Someone was envious of me now. No, this wasn’t a feeling that could be expressed as envy. Jealousy. Yes, jealousy was more fitting—a feeling as seething as gu poison. This isn’t the first time, though. Unable to leave the first floor, many Hunters spent their days anxiously waiting for the moment they received their Skills. That alone made countless people already quite jealous of me. There were articles praising me. People asked for my autograph. They also pointed at me and whispered as I walked down the streets. I quite enjoyed this tsunami of attention. I looked at the Viper. Still... I can’t believe even someone like you is jealous of me. If my past self saw me talking casually and making jokes with the Viper, he would have freaked out because something like that didn’t seem possible. That was how powerful and influential the Viper was in the Tower. I stanned the High Rankers; they were my idols. Even though the leader of the idol group, Fire Emperor Yoo Soo-Ha, had retired due to an unfortunate incident and was preparing to become a trainee again, I still idolized the Viper deep down. He was shouting in all directions that he was jealous of me, all the while his aura boiled. Witnessing that emotion right before my eyes, I couldn’t hold back my laughter anymore. “Ah. Ahahaha, hahahaha! Hahahahaha, hah, hahahahahaha!” Moonlight illuminated the field. The greenery had crumbled under the desert, covered in the dust that followed the wind. Tens of millions of roses rolled around in the valleys and dunes. And then the rain of autumn arrived. A shower, nothing more. Drenched with water, the edges of the valleys shone, and the rose petals that drank the raindrops became much more vivid. The falling and flowing rain brought life to the desert, which seemed to envelop the whole world. The golden flower petals embroidered the dunes, creating the illusion that something sacred was sleeping underneath. “Ahahaha... haha, ha... ahahaha.” When the world around us became an oasis at the heart of the desert, I finally stopped laughing. The Viper glared at me. “Are you done?” I nodded, my face wet from the rain. “Yes. I feel like I laughed enough to last me a year.” The Viper tried to use his high speed to cut my head off, but it was no use. There were grains of Kim Yul’s sand where the Viper stepped to take the stance. Sylvia’s petals were in the air that he charged across. Above all, no matter what he did, he was already soaked in Estelle’s rain. I parried away all the Viper’s attacks, as if I had predicted from where and how he would attack. “I’m sorry, Sect Master. You’re saying that because I’m strong, I was able to serve my teacher perfectly and raise my children well? That’s true in a way, but I think you’re misunderstanding something here.” “And what would that be?” “I wasn’t always strong.” I grabbed a short spear lying on the ground and compressed my aura into it. The heated spear flew toward the Viper. With a groan, he quickly rolled away to dodge my attack, the sharp spear tearing the flower petals before embedding itself deep into a dune. Raindrops splattered against the spear handle and dripped down. The Viper stood up, bleeding. He was already a wreck. It seemed he had been unable to dodge the attack completely. “Fuuuuck! What the hell are you saying?” he yelled. “I mean it. I wasn’t born strong.” I created three aura spears from a few flower petals, grains of sand, and drops of rain. The three scarlet spears hovered in the air, waiting for my command. I lightly threw them in the direction of the Viper. “Surprisingly, I’ve only learned to do this recently. Still, I can’t waste my aura without the support of Estelle, Sylvia, Kim Yul, and my other vassals,” I clarified. The Viper succeeded in avoiding two of the three spears, but that was my intention all along. The last aura spear hit the Viper’s shoulder and dug into his flesh. He fell down screaming. “I defeated the Demon King of Autumn Rain and comforted my teacher, yes, but it’s not because I was strong from the beginning. That’s absolutely not true.” When I heard the Viper’s remark before, I remembered the time I first met my teacher, so I couldn’t help but laugh. Back then, I had to beg for a very long time to be recognized as her disciple. She had guided me somewhere, saying she wanted to see if I was worthy of becoming her disciple. We had arrived at a pit with a master martial artist zombie—a training course to learn Starvation Death of the Demonic Heaven Arts. As I screamed helplessly and ran away from a martial artist zombie, Teacher guided me. “Then why are you hesitating? Hurry up and dive into hell. Remember when you were hungry for the longest time.” “The longest time I’ve been hungry was three to four days,” I answered. Upon hearing my answer, Teacher stared at me, dumbstruck. “What? Three to