Chapter 81: The Golden Road(2)

The infinite expanse of the golden road stretched forward under an unyielding, blinding sky.

**Keal** panted heavily, his boots dragging against the flawless pavement. Looking ahead, he could see distant figures of other candidates who had already pushed far deeper into the trial. Looking back, he saw a sea of trailing competitors, all vying for the same prize.

Panic and frustration clawed at Keal’s chest. He had come away empty-handed from the earlier trials; the legendary *Flame Sword Bone* had fallen straight into Arthur’s possession, and the high elders of the Church of Magic and Knowledge continuously favored Arthur over everyone else. This inheritance was his absolute last lifeline. If he failed here, he would remain a nobody forever.

Yet, every fiber of his being screamed in terror. He knew what awaited him just ahead—more psychological torture, more brutal memories designed to break his fragile psyche.

Gritting his teeth until his jaws ached, Kyle forced his legs to move.

*One, two, three... ten steps.*

The golden world fractured.

The scenery warped into a cramped, dark, and freezing attic reeking of dust and stale sweat. A towering, brutal-looking uncle loomed over him—a nightmare memory from his early childhood when he had been forced into grueling manual labor, beaten mercilessly whenever he made a mistake or failed to lift heavy crates.

The beatings. The verbal abuse. The utter helplessness of being a weak, starving child trapped in a life he despised.

*FZZZ—!*

The illusion dissolved, only to instantly restart. Over and over again, the agonizing memory replayed with terrifying clarity.

One hundred times, the vicious beatings looped in his mind until Kyle felt his sanity slipping. When the hundredth loop finally ended, he collapsed onto his hands and knees on the golden road, gasping for breath.

"Damn it... when will this nightmare end?!" Kyle yelled out into the empty void.

A wave of bitter determination washed over him. *’No matter what it takes... if I endure this, I get the treasure. I have to push through!’*

Fired up by desperation, Kyle surged forward, taking ten rapid steps all at once.

*BOOM!*

The world shattered again, but this time, the nightmare took a grotesquely horrific form.

He found himself pinned to his own bed by a foul, towering **Orc**. The creature was an absolute abomination—its skin a sickening shade of swamp-green, its massive, fat-layered body covered in festering boils and matted fur, radiating a suffocating, putrid stench of rotting meat, unwashed filth, and coagulated blood. Its yellowed, rotting tusks dripped with thick, greenish saliva that hissed as it splattered onto Kyle’s chest.

Before Kyle could even scream, the foul beast pressed its immense, crushing weight down upon him, slamming heavy, brutal fists into his ribs in a relentless cycle of physical violation and torment.

Kyle shrieked in absolute terror, his vocal cords tearing as blood sprayed from his lips.

*FZZZ—!*

The illusion vanished, resetting instantly. The monstrous orc pinned him down again. Again. And again.

Thousands of times, the horrific nightmare repeated itself, grinding Kyle’s mental resilience into fine dust. His mind could not take the relentless onslaught of degradation and agony.

As the thousandth iteration reached its climax, Kyle’s willpower shattered entirely.

*CRACK!*

The golden road beneath his boots flickered violently. A cascade of bright, shimmering digital sparks erupted around his body, dissolving him completely into thin air.

*FWOOSH!*

Before he could even register what had happened, Kyle was violently ejected from the trial space, materializing outside the ancient stone doors of the tomb where the trial had first begun. He collapsed onto the cold basalt floor, clutching his head, utterly broken and disqualified.

---

### II. Arthur’s Burden of Gold and Blood

Further ahead on a parallel golden path, **Arthur** walked with heavy, measured strides, his white-and-gold robes catching the unearthly light.

Unlike Kyle, Arthur possessed immense talent and the divine backing of the Church, but his path was paved with an entirely different kind of torment.

As he crossed his tenth step, the golden light dissolved into the grand, imposing cathedral of his youth.

He stood before his father’s deathbed. His father, a stern and unforgiving high-ranking paladin of the Church, had sacrificed his own vitality to forcibly graft the *Flame Sword Bone* into young Arthur’s chest. In the memory, his father’s final words echoed like a hammer blow: *"You are the weapon of the Church, Arthur. Weakness is treason."*

Then, the scene shifted.

The memory plunged into the agonizing reality of his present power. Every single time Arthur drew upon the golden divine energy of the *Flame Sword Bone*, the sacred marrow burned through his biological veins like liquid white phosphorus. The invisible agony of his bones melting and reforming under the holy seal tore at his nervous system.

