Devourer's Legacy: I Regressed With The Primordial Crest
Chapter 91: The Minds weight (2)

Chapter 91: The Minds weight (2)

The five hundredth step marked a turning point that Renard felt in his bones before he understood it intellectually.

The magical pressure, which had been building gradually like water slowly filling a basin, suddenly doubled. Then doubled again. The inscriptions carved into the stone blazed with such intensity that looking directly at them made his eyes water, and the air itself seemed to crystallize around him, becoming so thick and resistant that each breath felt like swallowing syrup.

Behind him, he heard a scream cut short, followed by the sickening thud of a body hitting stone. Then another. And another.

The staircase had claimed more victims.

Renard didn’t turn around to look. He couldn’t afford the distraction, and more importantly, he already knew what he would see. Children who had pushed beyond their limits, their minds shattered by magical pressure they weren’t equipped to handle. Some would recover, given time and proper care. Others might never be quite the same again.

This was the reality of magical training that the stories never mentioned. Power came with a price, and sometimes that price was paid in broken minds and damaged souls.

The physical strain was becoming serious now too. What had started as a pleasant burn in his muscles had evolved into genuine fatigue. His legs felt like they were made of lead, each step requiring conscious effort to lift and place correctly. Sweat ran down his back despite the increasingly cold mountain air, and his heart hammered against his ribs with the irregular rhythm of a body being pushed toward its limits.

But Renard had been here before, in different circumstances but with the same fundamental challenge. The question wasn’t whether he could continue—it was whether he was willing to pay the price continuation would demand.

He thought about the children behind him, most of whom had probably never experienced anything more challenging than a long day helping with farm work or household chores. They’d been thrown into deep water without knowing how to swim, expected to either adapt instantly or drown trying.

It was brutal. It was unfair.

It was exactly what he’d expected from the silent monastery.

Yet, as he climbed Renard didn’t use his essence - he was determined to push through just brute force.

The six hundredth step brought new torments. The magical assault shifted tactics, abandoning its previous strategy of gradual pressure in favor of sharp, stabbing attacks that came without warning. One moment his mind was clear, the next it felt like someone was driving ice picks through his temples.

Renard gritted his teeth and continued climbing. He’d learned long ago that the only way through pain was straight through the middle of it. Trying to go around or avoid it just prolonged the suffering.

At the seven hundredth step, the inscriptions began to move.

Not just the subtle shifting he’d noticed earlier—this was active, deliberate motion. The carved symbols flowed across the stone like living things, rearranging themselves into new patterns that hurt to look at directly. The magical pressure they generated became chaotic, unpredictable, striking from different angles with each step.

It was designed to break concentration, to make it impossible to find any kind of rhythm or flow. The moment you adapted to one pattern, it changed into something else entirely.

’What a psycho’

Whoever had designed this trial understood that mental resilience often came from finding patterns and routines that could be maintained even under stress. By constantly changing the nature of the assault, they forced climbers to adapt continuously, never allowing them to settle into a comfortable groove.

But there was a flaw in the design, one that someone with his experience could exploit.

Instead of trying to adapt to each new pattern, Renard stopped trying to adapt at all. He let the chaotic magical pressure wash over him like waves against a cliff, neither fighting it nor trying to redirect it. He simply endured it, treating each new assault as just another form of weather—unpleasant but temporary.

The technique was called "mountain mind" in some martial traditions—the practice of becoming so still and unmovable internally that external pressures couldn’t find purchase.

The technique was called "mountain mind" in some martial traditions—the practice of becoming so still and unmovable internally that external pressures couldn’t find purchase. It was exceptionally difficult to master and even harder to maintain under stress, but once achieved, it provided remarkable stability.

Renard had learned it from onr of the Demon Army Commanders during his previous life, though he’d never managed to master it completely.

But even his half-formed understanding of the technique had saved his life more than once during the war, and now, with a younger body and clearer mind, he found he could maintain it far better than before.

His pace actually increased as he found his center. The constantly shifting magical pressure still hurt, still tried to break his concentration, but it no longer disrupted his rhythm. He climbed with mechanical precision, each step placed with identical force and timing regardless of what the inscriptions threw at him.

Eight hundred steps. Nine hundred. One thousand.

The air was thin enough now that each breath provided noticeably less oxygen than his body wanted. The cold was becoming serious too—his fingers were stiff and clumsy, and he could see his breath misting in the frigid air. The magical pressure had stabilized into a constant, crushing weight that made thinking feel like trying to solve complex mathematics while someone hammered on his skull.

But he was still climbing.

More concerning was what he could sense above him. The staircase continued up into darkness, but there was something different about the magical energy ahead. It felt... deeper. More complex. Like the trials he’d already passed were just preparation for something much more challenging.

At the twelve hundredth step, Renard finally allowed himself to look back.

The sight below was sobering. Of the twenty-three children who had started this trial, only four were still climbing.

The rest were scattered across the lower steps—some unconscious, others sitting in stunned silence, a few trying to make their way back down to safety on unsteady legs.

Ian was still behind him, maybe two hundred steps back, but still moving. Blood covered half his face from his self-inflicted wounds, and his movements had a desperate, mechanical quality that spoke of someone running purely on determination after their strength had given out. But he was still climbing.

Two other children were even further back, moving so slowly they might as well have been stationary. One was a girl with dark hair who kept stopping to rest every few steps. The other was a boy who seemed to be climbing with his eyes closed, feeling his way forward step by step.

Four out of twenty-three. Less than twenty percent.

And they weren’t even halfway to the top yet.

Renard turned back to face upward and continued climbing.

The Silent Monastery’s selection process was more brutal than he’d expected, but it made sense from their perspective.

At the fifteen hundredth step, everything changed again.

The magical pressure, which had been a constant, crushing weight for the past several hundred steps, suddenly vanished completely. The inscriptions went dark, their light fading to nothing. The air became normal—thin because of the altitude, but no longer thick and resistant.

Renard’s next step, expecting the same resistance he’d been fighting against for hours, carried him forward with unexpected force. He stumbled slightly, catching himself against the stone wall, and looked around in confusion.

Had he broken something? Was this part of the trial, or had the magical defenses somehow failed?

The answer came in the form of voices from above.

"Another one made it to the threshold," someone said, their words carrying clearly in the thin mountain air. "That makes... four? Five?"

"Four," came the reply from a different voice. "The others fell back around step fourteen hundred. Only this one pushed through."

Renard looked up and saw them—two figures in dark robes standing at what appeared to be a wide platform maybe fifty steps above him. Even in the dim light, he could see they were watching him with interest.

"How long did it take him?" the first voice asked.

"Just over six hours. That’s... adequate."

Adequate. After six hours of climbing through increasingly brutal magical pressure, after watching nineteen other children fall by the wayside, after pushing his body and mind to their limits—adequate.

Renard almost smiled. These people really were as arrogant as he’d expected.

But their presence meant he was close to the end of this trial. The platform above had to be the outer hall of the Silent Monastery that Aldric had mentioned.

He’d made it!

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