I arrived at the empty temple and looked around.
Collapsed columns, broken statues.
It felt like a ruin.

In the center of the temple, a knight stood.

‘He's a knight guarding the temple of the gods. I wonder if I can call him a paladin?’

The paladin, wearing full plate armor, exuded an intimidating aura even while standing still.

It wasn't like there was actual energy pulsating from him,
but my instincts were warning me.
There was no benefit in getting any closer.
To put it another way, I could say my nerves were on edge.

‘...It’s a similar feeling to when I first met Jo Seohui.’

The paladin didn’t move. He just stood his ground.
From his firm stance, it seemed like he wouldn’t charge at me suddenly.

‘Well, even if he did rush at me, that’s fine.’

I was confident in my ability to escape safely.
While my physical strength and stamina were probably on par with other Earthlings, my agility was far beyond the average player on the third floor.

The paladin would likely be a challenge for a third-floor player, but not an impossible one.
He couldn’t be set up as an unbeatable trial.

‘Blanco’s team also casually mentioned clearing dungeons, so it must be possible.’

The distance seemed right, so I activated my skill.

[Frozen Prison]

Ice walls shot up, trapping the paladin inside.
The paladin tried to react, but was immediately trapped.

It wasn’t as fast as I expected.

Clang! Clang!
There was a noise from within the ice walls.
The paladin drew his sword and began striking the walls with force.

‘Do you think you can break it like that?’

The durability was a whopping 10,000.
This was close to the amount of damage needed to break through two full-strength Hatchling Breaths.

A dungeon knight couldn’t possibly match that level.

‘...His vitality seems pretty high, though.’

He endured the damage from the Frozen Prison.
That’s the kind of monster you'd expect guarding a dungeon.

‘Considering how many third-floor players would have to face him... His vitality is certainly high, even if other stats aren’t.’

I used several other skills in quick succession.
Releasing the Frozen Prison, I followed up with Poison Spikes and Shell Shot.

Fwoosh!
Boom!

The paladin collapsed after being hit by the skills.
He could withstand the Frozen Prison, but the other two attacks were too much for him.

[You have defeated an unnamed paladin.]

I approached the paladin to check for anything useful.
Coordinates, a pirate king’s memoir—anything useful, I’d take.

[Path to coordinates 3-1,852]

A map appeared.
Coordinates.

‘How many islands are there?’

It wasn’t easy to find familiar faces on the third floor.
Then, there was the memoir.

[Pirate King’s Memoir #2.]

A piece of the torn book with a note added as a bonus.

“Lucky me.”

Maybe it was as simple as just defeating one paladin?
But whatever the case, what mattered was that I got it.

I flipped through the Pirate King’s Memoir.
It wasn’t written in Korean, but somehow, I understood it.
The Soul System had translated it for me.

“…It’s a diary?”

The Pirate King’s Memoir was someone’s diary.
The earlier part of it was missing, but I could guess the flow of the story.

‘I left my hometown and sailed toward the sea. But it was so hard, I thought about going back home. I landed on an island and wandered aimlessly. Then, I arrived at a village...’

Dolf, who called himself the Pirate King,
flirted with a girl he liked in the first village he reached.
A paladin, on pilgrimage, witnessed the scene, and Dolf, who had nothing to his name, was punished and had to flee.

[(Excerpt) Damn bastard. I’ll get my revenge someday. Fucker.]
“......”

Dolf claimed the girl had expressed some interest in him, but the reality seemed quite different.
It was clear the paladin intervened.

I added the coordinates and memoir to my inventory.
I didn’t care about the Pirate King’s life and death—what mattered was how to ascend to the next floor.

‘I’ll check the location of the third island, too.’

I circled around the islands, scanning the horizon.
Just like at the first island, I thought there might be something not visible to the eye.

‘Is that it?’

The distance between the first and second islands was one thing, but the third island appeared slightly farther away.

The size of the islands had clearly increased.
The first island was now small in comparison.

I wanted to cross to it immediately,
but I hesitated.

The increased distance between the islands made the prospect more daunting.

‘A raft made by the Ice Elemental would never make it.’

I gave up quickly.
Once I started thinking of it as a life-or-death gamble, it was over.

The destination was floating in my mind,
but it was okay.

The second island had resources similar to the first that would be useful.
There was plenty to do.

The remaining Yukii on the first island had set up a base camp where she could see the second island.
There had been some commotion on the second island, but Yukii just watched it passively.

“Wow…”

A ridiculously large ship had left the island.
It was so different from the raft I had sailed on that I couldn’t help but be shocked.

‘In the third floor, it seems a boat is a must.’

Who were the ones leaving, and where did they come from?
Yukii didn’t care.
It wasn’t a question that had any meaning to her.

Her only thought was that she had to climb the tower.