The illusion shifted again, showing the death of his mother—a gentle woman who had opposed turning her son into a living weapon, only to be executed for heresy by the very Church leaders who now praised Arthur.

Loop after loop, the burden of his father’s cruel expectations, the agonizing burn of his sword bone, and the haunting guilt of his mother’s death replayed thousands of times.

Arthur gritted his teeth, blood dripping from his lip, his golden eyes blazing with stubborn, unyielding pride. He refused to break. Step by step, through sheer willpower and religious fanaticism, Arthur pushed past the threshold of the memory loops, continuing his march toward the end of the road.

---

### III. Keklar’s Shadows of the Past

On another parallel track, **Keklar**—maintaining his human disguise—marched forward with heavy, grinding footsteps.

As his tenth step landed, the golden road vanished, plunging him into the grim, unforgiving memories of his past life before his transmigration.

He found himself standing in the courtyard of a dilapidated municipal school in a rundown district. He was scrawny, underfed, and perpetually exhausted.

Around him stood a ring of vicious school bullies—older boys with cruel grins and clenched fists, shoving him into the dirt, kicking mud over his schoolbooks, and hurling insults about his impoverished family.

*"Look at this pathetic piece of trash!"* the ringleader mocked, delivering a sharp kick to Keklar’s ribs. *"You think you’ll ever amount to anything? You’re just a stray dog begging for scraps!"*

The humiliation, the biting hunger, the helpless rage of being beaten down day after day with no one to protect him—the memory clawed at his chest with razor-sharp talons.

*FZZZ—!*

The illusion reset. The bullies closed in again.

Once. Ten times. A hundred times. Thousands of times, the endless cycle of schoolyard bullying, isolation, and helpless degradation looped in his mind.

For an ordinary person, such relentless psychological torture would have shattered their ego entirely. But Keklar’s mind was forged in a different crucible. Beneath the human skin of his Slime Transformation lay the soul of a reincarnated sovereign.

As the bullies lunged in the thousandth loop, a dark, feral snarl broke from Keklar’s throat.

"You think mere memories can break me?" Keklar laughed, a harsh, chilling sound that echoed across the golden void. "In my past life, I was trampled into the mud! In this life, I devoured monsters to climb to the top! Your pathetic taunts are nothing compared to the hunger in my blood!"

With a savage roar of primordial malice, Keklar’s spiritual pressure surged outward, violently shattering the illusion from within. The schoolyard dissolved into black ash, and Keklar burst forward onto the golden road, his crimson eyes burning with an unstoppable, predatory drive to claim the inheritance waiting at the end.

The shattered illusion of the schoolyard faded into drifting black ash, leaving Keklar standing firmly upon the gleaming golden pavement once more.

He wiped a smear of dark blood from his lips, his chest heaving, but his crimson eyes were burning with an insatiable, wild fire.

*’I am no longer that pathetic, helpless kid on Earth,’* Keklar declared silently to his own soul, his knuckles turning white as he clenched his fists. *’That weakling died long ago! In this world, I hold a supreme System. I can devour bloodlines, consume unique metals, and digest legendary monsters to absorb their physical traits! There are no limits to my evolution!’*

A cold, arrogant smile twisted his face as he stared down the endless golden corridor.

*it doesn’t matter who stands in my way! I will devour every single pillar of strength in this realm until I become the absolute apex of this world!’*

On a distant parallel road, **Lady Sera** knelt on the cold, shimmering stone, her breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps.

Unlike Ethan, who had forged his soul in eighty years of brutal demonic torture and prison cells, or Keklar, who had clawed his way up from the bottom of two lives, Sera had been raised as the pampered, highly protected prodigy of the Frost-Peak Duchy.

Her life had been one of privilege, high-tier instruction, and absolute luxury. Her personal memories held no true tragedy or deep physical trauma.

Because she possessed no deep personal grief for the trail to exploit, the ancient rules of the Golden Requiem King’s trial took effect.

The path unleashed the **monarch’s own suppressed memories** directly into her consciousness.

"N-No... stop it... please..." Sera whimpered, clutching her head as tears streamed down her pale, flawless cheeks. Her Secret-Seeking Eyes flickered wildly, unable to break the emotional feedback loop.

*CRACK!*

Her mental defense collapsed entirely.