Tower of Paradise

I fell into the soft embrace of the cold floor, screaming, with my entire body convulsing in terrible pain spasms. The unbearable agony radiated through my nervous system, my mind drowning in the endless torrent of torturous, insupportable, and devastating suffering, while an enormous amount of dark energy traversed each organ, each muscle, each fiber, and each molecule of my body, as it was torn apart and reassembled, only to be torn apart again.

I writhed on the floor while the pain only intensified, becoming an unbearable torture that felt like a voracious whirlwind devouring my mind and entrails simultaneously. Blood, hot and thick, began to flow uncontrollably from my eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and even my pores, soaking my clothes and the floor around me.

Soon I realized, with terrifying clarity, the terrible truth that loomed over me: the power of the Terror Incarnation's soul fragment was too potent, too overwhelming for my immature body to handle properly.

The process was the opposite of the smooth rebirth I had experienced after overcoming the first floor. It was violent, ruthless, and unnatural, forcibly transforming my body into something it was not meant to be.

Something that was never meant to be.

The large amount of energy merged directly into the bones and muscles of my body, allowing it to integrate at the cellular level. The energy acted like thousands of tiny incandescent needles that mercilessly pierced my organs and bones, painfully reconstructing them, modifying my composition down to the marrow.

I clenched my teeth so hard that I feared they would break, trying to endure the indescribable torment while the unbearable pain continued to consume me in what seemed like an eternity of endless suffering.

All the energy that came into contact with my body pierced me without mercy, without exception, like a million red-hot needles. One or two particles I could endure with stoicism, but a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand... began to take their implacable toll, and during that endless time, I could only grind my teeth forcefully to avoid screaming, to not succumb to the impulse of howling like a wounded animal.

And this was just the beginning of my ordeal. The pain intensified to unimaginable levels, becoming worse than any conceivable torture; it was literally like dying from a thousand simultaneous cuts, like being dismembered and reconstructed over and over again in an infernal cycle. I sweated profusely, soaking the floor beneath my body while breathing in short gasps between clenched teeth, fighting to maintain consciousness despite the hurricane that threatened to drag me into madness.

Then, my eyes involuntarily narrowed while a heart-rending scream escaped my throat, unable to contain myself any longer before the energy that mercilessly pierced my skin and muscles. I screamed and howled in pain like never before, like a pig in a slaughterhouse, while my eyes seemed to want to pop out of their sockets in my now completely pale face, as fine as the finest marble.

My heart accelerated dangerously, reaching rhythms that no human being should experience, and my blood, originally an intense and vital red, began to turn black as the darkest night before my horrified eyes. Countless veins emerged prominently on my contorted face, all of them an unsettling purple and black color, with a strange pulsating power flowing through them like rivers of darkness.

Unable to stop it, I had no choice but to endure the agony. I could only try not to go mad from pain. Tears ran down my face, leaving traces of blood in their wake. The torture seemed endless.

My entire body emitted wisps of black gas that rose sinuously toward the ceiling, as if my very essence was evaporating. So much pain flooded my eyes with tears that fell freely, but at that moment, I was nothing more than a lump of suffering flesh, a mass of nerves and muscles in agony. The only thing I could do was lie paralyzed on the floor, prey to an indescribable agony that transcended any human experience.

I violently writhed on the floor while screaming until I was voiceless, hitting my head against the wall repeatedly in a desperate attempt to distract my mind from the main pain consuming me. Without a visible end to my torment, I continued to experience the bitter taste of hell in every cell of my being.

I came to think, in the darkest moments, that I preferred to die, that death would be a welcome relief from such agony, but obviously, no one was nearby to fulfill that macabre wish, and I had no choice but to endure, to resist with tooth and nail. My life hung precariously from a thread, one that dangerously thinned with each inexorable second that passed.

As the transformation advanced unstoppably, visible and profound changes began to manifest in my body. First, my hair completely lost its characteristic color, perhaps due to the overwhelming pain that overwhelmed me, or for some other arcane reason that escaped my comprehension.

My golden hair with delicate reddish tones became completely white as the purest snow in a matter of seconds, as if I had aged decades in an instant. Afterward, my muscles and skeleton notably thickened, becoming stronger and more defined, granting me a physique I had never possessed, and multiple fine black-reddish lines began to sinuously traverse the surface of my skin like lava veins beneath the earth.

I remembered, in a moment of lucidity between pain waves, that I had read some time ago about a fascinating phenomenon called supercompensation.

It was a biological process in which muscles torn by intense training or other extreme physical activities, upon subsequently recovering, would experience a slight but significant hypertrophy, becoming stronger and more resistant than before the injury.

Similarly, fractured bones would considerably increase their density and resistance after the recovery process. What was happening to my body at that precise moment was precisely that extraordinary phenomenon, but amplified to inhuman levels, taken to extremes that defied all comprehension.

The pain slowly diminished and finally disappeared. I lay on the floor, completely exhausted while my mind walked on quicksand.

In the silence broken only by the hoarse sound of my ragged breathing, the tower's voice whispered:

[You have acquired the first transformation of the Soul Reaper: Vast Lorde Mode]

[The innate ability: Successor's Eyes has been activated.]