Immortal Ice Empress: Path to Vengeance

After Mira passed the second step and started descending down the staircase, she didn't experience any deaths worth paying attention to for a while… Though, she's not exactly sure whether or not it's a good thing to be categorizing the ways she dies. Honestly, at this point, she's started getting used to it.

That's not to say that these deaths didn't bother her, it's just that they weren't enough to scare her anymore. As long as she keeps a strong will, this place will keep reviving her until she either breaks or passes.

Funnily enough, Mira wasn't too bothered with the deaths that came after the whole drowning incident. For the most part, they were rather swift deaths.

She got crushed by a mountainous sized rock, sliced apart by the wind, was repeatedly struck by lightning, consumed by darkness, and was pumped full of so much light that she burst apart.

Ironically enough, she also froze to death! Although Mira wasn't surprised by this, she still found it quite funny. Her whole personality, Dao, affinity, many of her battle styles, and even her natural aura was cold or related to the ice element in some way. Yet, she, an Ice Queen, died by freezing to death? How can she not find that funny?!

Mira wasn't too bothered by this though. By now, she had grasped that this place is pretty much omnipotent in its domain. Hell, she was even able to experience alternate versions of herself! She was able to live and experience thousands of years all within a few days!

She also knew first hand just how fucked up this place was with its tests and if she got worked up over something little like dying to her own element, then there'd be no way she would pass this test.

So Mira kept walking down the stairs trying her best to keep a clear mind, but this only became harder and harder the further down she went.

Surprisingly, the difficulty of this place wasn't even because she needed to experience a different form of death just to pass onto the next step. No, the most difficult part about all this is the pain in her soul and the thoughts invading her mind.

The pressure bearing down on her body also became stronger with every step she took and she's sure it wouldn't be too long before it'll take several minutes before she can even walk to the edge of a step. Not only that, but if the pressure keeps getting worse, she might end up having to crawl down these stairs!

To her, it seems like the true challenge of this trial is hidden behind the deaths she needs to experience.

Plus, Mira's 100% sure that this is only the beginning. She doesn't know how many steps there are, nor does she know what's going to happen within each step. Everything around her is just gray. The walls are gray, the stairs are gray, and the ceiling is gray. Another thing to note is the fog keeps getting denser the further down she walks so she can barely see a few steps ahead of her.

However, none of this deterred Mira. Not after she's come this far. She is going to complete this damn test even if she has to die 10,000 times! Even if she has to drag her body on the floor using her teeth, she's going to complete this damn test!

Oh, how naive she was…

Time passed extremely slowly for Mira, but eventually she made it to the 100th step. When Mira reached this point she had died 100 different times in 100 different ways. Yes, that's right. She actually died 100 different ways.

Some were slow deaths while some were instant. For example, there was one time she died by exploding into a million pieces and another one where her organs dissolved into mush.

Probably one of the worst ways she died was dying due to falling. As soon as she descended onto the next step, she was thrown up high in the sky and literally dropped. All the bones in her body shattered and most of her internal organs were damaged, but for some reason she was still alive. So she could do nothing but wait for her slow yet inevitable death.

From that point on, Mira swore she would always be careful when flying through the air. She did not want to end up like that again!

At this point, she was also getting a bit sick of dying. Not only was it extremely painful, but it was also extremely boring! I mean, all she can do is literally just wait for death! How boring is that?! Can't they at least give her something to do or at least look at? All the gray is starting to get a bit irritating.

Anyways, Mira also noticed 1 very important fact. The pressure, invading thoughts, and soul pain, all increased by 1% with every step she descended. And no, it's not an additional 1% based on the first step of the staircase, but an additional 1% of whatever the previous step was at.

For example, let's say the pressure, invading thoughts, and soul pain at the first step was rated at 100. The second step, Mira would feel a pressure, invading thoughts, and soul pain at a rating of 101. BUT, on the third step, instead of feeling a pressure of 102, Mira would instead feel a pressure of 102.01. This may not seem like a big difference at the time, but the problem is that with every step, this number is multiplied.

So now that Mira is on the 100th step, she's feeling a pressure at around ~270.5. This will only get worse from here on out as well. By the time Mira reaches the 1,000th step the pressure she'll be feeling will be around ~2,095,916. That's almost a 21,000 times increase versus when Mira first took her first step onto the staircase.

Mira did the calculations and knew that these stairs had more than a thousand steps or even 10,000 steps. Well, it's safe to say she's fucked! Her original pledge of completing these stairs even at the cost of dragging her body with her teeth might not be so far from the truth.

She can only hope that the stairs give her a bit of mercy and stop increasing the pressure so much after a certain point and instead add different things to make her journey more difficult.

Unfortunately, she didn't have any more time to think about these issues as a massive headache hit her. This headache got worse and worse over time and Mira knew that this would definitely be the way she died on the 100th floor. Death by headache.

What a pain in the… head! Teehee!

Mira tried making a pun in her mind, but it was so bad that it only made things worse!

After a certain amount of time, her headache became so bad that she literally couldn't think of anything else and before long her mind collapsed and she died…

Her body fell limp on the ground, but almost immediately her mind was restored and she was back in peak condition.

"Wow. That fucking sucked. That one is definitely going in the top 10 worst deaths. Hehe~"

Mira giggled to herself with her cute little kid voice causing Mira to remember that she's now a fucking loli!

Her mood soured after remembering she's no longer in the body of a teen, but she's now in the body of a child.

So, in order to shake these unnecessary thoughts away, what should she do?

That's right! Jump onto the next step and allow this wretched place to kill her! That should do the trick!

That's exactly what she did, except things didn't go exactly as Mira planned as things seemed to change a bit on the 101st floor.

She was now face to face with what looks like a combat mannequin.