The day when he would return to all his problems would eventually come. And by then, he wanted to be ready.

  After another night of rest, he got up, feeling surprisingly refreshed.

  Stepping outside, he walked up to his reflection wearing nothing but his birthday suit. His beard was already almost reaching his junk. His hair was draped over his ass. His skin was paler than bone. It hadn’t seen actual sunlight in who knew how long.

  He had to move his wise hermit beard aside to get a better look at his abs.

  Like the rebirth of Narcissus himself, he could feel that he was falling in love with his reflection. He was the only human in this prison. Thank god he at least looked immaculate.

  Chuckling to himself, he went back to get dressed. He put his headset on and cranked up the volume. “Let’s fucking go!” He clapped his hands together as he rushed over to the training area.

  After a while of working on his abilties, he moved on to exercise. By that point, progress had already stopped altogether. But he was resolved to do better that day. Even if he could only lift a gram more, by god, he would add a gram and lift it.

  He loaded the barbell and got onto the bench press. He took a few breaths to prepare himself.

  He adjusted his headset. Thankfully, both the headset and the BC were of the highest quality and could probably last throughout his whole time here. But that didn’t mean that he could be reckless with either of them.

  His finger tapped the crystal on the side. He swapped songs repeatedly, until one of his favorites finally came up. With a smile, he got ready for his set, the music blasting in his ears at full volume.

  Enemies (Enemies),

  Enemies (Enemies),

  Enemies (Enemies),

  You and I are enemies,

  Oh, you forgot? What a riot!

  Buddy, are you scared of me?

  Time has passed (the years are flyin’),

  Oh, then I guess I’m gonna leave,

  You’re done with violence (done and free),

  You’ve made your peace (you've grown and healed),

  But those screams (the ones I hear),

  They can’t be silenced (can't be free)

  No matter what I do,

  They still echo in my head

  And no matter what I do,

  They will echo ‘till I’m dead.

  Horror, terror, tremors, runnin’,

  Streaks of blood and sweat and tears!

  Spittin’, crying, screaming, I’ve been,

  Dreaming of your face for years!

  All those sins that you've committed,

  You have left them in the past,

  Standing here, you've forgotten,

  Blood is dripping off your hands,

  But I haven’t (but I haven’t),

  But I won’t (but I won’t),

  Forgive yourself (you little shit)

  And I’ll collect the debt I’m owed.

  I don’t care ‘bout respect,

  I just wanna see ‘em dead,

  I don't care ‘bout the law,

  I just want to see you dead,

  Shovel folded in my bag,

  I will aim it at your head, I got,

  Unspeakable hatred,

  Hell is waiting open wide.

  I’m the gravedigger, bitch,

  And you can kiss your life goodbye.

  Just as the guitar solo started, Freddy pushed the barbell off the rack and got to lifting. He had no idea just how much weight he was lifting, but judging by the gigantic plates on both sides, and the way his tendons creaked beneath his skin, it was a lot.

  “One… Two…” He felt amazing that day, and he knew that his personal best was waiting just around the corner.

  The song continued, but this time, something about it was off.

  Beneath the calm waters,

  Deep underneath the sea,

  The beast is waiting dormant,

  Waiting for me to speak,

  My mouth is slammed closed,

  MY LIPS ARE WIDE EXPOSED,

  I’M FEELING SO ALONE,

  I’M BLEEDING OUT MY THROAT—

  Freddy suddenly dropped the weight. It slammed him right in the midsection, and he lurched forward, his head flinging and sending the headset flying forward and skittering across the ground.

  A large bruise slowly spread out over his stomach, but he ignored it. Even that much weight was barely going to seriously injure him.

  No. His eyes were locked on the headset.

  He had heard that song uncountable times.

  Those weren’t the correct lyrics.

  He pulled the weight up with Hydraulic Flex and racked it, then slowly got up and walked over to the headset. For a minute, he simply stood there, his heart beating out of his chest as he hesitated to reach for it. But eventually, he gathered the bravery and gingerly put it back on.

  He rewound. This time, the song sounded the same as he remembered it.

