Freddy held on to what was left of his arm, sighing and extracting the spark of undeath from his storage ring.

Surrounded by a sea of monster corpses, he had no shortage of fresh meat to feed the ball of flesh.

Be it Ten Thousand Wet Hells or the newly upgraded Tsunami Strike, both were highly self-destructive. Tsunami Strike in particular was a nightmare to use. Even with a single star, his fist would be turned to mush.

The only way to use it was to ensure that the strike landed perfectly and that it landed somewhere it would hurt. The rush of lifesteal was usually enough to keep his arm from blowing itself to bits. But even then, he’d lose all feeling in the arm.

This needed to be resolved as quickly as possible.

Not to even mention the fact that it left him severely injured, the ability had another, bigger problem.

Most of the force behind the strike was lost whenever his arm blew up. Simply put, without the ability to contain and transfer it, it was far from fulfilling its full potential.

But in order to contain that force, he had to get accustomed to using Ten Thousand Wet Hells. “Fuck,” he swore, clicking his tongue and finally getting up. His arm was… mostly in one piece. It was time to get going.

Given the current political climate in Valhalla, he was basically just waiting for Thor to finally buckle and send him on a raid. The people were dissatisfied, and if he wanted to shut them up, he needed to show that he was worth Thor’s time.

However, it was already quite well-known that he was a powerhouse.

The problem was the fact that his temper had cost him his reputation.

It would take a lot of time to regain the trust. There was no way to change everyone’s opinion of him overnight.

Unless…

Unless he showed that he was an even bigger powerhouse than expected.

No matter how unstable they believed he was, if he could show himself as someone capable of single-handedly clearing a raid, that would shut them up.

But in order for him to display this level of ability, he needed to be able to use Tsunami Strike. And to use Tsunami Strike, he had to get accustomed to a certain tempering technique.

Ten Thousand Wet Hells was a nightmare of an ability. The more he worked on trying to use it, the more he realized just how much of a mistake this upgrade choice really was. There was simply no way to use it without risking his life.

For a while, he had contemplated purchasing some sort of potion or something else that could temporarily enhance his resistance so he could ease himself into using it, but recently, he got an even better idea.

He ran towards the nearest passage, and as soon as he was on the other side, he immediately used Blood Sacrifice.

Blood gathered, and soon enough, Bloodshed spawned.

Thankfully, the restriction on Bloodshed’s movement applied to the place it was summoned, and not the place where the bloodshed happened.

And the realm he was in was small enough that Bloodshed could move freely without fear of exiting its usual range.

“Okay, Bloodshed. Time to get started with the plan. I’ll wall myself in, you get started with gathering the monsters.”

Bloodshed nodded, and vanished in a blur.

He cackled. “Man, Bloodshed is fast as fuck. Heh. Thor would be proud…” But the day he introduced Bloodshed to Thor was still very much so in the distant future.

He let Bloodshed do its thing while he retrated back to the previous realm and sat down. He replaced the Warrior King’s Pendant with the water-affinity necklace. Then he entombed himself in a thick layer of blood metal. This was for the simple purpose of ensuring his limbs didn’t go flying all over the place.

Naturally, he was left without oxygen, but he’d live.

He waited for a while until Bloodshed sent the signal.

“I’m ready, Master.”

“Good.”

He triggered Ten Thousand Wet Hells. Immediately, his whole body started annihilating itself from the inside. But a moment later, an incredible rush of healing followed.

He felt like his body was stuck inside a meat grinder, but he persisted, continuing to use the tempering technique while Bloodshed shredded the army of monsters it had gathered at the center of the other realm.

He felt a powerful sense of deja vu. This felt like Thousand Wet Hells all over again, except ten times worse. For a moment, he once again felt the same feeling of impotence as back when he first upgraded Hundred Wet Hells. He was faced with what felt like an impassable obstacle, forced to resort to extreme means to make any progress.

But he was no longer the same man as he had been back then. This time, things were different.

At the base cost of 10% essence per second, which hadn’t changed even after the upgrade, a 13% discount with the Ocean Medallion, and 2% essence coming from his satellite, he could keep Ten Thousand Wet Hells running for almost thirty seconds straight.

