Chapter 60 : Fall and Flight

“…Eunrang?”

I was confident I could recognize the characters of acquaintances I’d been close to for years just by their silhouette.

After all, I had a history of living crazily for the game.

Even if the customization changed a bit, or the clothes were slightly different, I recognized them easily.

Among the character customizations of acquaintances clearly etched in my memory, there was only one user whose finger was severed for the

Therefore, I was even more certain.

The man who suddenly appeared through the clouds was Eunrang, the representative ranker of China boasting PvP ranking 13th, whom I

used to party with occasionally, and my friend.

“It’s me! Don’t you remember?”

I slightly lifted my hood at an angle only Eunrang would recognize.

The distinctive horns and vertical pupils of the Dragonkin.

With his archer class characteristics granting not only exceptional general vision but also incredible dynamic visual acuity, he should be able

to recognize me at a glance.

“…Who is it?”

“…Who am I, you ask?”

It was a bit shocking that he couldn’t even remember who I was after seeing my face.

Even though it had been a long time since we last saw each other, considering the memories and time spent together, I felt slightly hurt by the

fact that he had forgotten me.

But it’s okay.

It would be hard to immediately recognize someone known as a man who had thus transformed into a woman inheriting the mighty Dragon’s

blood.

Unless one was a peculiar case like me, who knew acquaintances’ customizations inside out, it was somewhat natural.

In fact, right after the body swap, there was major confusion as users often failed to recognize each other, so this was probably the normal

reaction.

…Still, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

Kids like Yejin and Yerim recognized me immediately, so comparing the two of them with Eunrang in my mind was unavoidable.

I pulled down my hoodie completely.

I twisted the vision-obstructing magic I had cast to hide my face, allowing only him to see my true face.

Then, tapping the horns on my head, which somehow felt slightly larger than before, I exclaimed.

“Still don’t remember? Handle!”

Being Chinese, he had no idea what my nickname meant.

Although a highly efficient translator interpreted our conversations, it didn’t translate nicknames.

Therefore, he was one of the people most surprised and disgusted when he finally learned the hidden meaning of my nickname much later.

Also, although he initially reprimanded my nickname as vulgar, he later became the person who teased me the most about it.

For him, who was far removed from otaku games and media, the idea that the horns of a horned female character could be treated as handles

was apparently a shocking and tremendous idea, or something like that.

Anyway, unlike other comrades, for him, making handle-related jokes about my horns was routine—there was no way he wouldn’t recognize

me after hearing this gesture and the word ‘handle’.

Seeing my gesture, he looked up at me.

True to his name meaning Silver Wolf, silver hair fluttered from within the robe covering his entire body, including his head.

His eyes gazed steadily at the horns on my head.

Finally, did he recognize me?

I realized that thought was quite detached from reality in an incredibly painful way.

A streak of light aimed at my head.

A flash descended from the heavens, lightning—a powerful natural phenomenon described even as ‘divine punishment’ in the records of

ancient ancestors.

The white arrowhead imbued with the energy of that lightning grazed past my ear.

Pit, the sound of the arrow passing is the last thing I hear before my hearing goes numb.

A high-pitched ringing, echoes inside my ear canal.

The intense roar of thunder and lightning, almost too much for the brain to process, manifested right beside my ear.

Along with a terrible headache, I felt blood flowing from my ear.

My concentration shattered due to the completely unexpected attack.

It wasn’t long before I realized that the mana supply to the <Flight> skill I had been maintaining was cut off.

“…Who is Eunrang?”

Watching the enemy plummet below the clouds, the man muttered thus.

---

Falling.

Thanks to the disappearance of the barrier, I felt the air colliding violently against my entire body.

The sense of freedom felt by skydivers I had only seen on TV as a child wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

The sensation felt when simply falling from the sky was quite different from freely flying through the heavens via <Flight> magic.

To draw an analogy, it was like the difference between the free flight of a hummingbird and the flight confined within the rigid frame of an

airplane invented by humankind.

Controlled flight through magic versus free fall, enjoying freedom itself without the sensation of control.

It was obvious which felt better.

My hair, long past the point of being called a bob cut, with no trace left of the short hair from my male days, whipped wildly.

Air rushed fiercely through the gaps in my simple clothes, refreshingly blowing away a somewhat stuffy feeling.

Far away, buildings that looked like mere dots gradually began to grow larger.

Just moments ago, they were barely the size of ants, but in just ten-odd seconds, they grew to the size of my head, and soon began to assume

their original massive forms.

Impact was imminent.

Perhaps only about a hundred meters remained to the hard concrete ground.

Falling like this guarantees injuries severe enough to prevent movement, at the very least.

The body of a mage user, being a user, is certainly much stronger than an ordinary person’s, but not sturdy enough to emerge unscathed after

a free fall from thousands of meters.

Then, a method must be devised.

The most efficient way to protect the body from impact is undoubtedly barrier-type defensive magic.

I was reviewing the various skills that came to mind, thinking about which skill could minimize the damage the most.

As the clouds cleared, the distinct smell of oil and exhaust fumes characteristic of a city assaulted my eyes.

Only then did I realize.

Below the battlefield where Eunrang and I were fighting was a city center.

And an incredibly densely populated one at that.

As proof, the roads were filled with cars spewing exhaust, and busy people were visible through the windows of the buildings.

If I fell and hit the ground like this, innocent people might be killed en masse by colliding with the barrier.

Just grazing near the shield made of my mana could be fatal to ordinary people, and anyone directly caught in it might become chunks of

flesh, unrecognizable from their former selves.

If things went further and I crashed into a building, the shockwave might even cause it to collapse.

Suddenly, my head throbbed.

It was a pain on a different level from the dizziness caused by the ringing in my ears just moments before.

There was no time to feel that something was wrong.

I circulated my mana circuits to think of another plan.

Along with the sensation of time slowing down, my enhanced thinking ability, thanks to high intelligence stats, kicked into high gear,

perceiving the situation and searching for a way out.

Is there a way to overcome this situation without harming civilians?

Yes, the Dragon’s blood and instincts latent within my body tell me.

But there was little time left.

The most intense instinct, directly linked to survival, manifested in any creature facing mortal danger, was only vaguely indicating the limited

fact that the best way out existed.

<Flight> magic requires sufficient time to recast because my concentration was broken and the casting was interrupted.

Other movement skills besides flight magic include <Blink> or <Teleport>, but skills that instantly move the body like these require setting

coordinates accurately before casting.

Literally, while falling in an instant, pinpointing my body’s coordinates and a suitable destination is impossible, even for a talented prodigy

like me with Dragon’s blood.

Maybe if I had more time to think calmly.

Suddenly, the background, which seemed slow due to high-speed thinking, accelerates again.

I sensed it intuitively.

Ah, too late.

Perhaps only tens of meters left.

Feeling my heart pound violently against the concrete floor looming right before me, I closed my eyes to prepare for the impending pain.

At that moment, I felt a strange sensation behind my back.

An odd feeling, as if someone was gently tickling me with a kind hand.

This sensation of something long folded unfolding through the rolling pin of longing for freedom.

The sense of free fall I once felt came to an end.

The trajectory of my body, which had been falling helplessly, was now tracing an upward curve once again.

When I came to my senses, I was already soaring towards the heavens.

Not the suffocating feeling of mana enveloping the body, but the refreshing coolness of the strong wind parting my hair.

And an inexplicable sense of liberation felt in my upper body and behind my back.

I felt something awakening, surpassing even the thrill the Dragon’s blood had brought me countless times before.

On that day, despite it being midsummer, a sudden cold snap accompanied by heavy snowfall occurred in some urban areas of China.