The Jester of Apocalypse
Chapter 100: Style

A little arrogant, but I believe it will still be a fruitful experience, Marven thought at first.

He knew of his son’s earth-shattering martial prowess and had seen him fight someone on the third step of the platinum path.

However, that was with his overwhelming advantage of well over a dozen spirit powers and an unending pool of life force, and in the spirit realm, none of them had either of those two advantages.

Neave likely had strength above his rank, even without those spirit powers. With his consumption of treasures and monster flesh, that was to be expected, but it was mighty arrogant of him to assume that that would qualify him to fight against someone on the platinum path.

What could he realistically have? The strength of someone on the second, maybe third step of the iron path? Even that was a reach since that would mean nearly three whole steps above his own—and he still had a child's body, even if it really didn’t look like one.

True, the others, well, except for Dukean, would still receive valuable training here.

Marven wanted to approach Neave and request that they change the strategy slightly. Perhaps it would be better for him to teach them things through theory instead. That way, even he was confident that he could benefit from this. Also, he wanted to spare his son the embarrassment.

Before he could even open his mouth to suggest that, Neave had already moved.

Now… the old cultivator seemed to have made a… slight miscalculation. Neave didn’t have the power of someone on the second step of the iron path. He had the power of someone on the second step of the—

Holy Father of heavens! Silver path! What the!?

That—that was incomprehensible. Had Neave found a way to advance his cultivation? No, no, he didn’t. It was plain as day to see that he hadn’t. Yet, how!?

Still, even with that impossible achievement, Neave’s speed wasn’t quite up to the same rank, and the difference between him and should still have been insurmountable.

After a mere split second, everybody except for Marven was lying on the floor. If these had been their actual bodies, they would have been dead.

"These are the rules of the bout,” Neave said. “You will all do your best to dodge. If you’re disqualified through getting your body destroyed, simply wait to recover and get up."

Marven raised an eyebrow, "We aren’t allowed to fight back, I assume?"

Neave grinned. "Feel free to try."

Arrogant, but he didn’t dislike that. It reminded him much of himself. Neave took a few steps forward and finally rushed at his old man.

***

He didn’t even know what to think anymore. He hadn’t been arrogant. He hadn’t made a rookie mistake. He had operated under the common sense he had acquired through hundreds of years of life experience. And yet…

His son’s power was, indeed, far lower than his own. And so was his speed.

But absolutely none of that seemed to matter in a fight against him.

If someone could rewind time at will and fix their mistakes the instant they made them, and then they did that uncountable times, polishing absolutely every movement they had and even just trying random things until they found what worked, they would still lose to Neave.

Marven saw Neave’s knee rushing from his bottom left and felt his side tense out of reflex. That minor tension, which would barely even qualify as a marginal technicality in any other fight, prevented him from turning fast enough as Neave’s right foot appeared out of nowhere, flying into Marven’s side.

He raised a hand to defend himself from the incoming attack, yet the other leg came rushing to his face— but no, it didn't, rather it landed on his knee, which was pushed slightly to the back while Neave reappeared behind him and hooked a leg under his neck.

Ah… That’s what you’re going for.

Marven could barely believe his eyes as he saw the entire world spin around him.

His body slammed into the earth, not hard enough to seriously injure him, but it was over anyway. Getting up wasn’t an option anymore. Golden runes lit up, and Marven felt hundreds of true strikes, all mere finger jabs, slam up and down his back, and within moments, his spine was realigned just enough for him to no longer be able to move.

The old cultivator ran his mind through the fight, refusing to accept what had just happened.

Neave had first compromised the flexibility of his torso, then capitalized on that tension to force him to raise his right arm. After that, he attacked his head, distracting him from his actual target, the knee, then blinked to said knee, where Marven naturally reacted by moving his left arm down slightly.

Then, with the same move, he both used a movement technique to disappear and pushed the knee just a bit to the side, which prevented Marven from using a footing technique to root himself in place, thus losing his only way of defending from the slam into the ground.

As his prey was stuck with his right arm raised, left arm lowered, stance and stability compromised, leaning slightly to the back due to the failed attempt to dodge the kick to the head, Neave hooked his right leg around Marven’s neck in a way that made it impossible to reach in time due to the awkward position of his arms.

Good…

Marven sighed a mental sigh of relief. At least he understood what happened this time. That meant he was making some progress.

