Chapter 724: 724: Train Better in Your Next Life
A jagged ribbon of mountain road lay buried in silver. Their shadows wrote a line across the ice.
No one dared follow. No one dared jeer.
The man at the front walked with hawk-bright eyes under sword-cut brows. Tall and lean, he carried a cutting pressure, a sense he could lay a hand on the sky and make it bow. He looked like a god stepped out of an ancient scroll, hard to look at directly.
“Emperor Sword as master, godrings as vassals…”
The line rang in every ear, a brand burned into spirit. Godring awakeners of the Earth Kingdom, even the Wolf Twins, dimmed before a Six-Shift.
Talent is common. Peerless talent appears once in a thousand years.
One stood already at the ninety-eighth heaven, the Sunforge Sacred Executor who had glimpsed the light of the temple. The other was the man before them.
“Caelum… can we really climb with him?” Estrella asked carefully.
Caelum stared at the man’s back and shook his head, lost, then turned to pray that the Fire God’s soul would watch over them. Excitement and nerves tangled in the twins’ eyes. Would such a heaven-favored monster ever put them in his eyes? They didn’t know, and didn’t dare hope he would honor any promise.
“Feels good to have both hands again,” Orson murmured. The pool’s baptism had restored his missing arm. He’d given the Titan prosthetic to Usher, cutting the man’s attack speed to pieces. Imported parts never beat stock. The living feel at his fingertips steadied him.
He still had a mountain of Awakening merits unspent from the battleground. When the seal came off, he’d push attack speed back to cap and beyond.
Before long they stopped beneath a steep slope riddled with holes like an ant nest. Above, countless little mouths glimmered with faint light, at least a million openings. The First Heaven, Immortal Slope.
Each hole held a pocket world, similar to secret realms back on Earth. Its low difficulty made it a favorite haunt of freshly awakened Fireborn. Occupy a nest and it would feed you experience and stat points. When you’d banked enough, you moved on.
Nuhachit’s talent now eclipsed Darulunina’s by far, but when big sis spoke, he still snapped to. Seeing her shake off the gloom put everyone at ease. They’d feared she would spiral.
They hauled out hooks and cramponed boots and worked in clean order. For the big tribes, the first thirty heavens held no secrets. Firevenom kids grew up on the routes.
Hooks bit stone, lines doubled and braced. Darulunina’s eyes sharpened; pride drove her to go first. The others followed like spiders, scrambling up and vanishing into empty dens.
“Don’t spread too far. Shout if anything goes wrong,” she called, chin tipped up, deliberately avoiding Orson’s eye.
He chuckled. Stubborn girl. She didn’t want him thinking her trash, so she was trying to get ahead.
Orson gripped a line, walked into the blowing flakes, and slipped into an empty den. Warmth brushed his skin. The cave was barely five square meters, a cramped box. Light blinked, and space swelled by dozens of times, yet the layout didn’t truly change.
A space pocket, but not a true realm. The feeling was… odd.
He pinged the others on private chat and got replies immediately. Distance was real-world close. Better than most instances; at least comms weren’t jammed.
“The Sunforge World, flames to purge the sky, all evil to ash,” a cold prompt intoned. “Recover your lost will from battles past.”
Two golden silhouettes bled out of the air. A copper-armored soldier with a demon-cleaver hacked at a two-headed fiend. Growls ricocheted in the cave as they tore into each other.
“What is this?” Orson checked their tags.
Crusader Legion Soldier, Remnant Image. Level 0. Attributes unknown.
Lesser Fiend, Two-Headed Gnoll, Remnant Image. Level 0. Attributes mindless.
His eyes lit. The soldier was from Earth—one of those who followed the First Emperor. The prompt fell silent. Orson watched them trade blows. The soldier was fierce, knocked down and back up, golden motes bursting like blood spray—heavy wounds. He booted the fiend over and roared.
Orson thought him about to finish it when the fiend whipped up, claws flashing, and crushed his skull. Then it crouched and chewed.
“Celebrating before the kill. That’s a death you earned,” Orson said, shaking his head. The adventurer wasn’t weak, and the fiend was no pushover, but a misstep still got you butchered. Deathmatch wasn’t sparring. A sloppy breath could cost your life.
“You gained 3,000 EXP.”
“You gained 1 free attribute point.”
He blinked. “Watch a clip, get exp and stats? That easy?”
He’d known higher heavens yielded more, but he hadn’t known… this was literally AFK watch-and-learn.
Another pair of phantoms blinked in. This time a Fireborn fought a fiend—and died again.
“Technique’s crude. Your whole body’s a weak point. Train better in your next life.”
More exp. More stats.
His interest spiked. After a dozen clips he had a feel for it. This wasn’t just a stool and a cage match; you had to read the fight and supply the right lesson. Answer correctly and it paid you. Answer wrong and it clawed back your gains.
Whoever designed these dens hadn’t just meant to juice Fireborn. They’d meant to pound fiend-fighting doctrine into their heads. Every bout ended in a death, and the ways to die were infinite. He even watched a man in bed with a beauty; a blink later she turned succubus surgeon and scooped him hollow.
He’d seen that flavor of rot before. As he was now, watching these clippings was like a senior lecturer grading kindergarten penmanship. No challenge at all.
“Lesson learned. Keep moving,” he sent across the channel.
“Yeah, this stuff’s on our wall carvings,” Nuhachit yawned.
“Skip to the Fifth Heaven?” Darulunina said.
Orson considered, then nodded solemnly. “Bold proposal. Better go straight to the Fiftieth.”
“What?” Caelum squeaked. “Fiftieth? My sister and I are level eleven.”
“Kill me now and I still won’t make that climb!”
Nuhachit went blank. The kids turned pale. The Fiftieth? Their old chief had barely made Thirty-Eight and almost didn’t come back.
And he wanted a handful of green teens to go feed themselves to the peak?
“I believe in your brains. Climb and you’ll crack it. Who told me last night they were going to the summit?” Orson asked, brows up.
Estrella blanched. “We… we did say that. But the plan was thirty years.”