Chapter 113 - Guinness World Record
Wingsuit.
A piece of gear with a top-tier danger rating among all extreme sports.
Just because it has "wings" in the name, some people think you can actually fly with it.
But no.
You're not flying—you're just falling... at a slant.
And you're doing it like a human flying squirrel—
At speeds exceeding 250 kilometers per hour.
"Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!"
Jin's eyes flew wide open behind his goggles.
The moment he leapt from the transport aircraft, the world unfolded vertically beneath him.
This must be what it feels like to not fall, but to slide, putting your life on the line.
His heart thundered like mad, while the view in his field of vision expanded toward infinity.
Fwooosh!
Altitude 9,000 meters, just shy of the Kármán line.
The earth lay endlessly below, and the distant horizon curved like a grand arc.
Jin gritted his teeth and spread his limbs.
Damn it!
The problem?
Nothing was going the way he wanted.
And of course it wasn't.
Wingsuit flying might look graceful from afar, but in reality, you're enduring air resistance equal to your body weight with every inch of your frame.
You must keep your joints stiff while steering with only your head and limbs.
It's a delicate, punishing act.
Even veteran jumpers with hundreds of flights under their belts could lose their lives over a minor mistake—
And Jin?
Jin had never even done indoor skydiving.
From one to ten, everything was awkward.
For reference—
On Jin's home planet, the record for "highest successful wingsuit flight" was 7,600 meters.
So just the fact he jumped from the transport plane meant he was already gunning for the Guinness record.
And here he was—
9,000 meters high.
Jin Evernight.
Coming for that record.
Fwa-fwa-fwa-fwa!!
The -60°C wind slammed into his face like a mad beast.
Jin focused all his strength on stabilizing his form.
Lack of experience was compensated by his honed, instinctual senses.
Now what?!
Despite being a total rookie, Jin somehow managed to stabilize himself and focused on what he could see through the goggles.
An ultra-wide AR display—
A standard issue for all Spec Ops operatives.
It worked perfectly even in this bone-freezing cold, and the embedded AI system tracked location data in real time, overlaying mission-relevant virtual imagery over Jin's vision.
[Target location confirmed]
A voice buzzed in his ear, followed by a red crosshair locking onto a point below the clouds.
A dim silhouette.
Something massive that ignored perspective.
The airborne fortress—Apophis.
And then—
[This is Chandler. All operatives confirmed in freefall.]
Another voice pierced his ear.
It was the bespectacled man who'd reported to the Colonel the day before, now introducing himself as Chandler.
He was the only operative left on the ground, in charge of the command relay.
He followed up at machine-gun speed:
[Vanguard is currently descending at 8,100 meters, traveling at 246 km/h. At this rate, Apophis's firing range will be reached in 54.2 seconds.]
"Vanguard" here referred to Jin.
He didn't mean to take the lead.
It just… ended up that way.
He was naturally flying at the tip of the V-formation.
But hey, whatever.
As long as he flew well, who cared?
Jin held his chin up high and stared straight ahead.
Fwoosh!!
Given that a wingsuit glides 2.5 meters forward for every 1 meter it falls, a 9,000-meter drop would theoretically allow him to travel 22.5 kilometers—but Apophis was closer than that.
Entering its bombardment range was even closer.
The fortress's silhouette grew clearer.
A dwarven citadel torn from the earth and raised into the skies.
Armed with 3,000 turrets.
[20 seconds!]
Apophis now stood fully revealed.
Wrapped in a veil of mist, it slowly rotated its gun barrels toward the incoming intruders nearing the anti-access zone.
The sound should have been a heavy rumble—
Jin couldn't hear it, but he could feel it.
[10 seconds! Pilgrim, prepare!]
Closer, ever closer.
[Everyone, get ready!]
Came the Colonel's follow-up.
Jin gritted his teeth.
[3 seconds! 2! 1!]
──────────!!!
A thunderous roar tore the sky apart.
A blinding flash turned everything white.
What was flying at them wasn't a mere shell—
It left a ring of flame in its wake—
It was a projectile of condensed mana.
A so-called mana shell.
Which meant each of those turrets was a damn artifact.
Insane!
The sheer scale of it all made Jin's eyes go wide.
But then—
Yeah.
That moment.
…Wait, that moment?
Hold on.
Why is everything moving so slow?
Jin squinted.