But Bloodshed was in the middle of killing hundreds of monsters, which meant he was receiving a ton of essence every second. Enough to sustain the tempering technique… indefinitely.

Only contained by the tomb of crimson metal, his body kept exploding, his veins bursting, and his muscles popping like water balloons. An intense headache burst through his skull every moment as his capilaries failed to resist the constant outbursts of force, but before his brain could be damaged, the healing sucked the blood right back in and patched the damage over.

Now matter where, as soon as the pain came, so did the healing, offsetting most of the damage he was suffering. Not all of it, but most.

I can do this.

He kept pushing. Soon enough, 30 seconds passed. He was entering dangerous territory. Even with the healing, the reflux essence was gathering rapidly, but he kept going.

He’d lived through an overload once. He could do it again.

Come on… What are you, a wuss!? This much pain is nothing!

Soon enough, he was feeling the reflux essence surpassing his RETI. But he kept going. Pushing it further, and further. He could feel his own body mummifying as the water refused to stay contained within him. And as the water fled, Ten Thousand Wet Hells had nothing to act upon, gradually weaking. Yet, he kept pushing.

Eventually, he finally lost consciousness and passed out.

He didn’t know how long he was out, or even when exactly he’d lost consciousness. But by the time he regained himself, he was already perfectly healed.

It had to have been quite a while given that the reflux essence had cleared out. The water that had fled his body had seemingly been sucked right back in. That was sort of unexpected. He had been banking on his Lake of Blood tempering technique, which stored a lot of blood in his heart, to rehydrate him once he passed out. But it seemed there were layers to his healing abilities that he hadn’t yet discovered.

He felt Bloodshed’s intent reach him, and its words followed soon after. “Master, I have exterminated all the monsters.”

He quickly absorbed the blood metal he was encased in back into his skin. “Excellent work, Bloodshed.” After a deep breath, he checked his progress.

Ten Thousand Wet Hells: Stage 2—3% Progress.

3% progress didn’t seem like much given what he’d put himself through.

But he smiled from ear to ear.

Compared to the progress he thought he was going to achieve? That was a lot.

And he wasn’t done with pushing himself. Not even close. After meditating to clear the reflux essence, he proceeded to another realm. For a long moment, he felt guilty about avoiding the task Thor had given him. Frankly speaking, what he was doing could almost be seen as a form of vandalism. But he chuckled to himself.

“Oh well. I’m sure Thor will understand.”

For a whole week, Freddy spent most of his time awake grinding away at Ten Thousand Wet Hells.

It went slow at first, and then exponentially slower later. Despite investing nearly all his time into grinding a single ability, and despite using borderline insane means to grow it, he barely pushed it to 17% progress.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

And yet, given the progress in his internal toughness, one would almost think he’d pushed it up a whole stage.

He noticed it in fights. Clawed swings he’d usually have to fear could barely even leave a dent in him. Most blunt force strikes might as well have been tickling him. And he could use Tsunami Strike. It was still harmful to him, but not nearly enough for it to be a problem. Besides, as long as he landed it properly, a single-starred strike practically refunded all the damage through the influx of healing.

On top of that, Dissipate Wave worked wonders for cancelling the ability. He was getting close to being able to upgrade it, and he was eyeing a potential candidate for the first construct—refund.

The main problem was that the refund concept was exceptionally rare. Well, there was actually an even bigger problem in the fact that it might not work. But it was worth the gamble.

Such an upgrade would hopefully allow him to reintake some of the water essence used in Tsunami Strike. Best case scenario was 50%. He’d be happy with even just 25%.

Tsunami Strike cost a lot of essence. After the most recent Abyssal Depths upgrade, it required 17% essence for just a single-starred use. Double-starred cost 34%. If he had to cancel the ability, that would result in a pretty consequential loss of essence. Doing anything to offset it was worth it.

And it was exactly the type of thing that could impress Thor.

Soon enough, using Ten Thousand Wet Hells no longer sent his limbs flying off his body. That wasn’t to say the ability didn’t still brutalize him, but it was far better than the catastrophe it caused at first.

