CHAPTER 88
The Green-Skinned Warrior

A request for protection? Was the situation that dangerous?
No, before that, it was questionable whether he could even go there. The entrance to the 3rd Floor was blocked by an unknown power, making it impossible to enter. So how?
‘Could it be like when I went to the Spirit Realm…?’
Could he use the power of the sacred artifact within him and the Sky Sword's Scabbard to enter, just like last time?
[The God of the Moonlight Forest affirms.]
He had a feeling it might be possible, and she confirmed it. If so, he could enter the 3rd Floor and see the situation for himself.
'Let me ask a few things!'
However, since it was a dangerous place, he needed more information. To begin with, the very reason the 3rd Floor was closed was a mystery.
When he asked about that, he received not just a reaction but an answer.
[A Lord…]
Her voice was still faint. A delicate whisper that sounded as if it could vanish at any moment.
But he knew for certain that the connection was there.
‘So a Lord is the culprit. But why?’
[That being wishes to descend to the lower world. It wants to collect all the Lord's sacred artifacts scattered across the 3rd Floor to open a hole. A hole large enough for its true self to pass through.]
He suddenly remembered Grisella, whom he had met not long ago. More precisely, he remembered the fragment of the Sky Lord that had descended using her body as a medium.
This meant that something similar was happening on the 3rd Floor.
The difference was that the Sky Lord had only descended as a tiny fragment, whereas this time, the being was aiming for its entire body to descend.
And to achieve that, it was plundering the sacred artifacts of other Lords.
'Can you really pull something like that off just by collecting all the sacred artifacts?'
[I don't know… No one has ever tried it.]
‘Then what makes that Lord so confident?’
[Perhaps they are trying because it's not an impossibility.]
In other words, it was a kind of experiment.
From what he had heard, Lords—no, the spirits of the Spirit Realm themselves—could not descend to the lower world.
They were souls who had already shed all worldly things and ascended to the heavens. There was no way they could return to the lower world through some vague means.
That's why that being was experimenting.
If it works, great. If not, too bad. That was the level of thought with which it had sealed off the entire 3rd Floor and begun a war over the sacred artifacts.
It didn't care in the slightest how much the beings of the lower world suffered or died.
‘…They're insane.’
[Spirits… when they look at the souls of the lower world, they tend not to distinguish well between whether they are alive or dead. There is that aspect to them.]
‘They can’t tell the difference between the living and the dead?’
[It's not that they can't, they just don't bother. In their eyes, they are all just souls in the same cycle of reincarnation. Clinging to a single life and finding meaning in it is a characteristic unique to the lower world.]
Come to think of it, the World Tree was a similar being. The elven race possessed souls that revolved around the World Tree.
Their dead souls became nutrients for the World Tree, and with those nutrients, the World Tree bloomed new flowers. Those flowers signified the elves who were reborn at the end of their reincarnation cycle.
If it was the same soul, it might not matter to the World Tree whether it was dead or alive.
…For the first time, he felt a distance from the entity beyond the glass bead.
He hadn't realized it when he only saw her crying and laughing at children's cartoons and getting excited over related toys.
Even if she acted like a child, she was a spirit of the Spirit Realm.
[You must stop them. If they fail, it doesn't matter, but if they succeed… If a Lord's true body truly descends upon the lower world, there will be no one who can stop it.]
'I get that it's a big deal. So who is it? The Lord who started all this.'
Jinwoo recalled the events just before he returned from the 3rd Floor. There had definitely been some unsettling business back then.
The Lord of Light was indiscriminately issuing trials and gathering monsters.
It looked like they were amassing forces for some ulterior motive.
Was that the culprit?
[The God of the Moonlight Forest denies it.]
But the God of the Moonlight Forest indicated that was not the case. The one who sealed the 3rd Floor and was plotting to descend to the lower world was not the Lord of Light.
[The one who caused this is the God of the Battlefield.]
Jinwoo recalled Vertus's enigmatic tone and pressed his hand to his head.

He wanted to leave immediately, but for that very reason, Jinwoo took his time to manage his condition.
He checked his supplies and told Rona about the situation on the 3rd Floor. In response…
"Me too! Can I go too?"
She wanted to accompany him.
Jinwoo asked towards the glass bead.
'Is it possible?'
[It's possible if she's an elf. Because she is a being that originated from me.]
The answer was that it was possible because she was an elf born from a flower of the World Tree. Conversely, this meant it was impossible for other races like humans or dwarves who were not born from the World Tree.
‘Then why can I go?’
A natural question arose.
He was not an elf, nor a being that originated from the World Tree. So how could he enter a Gate opened by the World Tree?
He was puzzled, but he was used to it by now. This wasn't the first or second time something like this had happened.
"Ready?"
"Yes."
After a short while, they finished their preparations to leave. Rona, with a determined expression, fiddled with the hilt of her sword, raising the tension in her body.
They didn't know what situation would confront them upon entry. If they were unlucky, they might have to fight immediately.
Jinwoo also took out his sword in advance. He had to have the Sky Sword's Scabbard out to open the Gate anyway.
"Is that the sacred artifact from the Sky Temple?"
"Yeah."
Rona looked at Jinwoo holding the scabbard with fresh eyes. She had heard about it, but to think he really possessed a Lord's sacred artifact.
She didn't know when the weak human who had been so desperately fleeing in the Original Forest had become such a being.
As someone who also pursued the way of the sword, she could have felt jealous, but instead, Rona was happy.
She had known of Jinwoo's talent from the start. After all, she had taught him the sword for a time.
Because of that, rather than jealousy, she was happy that her own touch had played a small part in the existence known as Kang Jinwoo.
If possible, a little more. That thought arose naturally.
"Jinwoo. Take this spirit with you."
"A spirit?"
Rona handed Jinwoo a white light. It was her familiar spirit.
"It doesn't have the power to protect you… but it will allow me to feel our connection no matter where you are."
"Right, we should prepare in case we get separated."
That was part of it.
She smiled brightly as she attached the spirit to Jinwoo, and he accepted it without refusal.
Since he had an ego sword that controlled wind spirits and the glass bead which was part of the World Tree's sacred artifact, Rona's spirit did not reject him.
"Let's go."
"Yes."
Soon, a Gate was opened using the glass bead and the Sky Sword's Scabbard, and Jinwoo and Rona stepped inside.
Though they didn't know if it would work, they both held a Feather of Connection.

