Chapter 185: I Want to Conquer You, Proud Senior, Like an Eagle

A hundred meters beneath the sea, not even sunlight could penetrate, leaving behind only pure darkness.

And it was there that the iron coffin—crafted from refined steel and mithril, resembling a prison—sank into the deep sea.

Cold seawater flooded into the iron coffin, carrying with it a salty sting.

The remaining oxygen within the iron coffin was depleted in a matter of moments, followed immediately by an endless sense of suffocation due to oxygen deprivation, making Ingrid’s suffering unbearable.

Accompanying it was the high-pressure environment brought on by the hundred-meter-deep seawater, enough to rupture the eardrums and damage the internal organs of ordinary people, as well as nitrogen narcosis caused by the same pressure.

If it had been any normal person, only a few seconds in this condition would be enough to die from organ failure.

Even Ingrid could not possibly sustain herself in such a state for long... She tried to struggle and save herself, but the mithril shackles pierced through every joint and bone in her body, completely sealing off all her extraordinary abilities.

After struggling for more than ten minutes in the pain of suffocating and drowning under high pressure, Ingrid’s heart slowly ceased to beat due to lack of oxygen.

Though the physique of an extraordinary being differed from that of an ordinary person, she had yet to transcend to the Legendary Realm. Her essence had not evolved, and she remained within the "human category"—her body still followed the basic rules of human biology, and without oxygen, she would still die from suffocation.

However—

Just as Ingrid’s heart stopped and she lost consciousness.

Her body suddenly trembled as if electrocuted, and that lifeless heart began to beat once again.

Ingrid’s bodily state was reverted to the moment before drowning, and what followed was the return of that pitch-black deep sea, the crushing pressure, and the agony of suffocation.

...

Even among the many methods of execution, water torture—where a towel is placed over the prisoner’s mouth and water poured to cause death by simulated drowning—was considered one of the most infamous forms of cruel punishment.

Yet, what was known as water torture only needed to be endured once.

But to Ingrid at this moment, death was not an escape.

Each time she drowned, she would be brought back to the moment before death, only to experience the suffocating deep sea and high pressure again. Death, then revival... an infinite cycle.

She wanted to struggle but could not escape. Even death was a luxury she could not afford.

All that remained was the endless cycle of near-death experiences, building into a vortex of despair.

...

It was unknown how long this state continued.

Until a certain moment, the metal chains scattered around the iron coffin suddenly tightened once again.

Driven by gears and mechanisms, the heavy chains pulled the iron coffin slowly from the seabed back to shore.

"Senior, unable to live, unable to die in the deep sea..."

"To experience the pain of suffocation and dying again and again, hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of times... That must have been terribly unpleasant, right?"

The nonexistent sunlight of the pitch-black sea shone once more through the crevice of the iron coffin, illuminating Ingrid’s eyes.

And next, she heard the familiar voice of the young man.

Only, the voice that usually sounded gentle and refreshing like a spring breeze, now felt cold and cruel to Ingrid, like falling into an icy abyss.

This young man named Rast seemed like a machine wearing human skin...

Because the artificial human exterior was so intricately lifelike, no one ever truly realized what kind of void and numb soul was hidden within that shell.

It was darker than night, a black hole devouring everything, even light could not escape.

"So, about the proposal I made earlier, Senior, have you thought it through?"

Hearing Rast’s question, Ingrid hoarsely spoke.

"How long... was I in the sea?"

"I knew you’d ask that, Senior." Rast smiled and raised his wrist, glancing at the mechanical pocket watch on it before showing Ingrid the dial: "Exactly one full day, twenty-four hours."

"But."

His words paused slightly.

Rast’s gaze passed through the crevice of the iron coffin, resting briefly on Ingrid’s face—pale and visibly weary from being soaked in seawater: "But I suppose, in your subjective experience, Senior, it must have felt far longer than just twenty-four hours."

Ingrid remained silent.

She had already guessed as much.

In windowless interrogation rooms or the deep sea where no sunlight could reach, long-term and high-frequency punishment and interrogation... could easily disorient the prisoner’s sense of time, leaving them unable to distinguish dates or durations.

Perhaps, from the prisoner’s subjective feeling, an entire day had passed, when in reality it had only been two or three hours—or the exact opposite.

In the military’s interrogation and torture manuals, many interrogation methods were developed precisely targeting the prisoner’s confusion of time. As a former Director of the Surveillance Bureau, Ingrid was all too familiar with this.

Even so—

When Ingrid clearly felt that she had endured weeks, perhaps even months, of torment in the deep sea...

Yet was told by Rast that only a single day had actually passed—this immense discrepancy still left Ingrid momentarily shaken, her mind wavering.