Out there—far away—
The shockwaves from the firing, rippling like a temple bell's echo.
The shells streaking across the sky.
The heat surging from the turret muzzles.
All of it—was moving in slow motion.
Even Jin himself.
What the hell...?
It felt as if time itself had begun to slow down.
The air was dense, almost suffocating.
Like plunging headfirst into a vat of glue.
And then, a voice brushed past his ear.
[Pilgrim. Psychic field deployed.]
The transmission from Command made him let out a dry laugh.
So you're telling me one person is doing all this?
Even though he'd been briefed in advance, it was still absurd beyond belief.
Wouldn't anyone feel the same?
The bombardment range of Apophis stretched across a full 3 kilometers.
To realize something was controlling the flow of time across that vast domain—
That would unsettle anyone.
No, wait.
Not time.
If it really was time, then that voice just now would have sounded like:
"Piiiiiilgrriiiiiiiiimmmmmm…"
So if it wasn't time—what was it?
Even knowing he wouldn't be able to see anything, Jin glanced down at the ground anyway.
Pilgrim.
The bizarre being sealed inside an Iron Maiden,
And one of only five Omega-class psychers in the city.
It wasn't just that they had slowed down shells.
They had slowed Apophis itself.
That alone was already far beyond the realm of human capability.
So this is the pinnacle of the new human race.
No wonder people call them walking tactical nukes.
That realization struck him anew.
[Get your heads straight, everyone. The projectiles are slower, not gone.]
Jin snapped back to awareness at the colonel's voice.
He was right.
The shells hadn't vanished.
They'd just slowed to the point of being visible to the naked eye—
But they were still very much en route.
Then the colonel's voice came again—
[From now on, Q and Elina will assist me with support. Try not to freak out. Everyone's played bullet-hell games as a kid, right?]
[Uh… I was terrible at those.]
[That's why you stayed on the ground, Chandler.]
Laughter echoed just as something whooshed in from behind and wrapped around Jin's wrist.
Fwwhhhheeeee!!
It spun as it came, sharp and fast—a miniature whirlwind.
Aerokinesis.
The colonel's power as a wind-controlling psycher had reached the rest of the unit.
Oh?
Realization came instantly—
It was like a jetpack pushing from his palms.
His body, which had moments ago floated as if suspended in syrupy air, now began to accelerate.
And then—
Jin, now surging forward with newfound speed, couldn't help but shout as he plunged into the curtain of shellfire.
FWOOSH!!
Wingsuits weren't built to ride air currents.
You had to treat your entire body like a rudder, which made fine-tuned movement all but impossible—
At least, until the colonel started supporting him.
Now, with whirlwinds wrapped around his hands, the impossible became possible.
Fwwwhhhheeeee!!
With just a tilt of the wrists, he could pull off sharp directional shifts.
Thus, the bullet hell game began!
"...!"
The first shell grazed past Jin's side with barely a hair's width to spare as he twisted his body mid-air.
The air currents surged chaotically.
A second shell approached—closer than the last.
Jin gave a quick, snapping twist to his center of gravity.
It was a minimal movement, but just enough for the shell to narrowly miss him.
An explosion erupted behind him, heat blooming in a wave of shock—
CRACK-BOOOOM!
Jin used the force of the blast itself to rocket forward, then stabilized himself mid-flight with a whirl of wind and tilted his body again.
Shells converged from multiple directions.
KA-WHAM!!
But Jin had already escaped their blast radius.
BZZZZZTT!!
The spiral of wind wrapped around him kicked his sharpened reflexes into even higher gear.
His following movements looked more like acrobatics than combat.
Aaaah! Dodge this way!
Uwaaaagh! Dodge that way!
Spinning mid-air—Wahhhh!
Twirling! Spinning! Gonna puke for real.
They say life is a tragedy up close and a comedy from afar.
And right now—
Jin was having the worst time of his life, spinning like a maniac in the sky.
But if anyone judged purely by how brilliant his aerial maneuvers were—
Even the colonel would have to admit, Jin was the best of them all.
[Lead, vertical distance to Apophis: 1,100 meters! Horizontal distance: 1,400 meters!]
When he finally came back to his senses, he realized he'd already crossed more than half of the bombardment range.
But the real problem was—he'd gone too far ahead.
Gggrrkkk…!
Slowly but surely, the 3,000 mana cannons finished reloading—
And all fired at once.
