Chapter 72: Adventure (6)

Lucid’s headache had mostly gone away once he had filled his stomach, but judging by the dullness he felt at the back of his head, he was still feeling its aftereffects. Still, it was nothing compared to the piercing pain from earlier, which was a relief.

He tried to figure out the reason his head had started to hurt so much, but he didn’t have enough clues to get to the bottom of it. It had been too sudden and too intense, and all he had been doing was to admire the painting in front of him. Perhaps there was something on the painting that had caused the pain. Swallowing his fear, Lucid once again stood in front of it, but nothing happened. There was no pain or any other strange occurrence.

Lucid shook his head and stepped away from the wall. He was fatigued from climbing the rocky mountain for days on end, and he had spent even more time awake and active to explore the cave instead of resting. He concluded that his headache had been due to the stress and overexertion, and took his mind off of it. Instead, he decided to focus on the one truth that the painting had confirmed.

“Someone else has been here in this mountain. Someone other than me.”

This fact alone came as a huge relief to him, and he felt a sense of great accomplishment. Not only that, but he felt hopeful that he could find the answers he needed on the other side of this mountain after all. It would be even better if he could find out about his family or the missing townspeople as well.

When Lucid left the cave, he was greeted by a gentle light. The sun was already high up in the sky, though it was covered by thick clouds which dissipated its brightness. It looked like it would start to rain at any time.

“Did I spend a whole night in there?”

He wasn’t quite sure whether he had slept or passed out, but since he wasn’t feeling at all tired, he decided to continue his journey.

Lucid made his way past the cave and looked for a path that would lead him down the other side of the rocky peak. Along the way, he was able to get a better look at the scenery below, since he hadn’t had the chance to do so last night. Now that it was bright out, he thought that he would be able to observe the landscape and perhaps figure out the best path to take. However, what he saw was beyond anything that he had imagined, and it left him speechless.

All he could see was clouds. White clouds stretched out in front of his eyes and covered everything as far as he could see. Even using his magnifying magic, he couldn’t see anything but clouds. It was strange, and it was interesting. There hadn’t been any clouds, not even a trace of them, on the side he had climbed, but now he saw that this side was nothing but clouds. There were clouds above him on the sky, and there were clouds below him. How could this be?

When he went to the edge of the peak, things got even more perplexing. Even there, he couldn’t see anything below because of the clouds. Well then, how was he to know how far he had to go to reach the bottom? Even worse, the other side was just a cliff. No matter which way he looked, there was no path that would lead him down the mountain. The slopes could hardly be considered as such, being closer to vertical drops than anything, so there was no way he could climb down the same way he had done up. There was nothing for him to grab hold to, and he couldn’t see anything below. Lucid couldn’t do anything but stare off into the distance.

After observing his surroundings a bit more, he concluded that there really was no easy way down this peak. This meant that he had to climb down the ridiculous cliff, but climbing up and climbing down were completely different things.

At the beginning of his second year in elementary school, some kids were playing behind the school. Indeed, not everyone played in the courtyard, kicking ball, since first and second graders were often chased away by the older kids. Still, if there were brave children like Myeong-su who stubbornly refused to leave and played in the corner of the courtyard, there were also children who left without putting up a fight, preferring to play tag or run around at the back of the school.

One day, as the children played tag, Ji-hoon, who had transferred schools not long after, had climbed up a rather tall tree to avoid being caught. All the other children were in awe, and even Ji-hoon himself was proud of his feat. However, it truly was a very tall tree, and Ji-hoon didn’t know how to get back down. He had remained stuck up there even after the bell rang, and teachers had found him crying on the tree. In the end, they had to bring a ladder to help him get down. Following this incident, the teachers had scolded him at length, and he had even sworn to never climb trees again in front of all his classmates.

Now, Lucid somewhat understood how Ji-hoon must have felt, stuck up there on the tree. He had managed to climb up somehow, but now that he was at the peak, he had no idea how to get back down. Even as he looked down the same way he had come, the cliffside seemed so much steeper than when he had climbed it, and he couldn’t bring himself to attempt to climb down it again. It was a wonder he had even managed to get up there safely. But no matter how much he grieved over it, there really was only one thing for him to do. He had to get down the other side of the mountain. He just had to figure out a way to do so. He had no other options.

Lucid decided to look around one final time before the sun set.

“Huh? What’s that?”

He stopped in his tracks. There, at the very edge of the cliff, there was a strangely suspicious spot. As he approached it carefully, he saw that there was a reddish black liquid that had flowed out from somewhere, though it was rather faded. It didn’t look like paint, and given the context of the situation, he decided it would be safe to assume that it was blood, whether human or animal.

Lucid looked around again, but still, he saw nothing. Besides the strange trace of blood, there was nothing else that caught his eye, so he went back to examine the bloody print.

He could tell at first glance that it was a very old print. The color was faded and it was quite dried out. Of course, he couldn’t simply assume that it was human blood, but based on the fact that he hadn’t encountered any wild beasts in the area during his climb and exploration of the mountain, and the presence of the cave painting, it was the most likely conclusion to draw.

Once again, he felt certain that the answers lay on the other side of this mountain.

The sun began to set, casting long shadows between the lumpy rocks. Just as they began to reach him, Lucid conjured his light sphere and went back into the cave, taking his place near its entrance. Once comfortable, he pulled all the scientific knowledge he had gained over the years and tried to find a solution to his current problem.

