However, the ice caps here were over 6,000 feet thick.

If the path to the Flight of Transcendence wasn't above the ice caps but beneath it, doesn't that mean Barlin had some serious digging to do?

Just the thought left him despairing.

And having read the map of the South Pole and learned how huge it was, what he thought was a 40,000-square-mile search now also required Reiki probing going as far as 6,000 feet deep.

It was literally hell.

Even then, Barlin didn't want to give up, as he was p