"With enough training, the body can become the most efficient weapon, but in the end, it has limits. We must find them or they will be our end." -unknown.
"While your body is strong beyond normal men, you still have little synchronization with it, so what we will do today is get to know your body inside and out."
The guardian said as he and Odin stood in absolute darkness. The scenery changed, and they appeared in an ever-changing landscape.
"What do you think is the most important part of the body?" the guardian asked Odin.
"The brain, as it controls most of our functions." Odin said.
"Yes, the brain matters the body needs the brain to function, and the brain needs the body to function both work in harmony but right now you have none of that you have lots of power and because of this you don't need the skill to fight as you can overpower them by brute force." the guardian said as the landscape became an arena.
"But how do we breach such a gap between mind and body? Simple, we give you a challenge that forces you to learn and use your skill or you simply die." the guardian said as he took a scythe and handed a sword to Odin.
The two walked towards the middle, and before Odin realized it, the blade was coming for his neck. Leaning back, Odin dodged the weapon by a few inches. He retreated but realized the guardian was always 2 feet away from him, no matter how much distance was made.
As time went on, Odin could only block, but he had found out that every attack Hope launched was straightforward to predict. But it was the sense of oblivion he felt that made him unable to react fast enough.
"You must control your instincts first they are always there the human consciousness is made up of 73% instinct and 27% self-awareness personality traits such as a taste for food or music come from the bacteria in your gut the reason you aren't more self than instinct is simply because you will die." Hope said as he swung rhythmically.
"It isn't wrong to want to live or die, but you must control them. If not, are you in control or is something else in control?"
Odin steadied himself and launched attacks back at Hope, but they all missed.
"Well, it took you half an hour, but you did it. But don't relax. Yet we got more to do." Hope said as the scythe disappeared along with Odin's sword.
"Now let's dance!" Hope yelled as the landscape changed again into a large concert hall.
"Salsa is fast and complex, which gives a good challenge to the mind and body as it learned its complexities and forms." Hope said as he snapped his fingers and salsa music played.
Odin was confused but did as told. He quickly learned the basics and practiced. As Odin danced, he fell into the rhythm, but before he did, he was assaulted by impending oblivion. His body tensed and he stood as still as a statue. His breathing quickened, and he started to sweat buckets.
His eyes moved towards the source, but all he saw was Hope dancing. His flow seemed to hide something, though, and as Odin focused, he saw what looked like a sea of stars that were being consumed by a large entity.
Odin seemed to hear all of creation scream out in pain as it was devoured. Slowly, a large creature appeared from the distance. The five red eyes that were shaped into rhombuses outshined the surrounding stars.
As it got closer, that impending sense of doom grew. Odin tried to move, but his body didn't respond. He closed his eyes and took deep breaths.
'Last time I had to face it, so let's do it again.' Odin thought as he calmed himself and forced his body to move.
It was like trying to move the entire world with just an arm, but it was felt in every limb as he slowly moved his body.
'Never thought the body could turn to stone under fear.' Odin tried to lighten the mood.
Odin slowly positioned himself to fight the entity, but the feeling of doom faded and his view changed to the ceiling of the concert hall.
"1.29 seconds. That's how long it took you to fight against your own self." Hope said as he sat down next to Odin.
"What do you mean?" Odin asked.
"It wasn't actually yourself more so an aspect of you the self idolization of death you see me and you and well any other Odin is always drawn to death maybe it's the death of a dream, the death of a relationship, or the death of those we love either way we are always near the source." Hope said.
"Each of us holds our aspect of birth and death I was born because of hope a hope to see my wife once more and my death is to drive anyone that holds such a sin like hope towards ruin after all hope is the root of all evil it makes the hero commit such acts of darkness just for a hope of a better world the more one embraces such a demon the eviler they become while I am training your body I am also training your mind so tell me what is your birth and your death." hope said as he looked down at Odin.
"My birth and death?" Odin muttered.
"In time, you will know I tell you this now because, unlike everything else, you have free will. Your choices matter. Remember that." Hope said as he got up.
"Now let's get to actually training you." Hope said.
Hope and Odin switched between many activities, such as salsa dancing, playing an instrument, and painting. The reason was to allow Odin to fully coordinate his body and allow him to have greater creativity.
After that, Odin focused on fighting in different situations such as low visibility and this was done by making him blind. Most fighting scenarios were unfair, so Odin would have a challenge.
What made it even harder was that Odin couldn't rest he was forced to adapt to find points where he could relax his mind and regain his mental energy while being attacked by Odin. While his body didn't tire out, his mind did another difficulty was how random the training was.
After a round Hope would increase the difficulty either by making him fight illusions, killing a sense, banning the usage of a limb, or making it so Odin couldn't think. It was a perpetual cycle of randomness that broke Odin down and slowly rebuilt him.
As he trained, he copied Hope's fighting techniques, or he tried to for Odin. It wasn't viable, as Hope fought with pure offense. Even his evasion was built to keep the attacks rolling out.