The most shameful thing was that Neave was holding back. At first, he had repeatedly demonstrated the ability to chain movement techniques in a way that made a kick to Marven’s face nigh unavoidable. If he started the fight with that, it was effectively over before he could even begin to retaliate.

The others weren’t dispatched immediately; they could go on for minutes.

Neave wasn’t the most outstanding teacher at first. Actually, he was likely among the worst Marven had ever seen. There wasn’t much any of them could gain from being defeated instantaneously by methods they couldn’t wrap their puny minds around.

Except for pain tolerance, perhaps.

With time, though, Neave slowly changed his approach, adjusting his skill level to an appropriate degree so the others could keep up. However, he had some rules he didn’t budge on. For example, he always instantly ended the fight when anyone committed something he judged to be an inexcusable mistake.

Which used to happen much more frequently at first, but as time went on, they got better at taking his advice—and he got better at giving it.

The old man’s spine realigned, and he was back in top shape within seconds. "Seriously… this place is a training ground the heavens would be jealous of."

And may actually be, he added inwardly.

It still had the critical flaw of having zero impact on one’s strength or stamina, but who cared about that? According to Neave, the time inside this place went by significantly faster than it did outside, making it a trade-off well worth making.

By the time Marven was back up, Neave was already before him, slamming a foot into his chin. His contemplative distraction had been judged to be an inexcusable mistake, it seemed.

Oh well.

***

They were weak. They sucked at fighting. And most importantly, they learned slowly. At first, teaching them felt more like bullying toddlers than shaping warriors up. Even putting the complete absence of competence aside, they were quite fragile.

From the moment they started, he could have predicted that none of them could stand up to his serious fighting style but had chosen to delay his ‘realization’ for much longer than he was proud to admit.

Bullying them was fun. Only once he got bored of the fights ending too early, he chose to go easy on them, moderating his movements to ensure they could last at least a few minutes.

That made it both a ton more fun and served to at least teach them something. However, he yet again got bored. Their improvement was agonizingly slow, and the ‘oh my heavens’ facial expressions slowly left their faces as time passed, replaced by pure frustration.

That wasn’t fun at all.

So, what he chose to focus on instead was finding a way to upgrade his toys. They had to learn how to fight better.

First, he started with Hunter. This guy was hopeless. His entire repertoire revolved around raw power, overwhelming strength, and… bare, raw predictability.

He was slow and clumsy, and his body allowed for little elegance. Not only was he too bulky for his height, but it was as if he had never heard of stretching.

He contemplated how he should improve his brother’s fighting style. First, he made an exhaustive list of things Hunter was good at. Putting that empty void aside, he made an exhaustive list of things Hunter was even vaguely competent at.

A somewhat decent grasp on stances and defense was the thing he was best at, which made sense. The problem was that it would never be enough.

Perhaps Hunter had been planning to shore up his weaknesses with spirit powers once he got more powerful, but Neave knew better than to think like that. One had to have a solid foundation first. If one didn’t have a way to deal with their weaknesses in every scenario, they were waiting for the day when they faced an opponent that countered them the way water extinguished fire.

His problem was not easy to solve with just skill. In fact, Neave made sure to stop Hunter from developing bad habits to compensate for his weaknesses, as those weaknesses had to be removed anyway.

Hunter had to train his flexibility more and perhaps reduce his muscle mass.

Neave was freakin beefcake, yet, flexibility wasn’t much of a problem for him. Which was honestly surprising even to himself. Perhaps his true body had changed under the influence of the shapeshifting skill? Or the monster meat he had eaten?

There were other things he could improve on for now. The way Neave handled it, eventually, was by always starting the fight by shattering his brother’s stance. This way, he had to get creative and find ways to defend himself from the follow-ups.

He didn’t make the shattering completely unfair either, and eventually, Hunter learned how to stop his stance from crumbling immediately and how to continue a fight once it did.

Next up was Gabrias.

If Hunter was hopeless, Gabrias wasn’t even qualified to be a cultivator. He was overwhelmingly slow and didn't have a shred of skill, strength, or flexibility. It was pathetic. But, it could be excused. Gabrias had never been a warrior, so Neave took a more general approach.

With him, he focused on guiding him into building proper stances, raising blocks, and simply not running away the moment he recovered. After a while, Gabrias could almost face a young warrior child on the iron path.

Almost, but not quite yet.

Then, it was time for Harel.

