The jungle was the worst.
The humidity, the insects, the animals… toxins, poisons, diseases… oh, and in case that wasn't enough of a vacation package, this wasn't just any jungle.
No, this was a jungle inside a rift. In a completely different world. With monsters. The kind graded as dangerous as a 98th-floor stage clearance.
Mind you, because perspective matters, in this world, there were exactly only three people still alive who had ever managed to reach the 100th floor of the Tower. And those three still couldn't clear the last stage. Not even on a good day.
And this rift's danger level was just two floors shy of that.
"Captain, we found some medicinal herbs. A bit poisonous without some clinical processing, but for now…"
Kim Daechan nodded at one of his party members, who returned with the rest, lugging their hard-won supplies. "Thankfully we have you, Lena. Your property-identifying power is just the best. Really. Without you, we'd all be the wrong shade of green by now."
Beside him was a badly wounded man. The oldest in the party. Uncle Vedant. His and his father's close companion, advisor, and the man who'd probably seen more battlefield disasters than any of them could count. Saving half the party and nearly dying for it wasn't exactly new territory for him. But he was far too old to keep playing the role of near-dead hero on repeat.
"Daechan…" the man called, voice a little thinner than usual.
"Yes, Uncle?" Daechan turned to him, already worried.
"Uncle's awake? Quick, we have to treat the wound now!" one of the party members blurted, panic already edging in.
Vedant raised his usually steady, unshakable hand. Now, it just looked aged and trembling. "Please… let me speak to Daechan alone for a moment…"
The other party members glanced at each other and solemnly nodded before heading out to guard the perimeter of their makeshift base, a literal hole in the ground. Real estate dreams, eat your heart out.
Daechan turned to Vedant, frowning. "Uncle, please speak. But don't say unnecessary things."
Vedant chuckled dryly, the sound more sandpaper than mirth. "You already know, right?"
Yes, Daechan knew. He knew Vedant wouldn't make it. Truth be told, none of them would. Not unless someone from the top five, or better yet, the top four, showed up for a rescue.
"The farthest we climbed the Tower was floor 91, wasn't it?" Vedant asked softly. "Our greatest achievement."
Daechan nodded.
"Which makes dying in a rogue rift equivalent to the 98th floor… a great honor," Vedant continued, a wry twist to his lips.
"Uncle, we need to hold on. Father will come to save us," Daechan said, trying to anchor himself to that hope.
"Look around us, my boy," Vedant huffed. "Even Lena didn't dare to search for supplies beyond a hundred meters from here. She knows if she goes further, we'll wander into another beast's territory. And right now, we don't even know whose territory this is."
Seven hours had passed since they'd been swallowed by the rogue rift. Immediate danger had greeted them, an overeager host they were, forcing them to run, sneak, and pray they found shelter before whatever owned the place found them. The most expensive single-use concealment equipment they had was now their only invisible blanket.
Eight people had been pulled into the rift, all of them highly trained and perfectly synchronized. But the 98th floor was still an entirely different league.
"That snake monster… it's impossible for us to even survive against it."
"We still have three more hours before the concealment equipment stops working. Usually, rifts like this have different time flows than our world. Let's hope it's one where our world has more time than here," Daechan said, offering comfort Vedant was far too sharp to believe.
"Daechan," Vedant grasped his hand firmly. "We felt it ourselves—the jump in danger from the 90th to the 91st floor. It wasn't just a step; it was like falling off a cliff. The difference was as great as the gap between the 80th and 90th. And that same gap was the same as between the 70th and 80th. But we know why we couldn't climb higher, don't we?"
Because unlike the steady climb between floors, like the 81st to 82nd, or the 71st to 72nd, the leap from the 91st to the 92nd was the equivalent of skipping twenty floors at once.
And the 93rd felt like skipping thirty floors at once.
By the time you reached the 98th, the strongest climbers claimed it felt like leaping eighty floors in one go.
They were, right now, standing in that kind of place.
"We shouldn't count on time dilation right now. It could be that days have passed back home. Or the opposite, only a few seconds," Vedant said grimly. "So… tell everybody… to bury me in this hole so my blood won't attract sharp-nosed creatures before the concealment equipment fails in three hours."
"Uncle, I already told you not to speak nonsense."
"Boy, you and those kids still have a chance," Vedant suddenly grabbed Daechan's collar with surprising strength. "Survive as long as pos—COUGH! COUGH—COUGH!"
"Uncle!"
In the middle of Daechan's panic, Lena suddenly dove into the hole and blurted out in joyful panic and utter astonishment, "Captain! Captain, Uncle, look! Look—the rift—! The rift is being cleared!"
"What?" Daechan's eyes went wide.
The three of them scrambled out of the hole, and beyond the concealment equipment's border, they saw it. The nightmare world around them was slowly dissipating into chunks of glittering glass. As if the sheer, mind-breaking danger of the last seven hours had just been… an elaborate cosmic prank.
"Did Lim Songbai or Yusuf come to clear the rift or something…?" Vedant muttered, baffled and suspicious in equal measure.
Still dazed, they stood there gawking at the impossibly undefeatable world crumbling into harmless glitter, until they noticed something else. Their own bodies were starting to glitch, and Uncle Vedant's injury also started to glitch.
The tower system was about to yoink them back to the 88th floor, without the injury sustained inside—
"T-this… this means A-ranked clarity was achieved?"
"We are saved…"
"…WE ARE SAVED!"
"UNCLE, WE ARE SAVED!"