The Jester of Apocalypse

A little arrogant, but I believe it will still be a fruitful experience.

Marven was aware of Neave’s 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. In the spirit realm, none of them had any.

Neave was likely to be several ranks above his own in strength, even with the spirit powers removed, 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?

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 Marven was confident that he could benefit from this.

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

There was a slight misconception Marven had. 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 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!? This was utterly ridiculous.

Still, Marven thought, that was shocking but irrelevant. His speed wasn’t quite up to the same rank, and the difference between him and Marven would be insurmountable.

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

“These are the rules of the bout. 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, “No, it’s just that you won’t be able to.”

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

***

Apparently, Neave could repeatedly outdo himself in shocking Marven beyond belief. And yet, Marven believed this may just be the most incredible surprise he had ever and would ever receive.

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

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

If someone could rewind time at will and fix their mistakes the moment 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 be inferior to Neave.

Marven saw Neave’s knee rushing from his bottom left and felt his side tense out of reflex. That minor tension in his side prevented him from turning fast enough as Neave’s right foot appeared out of nowhere, flying from Marven’s right.

Marven 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 Marven's knee, which was pushed slightly to the back while Neave reappeared behind Marven, 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, and he witnessed the faint glow of the golden runes.

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. Marven felt Neave pummeling his back repeatedly, and within moments, his spine was too splintered 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 Marven’s torso, then capitalized on that tension to force Marven to raise his right arm. After that, he attacked Marven’s head, distracting him from his actual target, the knee, then blinked to Marven’s left knee, where Marven naturally reacted by moving his left arm down slightly. Then, with the same action, he used a movement technique 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.

Then, the movement technique triggered, and Neave disappeared.

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 that 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 Marven could even begin to retaliate.

Back in the fight against Ilkivir, no wonder that creep had lost the moment he didn’t have his armor.

The others weren’t dispatched immediately; rather, 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 learn after being defeated quite literally instantaneously.

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. He instantly ended the fight when anyone committed an inexcusable mistake.

Which used to happen much more frequently at first, but as time went on, he rapidly learned how to make the others improve at an optimal pace. Which was yet another shocking surprise for Marven.

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, Marven added inwardly.

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

When Marven was back up, Neave was before him, slamming a foot into his chin. Marven’s contemplative distraction was deemed an inexcusable mistake, it seemed.

Oh well.

***

They were weak, indeed. Neave felt like an adult beating toddlers as he mercilessly pummeled the others initially. They were weak, far more fragile than he had expected, honestly.

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.

After all, it was so damn fun pummeling their asses and showing them who was really boss around here. 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, Neave yet again got bored. Their improvement was too slow, and the ‘oh my heavens’ facial expressions slowly left their faces as time passed, replaced by 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… Predictability.

He was slow and clumsy, and his body allowed for little elegance.

Neave contemplated how he should improve Hunter’s fighting style. First, he thought of what Hunter was good at. He had a somewhat decent grasp on stances and defense. It 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. You had to have a solid foundation first. If you didn’t have a way to deal with your weaknesses in every scenario, you were waiting for the day when you would face an opponent that had you thoroughly countered.

His problem was not easy to solve with just skill. Hunter had to train his flexibility more and perhaps reduce his muscle mass. It was kind of silly because, well, although Hunter was much taller than Neave, he still had less 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? Neave would take it either way.

The master of this spirit realm pondered how he should improve Hunter. The way he handled it, eventually, was by always starting the fight by shattering his stance. This way, he had to get creative and find ways to defend himself from Neave’s 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, Neave 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.

Now… It was time for Harel.

Her flexibility and skill 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.

Neave felt that her greatest weakness and strength lay in the same thing.

Perhaps he wasn’t qualified to say this, but she was kind of fucking insane.

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

And Neave didn’t consider this to be a critical issue either. She never hit him even once, of course, but she learned how to maintain a solid guard when capitalizing on openings, as well as how to recover from failing a strike and how to turn a failure into another attempt.

She was also wildly disregardful of her wounds, and Neave 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 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 powers 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 wouldn’t be much of a necessity.

Rather than focusing on his growth, which seemed to happen on its own anyway, Neave 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 wider 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 perhaps asking him straight up wasn’t the worst idea either.

Finally, there was Marven.

Neave absolutely loathed Marven’s style. It was an unambitious, defeatist style that set dead ends for itself.

It was hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but as per Neave’s decision, this dog would have those old tricks beaten out of it.

Out of everyone here, Marven was the one that 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 that 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 they lacked potential.

Neave could practically see what sort of life Marven had led. The old monster had lived through life-and-death battles time and time again, continuously having to rely on tricks and deception to handle more powerful opponents. It was the style of a beggar that rose to his station through deception and scams.

It made so much sense now. Neave 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—not without a fight.

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 Marven could tell precisely what he was messing up, given how obviously frustrated he seemed.

He just couldn’t fight against his deeply rooted reflexes.

No matter.

Neave would beat them out of him eventually.

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 really be exhausted from training in the spirit realm, neither physically nor mentally.

However, it was clear that it had been a while, and willpower could only last so long without breaks. Rather than allow them to go crazy from the continuous beatings, Neave had another idea.

It was time for a break.