But after a long silence, she simply closed her eyes again.

"I know what you're going to do next..."

Ingrid spoke softly, "Unless I fully surrender and become a weapon that pledges loyalty to you alone to achieve your goal, you won't stop, will you?"

Despite being the military’s most outstanding interrogator and having received the harshest counter-interrogation training, facing Rast now, Ingrid still felt an indescribable sense of helplessness.

This young man named Rast was unlike any opponent she had ever faced during her time at the Military Interrogation Bureau—

Fanatics of cults, battle-hardened elite soldiers, death warriors raised by royal families of other nations... These were all formidable and ruthless individuals, but there was a fundamental difference between them and Rast.

It was hard to imagine what kind of past Rast had lived to become such a creature, no longer resembling a human being.

Yet Ingrid still shook her head at Rast.

Her answer remained a refusal.

She was unwilling to return to the dark shadow of her past, to live once more as a weapon of slaughter, as the loathed black glove.

Ingrid loathed the former version of herself from the depths of her heart—the one who, in pursuit of vengeance for her mother, stopped at nothing and was drenched in blood.

She did not regret what she had done, because at that time, Ingrid had no other choice. But correspondingly—

After avenging her mother, there was nothing left in this world that could shackle her, not even her own life.

"Sigh, Senior, you truly are obstinate."

"Should I say, as expected of the military’s finest... If it had been someone with slightly weaker willpower, just one or two cycles would’ve been enough to break her mental defenses, bringing her to her knees with tear-streaked cheeks, begging me for mercy."

Rast sighed. "But from the very beginning, I had already prepared for a long campaign."

He snapped his fingers again. "Forgive me, Senior."

"If you ever change your mind, you only need to knock on the front of the iron coffin three times, and I will pull you and the coffin up together—redeemed from the sea of suffering."

The clinking of chains dragging across the rocky shore echoed once more.

And before Ingrid could even catch her breath, she was again pulled by those steel chains.

Together with the heavy iron coffin, she sank once more into the deep sea.

...

Splash——

Splash——

After long chaos, the pain and struggle of drowning.

Ingrid was once again pulled from the whirlpool of near-death and despair, and through the iron coffin, she saw that bright ray of sunlight.

"Thirteen days, or to be more precise—three hundred and fifteen hours."

This time, before Rast could even speak, Ingrid took the initiative to respond with a hoarse voice.

Her face was deathly pale, completely bloodless. Her brows and eyes carried an unmistakable exhaustion and weariness. The once delicate face now appeared numb and gaunt.

But there was still light flickering in Ingrid’s eyes: "I counted using the sound of my heartbeat and estimated that my survival cycle before each suffocation and death was about twenty-five minutes..."

"And I drowned and died from suffocation seven hundred and fifty-six times."

"From that, I was able to estimate the duration of this time spent at the bottom of the sea."

She spoke softly, "Rast, it seems you've lost again this time."

To still be able to calculate the length of punishment endured so clearly amid such suffocating, near-death agony, while retaining consciousness...

Naturally, it meant Ingrid had never surrendered.

"Moreover—"

She paused slightly, "Each time you returned my body from the moment of drowning back to its pre-death state—"

"This directly involved the rule of time regression. When using it, surely you wouldn’t be exempt from paying a price, right?"

"Equivalent exchange"—this was a hidden law within the extraordinary world.

No matter how powerful or bizarre the ability was, even those involving space-time, none could be used without cost or side effect, or without limitation.

Returning herself from the brink of death to a normal state again and again—this was nearly akin to achieving conceptual immortality, becoming a true immortal.

And for Rast to use such an overpowered ability bordering on cheating, he must have paid a price.

This was a variable that Rast had never openly admitted, yet it truly existed. It was also Ingrid’s only chance of victory in this gamble—

This cycle of despair in the deep sea between drowning and resurrection could not continue indefinitely.

While she endured the agony of suffocation and drowning, Rast was also paying a matching price for it.

And when Rast could no longer afford that price, it would mean she had won.

Ingrid would be able to face death with peace and never bow to his ambitions.

"Should I say, as expected of you, Senior? Even below the Legendary Realm, you've already reached the pinnacle of the extraordinary world and have such clear understanding of these hidden rules of power."

"Even when in such a desperate sea and agony, even when encountering a time-space ability never heard of before, you still managed to stay calm and deduce the truth."

Almost as if to confirm Ingrid’s deduction, Rast’s pleasant voice followed up.

"As you said, my 'Time Rewind' does indeed have limitations and is not a skill that can be used infinitely."

