Ch 47 – Hellish Training

'Of course, this still has its weaknesses. Why wouldn't it be?' Kaleido shook his head and summoned a burning ball of flames.

Placing his palm on top of the flames, he ruthlessly burned his palm as pain flashed through his mind. Gritting his teeth at the pain that caused every single one of his veins to face searing heat and be burnt to ashes almost made him pass out, but he held on.

'One big flaw of this killer move is the focus required to do it. Even with my infinite mental energy, allowing me to maintain a peak mental performance, I would still inevitably lose focus and fuck up, facing a severe backlash that would prove fatal while in a fight.'

'Next, I'm not immune to pain. The pain would cause me to lose focus, meaning in a fight, I shouldn't just tank through hits and risk having my focus dwindle.'

'Finally, it's still a mortal killer move. There are methods out there that can counter my killer move, like attacks that disrupt my thought process and such. Fortunately for me, those are the only major flaws this move has. If I prepare well enough and train hard enough to the point that maintaining this killer move is fully autonomous, I'll be well on my way to becoming the next Undying Demon.'

When he felt that he can't handle the pain enough, Kaleido extinguished the flame and heaved a sigh of relief when his hand returned to normal from its charred state. But even though the flame was already gone, Kaleido felt as if his hand was still being burnt in a sea of flames and clicked his tongue, "I forgot about mental trauma as well."

'Unless I develop my mind enough to the level of that old monster, I would still get traumatized by hellish pain like that. Sigh, I sometimes forget I've only been in this world for months and haven't forged my heart enough to deal with mental demons such as phantom pain.'

Shaking his head, Kaleido deactivated the killer move and instead recalled the contents of the inheritance.

'With the remaining Gu he left in his inheritance, I can only activate two other killer moves in the infinite series. Infinite: Danger Foresight, and Infinite: Replay.' Kaleido scratched his chin as details about the two killer moves surfaced in his mind.

'Infinite: Danger Foresight is more mentally taxing to the mind and is only possible to be maintained with the very foundation of all other Infinite Killer Moves, Infinite: Delayed Healing. With access to infinite primeval essence, anyone would be able to maintain Infinite: Danger Foresight and other Infinite Killer Moves indefinitely.'

'But my advantage is that I already have nigh-endless primeval essence, so I don't require Infinite: Delayed Healing as the foundation for all other Infinite Killer Moves, reducing the required focus to upkeep them all.'

'Although that would instead just be a flaw because having pseudo-immortality is still better than not having it, so I would need to maintain Infinite: Delayed Healing along with other killer moves from now on.'

'Unfortunately, due to my abundant dao marks, space and time path would conflict with each other, meaning I'll be unable to use space path killer moves.' Kaleido shook his head in disappointment at this dilemma before focusing back on his objectives.

'Infinite: Replay on the other hand actually removes the requirement of having to look at the past and then saving an ability because it rewinds Replay Gu back in time to the point where it still had that ability saved up, giving me a more convenient way of using that Gu!'

'With Replay Gu, I can effectively replicate other Gu abilities infinitely! A single Gu that has the abilities of tens of different Gu, Long Liv would have been a monster if he became a Gu Immortal with his talents and genius mind!'

Shaking his head once again at this lamentable fate, Kaleido's eyes gleamed and he muttered, "Sigh, it seems like my stay on this island would need to be extended until I fully master these killer moves and train my mind enough to continuously activate these killer moves."

Turning his head back at the morning sun and the beautiful sea, Kaleido smiled and said with a subtle grin, "There was a saying that said a genius who works harder than everyone else would give birth to a monster, so what if a monster works harder than everyone else appears?"

…

A Month Later.

On the shores of an island in the unexplored seas of the Central Continent, a large pot large enough to contain a few human bodies within it was placed atop a burning orange fire on the ground.

From the pot, gasses were emitted and rose to the sky while bubbles formed on its surface. If a human body were to be placed inside such hot water, it wouldn't be a surprise that they would die in seconds from the sheer heat and rigorous conditions inside the boiling hot water.

And yet, even in the face of common sense, a man with white hair and white eyes stood naked beside the boiling hot pot of water and stared at the water with cold eyes. They were tranquil and serene as if the dangerous waters ahead of them were nonexistent.

As they loosened the knot on their robe and had their white robe fall down to the ground, revealing their chiseled body bulging with muscle, Kaleido smiled and muttered with a tear rolling down his cheek, "I never expected that my dreams of living in another world would be brought to reality, a reality where I have to meditate for hours inside a boiling hot pot with no oxygen to breath and doing on mistake would pretty much fuck me over."

Laughing softly, Kaleido took a step and hopped down into the boiling hot pot of water.

As his body was submerged in boiling hot water, he can feel his body heating up with searing hot water giving him third-degree burns on contact. Strangely enough, he remained unfazed in the face of traumatizing pain and calmly planted his legs on the ground of the pot.