If he was in his armor, then he could easily use these moves, but even then most of the techniques used the insane regeneration of an immortal to fight Hope would frequently break his limbs or stab himself to attack Odin in odd ways.
Odin didn't know how long he had been fighting, but his body moved like fluid he launched counterattacks using odd angles as he broke his bones and quickly healed them.
As the blade slashed Hope's eyes, he quickly launched a series of jabs, using a spear. Each jab hit its mark and Odin lost his ability to use his arms as they were split from his body. Odin didn't flinch as he quickly switched forms and launched kick after kick at Hope.
Launching a spinning kick, Odin retreated and let his arms heal from his training. He had realized his regeneration had sped up every time after a serious injury. It used to take half an hour to regrown an arm, but now it took five minutes to fully heal.
The only problem was that he seemed to feel hungry, but the energy the system provided negated it. But for the first time in ages, Odin felt hunger.
The fight continued, and the two kept changing weapons. Each attack seemed to carry the strength of gods as they fought. Hope had not left out Odin's magic abilities, occasionally teaching him how to use his powers in different ways.
From his biomancy, Odin had developed a sort of osteokinesis allowing him to control bones, but he had to either use other bones around or break his and use them as projectiles. He had also developed hemokinesis, allowing him to use his blood as suppression magic.
His technomancy had branched to the more hypnotic aspect of magic. Using machines, he could use low frequencies to hypnotize people.
He had also learned how to combine both biomamcy and technomancy Odin considered the ability he got from the two an in-game ultimate. Once using it, he could spread his entire senses around everything either living or machine and view the surroundings.
In war, this would be great, as he could view his enemies while he stayed hidden far away. The con for this ability was the distance he could only see within a radius of 10 miles. With more understanding, he could increase it, but it would be awhile before he could spy on an entire world from a safe distance.
"Ok, you've been fighting for a year straight. Go relax." Hope said as he disappeared.
Odin stared at the spot Hope was standing. He slowly blinked before his body dropped as he fell unconscious.
"Well, we have completed the humanoid portion of combat. The rest will be up to you kido." the guardian said as he reappeared with food.
"Now I also should reward you for not complaining once during this year of training, so to sate your knowledge I'll spill some and also give you a little artifact." Hope's words woke Odin up.
Odin focused his attention on Hope and waited for him to speak.
"You already know how temperature works, so I won't explain, but remember cold is slow and hot is fast now. We have absolute zero for cold and infinity for hot, but what happens when you go past both of them?" Hope asked a question.
"It should be impossible. Even absolute zero requires so much energy that it's impossible to reach." Odin said.
"Well, I could understand your reason, but it's simply not the case. Looks at me, my body temperature is below absolute zero. I absorb entropy passively, but that's not the point." Hope said.
"When your break best the two you get negative temperatures. With positive temperatures, atoms are more likely to occupy low-energy states than high-energy states, a pattern known as Boltzmann distribution in physics. When an object is heated, its atoms can reach higher energy levels.
At absolute zero, atoms would occupy the lowest energy state. At an infinite temperature, atoms would occupy all energy states. Negative temperatures then are the opposite of positive temperatures atoms more likely occupy high-energy states than low-energy states." Hope explained.
"objects with negative temperatures behave in very odd ways. For instance, energy typically flows from objects with a higher positive temperature to ones with a lower positive temperature that is, hotter objects heat up cooler objects, and colder objects cool down hotter ones, until they reach a common temperature. However, energy will always flow from objects with negative temperature to ones with positive temperatures. In this sense, objects with negative temperatures are always hotter than ones with positive temperatures." Hope kept on explaining.
"Simply means -1 k is hotter than 1 trillion k."
"But why am I talking about negative temperature? Well, simply because of entropy when objects with positive temperature release energy, they increase the entropy of things around them, making them behave more chaotically. However, when objects with negative temperatures release energy, they can actually absorb entropy."
"Negative temperatures could be used to create heat engines engines that convert heat energy to mechanical work, such as combustion engines that are more than 100 percent efficient, something seemingly impossible. Such engines would essentially not only absorb energy from hotter substances, but also colder ones. As such, the work the engine performed could be larger than the energy taken from the hotter substance alone."
"And another key thing it could help understand why the universe is still expanding though in reality dark energy while very abundant after the singularity war or the big bang as you know it only affects the expansion very little the expansion is still expanding because of the collective conscious bomb." Hope concluded his explanation.
"Also, here is the artifact. I hope you like it. I personally obtained it from the warehouse and it was used to kill the origin of good." Hope said as he took out a revolver that kept switching between black and white.
"Now I would love to give you the unsealed version but that would ruin the fun because that gun can one shot anything or well anything but me but you get the point also the recoil would also take you out with your target so yeah but I hope you still enjoy it." Hopes said as he gave the revolver to Odin and left.
Odin looked at the weapon and muttered.
"Chronostasis."
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