[3rd Floor: Pandemonium]

Fortunately, they arrived safely on the 3rd Floor. They weren't separated from Rona either. They had landed in the same place together.
It couldn't have been a coincidence, so the Feather of Connection must have worked. Seeing this, it seemed not all elements of the Gate were blocked…
"Um, Jinwoo. Was the 3rd Floor always like this?"
"No. It was a city."
As people accustomed to Gates, the two immediately scanned their surroundings upon arrival.
Not just Jinwoo, but Rona also knew the 3rd Floor well. Wasn't it a place with a large city where various races resided?
But the scene unfolding before them was completely different.
"Is this a desert?"
The heat of the sun was so intense it made the sky shimmer. An endless expanse of sand and a few scattered, withered plants.
And rusted swords, spears, and armor stuck in the ground, along with white skeletons of various shapes rolling on the ground.
"The sun is so hot, would you like to wrap this cloth around your head?"
Jinwoo gratefully accepted the cloth Rona offered and wrapped it around his head and face. It seemed they first needed to find the God of the Moonlight Forest's temple.

Broken swords and spears were embedded in sand dunes everywhere. And beneath them lay a multitude of skeletons clad in armor.
Corpses so old it was impossible to tell when they had died. The blood had long since dried up, the flesh and organs had been eaten by rats and insects, and what was left after being decomposed by microorganisms was only rusted armor and yellowed skeletons.
It was a space that looked as if an ancient battlefield had been moved here intact.
"It's not just humans."
"This small one looks like a dwarf. Could that large bone be from an orc?"
As they examined the remains with Rona, they found it wasn't just human bones.
Traces of a battlefield where various races had fought and died together. Regardless of race, all that could be seen was a gruesome sight.
A terrible thought even crossed his mind that perhaps this sand wasn't real sand, but something else.
‘It feels similar to the Sky Lord's barrier.’
The barrier covering the 3rd Floor felt similar to the one the Sky Lord had deployed.
Of course, it wasn't identical. But it was fundamentally the same in that it was based on the energy of Erosion and covered the surroundings.
Thanks to this, Jinwoo could grasp the structure of the barrier, but…
‘It's just so vast.’
The Sky Lord's barrier was one meant to hide something by creating an illusion. Hiding a sacred artifact, or hiding Grisella.
It was an illusion that made a small space seem large, so it shattered before Jinwoo, who could see through Erosion.
But this barrier was different. It wasn't an illusion; it was real. Because it was truly covering the vast land of the 3rd Floor, there was nothing he could do just by grasping a little of its structure.
'If I find and destroy the core, like with Erosion, it should disappear.'
Every barrier has a core pressure point. It was self-evident that if he found that spot, the barrier would collapse like a building that lost its pillars.
The problem was that since this entire vast land was real and not an illusion, he had no way of knowing where the core or the pillars supporting the barrier were. There was no guarantee there was only one pillar, either.
For now, rather than thinking about destroying the barrier…
"Let's look for the temple."
"Yes. Let's go quickly."
Finding the temple of the Moonlight Forest was the priority.
Most of the surviving elves would likely be gathered there. Ipril would be there, and perhaps Poldre the wyvern rider as well.
'I wonder what Kalesian and Mahiri are doing. Is Kurenai Masato trapped on the 3rd Floor too?'
He didn't think he'd heard anything about them returning to Earth.
It was possible they had returned secretly, but there was a high probability they were still on the 3rd Floor.
It would be reassuring if he could join up with them…
Jinwoo and Rona trudged against the sandstorm, searching for the Moonlight Forest. They covered their heads and faces with the cloth Rona had given them and sealed the gaps in their clothes as they pushed through the sand.
Even with such preparations, the grains of sand somehow managed to get in, which was incredibly annoying. They got in through the gaps in their shoes, making their feet feel gritty, and even penetrated the cloth covering their mouths, making their lips feel dry.
"Rona!"
"What is it!"
The sandstorm grew stronger. It wasn't yet strong enough to be called a typhoon, but it was thick enough to obscure their vision like a dense fog.
Even though they were walking close to each other, they had to shout to communicate.
"Enemies, ten steps ahead!"
"What?"
Rona's eyes widened at the sudden warning, and the enemies hiding in the sand dune threw off their camouflage and charged.
"Kill them!"
"Fight! Plunder!"
Their ambush having failed, they charged forward—green-skinned warriors. They were orcs.