  “What the fuck…?” he muttered to himself, scowling. “Was I imagining it?”

  He hadn’t exactly been focused on the music at that moment. And the original did at least sound similar to what he imagined he heard. “Fuck,” he cursed as he took the headset off.

  Turning, he faced the edge of reality, gazing upon the reflection within. The motivation he’d felt just a moment ago had vanished into smoke.

  The days kept passing. And that unease never quite left him. Bloodshed was as silent as usual. Waiting. Looking at him with those empty eye sockets with a mystifying expectation. “What are you staring at?” he asked it.

  “I apologize,” Bloodshed said. “I was merely gazing upon your brillant image, Master.”

  “Yeah… well… do that a little less. Just so you don’t get tired of it.”

  More days passed. The unease grew.

  He was yet to listen to music again since that happened.

  While his motivation wasn’t quite there, the urge to keep himself distracted was undeniable. He kept working on his abilities, trying new things, even if they were rather ridiculous.

  Accelerate Blood Projectile could be applied to any object made of his blood. But it only triggered once he stopped holding on to the object in question.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  He came up with the idea of applying it to his sword and then, in the middle of a swing at an enemy, letting the sword go, causing it to suddenly and rapidly accelerate in the direction he’d been swinging it. Of course, this would do far less damage than a full swing with the weight of his body behind it, but it could work wonders as a feint or a surprise attack.

  This trick could also be used to quickly swap the sword from one hand to another, both in front of him and even behind his back. He could also send the sword spinning around someone’s guard. There were other applications, too, all of them requiring a lot of practice and a lot of patience.

  Especially with waiting for his essence to recover. It was a useful trick, but holy shit was it expensive. It was likely that he would never actually use it in a fight due to the immense cost, but it still counted. For the first time in what felt like forever, he witnessed abilities making progress.

  With the new gust of wind in his sails, he got more experimentative.

  One thing he’d been trying to figure out forever already was how to use his Tsunami Strike on his Blood Javelin similar to how he used it with the orb.

  With the anti-gravity concept, his Blood Javelin could float in the air for around a minute. With this, he no longer had to account for gravity when aiming the weapon. With the two concepts he’d used so far and with the help of Accelerate Blood Projectile and Hydraulic Throw, it was hard to even estimate how far he could throw the javelin.

  In fact, he even anticipated breaking the sound barrier when all the relevant abilities were upgraded to stage 3. That was no joke.

  But why wait until then? He theorized he could already get pretty damn close if he smashed the back end of the javelin with a Tsunami Strike.

  The main problem with this was that the force was just too much. No matter how lightly he tried applying his touch, at least half the spear was always blown to pieces, while the other half was sent flying in a not-so-aerodynamic spin. He’d tried everything, basically, but there was just no way to make this work.

  And then he had an idea. If it wanted to spin, he’d let it spin.

  Standing in the middle of the ability-testing chamber, Freddy conjured Blood Javelin and let it float in the air. Then, he gently pressed his finger not against the butt of the spear, but to the side, almost at the edge. Then, he triggered a double-starred Tsunami Strike, just lightly tapping the edge to transfer the force.

  The edge of the spear, right where he was touching, exploded into dust, and the rest of the spear spun, creating an absolutely horrifying high-pitched sound as it flew toward the edge of reality. As soon as it touched its reflection, it blew up into an uncountable number of pieces of shrapnel, bouncing all around the room.

  Freddy’s skin was left pocked with a few new holes, and as he finally dropped his guard, he was left with a mad grin on his face.

  While that move wouldn’t cut someone in half like he was in some sort of cartoon, it would definitely hurt to get hit by. And the concepts behind Blood Javelin appeared to agree that this could be useful. Because the ability finally made some progress.

  One by one, he discovered new, niche ways to utilize his abilities. Most would be useless in battle, but that didn’t matter. The key part was that he was discovering new ways to utilize his abilities. And this made them grow, finally breaking through stubborn bottlenecks.

  He could hit his forearm shields to trigger the shielding function himself, which could be useful for blocking attacks from behind.