"The consumption of magic and spiritual power is minimal—after all, you only suffocated in seawater. None of your organs were damaged, which makes the rewind far simpler than if you had been heavily wounded or missing limbs."

"The real price I have to pay, each time I rewind you, is that I must also personally undergo, feel, and experience everything you went through during that rewind period."

Rast’s voice was utterly indifferent.

"Compressing your near-death experience of gradually drowning due to suffocation over twenty-five minutes into an extremely brief instant, then personally reliving it all myself—that is the price of activating 'Time Rewind' on someone else."

Compress all the pain I experienced on the verge of death into a single instant and then relive it?

Upon hearing this, Ingrid inside the iron coffin paused slightly.

Even if the suffocating pain and sensations of dying were stretched across roughly half an hour, it would be enough to make a battle-hardened soldier collapse to the ground and beg for mercy.

Under such torture, 'death' itself instead became a form of relief.

It was only because Ingrid had repeatedly wielded "Black Iron" on the brink of death during battle, and possessed the unyielding willpower forged from her humble beginnings, that she was barely able to endure without breaking.

It wasn’t that she didn’t fear pain—it was precisely because she had endured so much more that she could withstand torment and agony.

In this regard, Ingrid believed that even the Upper Ranks of the Military could not be compared to her.

But—Rast claimed that each time he rewound, he would personally relive her entire near-death experience in just an instant?

Compressing a half-hour death process into one twenty-thousandth of a second would mean the intensity of that pain was magnified dozens or even hundreds of times...

How could that be possible?

"To be honest, I had already guessed that the task of subduing you, Senior, wouldn't go smoothly."

Rast looked through the crevice of the iron coffin, making eye contact with Ingrid inside.

The boy’s face remained calm, his dark pupils clear and bright—not at all like someone who had just endured a drowning pain a hundred times stronger than hers. This made Ingrid momentarily suspect that Rast was deceiving her.

Yet instinct told her that Rast wasn’t lying.

"Time Rewind," such a cheat-like ability... only what Rast described seemed like a fair price worthy of such a powerful gift from fate.

"I know, though born of humble origins, from Humble Origins—"

"You, Senior, are like a proud and solitary eagle."

"Despite lacking resources and connections, despite starting far behind your peers... you've never resented the unfairness of fate."

"Not once did you proactively seek support from any noble faction, nor did you ever approach the wealthy professors or deans for help—even though many waited for the day you'd open your mouth."

"Countless powerful figures wanted the chance to invest in you, to draw you into their camp."

"But deep down, you're just that kind of proud eagle who refuses to bow to anyone—"

"Otherwise, how could someone with such meager origins, without relying on anyone’s support, rise step by step to the position of Director of the Surveillance Bureau?"

Rast paused slightly. "You agreed to be the black glove of the Gravekeepers to avenge your mother."

"But deep in your heart, no one in this world has the right to be your master, nor the right to judge you."

"That's why you didn't retreat from the Empire with the Gravekeepers, and refused to heed Shiltina’s call to return and face judgment under Imperial Law."

"The Gravekeepers aren’t qualified, Granwell Kingdom and Starfall University aren’t qualified..."

"And I—"

He smiled. "Am equally unqualified."

"But precisely what I admire about you, Senior, is your pride."

"Like an eagle standing alone on snow-covered mountains, looking down upon all beings."

Rast’s gaze shifted slightly, staring into a far-off direction. "Senior, do you know?"

"In my homeland, there is a tribe that lives between snowy plains and snowy mountains, making a living through hunting."

"In that tribe, hunters would tame a falcon as their companion to assist them in hunting across the endless white expanse."

"But falcons are fierce and wild by nature—if one wished to tame a falcon and make it acknowledge the hunter as its master, a special training method must be used. That tribe calls it 'Eagle Taming'."

Rast’s eyes turned distant. "So-called Eagle Taming involves preventing the falcon from sleeping, gradually wearing down its wild spirit, until it finally obeys its master like an extension of his arm."

"This process requires immense skill and patience, often lasting a week or even half a month."

"During this period, neither hunter nor falcon may sleep—it’s a battle of wills, day and night, until the falcon’s will collapses and it submits to the hunter... But if the hunter falls asleep first during 'Eagle Taming,' all previous effort will have been in vain."

His voice remained calm. "And what I want to do—is use this very method of 'Eagle Taming'..."

"To conquer you, Senior—the proud eagle."

Rast snapped his fingers again. "Since you've already figured out your own way to measure time, I won’t hide it anymore."

"This time..."

He chuckled softly.

"It will be three months."

The chains rattled as they dragged the iron coffin containing Ingrid once more into the deep sea.

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