Chapter 149: It's all a part of the plan
Ever since she was selected by the tower to enter the Origin Realm upon reaching the rank of Floor 89 Monarch some 6,200 years ago, she had been tasked with serving as a guide in the Origin Realm for 6,666 years in order to ascend to Floor 90.
In her absence, her kingdom crumbled swiftly. A mere 200 years after her departure, the already diminished population of the Three-Eyed Demons was driven to extinction, with her becoming the last surviving member of her tribe.
Although she did check about the well-being of her tribe by chatting with incoming Champion's from time to time, once she realized that everyone she cared for was long dead, she became cold, detached and evil. With her only purpose in life being to ascend to floor 90 and become a True God.
It was impossible for her with her measly talent to clear the floor90 promotion test in her own and taking a quest was the only way she had any hopes of someday making it, albeit that someday was 6666 years away.
As a Monarch her life span was long, however, she had already lived for over 9500 years now and with a Monarch's lifespan being only about 10,000 years on average, she was finally starting to observe some signs of aging.
Her peak power was on decline, and she could not maintain her full strength constantly as that put a drain on her old body.
She was now at a phase where she doubted if she could survive for the remaining 400+ years as a Monarch or would she lose her natural strength and fall prey to a passerby champion wishing to exact revenge on her?
She had tricked many Champion's into losing their lives and today she played a similar trick on Rocky as well.
While there were a total of 10 different pools for him to choose from, pools of varying difficulty from E class to SSS, she purposefully led him only to the maximum difficulty pool that was notorious for claiming the lives of several previous champions.
Not offering him a choice and not explaining to him the situation that he found himself in, she tricked Rocky into walking into the maximum difficulty pool that he was unlikely to walk out of alive.
'The soul pool' was a pool that tested one's soul strength or claimed their life forever turning them into a vengeful specter.
For climbers like Rocky, who lacked the proper training to control their bodies within the soul realm, any Champion sent to that ominous realm inevitably ended up losing their life.
In the past 6,200 years, this grim pattern held true as no Champion that Epita sent to the soul pool had ever emerged alive.
Secretly she was extremely envious of Champions' of gods and only needed the slightest excuse to send them to their deaths which Rocky provided by not indulging her curiosity.
In life, she had not been chosen as a favored champion of a god and instead had to earn her right to enter the Origin Realm through hardwork, which made her extremely envious of the chosen ones who got to enjoy the benefits of this realm from the start.
Unlike normal promotion tests, which only gave a climber limited growth as a reward, the reward for completing a promotion test within the origin realm was 5-10 times better.
For the tier1 promotion, one was given the reward of maximizing their body potential if they successfully completed the promotion test from the SSS soul pool.
This meant that regardless of what limits their mortal body was capable of reaching at the peak, in terms of peak muscle density, peak body fat percentage, peak bone density, peak oxygen capacity, they were all reached instantly without the need for extra training.
Under normal circumstances, a person only built muscle and improved muscle quality through a gradual process known as hypertrophy.
This involved consistent resistance training that gradually increased muscle strength and size, and even for Rocky who was a perfected human, he still had a lot of room for improving his muscles through training as he was far from reaching the peak of what his body was capable of.
However, if he somehow survived his plunge into the soul pool for 30 minutes, his full potential was to be realized instantly.
If Rocky could survive the plunge, He could gain strength akin to a peak floor 39 climber as a mere floor 10 climber, providing him with a foundation far superior to a normal climber.
In this way, although the origin realm was harsh it was also fair as it gave the Champion's of Gods a chance to change their life and take control of their destiny should they be able to survive the challenges of the origin realm.
"You are never going to make it…. So what if you were chosen as the Champion of Gemini, in the end, this is all your life is going to amount to-" Epita said, as she felt assured that Rocky was going to die for sure.
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( Meanwhile Shakuni )
Shakuni merely laughed at Epita and her line of thinking as he watched Rocky's promotion test progress with great interest.
The fact that Epita really believed that she could trick the Champion Of Gemini out of his life, amused Shakuni, as to him it seemed like this demoness clearly did not take him and his powers as a fate manipulator seriously.
While to the rest of the tower, small events surrounding Rocky might seem as things that were random and unrelated, however, in reality they were all linked to Shakuni's master plan.
Having already absorbed the soul remnants of the dying Lich, Rocky's soul was abnormally strong for a tier0 climber.
Possessing strength that the likes of Epita could never even fathom imagining.
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/// A/N - Bonus chapter for hitting the PS target good job everyone! ///