The mob density in the Western Highlands was already low to begin with, but with the game map being stretched out to match its lore size, it was ridiculously empty now. Aside from the village defense and the zombie giant with the horde following it, they only encountered a few individual undead in advanced states of decay. Maybe the dungeons in the region would offer more enemies, but they were headed for the endgame content.

  The Jagged Pass was a mountain pass featuring rock formations that jutted up to the sky, ranging from a few meters to dozens of meters in height. They were the remnants of an ancient battle between two gods who tore the very earth asunder and raised it to fight each other. And among these signs of divinity lived the giants.

  Or rather, barely survived. Ravaged by infighting and the undead threat, their numbers had dwindled to only a few hundred, living in small, scattered settlements across a large region. They only ever met to quarrel or procreate. The only reason they hadn't gone extinct yet was that they were incredibly long-lived.

  "That's what the lore says," explained MANhera as they climbed the slope of the Jagged Pass.

  "How do half-giants come to be, then?" BlackKokoro asked innocently, drawing everybody's flabbergasted stares. But the half-giant in question laughed out loud.

  "The lore simply states that they're the result of an unlikely union. My original model is that of an orc, and then the [Giant Bloodline] subclass effect took over and gave me this appearance," MANhera responded, flexing her bulging muscles.

  Half-giants weren't a playable race and could only be accessed in the [Berserker] class. Every once in a while, players would complain on the forums because they liked the roleplaying aspect and wanted it to be available in other classes, but the devs maintained their position unwaveringly. They simply felt that the race should only be in a melee class.

  "I wonder if you can make a completely new character when you permadie?" wondered TripleBatsuDance. She knew MANhera and KuroYasha had both been permakilled during the purge in Dragonheart's Sanctum, but they had chosen to continue as stray heroes, forever being shown as enemies to regular players. How many people had restarted the game at level 1 by now?

  "I would hope so. I'd rather leave the game forever than have to go back to level 1 with the same character," responded KuroYasha, known for having over thirty characters at level 100. Whenever she grew tired of one, she would archive it and start anew, reaching level 100 within a weekend to appear in the guild as a new person. Who knew how long she would stick with the black fox [Exorcist] this time around?

  The party continued the ascent among the jagged rock formations, looking out for ambushes and telltale signs of the undead. Their voices could be heard long before one could see them, but the only sounds in the area were their footsteps on the gravelly path and the wind whistling through rock crevices.

  WolfGodKotaro's ears perked up, and he spun around in shock. The entire procession stopped and prepared for battle. AFKat heard it, too. It was a continuous noise, like a train rolling on tracks, approaching them rapidly. IpponSakura stood ready to intercept any attacks, and TripleBatsuDance had her finger on the button to equip her mask.

  Then, a figure suddenly zoomed past them at blinding speed. Even the samurai girl stood dumbfounded, even though her hand-eye coordination with her ridiculously high attack speed should have allowed her to react in time. The noise returned a moment later, and the figure stopped right beside them.

  It was a lean man with white rabbit ears and whiskers, wearing only a loincloth and running shoes. He had thick eyebrows, stubble, and chest and leg hair, steaming from the heat his body exuded in the cold air of the mountain pass. His name was WhiteRabbit - a level 100 player who had given up on his humanity.

  "MANhera-dono!" he greeted the half-giant in a sickeningly sweet tone, wiggling his hips in excitement.

  "Oh, it's you," she exclaimed, clearly recognizing him.

  "Who the hell?!" AFKat flared up.

  "This is the world's fastest player, WhiteRabbit-sensei," MANhera introduced him as if his appearance was the most normal thing in the world. "He has held that title since the game launched."

  "So we meet again," KuroYasha said with a frown, hiding the lower half of her face to hide her disgust.

  "Oho, you were here, KuroYasha-dono. Are you helping these players to level 100?" WhiteRabbit either ignored her attitude or didn't even realize her disdain. BlackKokoro and WolfGodKotaro both suppressed a shudder when his gaze fell on them.

  "Something like that. What are you doing all the way out here?" MANhera spoke for the rest of them when she asked what this almost-streaker was doing in the cold.

  "I'm measuring the size of the land. The Tea Party is trying to determine the world map's scale. Assuming it's correct, that is," explained WhiteRabbit with a serious look. The Tea Party was one of the top guilds in Prison of Eternity, putting as much stock on roleplaying as they did on skill. Each member had to be in the top ten of some official ranking, or they would be relegated to their sub-guild, Wonderland.

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  "Good luck with that. We won't keep you any longer, then," said KuroYasha with a dismissive wave of her oversized sleeve.

  "My, so cold," WhiteRabbit feigned sadness.

  "How big is the Western Highlands region?" AFKat stepped between them and inquired. They had walked at a brisk pace, owing to TripleBatsuDance's movement speed aura, so it was hard to tell how far they had traveled.

  "Nearly two hundred kilometers. We're definitely on a continent-sized map. Although I would like to know if there's more beyond the sea. Maybe the naughty god who brought us here already created more content on the other side of the planet," he responded with another distant look. There was the anticipation of adventure in his eyes.

  AFKat's idiot brother had often lamented that he had been born too late to explore the world and too early to explore space. She had always thought that he was just pathetic for complaining about something he had no control over. But now, the idea of exploring an unknown world had her heart beating higher.