Although he would have had trouble telling if he didn’t have the last two duds to compare her against, he could tell that her flexibility, speed, reflexes, and skill, by ordinary standards, were incredible. Her movements were slightly awkward, as she didn’t seem to be used to fighting without a sword, but that vanished rapidly and never stopped improving.

Her greatest weakness—as well as the most potent weapon in her arsenal—resided in the same personality quirk of hers. Perhaps he was the least qualified individual to state this, but she was kind of fucking insane.

Although the fight focused on teaching them how to build defensive stances and dodge, she was hellbent on getting a strike on him.

This wasn’t a critical mistake, either, not as far as Neave was concerned. Hell, if she wanted a hyper-aggressive fighting style, he would do his best to help her develop one. She never hit him even once, of course, but she learned how to corner her opponent through direct, persistent combos, recover from failing a strike, and turn a failure into another attempt.

She was also wildly disregardful of her wounds, and he felt that in a real fight to the death, she would thrive against most, if not all, opponents of her age and cultivation.

Admirable.

He entertained a few fun ideas as he observed her growth. In a sense, she had a similar fighting style to his own. Perhaps she would fit a few defensive or recovery spirit powers well. Or maybe speed should be a more significant focus?

Hmmm…

He would have to keep an eye on her growth and decide later. Time wasn’t a problem momentarily.

Dukean was next.

He was a good fighter. Even Neave could tell that much. His discipline, reaction time, and battle instincts all belonged to a true prodigy. It made Neave wonder why he chose such a set of spirit powers. In his opinion, Dukean would be a perfect fit for speed and dexterity-based abilities or general body enhancements like the ones he had.

He was excellent at discovering weaknesses and acting on them, and his guard was quite solid, which meant that defensive powers weren’t a strict necessity.

Rather than focusing on his growth, which seemed to happen on its own anyway, he contemplated Dukean’s choice of powers.

It was hard to say. Air, ice, and metal all had a relatively high skill ceiling. Air could become a terrifying mobility power. Ice could… Well, there was a lot of aiming and fine control involved, like with metal manipulation.

Earth… Kind of the same? Less fine manipulation, though, and more a general control over a large-scale fight. And fire… yeah, that was simply baffling.

Theoretically, there was a lot of potential synergy between how the skills could be used, but they clearly weren’t built with that in mind. Or were they?

Perhaps only some were, and the others weren’t. Maybe he just wanted a high range of skills to face a broader range of threats? Getting more powers wasn’t off the table, either, so perhaps he had hoped to round them up with something else?

So many questions. Neave felt that maybe asking him straight up wasn’t the worst idea, either.

Finally, there was the one he hated even thinking about.

Neave absolutely loathed his father’s style. It was an unambitious, defeatist set of skills that traded potential for cheesy trickery.

It was hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but even if he needed to beat this dog for a million years, Neave would do his best to stomp the old tricks out and make space for new ones.

Out of everyone here, Marven was the one who was making the slowest progress.

The reason why was… complicated.

Say there was a chess player who relied on several lethal, nasty openings and traps. He would be a terrifying opponent against anyone who didn’t know how those traps worked.

Against anyone who did, however, he would always start the match with a worse position.

It was a filthy, scummy style of strategies that relied on his opponents’ lack of knowledge more than his skill. Which was why it lacked potential.

Neave could practically see what sort of life his father had led. The old monster had lived through life-and-death battles repeatedly, continuously relying on dirty tricks and obscure strategies to catch more powerful opponents off-guard. It was the style of a beggar with sand in his pockets.

It made so much sense now. He had always wondered why his father was stuck on the path, but these skills made it damn obvious.

There was no more room for growth. He had perfected his style; the inherent, deeply rooted flaws weren’t going anywhere—because they were an integral part of it, the price he paid for a temporary, fickle advantage.

Neave had repeated the exact same deconstruction of his father’s defense many times, and yet, every single time, Marven failed to respond. His lovely, polite son would have kindly warned him about this, but it was clear that he could tell precisely what he was messing up, given how obviously frustrated he seemed.

Fighting against a lifetime of bad habits would take some time.

No matter.

In this case, beatings would suffice as a remedy as long as he administered enough.

The gang of disciples was beginning to look exhausted, and their trainer understood why. It was hard, no, rather, it was impossible to tell how much time had passed since they had started.

One couldn't be exhausted from training in the spirit realm, physically, mentally, or even spiritually.

Without breaks, though, willpower eventually reached its limit. Rather than allow them to lose their minds, there was a better approach he could take.

It was time for a break.