Throughout the week, other than training and exploring the interspace, he spent a lot of time shopping, gathering the last of what he needed for the Century of Solitude. And other than a few rare remnants, he had purchased practically everything he needed, all neatly contained within a box full of low-end storage rings.

He also bought several storage boxes. They were about half a meter tall on the outside but were much bigger internally. These boxes were used to transport stuff from one place to another and frequently used to maximize storage space. They weren’t of much use for carrying stuff around in person since they had no impact on the weight of the items inside them. If several tons of material were stored inside them, they’d weigh several tons.

But for that dungeon, they would play an indispensable role. Given that the dungeon lasted for a hundred years, he would need a place to store all his waste. Otherwise, he’d drown inside what would eventually turn into a giant septic tank.

As for the aforementioned rare remnants, he and Bloodshed were constantly keeping an eye out for them. It didn’t take long to find anti-gravity, thankfully. There was a realm with a bunch of floating rocks in it. But refund was nowhere to be seen, unfortunately.

He was also looking for impermeability, but that was surprisingly difficult to track down. If added to Crimson Dragon Scales, it would boost the essence blocking function, the most valuable part of the ability. Out of all the remnants he needed to upgrade his abilities to stage 2, this was the last one he found.

Refund was the only one he outright couldn’t find anywhere. It made sense, too. It wasn’t like the concept had much of a presence in the natural world. The only way he could track it down would be if he found some sort of rare plant or material that could refund essence somehow, and even then, he might not find the right remnant beside them in the Netherecho.

Frankly, he had no hopes of tracking it down on his own. He would have to buy it. But they simply didn’t have it at the store that sold captured remnants. Given its rarity, it would most likely only be sold during a large auction. Tracking it down could be a massive pain in the ass.

As always, at the end of the week, he harvested his organs and prepared them for trade.

Bloodshed visited the man who acted as an intermediary as usual. The man wrote down the information on the location and left. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. As soon as the goods were picked up, the money landed in his bank account.

He walked to the bank that night to check that everything was all right.

As he took out a statement at the bank, he sighed deeply at the number he saw on the paper.

Current balance: $1,002,941,624

One fucking billion dollars.

He had been spending his money quite fast, so he had technically already earned this much money, but it was only now that he ran out of things to buy that he passed the threshold.

He could barely believe what he was seeing.

On his walk back home, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. On that day, he had become a billionaire. A goddamn billionaire.

He could live a whole century in absolute luxury and still not spend all the money. Hell, if he invested it properly, he could probably live in luxury off the interest alone. Double hell, even if he just took the rounding error off the top of the billion dollars, he could live an incredibly comfortable life in a middle class neighborhood.

Just thinking about it made his heart flutter. He was immortal—unaging. Strong. Handsome. And rich as fuck.

Everything a man, anything anyone could ever ask for—hell, everything he had ever wanted—was all already in the palm of his hand. And then some. And then some on top of that.

He found himself standing in an ordinary street, with a lively, crowded restaurant to his right, shining a warm, cozy light over him, and a residential building with closed shops on the first floor across the street. And there, his steps suddenly halted. There, he stopped in his tracks, his heart pounding in his chest and his breathing coming unevenly. He could feel his hands shaking and hear ringing in his ears, all while the world around almost appeared to fade into the background.

“Why do I bother with any of this…?”

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of his phone ringing. He gasped, nearly jumping back. He could feel it vibrating in his pocket. Once. Twice. Thrice. It kept ringing.

But he stood frozen, unable to bring himself to answer it.

It rang again. And again. Then, it stopped ringing. Then, it started ringing again.

Reluctantly, he reached for his pocket and pulled it out.

“Hello?” Thor’s voice came through it, clear as crystal and louder than any other sound on the desolate street.

“Hey…”

“Yeah, uhm, I know you’re on a day off today, but I’d like you to stop by my office. It’s kind of an emergency.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, uh… It’s nothing immediate.”

“Can you tell me what it is?”

“I’d like to tell you in person.”

Freddy’s jaw clenched. “Why don’t you tell me right now?”

