If Yi Qiang had access to his skills, even with lower stats than he had now, climbing the smooth cliff would be simple. Now, though, looking up at the stone face he had to scale, the marksman was not very confident in relying simply on his body.

Placing his hand against the smooth wall, Yi Qiang's doubts multiplied.

Was I not supposed to do this?

Not left with many choices, the marksman rubbed his palm over the wall while treading water, searching for any crevices or bumps he could use as a foothold to start climbing. He found nothing in his immediate vicinity, so, unwilling to make his own without any tools, Yi Qiang began to swim around the plateau.

Thankfully, its circumference was rather small, meaning it only took the marksman 3 minutes or so to find his first foothold. This is probably the only crevice in the area.

Placing his hand in it, Yi Qiang extended his other arm and searched nearby for the next handhold, brushing around for a few seconds before finding it.

His fingers hooking onto the bump, Yi Qiang couldn't help but grimace. If all these handholds are going to be this tiny... this'll be a difficult climb.

As it turned out, his prediction was directly on the mark. Even with the superhuman fitness granted by 100 in all of his stats, the bumps and crevices were so slight his fingers constantly trembled, exerting their maximum power to keep him from falling off.

Slowly, he emerged from the cool sea, the salty wind resulting in quite the chilly atmosphere as it blew against his drenched clothing and skin. Nevertheless, he continued, veins visible on Yi Qiang's head from the strain of climbing the cliff.

Slowly settling into a strange mindset, Yi Qiang's conscious mind simply halted. Ruled entirely by intuition, the marksman scaled, searching for handholds and grabbing onto them subconsciously.

The fatigue of climbing, which was mounting, faded away.

Yi Qiang didn't know how long it took for him to get to the top, but he did know that when he finally got over the ledge onto the soft grass waiting for him, already dry thanks to the altitude and wind, his joints were throbbing and his fingers could barely move.

Of course, the marksman was anything but hobbled by the pain, instead sitting up and overlooking the ocean once again.

What exactly do I have to do?

Yi Qiang hesitated to jump over again. Maybe the answer was at the bottom of the sea, but before he put himself there again and took the risk of having to climb back up, the marksman wanted to be sure that there was absolutely nothing here. He also wanted to rest his hands, because it might be legitimately impossible to climb the ledge once again with fingers as exhausted and damaged from exertion as his.

Standing up and rooting around the grass for a few minutes, just to be absolutely sure there was nothing to be found there, Yi Qiang wiggled his fingers to get some blood back in them and facilitate their recovery. After finishing his inspection of the plateau, he closed his eyes.

Taking a deep breath, Yi Qiang opened them again and walked to the edge of the cliff, staring into the distance.

His sharp eyes worked tirelessly to pick out any detail in the distance or anywhere in the vast sea before him.

Any slight irregularity would inevitably be unraveled before his gaze as he surveyed the expanse of water.

Yi Qiang spent around thirty minutes surveying the water in all directions before giving up. I guess there's no physical sign of what I need to do.

His fingers entirely recovered by this point, Yi Qiang stretched a bit before leaping directly off the cliff.

If I want to get to the bottom, I have to get as fast as possible while in the air.

Keeping his back straight, Yi Qiang maneuvered himself to slice directly through the air, ready to cut into the water and reach the bottom.

With a very specific goal in mind, the marksman had a much easier time reaching greater depths, stabbing through the ocean.

When his momentum started to fade, Yi Qiang started to swim downwards. Thankfully, a high Vitality meant a similarly high air capacity, as well as high resistance to water pressure.

Both these traits were put in good use as the marksman swam deeper and deeper, in the darkness brought by eyes tightly closed. After all, Yi Qiang knew from personal experience how debilitating saltwater to the eyes was.

A few dozen seconds in, and Yi Qiang was getting worried. The pressure he was under was only increasing, and the marksman still felt no signs of the seafloor beneath him. He wasn't under risk of running out of air just yet, but as things were going, what would do him in was the pressure.

After around ten seconds, Yi Qiang's ears started pulsating. His chest felt more fragile than ever, and a migraine was slowly but surely developing. Still, though, he swam downwards.

At thirty seconds, even the world of darkness that surrounded Yi Qiang was starting to swim. The combination of oxygen deprivation and countless tons of water weighing down on his body was putting a toll on even his body, that had surpassed the limits of humanity back on earth. Nevertheless, he pushed.

A minute in, very little strength was reaching any of his limbs. It was all he could do just to inch downwards.

Eventually, the world around Yi Qiang disappeared into oblivion, even as he furiously struggled to reach the bottom, ruled by his will even at his final moments.

An unknown amount of time passed - it was a troublesome task to perceive the passage of time when one was, for all intents and purposes, dead - before Yi Qiang woke up.

Not pausing to appreciate the soft grass he lay in, the marksman shot up and took in a deep breath, looking wildly around him before remembering everything.

That was the roughest death I've experienced so far. Unfortunately, Yi Qiang could remember every moment up to falling unconscious in the water and, it was safe to assume, drowning.

First time I've drowned so far. Yi Qiang shivered. Quite unpleasant.

Shaking off the residues of his unsettling death, the marksman then stood up and looked out into the ocean.

What now?