four days? There’s just no talking with you. Forget it. It’s my fault! I had hopes for you for a moment, but you’re all talk.” And Teacher just... left me in the pit without even sparing me a second glance. She walked away as I continued to struggle frantically. “Lady Heavenly Demon! Lady Heavenly Demon? Please wait a minute! For god’s sake! It’s not like feeling full is going to kill me! It’s absurd that I can’t learn the arts because of that! Ah, fu—” And, just like that, the martial artist zombie ate me. My teacher had been a cold and lofty person. Even offering her a flower was very difficult. Now this guy envies me because I made you laugh. Somehow, he’s struggling to overcome me. What should I do, Teacher? When you were alive, many people probably envied you. What would you have done in this situation? It’s a bit disappointing that I can’t ask you this or hear your voice anymore. “Sect Master, I didn’t accomplish everything because I was strong from the beginning. I was just allowed a little more time than others.” Gasping for breath, the Viper looked up at me. Of course, he didn’t understand what I was saying. I understood the Viper completely, and not just because I once envied others. Because I peeked into his memories. A little while ago, when the Viper began to scream at me while swinging his sword, I saw the time that the Viper and the Inquisitor had spent together. I hadn’t met them yet at the time. Their memories flashed in my mind from time to time like a mirage. It wasn’t just their appearances, but even the conversation they had. “Sect Master, I know you’re trying to fix me because you can’t take responsibility for me.” I looked at the Viper, who was still staring at me. His thick lips were closed, and his dark eyes were blazing, but... “The two of us are friends and colleagues. Isn’t that enough?” Even now, I could hear the voices inside the Viper’s heart. It wasn’t that I awakened to a new Skill one day. On the contrary, my Skill list was full of footprints of my life. I didn’t suddenly become a mind reader. This is the trace that the Tower master left behind. It was the aftereffect of witnessing the Tower master’s trauma after dying at her hands. Amethyst embraced everyone’s misfortune in life, witnessing and remembering every moment of happiness. Countless people’s traumas were transferred to her. She suffered just as much as they did, screamed exactly when they screamed. Therefore, everyone’s trauma was the Tower master’s trauma. Watching the Tower master’s trauma was basically watching the trauma of everyone in this Tower. It was an enormous amount of difficult memories for one person to handle. Therefore, I tried to keep them out of my mind. But when the Viper is dragging out the resentment of the past and shouts like he did just now, then I can hear it like the time I see my killers’ trauma. The scenes that the Tower master witnessed were the wounds she embraced in her own heart. I didn’t know if these wounds really happened in this world already, or if they happened in another world that Amethyst had intervened in. Perhaps they would happen sometime in the future. I was awakened to Demigod Eyes. I chuckled again. This was how the Tower master saw the world. If her everyday life was listening to people’s screams whenever she encountered them, what was the point of living that way? The thought saddened me greatly. “Why are you still laughing?” I shook my head to shove my thoughts aside before looking down at the Viper. “Sect Master, do you want to beat me?” “If possible, you want to duel me and beat me fair and square, right?” I asked again. The Viper clenched his jaw before he coughed blood. “What... What are you going to do, then?” He was lying on the ground, and I was looking down at him. His cough had splashed a few drops of blood from his mouth onto my cheek. Just as I didn’t wipe away the pouring rain, I didn’t wipe off this blood either. “I’ll give you a chance. Again, I wasn’t always strong. It took a long time for me to get to this level. During that time, I met my children and took them in. They became my clan.” I pulled out the aura spear from his shoulder. When blood burst out, the Viper writhed again. “And you have a way to buy a lot of time. Two hundred years, six months, and twenty-one days.” “That’s how much time the Inquisitor spent on the thirty-first floor by himself.” Silence. The Viper didn’t seem to understand what I was implying at first, but his eyes slowly widened. Raindrops from the sky fell on my hair and then onto the Viper. Only after a few more raindrops fell did he break the silence. “So, what you’re saying is...” “Yes. Whether it’s two hundred or three hundred years, spend some time alone on this stage like the Inquisitor did. Train for hundreds of years, recruit people, and challenge me again, Sect Master.”