Child of Destiny

Shin was thinking about what he was going to do next, feeling a bit troubled about it.

“Should I continue hunting while waiting for them?” he thought for a moment before quickly shaking his head. “However, it is no longer efficient to explore the outer areas given my current progress.”

They said that leveling up after breaking through the threshold between the Level 150 and 151 mark was incredibly hard.

However, the true challenge seemed to come right after every ten levels. Leveling up was only getting harder whenever the player reached these thresholds.

Leveling after Level 160 was twice as hard as those at Level 150. Then it would be doubled once again once they later reached Level 170s, while Level 180s was twice as hard as Level 170s.

This pattern would continue every 10 levels, making it extremely difficult to level up.

Shin was incredibly lucky stumbling onto this place, which was a heaven for grinding levels. However, he still had taken more than a month just to level up from Level 175+ to his current level.

Unless he found a place where he could grind monsters much stronger and higher level than him, which also gave an abundance of experience points, then leveling up would become another huge problem that he needed to solve.

His only option was to find monsters with high life rating, such as Chieftains and Lords with decent bloodline, or regular monsters with 10 or so levels more than him.

However, he was already at Level 190s, which meant that he needed to hunt monsters at Level 200s.

Level 200 was another important threshold, where all kinds of monsters would gain significant boosts in their respective stats and combat prowess.

For the players, Shin suspected that this threshold was meant for awakening most of the innate abilities of every race, regardless of whether they were Transcendent, Ascended, or Epic Races.

It was also the point where most of the players had completely familiarized themselves with their respective racial traits and Tier 3 abilities.

This was the reason why Shin was too hesitant to go to the deeper parts of the island. After all, he was still too weak to face monsters of such caliber alone.

He would need some help from people of the same level or skill to be able to take down monsters of such a level.

“Tsk! This is getting annoying. Do I have to be trapped here until I reach Level 200?” he mumbled while frowning deeply.

“Dad! Dad! We have found an interesting place! Let’s play! Let’s play!”

While he was in deep contemplation, Sylvana suddenly leaped out of the nearby bushes and quickly ran toward him.

She then hopped into his embrace before continuing. “Gramps and Big Sister found an interesting place! Come! Come!”

Shin caught her and patted her head while furrowing his brows. “An interesting place?”

In these past few weeks, all his Elemental Companions had helped him quite a lot during the entire exploration of this place, particularly when scouting the areas and thoroughly drawing the topography of the map.

Astaroth and Sylvana, in particular, had helped him a lot since they were responsible for scaling through the areas that they had gone through, giving him detailed topographical features of certain regions when he was drawing his virtual map.

They had basically drawn all the explorable areas throughout the outer regions of the island. Even a few parts between the outer and inner regions had been scouted as well.

Whatever his elemental companions had found now would most likely be from the border dividing the inner and outer regions.

“Given that this little lass is so excited about it, it may be worth exploring,” he mumbled before turning toward Ronan, who came alongside Sylvana. “Let’s go! Tell me about it on the way.”

Ronan gave Shin a respectful bow before answering. “Yes, father.”

Sylvana pouted her mouth a little when she saw this before hitting Shin’s shoulder with her little fist a couple of times as a form of complaint.

It was supposed to be her job; how dare he let Ronan steal it from her!?

Shin just smiled and gently stroked her head, letting her calm down. He was already used to these kids’ little rivalry, so he was not that surprised by her reaction.

Along the way, he listened to Ronan while Sylvana was riding on his shoulders and doing some funny gestures, seemingly treating her ‘father’ as some sort of steed.

“A tower?” mumbled Shin after listening to everything.

Ronan nodded before continuing. “We have tried to enter it, but there is an invisible power that prevents us from coming closer to it.”

“Sylvie! Also tried to use her powers as well, but she always failed in the end,” Sylvana chimed in with a bit of disappointment.

She felt like her name sounded too long, making her too lazy to pronounce it. She then made it a bit shorter, which was why she sometimes called herself Sylvie.

‘It must be because of the restrictions set by the system,’ Shing thought.

Based on the rules of the game, these places that were only restricted to players were meant to be challenged.

They either had special quests that needed to be cleared before gaining a reward corresponding to the player’s performance, or a place filled with knowledge and unique and rare skill books, just like the Mage Towers, Thieves’ Den, Warrior’s Arena, and Sacred Chapel.

These places were quite normal during the middle stages of the game, particularly when the players started passing through their Tier 2 Promotion Quests.

Shin had also seen quite a few of them in the Divine Empire, but did not find anything worthy of his attention.

After all, he already had quite a lot of broken and overpowered skills in his arsenal, which could also be integrated into his version of Reality Manifestation.

He had become a bit picky when choosing such skills now, only choosing those that could be used as a model for his Martial Art Skills or Mentalism Techniques.

The rest would only become useless and take more slots from his skill arsenal, as well as the corresponding skill points.

“A tower, huh? I wonder if it is a high-level Mage Tower,” he mumbled.

Unlike him, who majored in Reality Manifestation and manifesting his martial and mentalism prowess within the game, other people required more skills and spells in their arsenal, especially the highly advanced ones.

The mages and other magic classes, in particular, relied more on these kinds of spells. The Forbidden Spells, Templar Magic, and such were the best examples of these.

“If it is truly a high-level Mage Tower, then I have struck gold this time!” he then grinned quite widely, understanding the importance of such a place during the current stage of the game.

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!

Not long after, the trio finally reached the place where the tower was found.

He was right that this place was right at the border between the outer and inner regions of the island.

Fortunately, they did not encounter any kind of monsters during their trip here.

“My Liege!” Astaroth, Solus, Blackie, and Whitie immediately gave Shin a respectful bow to greet him.

The rest, on the other hand, remained as casual as they usually treat him.

Shin nodded his head before turning to Hanzo. “Even with your spatial abilities, you are unable to enter the place?”

Hanzo shook his head while replying. “This restriction seems to be made by the Heavenly Restriction itself, which is why we are unable to break through it.”

With just those words, Shin confirmed it had to be a place available only to players.

“I understand,” he nodded before turning toward the said tower.

He was unable to get a clear look at it in the distance because of the dense trees in the surroundings.

What he saw was an extremely tall tower that seemed to be as tall as a real skyscraper in the real world. From his initial estimate, there must be at least 150 to 175 floors in it. This was even his conservative estimate, which was based on its outer appearance.

The tower walls seemed to be made of an obsidian material due to their pitch-black color that it had.

Because of this color, it seemed that all the light in the surroundings was moving toward it. It was creating an illusion where the beams of light were following toward it.

The sight somewhat stunned Shin, amazed by how magical the scene was that he was witnessing.

He could not see anything else on the surface of the pitch-black walls aside from the glittering ‘stars’ that were produced by the flowing lights in the surroundings.

After watching this scene for quite a while, Shin finally walked toward the tower while signaling for his elemental companions to wait for him.

*Ding*

Right after his feet crossed the mark where the others had marked the invisible barrier, Shin immediately received a notification from the system.

Skimming through its continents, he could not help but smirk. “I see.”

…