  He could apply Accelerate Blood Projectile to his Crimson Dragon Scales, which made him move ever so slightly faster if he leaped or jumped off the ground.

  While holding a Blood Javelin, it made him resist gravity just a little bit. If he conjured two, the effect became slightly more noticeable.

  If he used Dissipate Wave in the middle of hitting a Tsunami Strike, it drastically reduced the power of the ability. This seemed completely useless, but it had a massive effect, instantly pushing it 5% in progress. He wondered why this even grew the ability at all, but he realized that it could be used to trick someone into thinking his Tsunami Strike was far weaker than it actually was. This was a pretty damn useful application.

  His Hydraulic Throw could be used as an improvised Hydraulic Thrust. It was awkward and unwieldy, but it had its uses. It was precise and swift, so he could use it in tandem with Knuckle Blade to strike a weakness.

  Once he became more creative with them, he found a whole slew of new ways to employ his abilities. And to help his creativity along, he also read a large number of books on the topic of blood and water abilities.

  Yet again, his days felt like they were a bit easier to push through. But with time, the creeping arrival of bottlenecks was upon him yet again, and he started stalling once more.

  This time, however, he was more at peace with it. He knew that, with time, he’d find his way through them. He had more faith in himself.

  But then, something bizarre started happening.

  “Good night, Bloodshed,” Freddy said as always, turning around as he hugged his heavily degraded pillow.

  “Good night, Master.”

  As he was beyond exhausted, as he usually was when it was time to go to bed, it didn’t take him long to fall asleep. And then, seemingly instantly, he woke up again. But he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move.

  What…?

  Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something. A shadow loomed above him as he slept. His whole body broke into a sweat, and he desperately tried to break away from whatever was binding him. The shadowy figure watched, reaching a hand forward, and when it was about to touch his neck—

  Freddy woke up screaming and thrashing. He looked around, spotting no figure, only seeing Bloodshed, who curiously stared back at him. He groaned, breathing heavily, trying to calm himself down. He slumped into the bed, burying his face in his hands. “Sleep paralysis. Oh, fuck my ass. Can that even happen to an archhuman?” he wondered.

  That was the first time he’d had that happen to him. Dreamless sleep was the default for him for the most part. Although he keenly felt that he hadn’t been asleep for long, going back to sleep was out of the question.

  He got up, starting another day of training.

  For a while, no such thing happened again. And then it did.

  He was locked in the bed, facing the ceiling. The shadowy figure loomed above him yet again. It reached for his throat. He couldn’t react. A primal, uncontrollable fear washed over his whole body, but he was paralyzed, unable to do anything to defend himself.

  The hand reached his throat. Its touch was cold. Too cold. The grip was tight. He could feel the blood flow to his brain cut off, and soon enough, his mind began to shut down.

  What… the hell…!?

  And then he woke up, yet again leaping out of the bed.

  He stood there, awake yet frozen yet again.

  That had hurt. That had felt real.

  Taking a deep breath, he calmed himself. He’d heard of sleep paralysis. That was just how it was, wasn’t it? It felt like it was a hundred percent real. But it was the pain—the pain and the frigid cold—that had caught him off guard.

  He lightly slapped himself on his cheek. “Calm down.”

  It sucked having to suddenly deal with something like this, especially when he was already so strained mentally. But he at least knew it wasn’t real. He couldn’t let it get to him.

  He forced himself to lay back down and return to sleep.

  And then, he had a regular night. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. And this continued for a long, long while.

  At some point, he had pretty much completely forgotten about it. He was back to listening to music, too. Yet again, he had broken through the bottlenecks holding him back by learning even more bizarre, almost entirely useless ways to use his abilities.

  He had long parted with the idea of practicality. As long as it worked, it worked. Who was he to judge the abilities for how they wanted to be used?

  It was becoming increasingly apparent that his current status as a two-star was the main culprit for his limits. He already had a shit ton of extremely advanced abilities for a two-star.

  There was only so much his soul could tolerate. It had to adapt to allow for more power. And the more he pushed it, the slower that process became.

