[Basic Battle Power improved from 'Half-step Soul Formation' → 'Pinnacle Half-step Soul Formation']
[Becoming a full-time Serial Killer has been treating you very well, huh?]
"...."
[It's fine, you don't need to answer. Your System knows better than anyone how much of a nut-job you are!]
'You try living through more than one thousand lifetimes as a scorned cripple!' Knox spat back. 'I'd like to see how mentally stable you'd become!'
[Heh, stay salty ಥ‿ಥ]
"Tch, whatever," Knox muttered, kicking a dropped sword that smashed into a skyscraper and obliterated it. "I'm going to see what sort of alcohol they're keeping in their treasuries."
When bullied by a sentient being that could not be physically touched, there was only one solution—
Immersing oneself in the glories of alcohol!
In more than one lifetime, Knox had been born as the son, daughter, or whatever of bartenders, vineyard owners, and brewers. And thanks to his lucky star, his parental guardians had always treated him well by shutting him up with none other than alcohol!
"Now that I think about it," Knox mused while pillaging a monumental, gold-embellished vault, "could it be that the reason I talk so much is because I'm subconsciously begging to get drunk? Well, damn. I got some serious problems, huh…?"
*Plop!*
"Oh well!" he declared, uncorking a bottle of the good stuff. "I might as well embrace my nature! It's as God intended, after all!"
*Glug, glug, glug!*
While more than a hundred of the kingdom's most renowned cultivation geniuses were struggling to survive and gather Trial Points, Knox was engaging in the holiest of acts. As they desperately scoured Pandora for powerful opponents, he fiercely dueled with his alcohol resistance.
Who came out on top between the two? Well…
— Some Time Later —
"W…Where am I?" Knox groaned, rubbing his aching temples. "Is this… Is this a jail cell??"
The last thing he remembered was finishing up his looting session in Stratos Heaven, only to then indulge himself in the best worldly pleasure.
He also faintly recalled the appearance of a horde of powerful presences, but everything after that was hazy…
"Hum," Knox pondered, shaking the heavy chain that bound him. "Why was I captured and not killed? Was whoever did it enamored by my impeccable charm perhaps?"
The impeccable charm in question:
"Guhehe~, sesxhy lady~ Wanna be Daddy Knox's Mommy~?"
*Thwack!*
*Clink, Clank!*
*Toss—!*
"Yes, that must be it!" Knox declared, smacking one hand against the other. "But if that's the case, why would I be thrown in a damp, dark cell?? Maybe they're kinky like that… Hmm…"
"Might as well give up resisting while you still have the strength."
A hoarse, dry voice suddenly echoed. It belonged to a middle-aged man who looked like he was on his last legs, appearing hundreds of years older than he actually was. Clearly, he had been trapped in that place for a while—in the cell adjacent to Knox's.
"Who is it?" Knox asked, cautiously searching his surroundings. "Have you come to tear me a new one!?"
"...No," the middle-aged man replied. "I'm in the cell to the right of yours. And I've been caged here like an animal for the past four centuries. Suffering silently and alone…"
"Cool."
"...Cool…?" The middle-aged man doubted whether he had heard correctly. "That's all you have to say?"
Knox shrugged. "I mean, four centuries of isolation isn't that long, is it?"
"Not that long…?" The decrepit prisoner repeated with a listless gleam in his foggy eyes. "Have you even lived a single century, young man?"
A chuckle escaped Knox's lips.
"A single century?" he mused, recalling the hundreds of thousands of years of immobilized solitude he had endured. "You have no idea just how long I've lived."
Silence…
"You're not a sane one, are you?" the middle-aged man ultimately asked.
"Haha! Sanity is overrated, my guy!"
"Oh yeah, I forgot to ask before," Knox added. "But where exactly are we right now?"
"You don't know??"
"Nope," Knox admitted, grinning goofily. "One second, I'm enjoying my time with some good-quality booze, and the next, I find myself in this pungent-smelling place with some weird dude speaking to me through the walls."
"You… You really aren't right in the head," muttered the middle-aged man. "But no matter, since you're the first person I've talked to in the past few years, I'll inform you of this place and who owns it. First off, though—you know of the Beast Revolt, don't you?"
"Not a damn clue!"
Middle-aged man: "...."
He sighed, shaking his frail head. "As ridiculous as it may be, I had a feeling that you were clueless," he said before his tone shifted slightly, becoming that of a narrator. "Tens of thousands of years ago—sometime following God's creation of this world—beasts all of a sudden gained intelligence. And after the passing of a few thousand more years, the Intelligent Beasts amassed enough strength to commence a revolt that shook the core of the world."
"Woah, the beasties fought back, eh?" Knox remarked, fully immersed in the lore. "Do continue! I want to know what happens next!"
"…Okay…" the middle-aged man said awkwardly. "Following the start of the Beast Revolt, skip forward a couple thousand years and we humans were reduced to less than a thousandth of what we used to be. Total defeat."
"You guys actually lost to a bunch of semi-intelligent beasties?" Knox asked, rubbing salt in the already gaping wound. "Oof, would hate to be you all."
*Fu…*
The middle-aged man nearly had a stroke. His complexion worsened by a few shades as he clutched his sunken chest with his chained arm.
It were his ancestors that this blunt fellow was talking about, after all!
"Haa… Young man, you really don't mince words," he murmured. "Though, perhaps if we had someone like you around back then, we wouldn't be in the strut we now find ourselves in. This insurmountably deep pit that we can't seem to claw our ways out of…"
"Yeah, yeah, must be a bummer," Knox said. "But can you get to the point where this relates to where we are and who's holding us here? I kinda have something I want to do; time is money, am I right?"
'What something?? What time is money??' the middle-aged man thought, exasperated. 'You'll likely wind up being trapped in here just as long as I have…!'