Chapter Seventeen - The Long Ascent
Time in the Abyss was measured not in days but in scars. The years stacked upon themselves like layers of stone, yet to the young man, they were nothing but an endless forge, tempering his body against the cruelty of the land.
He had passed through the trial of flesh, his skin hardened until talons broke upon him and fangs shattered against his hide. But the Abyss did not relent, and neither could he. What came next was the strengthening of what lay beneath.
The beasts of the Abyss grew monstrous, their bodies knotted with strength. To hunt them required more than defense; it demanded force that could shatter bone and rupture sinew. The man began his training in secret valleys where rivers cut deep into stone.
He carried slabs of rock on his back, each one heavier than the last, walking until his legs gave way and his body collapsed in the dirt. He crushed logs between his arms until his muscles screamed and tore, then bound the wounds with crude salves, forcing them to heal stronger. He leapt from cliffs into the rivers below, letting the violent currents batter him against the rocks, then clawed his way back to shore only to leap again.
Years turned to decades, and the man's frame thickened like ironwood. His blows split the skulls of beasts larger than houses. His arms swelled with cords of strength, his back broad enough to bear the weight of boulders. When he fought, he struck with the full violence of storm and quake.
Unknowingly, he had ascended into the Muscle Refinement Realm, the rank of Martial Adept.
But power without control is as wild as the Abyss itself. In battle against a Bloodfang Serpent, a creature whose body spanned a canyon, the man learned this bitter truth. He fought savagely, ripping and tearing, but his movements were wasteful, his strength scattered. The serpent's body coiled, breaking his ribs, snapping his bones. For days he crawled, his body bent and broken, surviving only by gnawing the raw flesh of the beast he had slain.
In that agony, he began to study the cords within his body—the hidden threads that bound strength together. He discovered that muscles were nothing without the tendons that drew them taut. So he trained not for bulk, but for precision.
He strung ropes between cliffs and hung by them until his arms trembled for weeks. He hunted beasts not with weapons but with his bare hands, forcing his body to strike in unity, every joint and cord aligned. He mimicked the movements of predators—the sudden spring of the panther, the coiling strike of the serpent, the piercing dive of the crow.
His movements grew sharper, his strikes faster, his body more complete. When at last he faced a beast again, he did not waste his strength in wild blows. Every motion was deliberate, perfect, and deadly. He had unknowingly stepped into Tendon Refinement, the rank of Martial Knight.
A century had passed. His hair, once wild and black, had grown streaked with silver, yet his body only grew stronger. Still, the Abyss pressed harder against him. Greater beasts descended, creatures whose hides turned blades and whose roars split mountains.
His muscles tore. His tendons snapped. But always, the man healed, slowly, painfully, reforging himself in the crucible of violence. Yet he discovered a weakness still remained—his bones. They cracked under the weight of his power, betraying the body that housed them.
So he sought to make them unbreakable.
He drank marrow broth brewed from the bones of the fiercest predators. He ground powdered stone into paste and swallowed it until his stomach burned. He hurled himself from cliffs, letting the earth smash him, then rose again, broken and bleeding, to do it once more. Every fall drove his body closer to death; every healing bound his bones tighter, denser, harder.
Years bled into decades. His frame grew towering, his skeleton forged into a cage of unyielding steel. His fists struck with the sound of thunder, his steps cracked the ground beneath him. He had ascended into Bone Refinement, the rank of Martial Master.
But even iron bones could not shield the fragile temple within. In battle with the Abyssal Behemoth, a creature whose roar sent storms tearing across the land, he learned the frailty of his insides. The beast struck him down, and though his skin and bones endured, his lungs filled with blood, his heart faltered, his liver split.
For months he lingered near death, surviving only by clinging to fire and fury. Yet in that suffering he found his next trial: the organs themselves must be strengthened, for they were the furnace of life.
He began to drink poisons in measured doses, teaching his stomach and liver to endure. He submerged himself in freezing waters until his heart slowed, then forced it to beat steady once more. He sat in the smoke of burning herbs until his lungs burned raw, then drew the fumes deeper still.
Every test was torment, yet every torment remade him. His breath grew steady as stone, his heart thundered like a war drum, his veins carried fire instead of blood. The organs that had once betrayed him became his greatest weapons, vessels of vitality that no beast could shatter. He had become a Martial Grandmaster, tempered in Organ Refinement.
By now, centuries had passed. His skin bore scars like maps of forgotten wars. His hair was a mane of iron and silver, his eyes twin embers burning against the dark. He was not merely a man of the Abyss—he was the Abyss, its cruelty and endurance made flesh.
And yet… he longed.
Somewhere deep within, beneath the survival and the hunger, a question smoldered: was there more? The Abyss had given him nothing but endless strife. He had risen through pain, clawing his way across four pillars of martial cultivation. But what lay beyond this pit, beyond the choking clouds and broken peaks?
And so he climbed.
For years he scaled jagged cliffs that had loomed over him since childhood, cliffs that seemed to touch the ceiling of the world. He dug his fingers into stone, his tendons screaming, his bones grinding, his breath fire in his chest. Beasts pursued him, storms battered him, hunger gnawed at him—but he climbed still.
At last, near his three hundredth year, his hand broke through the final ledge. He pulled himself upward, emerging from the last wall of shadow.
And there it was.
The sky.
Not the ashen veil of the Abyss, but a vast expanse of azure, endless and pure. Clouds drifted like silver ships, and light—true light—poured down upon him, warm against his scarred flesh.
For the first time in three centuries, the man beheld the heavens. His amber eyes, so long hardened by blood and darkness, widened with wonder.
He had risen from the pit, carrying the Abyss within him, yet stepping into a world beyond it.