Chapter 293: Woman at the Foot of the Staircase

Victor continued climbing the staircase for far longer than he had imagined.

During the first stretches, the gravitational formation was little more than an inconvenience. His body had already undergone extreme pressure training many times, and the body refinement he had received from Rakshasa and Yu Jin Cheon allowed his muscles, bones, and organs to withstand forces that would easily crush an ordinary Vampire. With each step, Victor felt the weight increase, but he simply adjusted his blood circulation, distributed the force more efficiently through his legs, and continued.

After a few hundred steps, however, it stopped feeling like ordinary training.

The pressure was no longer merely something pushing his body against the ground. It penetrated everything. His blood felt heavier inside his own veins, his lungs required additional effort to expand, and even his heart had to beat harder to maintain normal circulation. Victor responded by concentrating his energy entirely within his body, eliminating any waste and directing every portion of his power toward physical support.

Divine Blood coursed through his muscles and bones.

His regeneration remained constantly active, repairing small tears in his muscle fibers before they could develop into serious injuries. Victor slowed his pace but didn't stop. One foot advanced, found the next step, and supported his body while the other was dragged upward.

Fafnir had stopped talking some time ago.

She walked a few meters ahead or sat on a nearby rock, simply watching. The formation didn't affect her in the same way, allowing her to clearly perceive just how much Victor was demanding from his body to keep advancing.

When he finally came to a complete stop, his calculations indicated that he had reached approximately the seven hundredth step.

Victor remained bent forward, one hand resting on his thigh. His chest rose and fell rapidly, and every breath seemed to require a conscious decision. He had put away his cloak long ago to keep it from restricting his movements, leaving his shirt clinging to his sweat-soaked body.

He raised his eyes.

There were still stairs ahead.

A lot of them.

Victor slowly exhaled and attempted to lift his right foot.

His leg moved a few centimeters.

Stopped.

He forced it again.

The muscle responded, but the pressure seemed determined to turn his foot into part of the stone itself.

Victor gritted his teeth and channeled more energy into his body.

His foot finally reached the next step.

Then came the worst part.

Shifting his weight.

Victor remained motionless for several seconds, feeling every muscle in his legs tremble as he tried to force his body forward. Frustration began growing inside him in a way he hadn't experienced in a very long time.

It wasn't fury.

It wasn't the uncontrollable anger that made someone want to destroy everything around them.

It was something far more irritating.

Failure.

The simple, bitter sensation of trying to accomplish something and discovering that, at that moment, he might simply be incapable of doing it.

Victor hated that.

Since his rebirth, almost every obstacle could be confronted with some combination of strength, regeneration, adaptation, or sheer stubbornness. Even when he initially lost, he usually found some way to continue.

Here, there was nobody to attack.

No enemy to overcome.

The staircase simply existed, telling him step after step that his body still wasn't good enough.

"This makes absolutely no sense," Victor muttered, attempting to straighten his back, irritated that his body wasn't responding the way he wanted.

His words came between heavy breaths.

He looked toward the next step and tried to advance again.

Nothing.

Victor closed his eyes for a few seconds, concentrated even more energy into his legs, and prepared for another attempt.

"So, are you going to give up?"

A woman's voice came from somewhere nearby, breaking the silence that had settled over that part of the mountain.

Victor opened his eyes.

He slowly turned his head.

A woman was sitting on a rock several meters above him, in a side area he could have sworn had been empty just moments earlier.

Victor couldn't identify when she had arrived.

That alone was enough to catch his attention.

The woman appeared young, perhaps even too young to possess the tranquility she displayed. Long black hair flowed down her back and over part of her shoulders, moving gently in the mountain breeze. Her skin was extremely pale, creating an almost exaggerated contrast with the dark hanfu she wore. Her eyes were also black, deep and strangely difficult to read.

And she was beautiful.

Not merely pretty.

She possessed the kind of beauty that would make most people look twice, even if they knew doing so might cost them their heads.

Victor recognized that immediately.

He also ignored it.

He had more important problems at the moment.

"If you're not going to help, don't break my concentration," Victor replied, turning his attention back to the staircase, hardly interested in giving free attention to a stranger who had apparently appeared just to provoke him.

The woman blinked slowly.

Then she rested her cheek against one hand, propping her elbow on her knee as she observed Victor like someone watching an interesting activity.

Victor tried again.

One minute passed.

Then five.

Ten.

