A Sorcerer's Journey 320 Surficial Tundra IX

Unhindered by his near-death encounter with the Ice Bats, Grimm continued his search for entrance points into The Burrow.
Six months later.
Inside the cabin of the Starfall Reconnaissance Craft, Myna raised his wing lazily and pointed in a far away direction. "There's a hole over there."
Grimm turned around and looked towards the direction Myna pointed in. Seeing that there indeed was a hole, he nodded and replied, "Right, let's go and check out if it's a burrow entrance."
Over the past six months, Grimm had consecutively found ninety-six entrances to The Burrow. If they were to add that to the forty-nine that he had found before the Ice-Bat incident, that would mean a grand total of a hundred and forty-five mission targets. Another way to put it would be a hundred and forty-nine pieces of Sorcerer Essence as a reward.
There were roughly three hundred elite Dark Demon Hunters assigned the same mission as Grimm. If his results were taken as their average, then the Sorcerer World would have discovered roughly thirty thousand entrances into The Burrow.
Of course, those discoveries were merely a small fraction of all entrances in the Burrow World, which puts into perspective the sheer vastness The Burrow. And yet its vastness was owed to the collective labor of the weakest creature from the bottom of this world's food chain, burrowing continuously over the course of eons.
The Endless World was truly an awe-inspiring place, ever-changing and unimaginable. It would forever remain beyond the limits of any sorcerer's imagination.
With a loud whoosh, Grimm slowly guided the craft down towards this opening.
Small creatures living on the tundra surface scurried away as they drew nearer to the hole. Grimm opened up the metal covering of the Starfall Reconnaissance Craft in order to gain a better view of the deeper reaches of the cavity.
Over the course of the past few months, Grimm and Myna had done this scouting process at least a thousand times so it would be fair to say that they were pretty experienced in it.
"Ugh, it's a burrow entrance that's already been marked using the Isotta imprint by some other Demon-Hunter Sorcerer."
Myna said, disappointed as he stood on Grimm's shoulder.
Grimm's eyes flashed around under the Mask of Truth, and after a barely audible sigh, the metal covering of the Reconnaissance Craft clamped shut. The dark metallic spherical flying object once again flew in a fast, steady pace into the sky.
Two days later, again, in an entrance cave into The Burrow, Grimm and Myna sighed in defeat.
This burrow entrance like the last one, was also marked by the Isotta imprint by some other Dark Demon Hunter.
For the past few days, it was pretty hard for Grimm to find a new burrow entrance that wasn't already marked down by other sorcerers. Perhaps unknowingly, they had started wandering in circles.
Inside the cabin of the Starfall Reconnaissance Craft, as they were flying, Grimm sighed and said, "It seems we have unconsciously been distorted by the World's Edge. After all, I feel that this world was a pretty small one."