  "Anyway, I'll be heading to the edge of the continent in the west, see how far I can go. If I find something noteworthy, I'll tell you on the return trip," WhiteRabbit said, saluting them flippantly. With these words, he shot off in a dust cloud, disappearing over the slope accompanied by the sound of his footsteps growing distant.

  "How fast is he actually?" WolfGodKotaro wondered curiously. He considered his weird appearance part of his build to move as fast as possible, although there was no equipment load system in the game.

  "Our normal movement speed when not buffed by boots or auras is like that of a light jog. I think the game files have it at eight kilometers an hour," KuroYasha, the most knowledgeable of the max-level players, answered thoughtfully. "My movement speed is currently increased by one hundred and ten percent, eighty percent of which comes from Sasahara-san's aura."

  "So we would be at sixteen point eight kilometers an hour?" The beast boy tilted his head and counted on his fingers. BlackKokoro patted his head with a warm smile, and he looked up at her in confusion.

  "WhiteRabbit's passive movement speed is at around two thousand four hundred percent. But he can activate a few temporary buffs to reach twice that for a few seconds each time," the black fox continued. In other words, he had taken less than an hour to travel a distance that had taken them five days.

  WolfGodKotaro stared at KuroYasha in disbelief. WhiteRabbit could reach four hundred kilometers an hour on foot, which put him above most race cars. It was a staggering number when one considered that he ran while practically naked. Maybe air resistance and drag didn't affect him when he moved on his own terms.

  "Once, I'd love to run at such speeds," he said with a longing gaze at the horizon, where the dust in WhiteRabbit's wake was still settling.

  "You could try something like that with a mount. Some of them can get really fast when you buff them right." KuroYasha chuckled at the beast boy's enthusiasm when he heard her words. The Pack could already move at eighty kilometers an hour in bursts, and Dalgander could maintain a similar speed for prolonged periods of time. And those weren't even in consideration for the fastest mounts.

  "Where can I find them?" he inquired hastily.

  "Not on this side of the world, I'm afraid," the black fox said with a wry smile, and WolfGodKotaro deflated. "Zombies aren't known to be especially fast."

  "I still find it criminal that only [Beastmasters] can have mounts~" complained BlackKokoro with a pout. She enjoyed the boon of having one such [Beastmaster] as a party member, with the game no longer limiting who could ride on the monsters. But she wanted to have a rideable broom to complete her image of a witch.

  "It would make the game pretty cluttered in towns," commented TripleBatsuDance with a shrug. "And the devs would have had to make the regions larger to account for the speed increase."

  "That all sounds like excuses to me~" BlackKokoro crossed her arms and sniffed.

  "Maybe we could petition the shu- Azrael to add mounts for everybody," suggested AFKat. She almost called him the shut-in god again. Knowing that he didn't actually drag them into a death game and was actively trying to make this world a better place meant that her initial image of him had been wrong. Even if he did talk like her idiot brother during his announcements.

  The party discussed what kind of mount they would want as they continued their journey. A flying carpet came up for TripleBatsuDance, and MANhera wanted a mammoth. KuroYasha mentioned a spinning turtle, and IpponSakura simply suggested a horse, since it would fit a samurai the most.

  "A giant centipede," Ansazu muttered under their breath while watching the group from the shadows of a nearby jagged rock. For the first time since starting to play this game, they felt the loneliness of being out on a tailing mission. Maybe it was because the game world had grown so huge that what used to take an hour or two now took many days.

  Ansazu imagined what it would feel like to ride on a giant centipede. They had seen them moving in the wild, seemingly gliding across the ground without a hint of rocking up and down. Surely, it would be completely smooth, like being on a train. A living train that could speed across the land in any direction without being bound to tracks or limited by terrain.

  The [Darkstalker] sniffed at the idea. It was an amazing one, if they could say so themselves. Hopefully, it could be realized one day. They knew there were such creatures in the corrupted south. Maybe a [Beastmaster] could tame them. Then they could all ride on it together, like going on a field trip on the bullet train.

  Who would Ansazu go with? They wondered at the direction their thoughts took them. In their imagination, the party they were chasing sat beside them as if they were friends. No, that was a traitorous thought. Ansazu had been ordered to tail and find an opportunity to eliminate these players because they had proven a threat to the realization of Vliroth's completion.

  The stalker shook their head to free themselves of this idea and teleported into a nearby shadow to maintain view of the group. This was a mission of utmost importance, so they could not afford to mess this up. Not again.

  "What do you think?" Ansazu heard TripleBatsuDance's voice from nearby and flinched. When they looked around, they noticed that it had simply echoed off a nearby rock face. The targets were not aware of their presence.

  "Eh, I'm quite fine with Dalgander. I'm a wolf god after all," responded the beast boy with a wry smile.

  "Do you mind spoilers?" KuroYasha asked mysteriously.

  "Yes, but that question in itself makes me think of a lot of possibilities," WolfGodKotaro said and hung his head.

  "Then I will reveal nothing. It will only build your anticipation," the black fox covered her smile with her sleeve and walked ahead. The beast boy stared at her fluffy tail as it swished left and right. He knew from his own tail that it was a sign of giddiness. She was surely looking forward to his reaction when he encountered what she was hinting at.

  He sniffed and smiled to himself. Now he had a new thing to work toward to complete his role-playing experience.