Roughly twenty minutes had passed, which translated to about a full day of in-game time.
Quest.
Moving at full speed, Daigan finally arrived at the quest location before the third day.
“Sure enough, it moved.”
Snow dust from Snezhnaya still seemed stuck to the soles of his boots, leaving a wet trail beneath his feet.
Daigan had already crossed through the miasma of the Sumeru rainforest.
“Why does it freeze up every time I’m about to reach a new map?”
He came to a stop like an armored pterosaur.
Under the residual momentum of his sprint, the earth beneath his feet was plowed into two deep furrows.
The Aranara in the forest scattered in panic, hiding behind trees and among the grass, curiously watching this uninvited intruder.
“His steps are so heavy…
the little grass was crushed by him,” an Aranara murmured softly upon seeing the plowed ground.
But Daigan kept his eyes straight ahead, paying no attention to them whatsoever.
Reaching the approximate location, he opened the map, tapped V to track, and looked down.
Right in front of his steps, a faint golden light point representing the [Quest Marker] appeared.
Seeing this, Daigan couldn’t help thinking that the previous 2D interface was far more convenient—one could just follow the guide straight to the target.
Now that it had transitioned to 3D, some places weren’t on the surface.
After long-distance tracking ended, one still had to rely on these fool-proof markers to relocate the exact position.
Otherwise, one might end up standing right above the destination, staring anxiously at the target hundreds of meters below.
Well…
he shouldn’t look at it that way either.
Back when he first transmigrated, the pixelated graphics were even easier: the whole world only had seven regions.
Click once, AFK during the loading screen, and he would arrive.
But back then there was nothing to do—zero fun.
If he had to live out the rest of his life in a world like that, he would rather just reincarnate.
Thankfully, leveling up via the system upgraded the graphics; otherwise, he would have died of boredom long ago.
Having set his direction, he sprinted forward toward the target with peace of mind.
*Bang!*
Sprinting off again, Daigan’s figure vanished into the rainforest.
Seeing the intruder leave, a few Aranara finally dared to creep out.
An Aranara gripped the edge of a mushroom cap and poked its head out, its round eyes staring unblinkingly at the figure disappearing behind the cliff wall.
“He didn’t see us.
So disappointing…
No, wait, not disappointing,” one said with relief.
“His feet are so, so heavy!” An Aranara hopped curiously over to the footprint Daigan had left behind.
Stepping into it with its short little legs, its whole body sank inside, lying comfortably within the depression.
“It’s even deeper than the holes left by Sumpter Beasts!
When he jumped just now, Nara felt the ground shaking, like the tremors before thunder!”
“So should we still follow him?” Another Aranara pulled its neck back as it looked at the footprint, its voice tinged with fear.
“He is stronger than even the fiercest big robot…
Nara, look at that tree over there!” Its tiny paw pointed to a crooked tree nearby, where a shallow scrape had been left on the trunk.
Probably because it wasn’t straight, it hadn’t loaded in Daigan’s field of view, so it had been grazed slightly as he sprinted past.
“His hem just brushed past it, and such a big chunk of bark peeled off!
So scary…
Nara-Nara doesn’t want to follow him.”
“Nara, Nara-Nara, he didn’t come to make friends,” the oldest-looking Aranara said slowly, shaking the flower bud atop its head.
“He has no scent of dreams on him, only the scent of wind—a very, very fast wind blowing in one direction, never stopping for us.”
The Aranara went quiet.
They wanted to find a good person who could see them.
That way, they could rescue the imprisoned Lesser Lord Kusanali.
But this attack helicopter of a man obviously didn’t fit their criteria.
In the end, the Aranara could only watch as Daigan dashed straight toward the Chinvat Ravine valley.
***
The Akademiya’s patrol teams were miles away at the main city walls.
This valley was a desolate place deliberately forgotten by the House of Daena.
No crisp rustle of scholars’ robes touching, no friendly nods from scolding guards—here, there were only the chirping of rainforest insects and the rushing torrent of the river.
Sumeru Rainforest.
Beside a giant tree known to no one.
Daigan arrived on schedule and looked down.
