The Psychopathic Beast Emperor-Chapter 81: Completing the Quest

[DAILY QUESTS: UPDATE!]

1. 1000 Squats (50 Completed)

2. 500 Push-Ups (Yet to Complete)

3. 10 km Run (Completed)

4. 2 Hours Meditation (Yet to Complete)

5. Weapon Familiarization (Yet to Complete)

Time Limit: 13 Hours Left!

Penalty: Become Crippled for Two Days

Side Note: All these will be done with the suppressors on. Don’t worry. The system already helped you with it.

Good Luck!

...

Bahamut stared at the system screen, his expression flat with acceptance. The system was literally turning him to die... Again.

"You look like you are ready to die," Sel commented from the side as he finally pushed himself up with his staff.

"Just kill me already..." Bahamut muttered with a grave tone, making Sel shiver. The aura around him was dark and depressive. The air even turned chilly. This was a man who had accepted death as his salvation.

"I feel like something is up. What do you need?" Sel asked, after pondering a bit, making Bahamut sit up suddenly as if he wasn’t the one who had just accepted to die.

Bahamut stared at him behind the blindfold, as he stroked his chin for a while...

"How many weapons do you have?" he asked.

"Mm... About twenty..." Sel responded casually, making Bahamut stare at him as if he had said he was a god.

"TWENTY?! What the hell, dude!" Bahamut exclaimed in shock. Twenty weapons... he thought he had either one or maybe two, but twenty?

"And you know how to use all of them?" he inquired, his shock slowly rising.

"Uh... yeah?" Sel responded with an embarrassed chuckle.

"Are you a god of weapons or something?" Bahamut and Ren scrutinized him with narrowed gazes. Bahamut was even leaning towards him, his face dangerously close to his.

"My master back home can use a lot of weapons..." Sel leaned back, his usual calm composure almost breaking.

"Hmm... I have to familiarize myself with a weapon," Bahamut spoke, finally leaning back and leaving Sel alone.

"What weapon?"

Bahamut thought back to the events that had taken place ever since he reincarnated into this world, of which he didn’t even know the name. He recalled how he’d fought beasts all this time and remembered the battle with the golden sun eagle.

"A spear."

"You sure?"

"Yep!"

"Alright."

...

’System!’ Bahamut called out to the system as he stood in a training room. They had gotten access to it through Elder Silvia. It seemed that direct disciples had access to some private facilities in the sect. And that was how he found himself in this place with Sel and Ren.

Sel had given him a spear, which wasn’t even necessary because there was a rack of weapons in the training room. But Bahamut had an intuition that Sel’s weapon would be his best option, so he still kept it.

The place was large, about as wide as a normal gym with a wooden floor, though the wood looked extremely sturdy and strong. The walls were painted golden brown, giving them the same color as the floor. The ceiling was also tall enough to contain a nine-foot-tall person without their head hitting it, and they could even move freely.

Bahamut stood there, holding the spear with the head facing downwards in front of him, while the shaft pointed upwards behind him.

’Can you unlock any of my memories about spear usage?’ Bahamut asked the system, though he wasn’t hopeful.

[Replying Host...]

[Yes! But, it will be only the basics of the basics]

’Really? Nice.’

[Accessing Past Live Memories...]

[Overriding Passive Attribute...]

[Accessing Spear Usage-based Memories...]

[...Callibrating...]

[Success!]

The world tilted, as if someone had quietly slid a different lens over reality. Bahamut’s grip on the spear adjusted on its own.

His fingers remembered where to sit; where the balance point was, how much pressure was too much... The shaft no longer felt like a long stick with a sharp end; it felt like an extension of his arms, of his spine, and of the space around him.

A memory surfaced... the feeling of standing still and being dangerous anyway.

Bahamut inhaled slowly. His stance shifted; his left foot pushed forward. His right foot angled just enough as his knees relaxed. The spear tilted a few degrees, the head no longer pointed down but hovering at an unthreatening, indifferent angle.

Sel blinked. Ren’s ears perked...

Bahamut moved.

There was no flourish, no dramatic shout like he had an issue with silence, and no burst of aura.

He stepped forward once and thrust.

The motion was clean and linear. The spearhead stopped a finger’s breadth from the far wall.

There was no whistle of air, no explosive force, yet the absence of wasted motion made Sel’s spine prickle.

Bahamut withdrew the spear, rolled his wrists, and pivoted.

He made a sweep: low, controlled, and precise enough that if there had been an ankle there, it would have been gone.

Another step, followed by a thrust, then a half-turn, with a reverse grip adjustment that lasted less than a blink.

He wasn’t training... He was remembering how it felt to use one of the weapons he’d mastered a long time ago.

Sel’s hand tightened around nothing. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"That’s..." he muttered, then stopped himself. Bahamut continued, so focused that the world was now a background to him.