His foot advanced a few centimeters.

His entire body began trembling.

The pressure seemed determined to tear his bones from their joints as he forced his weight onto the next step.

Twenty minutes.

Victor continued.

Fafnir remained silent, now considerably more interested in the mysterious woman than in his progress up the staircase.

Forty minutes later, Victor finally managed to move his entire body onto the next step.

He nearly collapsed to his knees.

He managed to prevent it at the last instant by pressing his hand firmly against his thigh and forcing his spine to remain straight.

The woman sighed.

"My Seol-ie really is a curious girl," she murmured, watching Victor practically destroy his own body just to advance a single step.

Victor heard the nickname.

He paid attention for half a second.

Then decided he wasn't interested enough at the moment.

"I understand that I'm not exactly a good person," Victor said, attempting to stabilize his breathing and gather enough strength for another step. "But you're starting to get on my fucking nerves."

The woman raised an eyebrow slightly.

Victor finally looked at her.

"If you came here just to sit around mocking me, then leave," he added, wiping the sweat dripping from his chin before concentrating energy into his legs again.

The woman stared at him for a few seconds.

She didn't seem irritated.

In fact, she looked almost amused.

Then she raised one finger.

Victor saw the movement.

Nothing more.

She waved her index finger to the side.

An absurd force struck Victor.

"What the fu—" Victor managed to say as his feet simply left the staircase.

The world turned upside down.

Victor was thrown backward.

For a fraction of a second, he thought he would crash against one of the lower steps, but then he realized he wasn't merely falling a few meters.

He was plummeting down the entire staircase.

The steps began flashing past his eyes faster and faster.

Victor tried to stabilize his body.

He couldn't.

He tried transforming into bats.

The pressure surrounding him seemed to prevent him from gathering the concentration necessary.

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!" Victor shouted as he watched hundreds of steps fly past beneath him at an absurd speed.

Then gravity disappeared.

Victor blinked.

His feet touched stone.

He nearly fell forward because he had been prepared to withstand a pressure that simply no longer existed.

Victor opened his eyes.

He was at the base of the staircase.

On the first step.

The entire path that had taken him hours to climb was once again stretched out before him.

Victor stood motionless.

His left eye twitched.

The frustration that had already been approaching anger took on a much clearer form.

"No," Victor muttered, looking upward as he felt something inside him beginning to boil. "No, no, no..."

Then he noticed the rock beside the staircase.

The woman was sitting on it.

In the same position.

One hand supporting her cheek.

One leg casually crossed over the other.

As though she had never been hundreds of steps above.

Victor stared at her.

Fafnir appeared behind him shortly afterward, also observing the stranger with a considerably more cautious expression than before.

The woman ignored them both for a few seconds.

Then examined Victor from head to toe.

"Did Yu Jin really train you?" she asked, her eyes studying his posture, his still-tense muscles, and the flow of energy circulating through his body.

Victor didn't respond immediately.

The woman shook her head.

"That idiot disciple really can't do anything properly," she remarked with another sigh, sounding genuinely disappointed in someone Victor knew perfectly well was one of the most dangerous beings on the continent.

Victor narrowed his eyes.

She continued.

"He thinks he's such a big shot because he became the Heavenly Demon after I stepped down," the woman said, absentmindedly playing with a strand of her long black hair. "And he even dares to teach my techniques to someone so..."

She paused for a moment.

Looked at Victor again.

"Weak," she concluded, her expression remaining perfectly calm.

Victor froze.

For some reason, that single word managed to irritate him far more than being thrown seven hundred steps down the staircase.

Fafnir glanced discreetly at him.

Victor took a deep breath.

Once.

Twice.

The woman remained seated, clearly waiting for a reaction.

Victor didn't attack.

He didn't release his aura.

Nor did he attempt to intimidate her.

After what had just happened, he would have to be a complete idiot to believe that this woman was someone he could simply charge at.

Instead, Victor began mentally reorganizing everything she had just said.

She had called Yu Jin Cheon her disciple.

She said he had inherited the title of Heavenly Demon after she stepped down.

She had referred to the techniques Victor had learned as her own.

And she knew Rakshasa intimately enough to call her Seol-ie.

Victor looked at her black hair.

At her equally dark eyes.

At that absurdly youthful face.

Then he stared at the woman again.

"Who are you?" Victor asked, his irritation giving way to a far more interesting suspicion.

The woman merely smiled.