"Caw caw, I think so too," Myna affirmed.
The World's Edge was just a name given to the invisible borders of the world, which the sorcerers couldn't come up with an explanation for. If one were to fly straight into one, they would inevitably find themselves on a distorted pathway that wound around the world.
Different levels of lifeforms would always have completely different perceptions of the world around them.
When Grimm was still in his youthful ignorance, back at the Eastern Coral Island when he was still doing odd-jobs under Old Ham. Like most other civilians, Grimm thought that the sky was endless, the border of the land was the ocean, and this ocean stretched to infinity and beyond.
This world had no limits, there will never be an end to it.
And as Grimm became a sorcerer-apprentice, his knowledge grew. Alongside that, the world as viewed through his eyes had undergone a massive change.
The Grimm at this stage understood well that the world indeed had boundaries. And yet, he couldn't quite grasp what this boundary was. He had never tried to imagine what it was like, or rather, it was impossible to imagine the general dimensions of what made up a world.
However, Grimm was more than certain that the world indeed had a boundary, albeit one that could not be explained.
It was not until when Grimm had become an official sorcerer, after he had gone on his first Demon-Hunting Expedition and after he had started to perceive the Spatial Relative Boundary, that he understood that although the world had a boundary, it was blurry and distorted. A normal creature would never be able to stray away from the boundaries of a world no matter how hard it tried.
In their perception, the sorcerers had named this strange phenomenon the World's Edge.
However, with their current Life Level, it's a given that the sorcerers would not use your run-of-the-mill methods to go beyond the World's Edge.
One of these special methods was the one most familiar to the creatures from the Endless World. It was the World's Aperture that allowed the sorcerers to transcend dimensions into other foreign worlds.
Apart from that, Grimm knew three other methods to escape the interiors of a world, which were: transcending the layer of Chaotic Energy above the clouds into the Void Space, entering the Void Space through penetrating the Relative Spatial Boundary, and lastly, using the Destiny Lever to incite the Space-time Rift.
As for the lifeforms higher up the ladder, like a World Lord or a Stigmata Sorcerer, although no one knew what the world was like through their eyes, but no doubt about it that it differed wildly from the regular sorcerer's perception. Though, there was already a chance lurking around the corner that there would be a mind-breaking breakthrough for them.
This was the growth of one's Life Level.
Creatures of different Life Levels viewed the world differently. Consequently, their actions and aims would always have differing reasonings.
The perception that the world was small would inevitably result in hubris and arrogance. The perception that the world was vast would always make clear to oneself their standing in the world.
In his ignorant, arrogant youth, the sorcerer-apprentice's nickname and ranking were trivial things that were fought over brutally in a closed system between a bunch of kids. At that time, when they were atop the sevessel, the top five people who could not be defeated were all nicknamed "Heavenly King".
What they didn't know, was that closer to immortality a sorcerer gets, there would be no such bombastic nicknames. In some instances, these sorcerers would have long forgotten their own names as the years go by.
The only thing they had left, was the eternal pursuit of true knowledge. As such, the only thing people remembered about them was the name of their Sorcerer Towers…
The simpler a theory was, the deeper it would become and there would be even less people who actually grasped it.
This was because most people were regular humans who drifted through life along the flow. They would only become a small, insignificant cog of history, washed away as the years go by. They only understood the immediate empty happiness in front of their eyes, with the basic emotions of pain and happiness dictating their judgment on their own perceptions.
Upon deeper reflection, it seemed that this was the reason that sorcerers would not even bother to mingle with sorcerer-apprentices.
The disparity in the perception of reality between two different people from different Life Levels was a gap too great.
It was due to this…
The way the Dark Sorcerers trained their apprentices was precisely because they disdained these pointless exchanges that they simply let the apprentices mercilessly kill each other. From there, the sorcerers would select the surviving seeds that passed the ordeal and see if they had the potential to grow into the Life Level they themselves were on.
Bright Sorcerers on the other hand allowed all their apprentices to face the ordeals collectively and to share their burdens as they grew. In their process of making up for one another's shortcomings, they would gradually come to realize the insignificance of the individual.
Sigh.
Grimm said bleakly, "It seems that we have to return to the Battle Command and debrief our mission. In our current mission, we have achieved a hundred and forty-five mission targets. Although I still do not know where our results stand in comparison with others, my hopes of getting the Honor Badge is pretty much dead."
"Caw caw, we have also discovered a total of two special places in the Burrow World. I wonder if they are clues to a bigger mystery. Maybe the Battle Command would give us rewards?"
Myna on the other hand, was much more enthusiastic. His reply to Grimm's statement was done while fruit juice was sploshing about his beak.
Thinking for a moment, Grimm shook his head and said, "Maybe there would be a reward, but it most likely will not be an Honor Badge. I can't help but think that the Great Black Isotta is already well aware of the situation reports about this world."
Grimm sighed again as he said, "A being of such degree, who knows what plans he has in mind."
Myna was pissed.
"Tch, when Lord Myna was already getting involved in grand masterplans, it's most likely that he was still just another little sorcerer just like you right now."

Chapter end