Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 3002: Extreme Physique

The Gravestone Ruler came down like a falling mountain.

Typhon shifted aside at the last instant, one scaled arm rising to intercept the massive weapon. The ruler crashed against his forearm with a deafening boom, sending a shockwave rippling across the training ground. The hybrid was forced back half a step, his feet carving shallow trenches through the stone.

It wasn’t the weapon’s edge that surprised him.

It was the weight.

Every swing carried a crushing force that seemed capable of flattening mountains. Even a glancing blow threatened to shatter bones through sheer momentum alone.

Emery gave him no time to recover.

He flowed seamlessly from offense into defense, the colossal ruler sweeping into a low horizontal guard before pivoting into another devastating strike. Every movement originated from his center, his footing rooted firmly to the earth as his hips, shoulders, and arms worked as one. Rather than resisting the weapon’s impossible weight, he allowed it to carry each attack forward, guiding its momentum with practiced precision.

There was nothing flashy about the style.

No dazzling flourishes.

Only relentless, overwhelming pressure.

It was the kind of combat that slowly crushed an opponent’s defenses, giving even a Three Cosmos hybrid almost no room to breathe.

For several exchanges, Typhon found himself genuinely driven backward.

”Huh...”

The qilin hybrid’s eyes narrowed with genuine interest.

”Impressive.”

His aura suddenly exploded outward.

Golden scales spread rapidly across his body as muscles expanded beneath them, his horns lengthening while blazing spirit energy surged through every vein. In the blink of an eye, he completed his beast transformation, releasing the full might of his bloodline.

The battlefield changed instantly.

If Emery could now rival Typhon in raw physical strength, speed remained an entirely different matter.

Typhon disappeared.

One instant he stood before Emery.

The next, he had become nothing more than streaks of golden light racing across the battlefield. Every movement was impossibly fast, each attack arriving from a different angle before Emery’s eyes could properly follow. The pressure shifted immediately, forcing Emery onto the defensive.

Emery responded without hesitation.

Darkness and radiance intertwined around his body as he activated his Twilight Transformation, his own aura rising sharply to meet the hybrid’s overwhelming presence.

Then he planted the Gravestone Ruler before him.

The massive weapon struck the earth with a thunderous crash.

The surrounding space seemed to sink.

An immense field of invisible gravitational force expanded outward from Emery’s position, forming a perfect defensive domain. Every incoming attack slowed the instant it entered the field, as though countless unseen mountains were dragging it downward.

This was his attempt at unleashing the final form of the Three Axis Mountain Techniques. Although it remained incomplete, the effect, when combined with the immense weight and overwhelming presence of the Gravestone Ruler, was nothing short of tremendous.

Typhon’s next strike collided with the domain.

The punch landed...

It struck the ruler with a metallic roar before sliding harmlessly aside.

Typhon withdrew several steps, studying the technique with open admiration.

”Your ruler techniques have reached another level.”

Emery lowered the massive weapon, his breathing calm and steady despite the exchange.

”Even so...” he admitted with a wry smile, ”I still have no answer to your speed. Against you, I can only stay on the defensive.”

Typhon snorted.

”Hah. Stop underselling yourself.”

He folded his arms, his draconic tail swaying lazily behind him.

”Once your two avatars finish their cultivation, you’ll become even stronger.”

He shook his head, laughing.

”You damn monster.”

Emery answered with nothing more than a faint smile.

His physique had come a long way.

The breakthrough into the Major Stellar Body—the second stage of the Stellar Beast Body Refinement Art—had arrived deep into the previous year after he had finally refined every last high-grade beast core required by the legacy. It had not been a sudden breakthrough marked by violent explosions of power. Instead, it was a slow, methodical transformation that unfolded over the course of an entire week.

Every part of his body had changed.

His bones, already comparable to divine metal, grew denser and tougher, able to endure impacts that would have shattered even high-grade artifacts. His muscles reorganized themselves at the deepest level, each fiber becoming capable of releasing explosive force with almost perfect efficiency. Even his blood and meridians transformed, allowing spirit energy and physical strength to circulate together without the slightest obstruction.

By the end of the process, there was almost no delay between thought and action.

Every movement became instinctively perfect.

VIA had recorded the results without the slightest hint of excitement.

[Battle Power: 2398 (2871)]

Nearly six hundred points higher than before.

That number represented nothing but his physical body.

