The longer Mira stayed on this staircase and the more she descended, the worse she started to feel.

Around step 700, the thoughts that were invading her mind had now occupied most of her rational and subconscious thoughts making it so the only thing she could even think about is giving up, suicide, or even just taking a break.

Not surprising is the fact that after these thoughts started consuming most of her mind, Mira found it more and more difficult to focus on the combat mannequins she was forced to fight.

Just this alone was more than enough to almost break Mira, but once you include the pain in her soul and the pressure on her body… let’s just say it makes for a test where even the words ‘pain’ and ‘suffering’ sound more like blessings rather than curses.

Around step 800, the pain in her soul had just about reached the amount of pain she went through during the last test where she was trapped in that room full of tiles and was forced to endure that suffocating torture.

Honestly, Mira could still endure that kind of pain if that was the only thing she needed to do. If she could just scream and endure, then even if she lost her mind she had confidence that she’d be able to pass. That’s how much self-confidence and willpower Mira has.

But having to ‘fight’ against someone, if you could even call it that, while enduring that amount of pain is inhumane! Mira wouldn’t even do this ** to her worst enemy, the god who has been messing with her for her entire life! She only wanted to kill that bastard and be free!

But this place and these tests? This ** is just wrong! Even if the treasure at the end of all this is some heaven-defying fate-altering treasure that can make her go from someone ordinary to a powerhouse. Hell, even if this place directly made her an Immortal, the torture she’s having to go through would not be worth it!

Mira would gladly quit this crap if that option was available to her! Whatever’s at the end of all these tests cannot be worth all of this nonsense and even if it was, Mira felt like she wouldn’t need it to accomplish her goals.

Unfortunately, she can’t quit and since she can’t quit then she must go on. But as one might expect, fighting while enduring crappy thoughts and intense pain in the soul definitely isn’t pleasant.

She’s ended up with several injuries merely because she can hardly focus on what’s going on in front of her.

Now the cherry on top is the pressure. Around step 900, the pressure bearing down on Mira was enough to slow down her movements by around half. The pressure she felt was extremely odd as well. It felt like someone was pressing down on each individual cell in her body instead of someone pushing down on her shoulders like if someone were to flare their aura at her.

Needless to say, fighting, or really, dodging is not easy under these conditions. Actually, fighting would be impossible if she were really forced to endure this ** and try to kill someone at the same time.

Mira can say with confidence that 9 out of ten of her hits would definitely miss and the last 10% would be lucky shots.

Luckily, she only has to survive!

…

If you can even call that lucky… but Mira was at least a bit thankful that she didn’t need to attack.

She is great at dodging and surviving. It could even be said that her will to survive is what keeps her going. It’s how she’s stayed sane throughout all those lonely years sitting in what she thought was the void as her soul was waiting to be reincarnated. It’s how she’s pushed through every troublesome encounter, every difficulty, and every hardship in her life. She’ll even wipe out civilizations, worlds, and even universes if she has to if it means she can survive!

And what’s the reason she wants to survive so badly? So she can kill that bastard of a god, that’s why!

These thoughts have been ingrained into every fiber of her being and it’s even ingrained into her soul!

If all she has to do is survive, then Mira has confidence that she’ll be able to pull it off and that’s especially the case now since she might actually die or end up in a place worse than what that would do to her if she gave up and succumbed.

That god who has kept playing with her, only wants to break her will and essentially force her to become his concubine, but these stairs or whatever’s in charge of these tests might turn her into a mindless beast or put her through endless torture for giving up. At that point, she’d be no better than a mindless beast if she was forced to go through that. She’d be considered lucky if she actually got to experience true death!

Knowing that, Mira’s will to live flared as she basically ran around each step like a headless chicken! At this point, Mira was actually happy she was reduced to a loli! She never thought she would be feeling happy to have the body of a child, but right now she is incredibly happy!

Her body being smaller means she’s a much harder target to hit. And what does that mean? She gets injured less and can dodge attacks much more easily. Unfortunately, the good also usually comes with the bad because conversely, if she does get hit then each hit will be more lethal than it was before.

For example, if she gets hit in the stomach, then almost all of her internal organs get damaged to a certain extent. If she still had the body of a teenager, then only the internal organs in the area that was hit would get damaged.

So while she is harder to hit, if she does get hit then she’ll take more damage. But Mira couldn’t care about that. Even if she had the body of an adult woman, if she got hit by one of the combat mannequins on step 900 or above, she wouldn’t be in good shape. Sure, it might reduce how many internal organs get destroyed, but some would still be destroyed and the ones that weren’t would definitely be injured.

Mira would have to turn into a giant if she wanted to reduce the total amount of damage to her body, but that would only cause her to take more hits so the tradeoff wouldn’t really be worth it.

Also, when she crossed step 900, things became exponentially harder with each progressive step she took. The combat mannequins were stronger, faster, and smarter while her mind, body, and soul were slowing down.

Not only that, but she now had to survive each mannequin for 460 seconds starting on the 900th step with each step after that adding another second.

That’s another 14 hours of this ** that will only get exponentially worse the more she progresses.

It’s reached the supposed final stretch, at least that’s what it’s like in Mira’s mind, but honestly Mira’s not sure what she’s going to do because it won’t be long before she’s forced onto her knees due to the pressure and once it reaches that point, she’s only a few steps away from having to army crawl her way through each step…

In that scenario, Mira would still be at least 20 steps away from the 1,000 step milestone…

When Mira thought of such a scenario, despair started to seep in as failure started to seem like the inevitable outcome.