The first solution he came up with was to climb down in the same way he had come up: by crawling down like a lizard. He had already done it once before, so if he maximized the friction between his limbs and the side of the cliff, he should be able to theoretically make it down to the other side. However, there were two problems to this. One was that he could easily lose his balance if a strong gust of wind were to blow, or if he were to put too much weight on one part of his body. This had been a problem when he had climbed up, as well, so he was well aware of this danger. Another was that the cliff he had to climb down was much steeper than the cliff he had climbed up on. Though he couldn’t be perfectly sure of it, it appeared to be a very straight, vertical drop. Would friction even be of use in such a scenario? The cliffside he had climbed up had had a slant to it, at least, which allowed him to maneuver here and there to get in an optimal position to continue climbing, avoiding steep areas and finding spots with more to grip on. Even that had been physically exhausting, and the loss of strength had almost put him in grave danger near the end of his climb. In short, this solution was too dangerous.

The second solution had been inspired by hot air balloons. He had read about them in a book Ki-woong had lent him, and they were apparently able to float on the basis that hot air is lighter than cold air, which meant that it raised above the cold air of the atmosphere. If he were to use this concept, he could fill his rucksack with hot air and jump down the cliff, which would theoretically allow him to, if not float, at least glide down slowly. However, this solution was too complex for Lucid to even grasp his head around. He thus left the cave again, taking his rucksack with him. He climbed up an appropriately sized boulder and raised his rucksack above his head, using magic to heat the air inside of it. He continued to heat the air in the pack for quite some time, but his rucksack didn’t fill up like a balloon at all. No matter how hot the air got, the material of the rucksack itself wasn’t able to keep the air inside, and the hot air continuously escaped. Another issue was that the rucksack itself wasn’t big enough to contain enough air to make it float.

The third solution was inspired by hang gliders. He thought of taking all his spare clothes and tying and weaving them together to then jump off the cliff, but that was just a complicated way to jump to his death. Just like with the rucksack, it would be too difficult to turn his clothes into something that even remotely resembled wings, and if the fabric were to twist in mid-air, then that would be the end of him no matter how much air resistance he had.

But someone had been up here. How had they gotten down?

As he continued to think and test out his theories, the sun fully disappeared and the night settled in. Though he wasn’t bothered by the dark, thanks to the light sphere shining above his head, Lucid still knew that there was nothing else he could do at this point. He was hungry, and the only food left in his rucksack was one lone dried up vegetable. Earlier, he had stuffed his face with everything he could find, and though he hadn’t had the time or sanity to consider the repercussions then, he now regretted it bitterly.

He could withstand the hunger, but not for long. The more starved he was, the more fatigued he would be, which would expose him to more dangers later on. At this point, he had no choice but to pick a solution and go with it. Time was definitely not on his side, and he decided to leave tomorrow, no matter what. He would have to come up with a viable solution until morning at the latest, or explore the surroundings some more to find a way down. For now, he closed his eyes and chose to rest. He worried that his hunger would keep him from sleeping, but his fatigue won over, and soon enough, he was fast asleep.

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He woke up a few times through the night to cast warming magic whenever a particularly cold draft blew through the cave, and when he opened his eyes in the morning, he found that the world outside was shining brightly. Was the sunlight truly so harsh today? But the more he looked and the more his eyes got used to the light, he realized that it wasn’t the sunlight at all.

It was snowing. He had thought the clouds yesterday had been rainclouds, but they had brought snow instead. Lucid walked outside, the fallen snow crunching under his feet, and sighed as he looked down the cliff. The ground he was standing on was already quite slippery from all the snow.

“The cliff can only be worse,” he muttered.

Of course, he could always melt the snow away with magic, but there was no denying that the situation had gotten even more dangerous than yesterday. Moreover, the snow now covered what little was left to the sight, and he could see even less now.

A snowflake fluttered down in front of his eyes, and as he watched it fall, a formula came to mind. He had read about heavier objects falling faster than lighter ones, and at the side, there had been an annotation that read “Keep in Mind!” with a formula underneath.

“What was it… F=ma…?”

In short, the mass of an object multiplied by its acceleration yielded the value of the force that acted upon said object. This also gave way to the formula ma=mg-kv, in which mg denoted gravity and kv denoted air resistance. As such, the difference between the force of gravity and air resistance also yielded the value of the force that acted on an object. Air resistance, or kv, was measured by multiplying the velocity by the drag coefficient. Keeping these formulas in mind, Lucid began to make his calculations.

“F=ma, meaning that the force of gravity is proportional to the mass of an object, but it is also affected by resistance. ma=mg-kv. This formula means that if I want to decrease ma, I would have to decrease both mg and kv, but since mass is constant, I can decrease ma by increasing the value of kv. The only thing I can alter in this formula is k, which is the drag coefficient. If I increase the drag coefficient, I can decrease the value of ma.”

If things worked according to the formula, he could theoretically increase the drag coefficient infinitely and ignore gravity altogether, but realistically speaking, Lucid couldn’t assign an infinite value to a variable. Infinity wasn’t a concept that humans could fully grasp, meaning that he couldn’t apply it to his magic. Magic, after all, only worked within the confines of his own understanding.

Therefore, Lucid had to come up with the maximum value he could assign to the drag coefficient. It had to be the greatest number he could comprehend, but the problem was that if it failed to exceed the value of mg, this would all be for naught.

“35kg x 9.8m/s = 343kgm/s…” Lucid mumbled, dropping to his knees and scribbling his calculations on the ground.

<Adventure (6)> End.