Emery had reached a new extreme threshold. Few beings beneath the Supreme Realm could now rival him in raw physical strength, endurance, or resilience.

More importantly, today’s sparring session had confirmed what the numbers alone never could.

Against Typhon—a hybrid whose greatest advantage had always been overwhelming physical dominance—Emery could now meet him head-on. Although speed still remained his greatest weakness, the gap in strength had all but disappeared.

That alone made the years of painstaking refinement worthwhile.

Satisfied, Emery dismissed the Gravestone Ruler, its enormous weight dissolving back into his inner domain.

Typhon gave him a final nod before transforming into a streak of golden light and disappearing into the depths of the inner world.

Emery closed his eyes.

His consciousness slowly descended into his inner domain, seeking the two figures who had remained in uninterrupted cultivation throughout the entire exchange.

The dark avatar had not moved in nearly two years.

It sat in absolute stillness, surrounded by the faint remnants of the Tier 8 material recovered from Parasite X—the crystallized core that contained the purest concentration of the creature’s spatial essence.

Wisps of silver-gray energy continuously drifted from the shard before dissolving into the avatar’s body, where Khaos patiently dissected, refined, and assimilated every fragment of comprehension hidden within it.

The process was painstakingly slow.

Rather than consuming the material outright, the avatar unraveled its structure layer by layer, absorbing the laws hidden inside one thread at a time. Each fragment revealed another glimpse into the nature of space itself, insights that no ordinary cultivation technique could ever provide.

Emery had entrusted this task to the dark avatar deliberately.

Such comprehension demanded uninterrupted concentration over years rather than months, and with his responsibilities to his growing family—constantly drawing him away, he could no longer devote himself to that kind of endless meditation.

The avatar could and the results had exceeded his expectations.

Over the past two years, his mastery of Spatial Law had deepened enormously. The improvement was not merely in techniques or execution but in his very understanding of what space truly was. He no longer viewed a spatial rift as simply a tear connecting two locations. Instead, he had begun to perceive the invisible framework beneath reality itself—the countless folds, layers, and intersections that techniques merely manipulated without ever truly comprehending.

It was an entirely different level of insight.

Nearby, the light avatar cultivated with equal focus.

Floating before it was the Astral Link, the mid-grade Tier 7 device that had once been Randhall’s most closely guarded secret. The metallic cube endlessly shifted through countless geometric configurations, every surface rotating independently as arrays folded into new arrays without pause.

Each pattern demanded direct mental pressure to unlock, while every completed sequence collapsed almost immediately into an even more complicated arrangement.

Each level grew exponentially more difficult than the last.

Its divine sense had sharpened dramatically as a result, becoming finer and more precise. Spiritual perception that had once been broad and overwhelming was now astonishingly refined.

Emery watched both avatars quietly for several moments.

His mind turned, once again, toward the greater threshold ahead.

The Three Cosmos realm.

With his third layer of the Second Cosmos already at its peak, he could force the breakthrough attempt if he wished. But the memory of the failed tribulation he had faced on Astiel Planet stayed his hand. He would not gamble on it. This time, he intended to prepare properly, to stand before that threshold only when he was certain.

His physique had reached a new height — yet it was still not enough.

The third stage, the Grand Stellar Body, demanded more high grade beast cores. But the scarcity of those cores was not the true reason for his hesitation.

It was the Stellar Beast Core now seated within him.

Born from primal resonance, it existed beside his own foundation rather than replacing it. It had dramatically expanded his spiritual pool and granted him access to immense stores of raw primal energy. But it was also new. Unsettled. A second heart beating out of time with the first.

He could feel it in every cultivation cycle.

Each time he circulated his power, the beast core pulsed alongside his true foundation, and the two did not yet move in perfect rhythm. His Dao of Heaven and Earth balanced them — but the balance was still delicate, still settling. The primal energy carried a hunger with it, an ancient urge to devour and dominate that pressed faintly against his consciousness whenever he drew too deeply from it.

Pushing toward the third stage now, before that new core had fully harmonized with the rest of him, would be reckless.

His body needed time to grow into what it had already become before it could reach for more.

So Emery let the physique rest.

He would spend that time strengthening himself elsewhere instead, letting the harmonization happen naturally while he sharpened a different edge.

His attention settled on a method he had been meaning to properly develop.

The [Twelve Spirit Beast Arts].

Emery exhaled slowly, the momentary frustration long gone.

Once again, his training continued.