“Just come over and we’ll talk, okay?”

“And what if I don’t want to?”

Thor went silent. “What? Sorry, what did you just say?”

“I… Never mind. Sorry. I’ll come over right away.”

“Okay, man… See you then.”

“Bye.” Freddy ended the call. The bulky phone felt heavy in his hands. He clenched it and quickly put it away in his pocket. But he didn’t move. He couldn’t bring himself to take even a single step.

All he felt at that moment was hesitation. He knew why he was being called.

But he didn’t know why he should go.

Suddenly, he sighed. He’d think about it later. For now, he had to go.

He pulled out the bike from his storage ring and rode it to Valhalla’s headquarters.

There, as soon as he stepped into Thor’s office, he got the news he already knew were waiting for him.

“I’m going to need you to join us for a raid,” Thor said, his fingers locked in a grip so tight his knuckles turned white.

“They’ve been bullying you again, I guess?” Freddy asked, sighing. “I understand. I promise I won’t go out of control or act out again.” He hesitated for a long moment, his whole body raising as if he were about to say something.

“Hmm?” Thor hummed. “What?”

“I…” He deflated. “Nothing.” He got up. “Just let me know the exact time.”

“Tomorrow. 10 p.m.”

“Okay. See you then.”

“And Freddy…”

“Hmm?”

Thor’s expression darkened. “Show them what you can do.”

He nodded. And then left.

And as promised, when the moment came, he arrived.

Standing beside the rest of the vanguard was Freddy, wearing a simple white shirt and grey sweatpants. He could feel the confusion and simmering resentment of the others around him.

“Why isn’t he geared up?”

“Don’t tell me he is about to do something crazy again…”

“Does Thor know?”

But he ignored them, triggering Crimson Dragon Scales instead. His body was coated in the red scales, covering him from head to toe.

The other members looked at each other and then him, bewildered. But they kept their mouths shut.

Their target was an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city. The lights in the building were seemingly off, but they already knew this was just an illusion. On the inside was a drug operation. And not just any drug operation—one where they tested the drugs on captives.

It was the same as usual. Anyone standing before them was already sentenced to death. They stood in the way of freedom. Their existence was inexcusable in a just world. They had decided to put their lives above those of others. And for that, they would die.

It didn’t take long for the announcement to arrive. They received the signal, and the vanguard charged towards their target.

This time, Freddy was the fastest right from the get-go. He made it to the building way before anyone else, and with a dropkick, burst through the opening doors. An alarm blared. Guards gathered, filling the hallway and rushing his way.

He lifted his left hand. Atop it, a ball of segmented metal appeared.

There were a lot of guards present. He had tested this combo with the Tsunami Strike many times, but always stuck to just single-starred use. But at that moment, he knew he wasn’t just there to be efficient. He was there to show off.

He threw the ball into the air before him, and without hesitation, cast Tsunami Strike with both stars. The ability immediately sucked up a huge mass of essence, fueling a raging tide that rolled throughout his entire body. It coursed through his limbs, concentrating in his fist, compressing so violently his hand wanted to explode.

The men rushing him could feel that something was off, their steps halting and guards raising.

The two stars shining in Freddy’s chest were overpowering, radiating an aura of absolute destruction.

His fist landed on the crimson ball.

The ball exploded with a violent flash of light, a thundering noise, shimmering red dust, and a barrage of lethal shrapnel, with the shockwave blowing windows up, shaking the building, bursting eardrums, and the shards smashing the walls, crushing armor, bone, tearing skin, skittering and ricocheting in a cacophony of ringing metallic dings and screams, splashing concrete dust and bloody mist, flooding the hall with wet gore.

His hand was a bit mangled, but most of the damage had been offset by the healing.

He stood there, his own mouth agape at the horror he had manifested.

Everyone in the hallway before him was dead. In pieces.

The vanguard that had moments ago been charging had now stopped, waiting behind him and observing apprehensively.

Freddy couldn’t hold back a pleased snort. “How’s that for showing off…?”

“Please!” someone shouted from down the hallway. “Stop! W-we surrender!”