The bottom of the pot was far hotter than the water surrounding his body as it was the nearest to the fire below him, allowing pain that is similar to burning his veins and flesh over and over to greet him.

Kaleido remained calm and tranquil, his heart beating rhythmically as if the pain that he faced was just air. But while that was happening, all of the grave burns on his body would disappear in split seconds, and all of the damage dealt to his body was missing as if they were never there.

After successfully placing himself in a lotus position where he crossed his legs on the searing hot ground, Kaleido focused on maintaining the killer move while thinking, 'No pain, no gain.'

Counting down from three, Kaleido's heart trembled for a bit before being forcefully calmed down, and while submerged in boiling hot water, he opened his eyes.

Less than a second later, boiling hot water seared his eyes, causing him to turn blind before his vision then returned to normal. He forcefully kept his eyes open under tremendous pain, and his eyes remained steady and cold as if it wasn't being burnt right that instant.

Next, Kaleido conjured a black spike from nowhere and held it right in front of his forehead.

'So what if I don't have a functioning brain, I still need to make this killer move ingrained right into my very bones and soul! NO PAIN NO GAIN!'

A gruesome sight of self-harm then happened as Kaleido impaled the black spike through his forehead and out it came from the back of his head. His consciousness continuously fazed in and out of reality as he desperately grasped at every last thread of survival.

If anyone else were to undergo the same experience as he did, there was a high chance that they would have already given up under such immense pain. Even if they did somehow survive and got out of that situation, they would still face tremendous trauma that would haunt them till their deaths.

And Kaleido was no different. Just a few months ago, Kaleido was just a normal boy from Earth who was forcefully dragged into another universe, leaving him to survive in this world's cruel conditions to the point that he made himself go through an insane amount of torture to ingrain a killer move into his very bones.

Unfortunately for him, haste makes waste, and Kaleido failed. He lost his focus and the killer move deactivated; in mere seconds, his body was boiled from the inside out while his consciousness drifted away into the land of death.

Instantly, Kaleido, who was sitting in a lotus position on a bed opened his eyes while puking out gastric acid from his mouth. His breath turned rough and uneven as if he was just boiled to death with a spike piercing through his brain, and the illusory pain almost made him puke once more.

Resisting the urge to puke, Kaleido muttered with a crazed grin, "An hour… I SURVIVE FOR AN HOUR!"

"AHAHAHAHA!" Kaleido clenched his fist while wiping away the remaining puke from his mouth, grinning widely as he muttered in excitement, "Who would have thought that Danger Foresight can be transformed into Death Simulation."

'With my new killer move, Death Simulation, I can experience and live in a possible future as if I was really there and feel everything. Of course, the big flaw is that I can only simulate myself in living in a future where I would die, and that future is not an "absolute" future like the ones shown by Danger Foresight.'

'Maybe once I become a Grandmaster in time path, I'll be able to deduce Future Simulation Gu and allow myself to experience future events while remaining in the past. The only problem is that if I want to recreate those futures, I would need perfect bodily control to replicate my exact movements…' Kaleido suddenly paused as he realized something. 'Unless I can use Replay Gu for that.'

'Sigh, that's something I'll consider later. For now, I'll just use Death Simulation for training purposes without actually risking my life, allowing me to rapidly grow with virtually zero risks.' Kaleido stood up and walked towards his house.

Planting his palm on his house, a mysterious power soon enveloped it and it disappeared as if it was never there. He then went on to erase all evidence and traces of his activities on the island.

'If someone else were to ever visit this island, they wouldn't even know that I have been here.' Kaleido chuckled while storing all of the remaining crops on his massive farm and erased all of the farmland he has cultivated, decimating the ground and leaving zero clues behind.

After a long while, he felt that his preparations were satisfactory enough and turned to look back at the sea.

Walking toward the sandy shores of the island, Kaleido summoned a raft from nowhere as it splashed the seawater around it. But when the surrounding water was about to splash on Kaleido's body, it collided with an invisible barrier around his body and slid down to the ground.

'After a month of rigorous training, I'm finally setting off from this island and finding my way back to human civilization!' Kaleido stepped on the raft as his body and eyes suddenly glowed with a milky white light.

Quickly dimming down, the illusory glow around his body and eyes disappeared as he successfully activated his killer moves.

'Finally, my efforts are bearing fruits! Activating those killer moves is as natural as breathing already! Perhaps my demonic heart has also grown because of this rigorous training of mine.' Kaleido shook his head and unfurled the sails of his raft.

With the wind colliding against the sails, his raft slowly departed from the island, and Kaleido wore a beaming smile.

"Let's just hope that my adventure at sea this time would be a lot shorter."

AN: This chapter has 2033 words.

Sorry...

(February 19, 2023 – 451st day of writing)