Chapter 77: [77] : The Weight of Souls, Apathy of the Abyss

Declan made it to the fifth step before his vision started to heavily blur.

The spiritual pressure was completely absurd. The system wasn’t just throwing heavy data at him anymore. It was throwing literal cosmic horror into his optic nerves.

As he placed his boot on the sixth marble block, the dark void around the staircase twisted.

Massive and terrifying shapes began to form in the shadows. He saw giant tentacles covered in weeping eyes. He saw planets cracking open and screaming.

He heard the voices of a billion dead players whispering directly into his ear, telling him to jump off the edge and end the pain.

[Warning: Sanity integrity at 60%.]

[Hostile mental invasion in progress. Hallucinations imminent.]

Declan stopped. He was hunched over, breathing heavily. Sweat mixed with the blood dripping from his nose.

He couldn’t just tough this out. His physical stats, his massive Strength and Agility, were completely useless here.

You couldn’t punch a hallucination. You couldn’t dodge a mental attack that was directly wired into your brain stem.

"Okay," Declan wheezed, wiping his face with the sleeve of his black Predator’s Coat. "You want to play mind games. Let’s play."

He didn’t take another step. He stood perfectly still on the sixth marble block and opened his digital inventory.

He bypassed his weapons. He ignored his health potions.

He tapped the icon for the Global Auction House.

The glowing yellow interface popped up in front of his face. The screen flickered wildly, struggling to render through the heavy interference of the trial’s spiritual pressure.

Declan squinted, forcing his eyes to focus on the search bar.

He typed in two words. "Mental Defense."

He hit the search button.

The server had exploded with activity since the Purge Wave ended. Players were dumping all their scavenged loot onto the market to make a quick buck.

Declan filtered the search by Lowest Price. He didn’t want a high tier relic that cost a million points. He just wanted a basic concept. His Boundless Enhancement talent would do the rest.

At the very top of the list, he found a cheap and gray tier skill book.

[Skill Book: Mental Fortitude]

↳ Type: Passive Skill

↳ Tier: Scavenged

↳ Description: Grants a minor 5% resistance against fear effects and low level illusion magic. Helps the user stay calm in stressful situations.

↳ Buyout Price: 20 Origin Points.

It was a trash skill. A literal beginner’s tool meant to help newbies not run away when they saw a scary monster.

It was like a drug people take to boost their confidence and keep them sane.

Declan tapped the buyout button instantly.

[Item Purchased. Origin Points: 20.]

The cheap gray colored book materialized in his hand. He didn’t hesitate. He slammed the book against his chest.

The book shattered into a burst of dull gray light that sank directly into his skin.

[Skill Learned: Mental Fortitude Level 1]

He felt a tiny and almost unnoticeable cooling sensation in the back of his head. The whispers in the dark got maybe one percent quieter.

It was completely useless against the 10,000% scaled difficulty of the Ascension Trial!

"System," Declan commanded, his voice cold and steady. "Open enhancement menu. Target: Mental Fortitude. Push it to plus thirty."

He had farmed an insane amount of Origin Points during the Abyssal Tide event. Wiping out millions of Void beasts with a Relic tier siege cannon had flooded his bank.

He had well more than enough points sitting in his treasury.

He had the funds. He had the cheat code!

The system chimes blared instantly. They sounded panicked, rapid, and aggressive.

[System Enhancement Initiated. Calculating cost...]

[Warning: Enhancing a passive mental skill beyond safe limits will result in permanent emotional death or lobotomization.]

"I don’t care," Declan grunted, gripping his head as the familiar splitting headache of the enhancement process slammed into him.

It mixed with the trial’s spiritual pressure, creating a cocktail of absolute agony. "Do it!"

[Talent: Boundless Enhancement overriding error.]

[Safety protocols bypassed. Cap removed.]

↳ Mental Fortitude +5... +10... +15...

A blinding white light erupted from Declan’s body. It illuminated the dark void, pushing back the terrifying shadows and the giant tentacles for a brief second.

[Cost for +1 to +30: 1,500,000 Origin Points.]

The points vanished from his bank. Declan didn’t even flinch at the price tag.

The white light shifted. It turned into a deep and consuming black void outlined in jagged purple static. The light didn’t surround his body. It sucked directly into his skull!

[Skill has reached +30.]

[Triggering Ultimate Conceptual Mutation...]

Declan fell to his hands and knees on the white marble. He gasped, his eyes wide.

The pain vanished!

It didn’t fade away slowly. It just stopped existing.

The crushing weight on his brain, the feeling of a bank vault sitting on his skull, the terrifying whispers of dead players, all of it was instantly muted.

Declan blinked. He looked around.

The massive tentacles covered in weeping eyes were still floating in the void next to the staircase. The planets were still cracking open in the distance. The cosmic horror was still there.

But it didn’t look scary anymore. It just looked boring.

He stared at a giant eyeball staring at him from the dark. He felt absolutely nothing. No fear. No panic. No stress.

A new purple text box floated gracefully in front of his face.

[Skill Mutated: Apathy of the Abyss]

↳ Type: Passive Skill

↳ Functionality: All psychological, soul, and conceptual mind damage is permanently nullified. The user is entirely immune to fear, madness, and mental manipulation. The user perceives cosmic horror and divine pressure as mundane, ignorable data.

Declan let out a long and slow breath. He pushed himself off the floor and stood up straight.

He dusted off the knees of his black Predator’s Coat.

"Much better," Declan said. His voice was completely flat. There was no strain in it at all.

He looked up the massive and endless spiral of white stairs.

The system was throwing its absolute maximum threat level spiritual pressure at him, trying to crush his mind.

To Declan, it felt like a light breeze on a mild spring day.

He put his hands in his pockets. He started walking.

Step seven. Step eight. Step nine.

He didn’t hunch over. He didn’t bleed. He strolled up the stairs like he was walking through a park.

The void screamed around him. The shadows writhed and flashed terrifying images of death and destruction.

Declan ignored them completely. He actually started whistling a discordant and off pitch tune that echoed loudly against the marble.

[Warning: Sanity integrity at 100%.]

The system prompt flashed in the corner of his vision, completely confused by his lack of reaction.

He reached the tenth step. He didn’t even pause.

"Is this really all you have?" Declan asked the dark void. "I was told this trial was hard. You’re just trying to bore me to death."

He kept walking. Step eleven. Step twelve.

The game engine realized its mental attacks were completely useless against his mutated skill.

The spiritual pressure didn’t lift, but the environment began to physically change.

Declan noticed the white marble beneath his boots was starting to turn a dull and ashy gray.

He reached the twentieth step and stopped.

The staircase widened massively here. It turned into a large and circular platform hanging in the void.

And standing on that platform, blocking his path upward, were figures.

They weren’t giant monsters. They weren’t Abyssal demons or Flesh Stalkers.

They looked like players!

There were ten of them. They were entirely made of gray and shifting smoke.

They wore heavily detailed armor that looked like it belonged in a different game entirely. One wore samurai style plating. Another wore futuristic sci fi power armor. One had a massive wizard’s hat and held a glowing staff.

They didn’t have faces. Just glowing white eyes shining through the gray smoke.

A system prompt appeared over the group.

[Floor 20 Reached.]

[Trial Phase 2: The Phantom Kings.]

Declan stopped whistling. He took his hands out of his pockets.

"Finally," Declan smiled, his dark eyes locking onto the glowing white eyes of the phantoms. "Something I can actually hit."