Chapter 500: The Hunger of the Eternal Warrior

The Hunger of the Eternal Warrior

"If it’s you people, the ones who share the same soul as mine, then you should understand my deep desire for battle!"

Victor’s eyes trembled.

"The longing I have to fight against powerful opponents, which consumes my very existence!"

His voice cracked slightly at the end.

"Surely my past incarnations should understand!"

The rage in Victor’s expression slowly changed.

It didn’t vanish.

Instead, something much more vulnerable appeared beneath it.

Desperation.

His shoulders lowered.

The fire in his golden eyes became unsteady, and for the first time since entering the spiritual realm, he looked less like an enraged warrior and more like someone desperately trying to make others understand something that words could never properly explain.

His breathing became uneven.

His fists loosened.

He looked at them almost as though he were asking them for permission to be himself.

One could actually feel the pain behind his expression.

It wasn’t merely frustration over losing a battle.

It was the pain of being denied something fundamental to his nature.

Victor had always been drawn toward powerful opponents.

The closer a battle came to the boundary between victory and death, the more alive he felt.

That thirst wasn’t something he could simply switch off.

It was buried too deeply inside him.

And his past incarnations understood that better than anyone.

They shared the same soul.

They shared fragments of the same instincts.

They shared countless memories of battles Victor himself had never experienced.

For a moment, silence filled the spiritual realm.

The past incarnations looked at Victor.

None of them mocked him.

None laughed at his outburst.

Instead, several expressions subtly changed.

They understood.

They truly did.

Some of them remembered standing before enemies far stronger than themselves and laughing in excitement rather than fear.

Some remembered the feeling of blood rushing through their veins when they encountered someone capable of pushing them beyond their limits.

Others remembered something even more extreme.

They remembered begging their enemies not to stop.

They remembered asking opponents to reveal more of their strength.

They remembered desperately wanting to see what existed beyond the limits they had already reached.

And there were those among them who had once become so bored with the ordinary world that they had challenged the very Gods themselves.

They had begged those divine beings to descend.

Not because they hated them.

Not because they wanted revenge.

Simply because they wanted something capable of relieving the crushing boredom inside their hearts.

The memories were different.

The lives were different.

The enemies were different.

But the feeling had always been the same.

That hunger.

That endless desire to fight someone powerful enough to make their blood boil.

Victor’s desperation struck deeply into those memories.

The past incarnations understood the expression on his face because they had worn it themselves.

One of them finally stepped forward.

The atmosphere became quieter.

Victor raised his eyes toward him.

For a moment, neither spoke.

Then the past incarnation’s expression softened.

"Of course we understand what you’re feeling right now better than anyone else. After all, we are you and you, we."

"Then why?!"

Victor showed a pained look, one that he had never shown before.

It was not the expression of a warrior who had been defeated.

It was not the frustration of someone who had lost an advantage.

It was something far deeper.

Something that had been buried beneath countless battles, countless wounds, countless moments when Victor had stood at the edge of death with a smile on his face.

The golden eyes beneath his black hair trembled faintly.

For a moment, Victor looked almost lost.

The sight was so unfamiliar that even the spiritual realm seemed to fall unnaturally silent.

Victor had endured things that would have broken ordinary people.

He had been stabbed multiple times.

He had been burned so severely that his body had nearly been roasted alive.

He had died before.

He had stood on the verge of death more times than most people could ever imagine.

Yet through all of those experiences, he had never shown an expression like this.

Pain, yes.

Anger, certainly.

Excitement, even in the face of death.

But never this.

Never this helpless, almost wounded look.

If anyone other than his past incarnations had been present to witness Victor’s face at this moment, they would probably have been shocked to the point of questioning whether the person standing before them was truly Victor.

The man who normally smiled at danger as though it were an invitation now looked as though something had been torn away from him.

But the past incarnations did not need to question him.

They knew.

They knew painfully well what Victor was feeling.

Because they had felt it themselves.

A true battle had never been about simply defeating an opponent.

It was about stepping into a place where the outcome was uncertain.

A battle could only truly be called a battle if there was a chance of death.

That was the line that separated genuine combat from meaningless practice.

If there was no danger, there was no pressure.

If there was no pressure, there was no thrill.

And if there was no possibility of death, then for people like Victor and his past incarnations, something essential was missing.

Death itself had never been the problem.

To them, death was merely another possible ending.

If they could obtain a satisfying battle before reaching that ending, then even dying was not something worth fearing.

In some ways, death after a magnificent battle could even be considered a worthy conclusion.

That was why Victor’s reaction affected them so deeply.

They understood the thirst burning inside him.

They understood why being dragged away from a battle was more painful to him than many physical wounds.

One of the incarnations finally spoke.

His voice was calm, but there was no coldness in it.

"We truly understand what you’re going through... But no matter which incarnation, no matter the timeline, no matter the world. We are not allowed to lose to the Universal Emperor."

Victor’s expression tightened.