The Path to Corruption
Somehow, even in the Heaven Realm where it felt like daylight would last forever, night still came. The world above the skies had a completely different nightscape in every way. I didn't know about anything else, but the scenery alone was killer. With so much open space, it seemed like the perfect place for training.
I did some light stretches and stepped outside. It wasn't anything impressive—just basic bodyweight exercises with a few extras added on.
Lowers Strength stat, raises Intelligence stat.
First, I downed one of the potions piled up in my inventory. It was an item that lowered my Strength stat while boosting Intelligence. By using something like this to drop my Strength, I could push my muscles even harder and trigger super recovery. The numerical change was subtle, but in the Heaven Realm where stats were already halved by the base restrictions, it would make a significant difference.
After consuming a few types of potions, I took shallow breaths and activated Mana Reinforcement.
Mana Reinforcement
-Kurrrung! With the sound of thunder, power surged into my body. At the same time, I channeled the circulating mana intensely into the muscles of my limbs. Once I infiltrated the mana directly into the muscle fibers while minimizing the reinforcement effect as much as possible, I was ready.
With preparations complete, I donned the heaviest armor I could manage and started running.
-Thud thud thud thud thud!
Running was one of the few high-intensity exercises I could do even in this challenger's body. The faster I went, the more load I could apply. Gym equipment would require ridiculously bulky gear. Other bodyweight exercises lost meaning once you could easily overcome your own weight. But running? You could directly convert your enhanced performance into load. Just crank up the speed.
The key point was disabling speed-related support skills like Dash. Most of these were auto-activating buffs or passive skills, so normally you couldn't turn them off at will. But I could. After long practice, I'd mastered blocking the effects of certain passive and auto-buff skills. If I couldn't fully control my own skills, it'd be embarrassing as hell.
Thinking about my goals, relying too much on the system wasn't good either. Anyway—
With all support from skills like Dash and Leap completely blocked. I borrowed the power of Mana Reinforcement to endlessly repeat the same path.
-Snap, crack! Sounds of something breaking echoed from all over my body. The body, overworked to the extreme with Mana Reinforcement, was breaking down. But the damaged parts quickly recovered thanks to Super Regeneration. Then they broke again. In the end, training was self-destruction. The cycle of destruction and recovery led to growth, and the synergy of Mana Reinforcement and Super Regeneration pushed it to the limit.
Thanks to my stats being halved, today's workout felt especially effective. This might let me raise my stats even more than I thought.
“Hoo, hoo...”
How long had I been running? Stamina was starting to flag. MP was plummeting too, so it was about that time. The forcibly maintained Mana Reinforcement cut off due to mana depletion.
-Crack!
“Fuck!”
Holy fucking shit, it hurt like hell. Like someone jamming hooks into my muscles and ripping them out. But this goddamn pain invading my body was the peak. The moment the load hit hardest.
“Uwaaaagh!”
I screamed without holding back and kept running by sheer force of will. Pure demonic grit. Overcoming pain that made me want to black out, running endlessly, and running some more.
-Thud.
“Ugh, haa, kuh, fuck, shit.”
I stopped only when I physically couldn't move anymore. Normally, pushing this hard wouldn't be great, but with Super Regeneration, I didn't care. Wait for stamina and MP to recover, then repeat the same madness.
After a few hours of that, purely through exercise—no level-ups—I managed to raise my Strength and Agility stats by 2 each.
“This is better than I thought...?”
Gaining this much in a single day wasn't easy at all. What a cheat.
The next day, I sat at the table with the heavenly couple for breakfast.
“Did you sleep well last night?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“That's good. No inconveniences?”
I hadn't slept myself—instead doing night calisthenics—but I gave a polite enough answer. They were just being polite anyway. And I had slept a bit. An hour or two after finishing my workout. I could pull all-nighters for a few days no problem, but lately, for mental health, I tried to sleep once a day.
“...”
Angela, sitting at the table and chewing bread dipped in soup, stared at me with a strange expression. Similar to the look she'd had hiding behind the wall yesterday. She'd probably noticed me sneaking out and back at night. I'd even used Shadow Stealth, but a level 1 skill wasn't quite enough.
“What're you curious about this time?”
I finished eating and waited until the heavenly couple cleared the dishes before asking. Angela, fork in her mouth, mumbled her answer.
“What'd you do yesterday? You didn't sleep here, right?”
“I did, just a bit.”
“What'd you do if you barely slept?”
I answered shortly. 'Just exercise.' Her eyes narrowed slyly.
“I'm from a Sky Watcher family, so I have the blessing of Farsight. I can borrow the divine beast's eyes to see other places.”
Oh yeah, yesterday during my workout, I'd seen a huge bird fly overhead.
“It was too fast to see what you were doing, but that was exercise? Do earth humans do that kind of thing?”
“Nah, just me.”
“You say you're human, but why're you so different from other humans? Are you really human?”
Angela was super curious about the surface world, unlike most heaven folk with their chosen-people superiority. In their terms, curiosity like that could invite heavenly punishment. Reacting to her questions was the same. Each time I answered, her burning curiosity would inch toward the forbidden.
Those eyes reminded me of Elenoir, proving it. I had two choices here for Angela. Block her curiosity at the source—ignore her for her own safety. Or feed it, raising her risk of heavenly punishment—but the Heaven Realm was doomed anyway.
The Heaven Realms in other towers, where the story had progressed, were mostly wrecked. The system was designed that way.
“Curious how humans live?”
And I chose the latter. Answer her curiosity, heavenly punishment be damned. The Heaven Realm was collapsing regardless—not that I didn't care if she died from it.
I'd decided to destroy the Heaven Realm, but that didn't mean killing all heaven folk. It was a world created and sustained by the Heavenly God, so killing it would automatically end the realm. That was my goal.
Take down this floor's prime hidden boss candidate—the Heavenly God—destroy the Heaven Realm, and send all heaven folk back to earth. No more heavenly punishment once it's dead. I'd get this curious heaven girl safely to the surface.
Unlike floor 9, where I'd agonized and sacrificed so much before deciding.
“N-no, not that. Why would I care about filthy humans' habits?”
“You do. Don't chicken out. No heavenly punishment's coming.”
“Y-you're seriously gonna get heavenly punishment! That's blasphemy against the Heavenly God!”
I didn't know how to escape the system yet.
“So what.”
At least I'd free her from this stifling Heaven Realm bullshit.
The Angelos-Dalpion couple and Angela were Sky Watchers. Sky Watchers were sentinels guarding the Heaven Realm's outskirts while managing divine beasts like shepherds. They inherited the Farsight blessing generationally, living their whole lives as Sky Watchers.
A curiosity monster like Angela popping up in such a family was... complicated.
“Whoa, you came?”
It was late evening when I slipped into Angela's patrol sector. To tell her surface stories behind her parents' backs. She'd jumped at my 'heavenly punishment? whatever' attitude. But her face still screamed 'this is bad, though...'
Thinking it was wrong but unable to resist her curiosity. Her expressions and fidgeting made it look like some shady rendezvous. And with her being a pubescent girl, the vibe was even stronger. Hell, I was the gold sun position seducing her into delinquency.
Ha, great.
“Th-then hurry... someone might come.”
Seducing the heavenly daughter into corruption. Start.