  Upgrading them wouldn’t be an issue, thankfully. That part of the burden would be handled by the spirits. But reaching the point of being able to upgrade another ability was becoming more and more of an uncertain prospect.

  And yet again, this hurt his motivation to keep going.

  Honestly, he already believed he was powerful enough to defend Valhalla. The only reason he kept pushing was to have something to work towards.

  While he didn’t necessarily regret not tracking the time, there were moments where he randomly had a thought that made him break into a cold sweat—what if he still wasn’t even done with half the time he had to spend here? What if it had only been something like twenty or thirty years?

  The thought of that was a waking nightmare. So he avoiding thinking about it as much as he could.

  As for his physical capabilities, he had long reached what he believed to be his absolute limit. Perhaps expensive treasures or even more insane experimental drugs could buy him a few more bits of strength, but as it was currently, exercise felt pretty pointless.

  But that wasn’t to say that his body wasn’t changing. In fact, he was slowly losing weight and thinning out his massive bulk. Nothing too drastic. He was listening to the weapons. Their shells. He was capable of more advanced stuff at a lower weight, while still keeping a surprisingly substantial portion of his physical strength.

  And drastically enhancing his speed.

  He also decided to try pushing it in the opposite direction, bulking way past his previous maximum. He became super immobile and started looking like a balloon animal at some point. His neck was so thick that his head looked like it was sinking into his body. While it was a fun experiment, he lost the weight again and returned to a reasonable size.

  There was, however, a point where he was definitely becoming too skinny. He could feel it in the way his sword responded to it. He didn’t have as much of a hold over it as he’d like.

  And after a lot of testing, he discovered what he believed to be the perfect size.

  It was on the day he realized that that it all kind of came crashing down. The rewards for his work were becoming too pitiful. He was basically only working on Ten Thousand Wet Hells at that point, which could inch forward through sheer brute force. Everything else had stalled to a screeching halt.

  Sighing, he threw the Sanguine Beheader on the ground and turned to face the edge of reality. He slowly approached it and put his hand gingerly on his reflection.

  It was always so bizarre to experience. The warmth, the sensation—it was like he was touching someone else, a stranger who just happened to perfectly mirror him. It was almost comforting.

  He chuckled. “Those really really really tough times I’ve been fearing seem to have finally arrived.”

  Well then. It was time to finally crack open one of the better movies he’d been keeping for this moment.

  With Bloodshed comfortably seated by his side, Freddy slumped into the bed and gently tapped the crystals on the remote. He scrolled through the library until he found something he’d been wanting to watch for a long time.

  It was a thriller about a man chasing down a group of people who kidnapped his daughter. It starred his favorite actor, too.

  With a tap, the movie started, and he felt the tiniest sliver of his exhaustion abandon him.

  Until that point, Freddy had been prioritizing more lighthearted stuff, comedies, romance, light drama, anything that could stave off the feelings of loneliness. But it was good to watch something dark sometimes. Forcing cheer was tiring.

  As the movie got underway, Freddy found that he was quite enjoying himself. He had crumpled a food pill and was eating small chunks as a snack. It was no popcorn, but it sure as hell beat nothing.

  The man in the movie broke into a building only to discover that his daughter had been moved someplace else. It was a tragic scene, full of despair and hopelessness.

  Once he returned home, realizing he was back at square one, the man slowly got up and headed to his bathroom. But as he stepped inside, something bizarre happened.

  The screen started flickering.

  “No…” Freddy gasped. “Don’t fucking tell me the BC is gonna break!”

  Just as he was about to get up and check to see what was happening, the man in the movie started acting strange. He slowly walked up to the mirror, and then just kind of stood there.

  There was no reflection in the mirror before him.

  Then, with a twisted crack, the man’s neck snapped, and he turned to look directly into the camera. His eyes were hollow.

  Freddy froze in the spot, his body running with chills all across his body. His eyes stared directly into those empty eye sockets. The screen flickered more intensely.

  Another snap echoed through the room as the man’s jaw cracked open, dripping with blood. He groaned in pain and whispered. “Beware… the reflection.”