bears

It took Alex approximately one hour to finish the first ten stages. With each subsequent stage, the difficulty of the next stage increased.

Just climbing the ninth set of steps to the tenth stage took him more than ten minutes, and Alex was on the verge of quitting when he finally passed the stairs.

It had to be said that the rewards also weren't bad; just the mental improvement was worth more than any epic item he had. Don't even mention the physical improvements.

Right now, his stats were almost halfway through what they were before the quest started, and he could easily use his skills if necessary.

Alex Adams

Age:17

Blood type: A+

Level: 50

job: mystical sword mage

title: first in history, first master

skills:

active: hollow sword(level3), wind blade(level4), shadow clone (level 2)

passive: sword dance(level5)

integrated nanobots: 13,981,002,153

strength: 55

agility: 55

stamina: 55

mana: 55

regeneration: 55

free stat points: 0

"ok, it's time to climb the hellish stairs again," said Alex and stepped on the first stair, "what the f** is this pressure???"

This time, besides a mental attack, he also felt some strange physical pressure trying to flatten him.

It was hard to resist the pressure and stand straight, but Alex greeted his teeth and just continued climbing.

When he was halfway through the stairs, he was under so much pressure that he felt like he was carrying a mountain on his back.

But he didn't give up; he just greeted his teeth harder and took one step after another until he finally reached the next stage.

This time, instead of the usual silver light, a white light enveloped him, and he felt like he was taking a hot bath in the legendary holy water after a long day of work.

He savored every moment of it to the last, and when it was over, he felt like he was a newborn baby.

"wow, I can feel the changes in my body. Such drastic changes. Is this even possible?" at this point, Alex was a little worried about his physical body; he couldn't imagine the toll it took on his body to constantly go through reformation.

"I hope I don't die," he said and looked ahead.

In front of him, two white bears and a bigger black one were standing still, looking at him with curious eyes, almost like they couldn't believe that they were supposed to fight such a weak, insignificant creature.

"don't look at me like that," Alex said with an offended tone, "I will be wiping the floor with you in two minutes."

Alex didn't even wait for a reaction and dashed forward and slashed his sword horizontally at the smallest bear.

The bear didn't even flinch as it just stepped to the side and dodged Alex's attack without any problem.

"so you know how to dodge, huh. Let's see you dodge this."

He raised his sword above his head and slashed downward in a fast move, and activated his second active skill, "wind blade."

The bear didn't expect the wind blade and was surprised to see an almost invisible thread made of wind moving his way at such speed.

It was so thin that it could easily be mistaken for a hair in the wind, but the bear could sense the danger coming from the level 4 wind blade.

It didn't stall and jumped to the left in an attempt to dodge the attack again, but it still lost a leg to the wind blade, and a pained roar escaped its mouth.

The other white bear didn't stand still either and ran towards Alex. Alex used the momentum of the bear to his advantage and slashed a new wind blade towards the second bear.

With the bear's and the wind blade's speed adding to each other, the bear didn't have any chance of dodging the thin blade and got hit right in the face.

And another roar was heard in the silent mountain.

"just die already; I don't like hurting animals. I guess that's it for climbing without using skills."

Alex activated his "hollow sword" skill and dashed towards the first bear.

His time was limited, and he couldn't focus much on improving his body. It took time killing beasts of uncommon level or higher without skills, and only God, or better said the system, knew what other kind of beast he would be encountering in the following stages.

After activating his skill, he quickly got rid of the two level 20 uncommon beasts with ease, and now was the boss's turn.

Alex expected the boss to also be an uncommon beast but with a higher level. he never expected to encounter a rare grade beast at this stage.

He had already anticipated that he would encounter rare or even epic beasts in his journey to the top of the mountain, but what he never expected was to meet one so soon.

"Does that mean that I will be fighting epic grade boss when I pass the 20th stage?" said Alex and then realized something else, "what about level 31???? Am I going to fight a legendary beast???"

Even the thought of fighting a legendary beast was out of the question for Alex.

Legendary beasts couldn't be categorized as normal since their intelligence was far more than that of a normal beast and sometimes even more than humans.

If he had to fight a legendary beast, Alex wasn't sure if he could ever finish this quest.

"let's forget about it for now; I will think of something when I reach that stage. For now, let's just be worried about what's ahead," said Alex, looking at the black beast in front of him.

The black bear looked him right in the eye and roared before charging at him.

Alex squeezed the sword in his hand and shouted, "bring it on," before moving to the side and stabbing the bear in the shoulder.

But the bear didn't seem to notice the scar and just continued attacking.

Alex dodged and attacked whenever he got the chance, but it seemed like none of his attacks had any effect on the rare grade beast.

The scars were there, but the beast never even flinched when Alex stabbed or slashed at it.

"I guess I have to use that…" said Alex and activated his last active skill, "shadow clone."

Two clones exactly the same as Alex, with 20% of his overall strength appeared next to him.

The bear seemed surprised at the sudden increase of the enemies.

It was dazed for a second, and Alex used the chance he just got to attack from three different directions.

The bear didn't know how to react to the three people who looked exactly the same attacking him. He chose the one in the front and decided to kill that one before going to the others.

Luckily for Alex, the one that the bear chose was a clone, and it gave him the chance to land a direct blow to the bear's right hand and chop it off using all his strength.

The other clone also landed an attack, but since it only had 20% of Alex's overall strength and stats, it wasn't able to do as much damage as Alex did.

The bear went into a berserk state and attacked the main body without giving Alex a moment to feel happy about the attack he had just landed.

"oh, shi….." Alex was cut short by the bear's paw, hitting him right in the chest and leaving five big holes.

Thankfully, none of his vital organs were hit, and he could still fight, but he had lost 60% of his stamina, and he couldn't afford to spend more time fighting in his current condition.

Alex used the remaining clone to distract the bear for a second, and as it was occupied, Alex jumped on its back and started stabbing in a frenzy.

The bear was in pain and couldn't do anything but slam its body into the mountain trying to get the source of the pain off its back.

But it was useless, and Alex kept stabbing until the bear's HP bar hit zero.

The bear's body disappeared the moment its HP reached zero, and Alex dropped to the floor with almost no stamina left.

But thankfully, as he was about to die, the golden glow covered his body and refilled his stamina and mana stats.

Alex got up with an unusually relaxed expression on his face and dusted his clothes as he watched the stairs coming out of the mountain wall.

Before moving forward, Alex looked at the time and could see that he didn't have much time left.

16:48:21

He had already wasted almost one-third of the time he had and couldn't afford to lose any more time.

Alex stepped on the first stair, but to his surprise, he could only feel the mental attack and not the physical pressure.

'maybe it only happens every ten stages,' Alex thought as he slowly moved upward.

When he got to the next stage, he wasn't as tired as always, and he felt like his mental defense improvement was becoming more apparent.

There were a lot of different ways to attack, and one of the scariest ones was mental attacks; Alex had already been the victim of several mental attacks in his previous life, and he only survived thanks to his companions being by his side. So he fully understood the value of the improvements he was getting.

"if only I could take back these stairs with me…." Alex said as he climbed the stairs.