Yukii felled trees.
By freezing and shattering the roots, she could easily bring them down.

‘If I use this wood as the base, I should get the Soul System’s enhancement, right?’

Just like the Earthling had done.

Yukii made a raft and reinforced it.
She added walls of ice.

However, her ice was of such poor durability that it couldn’t really serve as a boat wall.

‘…Hikari isn’t going to help either. Maybe I should’ve just followed them.’

I was starting to regret not going with the Earthling.
That regret only deepened as Hikari took longer than expected.

Four days later.

“Chief.”
“Ah, you made it safely, Hikari.”
“It was so hard.”

At a glance, Hikari looked like a super-powered woman.
With her golden bob haircut, she cheerfully approached Yukii to greet her.

Finally, she had made it to the third floor.

Yukii, seeing Hikari after four days, sighed deeply.

“Why did it take so long?”
“Huh? I just came straight here.”
“......”

It made sense.
Yukii and Hikari, though summoned at different times, hadn’t been separated for that long.

It wasn’t weird that time would flow differently on each floor.

Yukii had stayed behind for purely practical reasons, thinking that a week’s wait would work for Hikari.

“Chief, don’t tell me...”

Hikari gasped and looked around.

A vast, empty ocean.
She would lose her mind in just a week here.

“How long have you been here?”
“Four days.”
“Eh? Four days? Only four days? Ugh, what the heck.”

I had thought I spent at least a year here.
Seeing Hikari grumble with a hint of disbelief, Yukii couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I didn’t wait for a year.”
“Yeah, I figured.”

Yukii had a goal.
A goal that had formed after being summoned to the Tower of Struggle.

No matter how much Hikari was a trusted companion who had been with her even in dangerous situations, Yukii wouldn’t give up on her newly found dream.

Hikari understood Yukii’s heart.

‘The hope that my dead mother might be alive in the Tower of Struggle...’

She had learned of the possibility,
but how could she give that up?

“What should we do?”
“We need to cross to that island first. Then…”

Yukii briefly explained the layout of the third floor.

Yukii asked,
“Do you think we can cross?”
“It’s impossible.”

Hikari shook her head.
From her expression, it seemed completely impossible.

“Another wall blocking the way?”
“Yeah.”

Hikari was a superhuman who could control light.
She could even transform into a photon.

In the previous floor, she had tried to escape the region.
With the speed of light, there was nowhere she couldn’t go.

But she had failed.
She was blocked by a ‘wall’ that even light couldn’t break through.

“We’ll have to cross by sea, then.”

Yukii gave up quickly.
She had anticipated it.

So, during the four days while she waited for Hikari, she worked hard on building the raft.

“Is this it?”
“Yeah. We’ll leave tomorrow morning.”

It had taken quite some time, but the result was surprisingly good.

At least it was good enough to form the shape of a boat.

“Why? Doesn’t it look good?”
“…No, it’s fine.”

Hikari’s expression seemed so confident that Yukii couldn’t say anything about it.

The next morning, the two of them boarded the boat and set off into the sea.

“...Wow, this is too much.”

Hikari had transformed into a mass of light and boarded the boat.
It seemed like she was outright declaring she wouldn’t row, which made Yukii chuckle.

“We need to reduce the weight.”

Hikari said this proudly,
and Yukii couldn’t refute it.

Yukii gritted her teeth and began rowing.
Her strength wasn’t exceptional, so crossing even one island wasn’t easy.

‘How did the Earthling do it?’

Even though she was an Earthling, the male was still a male.

“Hah... Hah…”

They finally arrived at the second island.
Yukii, panting, shoved the raft into her inventory.

“Wow. This island seems bigger than the one we were on.”
“....”

Hikari casually surveyed the island.

‘She could at least help...’

Yukii gritted her teeth but couldn’t say anything.
It was more efficient for her to struggle alone than for both of them to suffer.

“I’ll take a quick look around.”
“…Okay.”

While Yukii exhaled heavily, Hikari quickly looked around.
It didn’t take more than two seconds.

“There’s someone here?”
“A handsome man?”
“No. A very dirty man. Looks like a martial artist.”
“……”

That couldn’t be right.

“Let’s go check it out.”
“Yeah.”

Hikari led the way, and soon they met the man Hikari had identified as a martial artist.

“Earthling.”

Looking at his face, it was definitely him.
He hadn’t shaved, so he looked a bit scruffy, but his features were unmistakably the Earthling.

“You made it over?”

Clang!
“......”

The Earthling glanced at Yukii but focused on his work, smashing rocks with a crude pickaxe.

Clang!
“What is he doing…”
“This?”

The Earthling wiped his sweat away and spoke.

“Magma stone mining?”

Not really, but...

[Mining][Lv.4][F]
[Efficiency increases by 13% when mining ores.]