Chapter 485
Chapter 485
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 485
Chapter Title: Infinite Staircase
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One step at a time.
At first, he was confident.
He had a secret technique called "Gradual Acceleration," after all.
The higher he climbed, the faster he'd go, and no matter how endless the staircase seemed, he'd eventually reach the top.
But.
Tap.
The moment Park Chan-woo set foot on the first step, he realized.
How foolish and arrogant his thinking had been.
Ssssss...
The strength drained from his entire body, like sand slipping through an hourglass—ever so slowly, yet inexorably.
His muscles weakened, and the life force flowing through his veins grew faint.
It wasn't due to a drop in his stats.
'...I'm aging.'
His body was.
Ever so slightly, it was yielding to the natural law of time that none could defy.
He immediately halted the activation of "Gradual Acceleration."
Instinct told him that gaining speed would only accelerate this decay uncontrollably.
Slowly.
One step, one step.
Without greed, focusing only on his breath and footsteps.
The problem was time.
Time was finite.
Even as he took a single step on this staircase, the hourglass of his death sentence continued to pour relentlessly.
Death was creeping closer with every passing moment.
He felt impatient.
A corner of his mind stirred with anxiety, urging him to escape this pointless staircase quickly.
But he forcibly suppressed it.
What he needed right now wasn't speed.
'Patience.'
He had learned this virtue bone-deep through countless lives of failure.
Park Chan-woo took another step.
And time indifferently began to flow.
The hundredth step.
His breathing started to grow a little ragged.
A subtle fatigue he hadn't felt before.
It rose like mist from the depths of his muscles.
His heart still beat strongly, but the intervals between throbs seemed just a touch slower.
The thousandth step.
A single silver strand appeared among his black hair, shining like a star.
A faint ripple stirred in his heart.
The taut skin around his eyes remained unchanged, but he imagined the faint traces of life that a mirror might reveal.
'Come to think of it, this is a first.'
He had died countless times, but never aged.
This sensation was far stranger to him than death.
The ten-thousandth step.
Walking itself had become difficult.
To take a single step, he had to focus his entire consciousness.
His knee joints creaked as if protesting, and the sweat trickling down his back cooled, bringing chills.
Faint age spots were blooming on the back of his hand.
Gazing at it, he suddenly recalled his father's hand from long ago, before his regressions—a life before this endless cycle.
Rough and coarse, yet firmer than anything in the world.
His sense of time grew hazy.
He stopped counting the steps.
He thought only of the step beneath his feet and the next one.
Before long, his hair was dusted with white frost, as if sprinkled with salt.
His once-sharp jawline had dulled, and irreversible rivers of time carved deep wrinkles into his once-taut skin.
He was growing old.
The sword of Baal at his waist now felt like a burdensome load.
His back began to hunch slightly, his vision blurred, and only the wind's howl rang in his ears.
The world seemed to drift farther from him.
Yet.
Why was it.
This sensation of aging. This inevitable process of decay.
...It wasn't so bad.
'Ah.'
Instead, an uncanny peace filled his heart.
He was a regressor.
His time had always been abnormal.
Explosive growth, instant loss of everything, or a return to the past.
He had never once experienced advancing toward the "future" as naturally as this, like an inevitable law of nature.
Always an incomplete existence.
A soul trapped in process.
But now, on this endless staircase, he was finally feeling the natural flow of time with his whole body.
The fading of youth and weakening of the body were undoubtedly sad.
Yet at the same time, his soul was filling with a profound, serene fullness he had never known.
Park Chan-woo realized.
'Life is beautiful. Radiant. Because it ages.'
This was the most sublime and natural process all living things endured.
Birth and growth.
Then decline and death.
Within that grand cycle, he finally felt himself as a truly "living being."
His footsteps had changed.
No more impatience or anxiety.
Just one step, one step, silently accepting and savoring the time given to him.
In contrast to his aging flesh.
His soul shone ever clearer and more transparent, like a gem polished by the winds of time.
The top of the tower.