It was only him and the spear, nothing else. He continued with the movements...

Step, thrust, recover, turn, block, redirect, advance, withdraw, realign.

But each movement flowed into the next without seams. There was no hesitation or overcorrection.

The spear never drifted off-line... never lagged behind his intent. The wooden floor creaked softly beneath his feet.

Ren’s eyes glowed faintly as he followed Bahamut’s movements.

Sel finally realized what was bothering him. Bahamut wasn’t fast, nor was he strong.

He was correct.

Every angle was right. Every distance was measured, every motion ended exactly where it should, no more, no less. Even Sel, who had trained with weapons for years, felt a strange irritation in his chest.

It was like watching someone write perfect characters without thinking about the strokes.

Bahamut stopped, then exhaled.

"Huh... That feels..."

Sel stared at him.

"You’ve never trained with a spear?" Sel asked slowly, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Not in this life..." Bahamut muttered, his eyes glued to the long weapon in his hand.

"I don’t know any techniques," he said honestly.

Sel swallowed hard at the statement.

"You don’t need them."

"That bad?"

Sel let out a short, incredulous laugh.

"That basic thrust you did?" he said. "If you used it on someone charging at you... They died before realizing you moved."

Ren nodded enthusiastically. Even he, who had once been a blind boy, could tell that Bahamut’s basic movements were dangerous. Very dangerous... And deadly.

[Weapon Familiarization Completed!]

...

The training room felt smaller now... not physically. Its walls hadn’t moved, but the air itself had thickened, like the space had decided to sit on Bahamut’s shoulders and refuse to get up.

He stood in the center of the training roomm staring at the translucent red screen hovering in front of his face.

[Daily Quest Update!]

- Squats: 50/1000

- Push-ups: 0/500

...

Bahamut exhaled slowly.

"You really hate me," he muttered. The suppressors answered quietly by increasing their presence.

His body felt like it was being politely but firmly reminded that it did not own itself today.

Sel leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, already regretting staying to watch. Ren sat on the weapon rack, his ears drooping slightly, his eyes fixed on Bahamut with concern.

Bahamut set his feet...

"Alright. Let’s ruin my entire existence."

The first squat nearly fooled him. His legs bent, his body lowered, his muscles protested, but only mildly.

"Okay," he breathed. "This isn’t..."

The suppressors suddenly clicked. He felt like gravity had tripled.

His descent turned into a controlled collapse, his thighs screaming as an invisible pressure crushed down on his spine, hips, and knees. His bones groaned...

He hit the bottom of the squat, trembling.

Then pushed up.

Veins stood out along his neck. His teeth clenched.

One.

Two.

Ten.

By fifty, sweat was pouring down his back like rain.

By one hundred, his breathing was ragged, shallow, like his lungs had forgotten how deep breaths worked.

By two hundred, blood began to trickle from his nose, splashing onto the wooden floor in dark, sticky drops.

Sel straightened.

"Bahamut," he said quietly. "You can pace..."

"Don’t," Bahamut rasped. "Interrupt."

His legs shook violently as he dropped into another squat.

Three hundred.

His thighs felt detached, like foreign objects screaming complaints into his nervous system. Every rise felt like dragging his body up from underwater, except the water was made of stone and intent.

Time stopped behaving normally.

There was no counting anymore. Just a rhythm of pain.

Down.Up.Down.Up.

The floor beneath his feet began to crack, not dramatically, but enough to show fine spiderweb fractures spreading outward.

His muscles tore.

Regenerated.

Tore again.

But the regeneration lagged.

The suppressors didn’t care that his body was healing. They only cared that it was still moving.

By six hundred, his legs buckled mid-rise.

He slammed to one knee, coughing violently, blood spraying from his lips this time.

Ren hopped down from the rack.

"...Idiot," the bunny muttered, ears flattened.

Bahamut laughed weakly.

"Too late to stop now."

He forced himself back up.

Seven hundred.

The last stretch wasn’t training.

It was survival.

His heartbeat thundered so loud it drowned out his thoughts. His muscles weren’t just screaming anymore; they were silent, numb, moving only because something deeper refused to let him stop.

Each squat took everything.

His legs no longer rose smoothly. They jerked, like a puppet dragged upward by invisible strings.

At nine hundred, he collapsed forward, hands slamming into the floor, breath coming in broken, animal gasps.

"...Fifty," he whispered.

Sel moved instinctively... and froze.

Bahamut was already moving again.

The last fifty were ugly. No form, no grace. Just defiance.

When he hit 950, his legs finally gave out completely.

He slammed onto his back.

The system chimed.

[Squats: 1000/1000 (Completed!)]

He didn’t respond.

He just lay there, chest heaving, blood and sweat soaking into the wood beneath him.

Then the screen updated.