"Vanis.h.i.+ng Potential, A t.i.tan's Const.i.tution?" Elizabeth unconsciously voiced the phrase that entered her head when she took that first step. It sounded like total drivel, so she temporarily tossed the thought to the back of her mind as she prepared herself to take another step. The trial would end if she kept wasting time a.n.a.lyzing an arbitrary collection of words, otherwise…

Elizabeth's weathered body rose to the next step of the staircase and experienced the same thing. She felt not an itch of pressure while yet another random a.s.sortment of words appeared in her thoughts. Again, she ignored the words and took another step, and then another… Elizabeth climbed the steps of the staircase at a steady pace as she felt absolutely nothing and all the while, the collection of words acc.u.mulated and stuck with her as if imprinted on her very soul.

The phrases turned into complete sentences, then entire stanzas and paragraphs, and as Elizabeth crossed the 100th step up the staircase, she could feel the words mix and mash into basic formulas and complete mnemonic devices. Slowly, Elizabeth lost control of her body, even to the point of forgetting the pain she carried with her, as the totality of her focus revolved around organizing the ever-increasing collection of words she earned from ascending the staircase.

After stepping on the 300th step, the pressure Elizabeth had been slowly but surely acc.u.mulating appeared to materialize as her regular clothes started to dig deep into her skin and her blood started to singe in an undetectable heat; yet she didn't seem to mind. After stepping on the 450th step, Elizabeth no longer had any blood staining her skin; it had all vaporized away.

At the 700th step, Elizabeth's physical clothes also started the process of incineration, and by the 900th, on the surface of Elizabeth's fully nude body, there was evidence of very faint black tattoos starting to form. By then, the pressure had escalated to truly horrifying proportions evident by the instantaneous annihilation of all the sweat that escaped out of Elizabeth's pores. She still didn't notice anything, as her mind was fully enamored by the endlessly profound scripture the heaven-spanning staircase imparted onto her. But the truth of the matter remained, her body was under monumental pressure; the likes of which could compact refined t.i.tanium…

Elizabeth kept her nigh-invincible obliviousness until she reached the 999th step. There, just as she took the 1,000th step, her consciousness was jolted awake and an ecstatic cry escaped her lips, "Chaos Requiem! Surpa.s.sing perfection!!!" Her laughter shook the world around her like the roars of a sovereign demonic beast and the pressurized air around her visibly rippled.

'What are the f.u.c.king chances?' At this very moment, Elizabeth wished for nothing more than to know how her situation ended up being so conveniently resolved. She quickly calmed down as the trial had yet to end, meaning she still needed to continue ascending the steps to the best of her ability. But with what she had learned just for climbing up to step 1000, she was already more than content.

Elizabeth thought, 'f.u.c.king functions...' Her quest functions had really understated how suitable the First Stage of the Cataclysm was for each chosen, as her already perfect foundation was about to destroy the meaning of "limits." 'This f.u.c.king technique… how can a cultivation method be this broken?' She knew the answer to her question as she possessed the entirety of the technique. But regardless of the fact, she still felt compelled to jokingly complain.

Elizabeth continued rising up the steps of the staircase as she reviewed the information she had learned. Chaos Requiem, it was a technique that used origin energy to derive chaos and nurture the body and soul. For all intents and purposes, it was a technique created to eliminate the limits of one's talent. Essentially allowing just about anyone to rise up the ranks of cultivation so long as they had enough resources. However, for someone already talented, especially someone talented in learning various types of origin energies like... Elizabeth, it was a.n.a.logous to cheats in real life.

Elizabeth being a pract.i.tioner of s.p.a.ce, time, and yin energy, she was more than well equipped to ignore using resources as her Inner Strength itself could power the technique and pa.s.sively generate chaos energy. Of course, with Elizabeth's current reserves and quality of origin-type energies, she wouldn't be able to generate even a wisp of true chaos even if she were left alone to generate chaos for billions of years. But, with her current abilities, generating fragmented grandmist — a much less pure, but still considerably potent source of energy for her level — was not an issue; even if she only generated pitiful quant.i.ties of it.

With the quality of grandmist Elizabeth created out of her energy reserves, her body, which had previously been at the brink of collapse, now looked even healthier than her previous peak. Her Dantian and soul, which were also threatening to shatter, slowly stabilized and even compacted, with their outermost layers still being pa.s.sively strengthened.

The pressure that was still acc.u.mulating as Elizabeth shot up the staircase, only helped her body better absorb the grandmist she generated. Thus, as she climbed, her foundation only continued strengthening and the tattoos, consequent of implementing the technique, grew darker to match the strength of the pressure.