Right at Jin.
BOOM!!
And in that moment, Jin knew.
There was no dodging this one.
Slowed or not, a shell was still a shell.
Even at one-tenth the speed, with a muzzle velocity of 1,000 meters per second…
It was still nearly twice as fast as a major league pitcher's fastball.
Fine then—bring it on!
Facing the incoming storm of fire focused entirely on him, Jin twisted into a wild spin, flinging himself into a last-ditch effort—
[Gravity.]
And in a flash, his body turned feather-light and soared upward.
He didn't even need to check—
Q had entered the field.
Unfazed, Jin embraced the sudden altitude gain, channeling the wind more aggressively as he shot even higher.
A massive explosion tore through the air beneath him.
BOOOOOM──!!
Even though everything was slowed, the shockwave still surged after him like a pillar of flame.
But it couldn't reach him.
An invisible force caught the blast like a wall.
[Go, Jin!]
"On it!"
Leaving Elina's transmission behind, Jin twisted his body mid-air—
Blood rushed naturally toward his head.
A sea of clouds.
The moment the sky and earth flipped—a reversal of heaven.
At the end of it all, Apophis was readying its third bombardment.
Its cannon raised skyward.
A thunderous KWAANG!!! followed.
Jin didn't dodge the incoming shell that tore through the air with an ear-splitting boom.
Not because he trusted Q or Elina's support.
Let's break through!
Now's the time!
It was impulsive—but without a hint of hesitation.
Whoooosh!
Starting from his head-first descent, fierce winds began to swirl around Jin's body.
It was the result of the gale that wrapped around his hands gradually expanding its domain.
From within it, the trembling of thunder began to bloom alongside a flash of violet lightning.
It looked like a cumulonimbus cloud.
And naturally, this wasn't something orchestrated by the Colonel—
It was a power born purely from Jin's own will.
Tornado Ascent.
A technique that could be used upon reaching mid-Second Rank.
Kendrick's elemental martial technique had been unleashed through Jin's hands.
Crack-crack-crackle!
The lightning sphere spun like mad.
A mental image near perfect.
An abnormal amount of mana approaching Third Rank levels.
And on top of that, he was borrowing the Colonel's power.
WHOOOOOOOSH!
In an instant, Jin had become the eye of the storm.
Though he was suspended in midair with no foothold, he created rotational force using only his upper body.
Unable to withstand the raging spin, his wingsuit began to tear apart from his wrists with loud POP! POP!
But he didn't care.
…One rotation!
...Two rotations!
...…Three rotations!
Engulfed in the surging whirlwind he had amplified to the max,Jin dove straight into the center of the massive shell that filled his entire vision.
"Hrrmph!"
Forcing the barely restrained mana under control,he reached toward the trajectory pointed to by his mental image.
And so—
The final grand rotation.
...…Four full turns!
The next moment—
KWA-RUUUUM!!
A thunderclap tore through the sky in a jagged bolt—
In a moment that felt like even time itself had been electrocuted,the enormous tornado's aftershock swallowed thousands of shells whole.
Crack-crack.
The sharp sound of fracture echoed back into the sky.
KWAANG—!!
[Holy crap! Hey! Can you hear me?!]
[Jin—!]
It was when Q and Elina shouted at the same time, their skin trembling even from a distance due to the explosion.
WHOOOMPH!
Something cut diagonally through the smoky, churning air.
"Whoa! Shit! Wait! WAIT!"
The one shouting desperately through clenched teeth—was none other than Jin himself.
His wingsuit was wrecked.
The gusts around his wrists had vanished.
Now he was plummeting like a missile, and far off in the distance, Q's veins bulged in panic.
[Parachute! Deploy your damn parachute, idiot!]
"IT'S NOT OPENIIIIING!!!"
As Jin desperately yanked the safety pin,the ground of Apophis rushed closer in real time.
Blink?
No use.
How the hell could he land from this speed?!
Maybe it was a trick of the eyes, but the ground was really, truly right in front of him now.
Sucking in a ragged breath, Jin pulled the cord with every last ounce of strength.
"Please!"
At that moment—POP!
The parachute burst out from the bag on his back.
The wide canopy caught the air and billowed open.
BOOOOOM—!!
And thus—
Jin Evernight.
Somehow stuck the landing.
Unofficial Guinness World Record: Achieved.