The guidance point stopped in front of a cliff face on the west bank of the ravine, where vines intertwined and jagged rocks jutted out, looking no different from the surrounding wild cliffs.
“It’s clearly just a piece of ground.”
Daigan looked up.
Running all the way here, no red dots indicating [Threat Level] had popped up in his vision.
Either he was unlucky, or the mobs here were so low-level they didn’t respawn anymore.
“Is it here?”
Daigan closed his eyes.
Just in case, he turned off the game music and turned the background sound effects to maximum.
Instantly, from deep within the cliff face, a faint hum of Akasha energy resonating with steel could be heard.
Along with the ethereal, soft chime unique to Domains.
“Looks like this is the place.”
He raised his hand to push aside the vines, his fingertips searching until they pressed on an inconspicuous bump on the cliff face.
That was the core location where the guidance marker was flashing.
With a soft click, the jagged rocks under the vines slid inward like living things, revealing a narrow crevice wide enough for only one person to pass through.
Inside the crevice was not a straight dirt path excavated by hand, but a steep downward staircase, flanked by Akasha crystals glowing with a cold light.
The light was so dim it could only illuminate the small space beneath one’s feet, while the end of the stairs was swallowed in a darkness so thick it seemed as if all light had been deliberately stripped away.
Simultaneously, Domain information appeared before Daigan’s eyes:
[- Domain Name: Joururi Workshop (Weekly Boss Domain)] [- Unlock Conditions: Adventure Rank ≥ 35 + Complete Archon Quest Chapter III: Act V ‘Akasha Pulses, the Kalpa Flame Rises’; uncompleted quests can be entered by joining a friend’s world in co-op] [- Location: Sumeru · Avidya Forest – Chinvat Ravine area; a dedicated Teleport Waypoint will be displayed on the map after unlocking] [- Boss Classification: Fatui Harbinger · Scaramouche’s God-Creation form, designated as ‘Dominator of Trounce Domains’] [Scanning Domain Information…] [God-Creation Project, unreleased] [Character level meets requirements; challenge recommended]
Looks like this is the location of the Gnosis.
Still, as for Scaramouche…
Daigan had some interaction with him.
Usually, when skipping through story cutscenes and watching Harbinger trailers, Scaramouche looked like a young male character.
He rarely saw these Harbingers as actual in-game models.
But he remembered once after finishing a quest story, when he prepared to leave and farm mobs, he lagged.
It froze several times, lagging with every sprint.
Then somehow, Scaramouche’s character model suddenly spawned in.
Unfortunately, before he could react, it disappeared.
But the system had recorded Scaramouche’s data.
“I remember he was somewhere between Level 80 and Level 85.
Is he the boss of this God-Creation plan…?
Damn it, I didn’t read the plot carefully.
What kind of overpowered plan can take that short guy from around Level 80 up to Level 90?”
Looking at the Domain, Daigan actually hesitated for a moment.
One had to realize that above Level 80, every single level required an astronomical amount of experience points.
From Level 0 to Level 20, it had only taken him two hours.
From Level 20 to Level 40, after getting familiar with mob-farming spots, it took about three hours.
Later, after shifting from pixel art to 2D, going from Level 40 to Level 70 took him a full five days—not only did the game’s converted time grow longer, but the previously simplified controls became more complex.
For example, escaping prison, operating computers to open doors, or clearing domains used to just require pressing a single jump button to pass, but now they required solving puzzles.
Though not extremely difficult, it still wasted a lot of time.
But these weren’t the main obstacles to leveling up.
The hardest part was the scaling of the EXP bar.
The EXP required for the first 20 levels was about half of what was needed from 20 to 40, and the EXP from 40 to 60 was about half of what was needed from 60 to 80.
But after Level 80, the EXP needed for *each single level* equaled the sum total of all eighty previous levels combined.
Converted to this world’s calendar, he had lived here for 24 years, but his play log showed over two thousand hours—roughly a bit more than two months.
From four or five minutes a day in the pixel phase, to 24 minutes a day now in 3D, it really was quite an ordeal to endure.
He had a hunch that after Level 85, the world might undergo new changes again, perhaps even transitioning into a photorealistic style.