The Lord of Stamina gazed down at the tiny human challenging his trial with the unshakable calm of a mountain.
He was confident.
What mortals truly feared wasn't "death."
Death was but a momentary pain, followed by nothingness.
The true terror was the helpless "process"—knowing with certainty that death approached, yet being powerless to stop it.
The fading of strength, the withering of beauty, the body that once commanded the world refusing to obey.
All those moments.
Worse than dying in an instant was watching everything slowly wear away.
That was the most primal, cruel punishment, capable of breaking even the greatest hero's will.
The Lord of Stamina had seen it countless times.
How many powerhouses had knelt and despaired before his "Infinite Staircase."
They started with bold vigor.
But with each step, feeling their body age and strength ebb, their feet would halt.
Terrified by their withered hands, they lost the courage to advance, collapsing into dust on the spot.
Even those with superhuman will who pressed on faced the same end.
The body would perish first.
And the decaying flesh would erode the spirit within.
No one could endure this trial.
Yet.
...Park Chan-woo was different.
[...?]
For the first time, a faint ripple disturbed the Lord of Stamina's ironclad composure.
In his eyes, Park Chan-woo's body was clearly aging.
Black hair turned white, his sturdy back hunched, and even a single step looked arduous.
The flesh marched unmistakably toward death.
Yet something was off.
His soul burned brighter with time.
Like a lantern flaring vividly within a worn, tattered shell.
Opposite the body's decline, his presence grew clearer, deeper.
The Lord of Stamina saw it.
Park Chan-woo wasn't despairing in this horrific trial.
[He's... singing of life?]
Instead, he was "singing."
His soul wasn't mourning or rejecting the natural cycle of aging and fading.
It welcomed it, praised it, transmuting it into a beautiful song.
It was an "ode to life."
Through his aging body, Park Chan-woo realized how precious and beautiful every moment of life was.
The recklessness and passion of youth.
The wisdom and maturity of middle age.
The peace and transcendence of old age.
All essential parts of the grand story called "life."
He no longer feared death.
Death was the final period completing life, embraced by his entire soul.
His soul's radiance was inevitable.
In countless regressions, he had always been "incomplete."
But now, on this staircase, he was finally writing the story of his life toward its conclusion.
[Impossible...]
The Lord of Stamina rose unconsciously.
The despairing trial he designed had become salvation for this human.
A absurd phenomenon denying all his calculations, his very reason for being.
[How...]
The Lord of Stamina couldn't comprehend.
Before Park Chan-woo's pure song of life, his authority was losing power.
His trial operated on "fear of decline."
But one who transcended fear was beyond his reach.
The Lord of Stamina could only watch in shock.
Finally.
Tap.
After an eternity.
Park Chan-woo's final step reached the summit.
He was utterly aged.
His once pitch-black hair was snow-white, his sturdy back bowed under time's weight.
Deep wrinkles mapped his face like rivers, his hands skeletal as dry branches.
But.
"It's truly beautiful."
At the top, Park Chan-woo smiled.
...Radiantly.
...Beautifully.
The Lord of Stamina was speechless.
How could he not be.
Park Chan-woo.
He had clearly "transcended."
He had reached the summit.
Park Chan-woo raised his withered hand, spreading it toward the sky as if gauging it.
He reflected on his life.
Countless deaths and failures, and one single chance.
Through all that time, he had always been young.
But that youth was anxious, unfinished.
Yet now, in this aged body, he felt a complete "life" for the first time.
Aging wasn't fading away.
It was condensing every lived moment to burn brightest at the very end.
Shining even more.
He turned to the being who had granted him this profound realization.
And spoke with sincerity.
"Thank you."
With those words, the Lord of Stamina felt everything crumble.
He had no choice but to admit it.
His perfect defeat.
The moment he acknowledged defeat.
Whoooosh.
Park Chan-woo's aged body was enveloped in dazzling light.
Defying time, his white hair turned black again, his hunched back straightened, and the deep wrinkles vanished.
He was regaining the radiant youth of his prime.
"...?"
But it was different from before.
Something had fundamentally changed.