Elizabeth kept up a remarkable form for a good extra 300 steps before her Inner Strength ran out. Even after then, she kept her pace steady until 1,450th step. Thereon, she slowly decreased her speed, as she finally noticed that the pressure had been doubling each step. Elizabeth started taking pauses in her ascent after the 1,475th step, and by the 1,490th step, she felt like she weighed several times her usual weight.

With her heart fully invested in getting the most out of this situation as she possibly could, Elizabeth took a step. She paused and took a deep breath before taking two more. Another step caused her eyes to almost shut and the step after that brought her down to one knee. Elizabeth struggled to move as she pulled herself up to take another step, and after doing so, she fell face first onto the ground.

Madness… That familiar complete and utter madness clouded her eyes as she simply refused to let it end with only four more steps to that perfectly round number; 1,500. Elizabeth slowly started to pick herself back up, but it was obvious that she would take longer than a minute just to continue onward. She had already been in a cripplingly painful state today and had suffered through even worse pains before. Thus, the decision to brutalize her body came about with no qualms…

She had already decided to take a break after this, so what was a "little" extra pain in the grand scheme of things? Elizabeth took half the allotted time she could spend on the step to drag her right hand over to the area where her neck met the left side of her shoulder. Twenty more seconds were spent stimulating five acupoints which mediated her bone marrow.

As her goal was nearing completion, Elizabeth's body which previously felt heavy beyond comparison, now felt as light as a feather. But, the effect was offset by the blistering heat that now coursed through her veins. Even from outside her body, if there were anyone present to witness Elizabeth's current state, they would be drawn to the neon red which only got brighter as she rose.

Elizabeth didn't even breathe as her body transformed. Every moment she stayed in this state, her body would degrade exponentially. Thus, she rushed to end this trial as soon as possible; to achieve her desired ascent to the 1,500th step. After the transformation, the pressure from the next two steps barely even registered. It was only after she stood on the 1,499th step that paused and spat out a ma.s.s of black blood.

DANGER! That instance of hesitation where she paused made this event a battle of life and death as Elizabeth should have made completed her goal and stopped the eruption of her blood by now. With her body shaking uncontrollably, her legs would not respond to her will and as time pa.s.sed, that paralysis would travel up her body and leave in stasis for an untold amount of time.

Elizabeth's schadenfreudian smile and squint combo emerged as a response to this blatant insubordination on the part of her unresponsive body. She didn't even think of the consequences before opting to lunge her right hand down to her immobilized right leg and create a terrible bruise on her skin as she decided to free up all the tension locked up in her leg.

Immediately, she headed towards the ground, destined to crash as her balance was all but stable. However, as she fell down, the recently acquired Kinesthetic Acuity left her able to instinctually manage the forces impacting her body and through mystical levels of acrobatics, she actually somersaulted onto the next and final step while under the crippling pressure of the staircase.

Elizabeth landed right on the edge of the step, just as planned. Immediately upon being able, she dragged a hand onto the lower step to end the trial before the pressure of the 1,500th step was able to do much more damage. With her fingers grazing the surface of the 1,499th step, the pressure surrounding Elizabeth dissipated with explosive force. If Elizabeth were standing, she would see that the steps around her, both ascending and descending, also dissipated, while the surface of the 1,500th step, where her body now lay in shock, stretched in all directions to reform the white room she saw when she first entered to take the trial. The last thing she saw before going unconscious was the fuzzy image of her results.

[Foundation/Candidacy Substation

Performance: ???

Reward: 1 Cyan Badge, 9 Chaos Seals

*****: Mhmm… This is quite the curious case… Path of Perfection, right at the cusp of breaking through... Three sources of origin energy, and perception high enough to understand and organize the base level of Chaos Requiem... Hahaha… For her level, she literally couldn't be better equipped to inherit my legacy! But her level… She's too young, too inexperienced… Mhmm… Mhmm... Mhmm! I can't believe I'm doing this, giving a Mortal Stage greenhorn such status, but by G.o.d has she earned it! Hahaha!!! Don't disappoint me, la.s.s!]

Elizabeth pa.s.sed out before she could read through the message. However, shortly after the message ended, her body was lifted by a gentle neutral energy. As her battered and exhausted body rose, several black hieroglyphics foreign to languages of Earth manifested in the air around Elizabeth. As Elizabeth was flown out of the substation trial for Foundation, the black characters revolved around her and, one by one, they shot into different parts of her body.