A shockwave parted the flames as Kyle swung his hammer with a smile.
He had been swinging his hammer for quite a time.
His muscles bulged and tore again and again due to the cold and the strain.
'Gotta keep going!' he thought as he swung again.
His arms bulged with all the power he could muster.
His body was screaming at him that he was using too much power and that he was getting injured.
But that was exactly what he wanted.
The offensive aspect of the muscles had to be trained as well.
He had to swing stronger, wider, and harder.
He swung again and again.
'More!' he thought as another shower of frozen blood burst out of his broken skin.
'More!'
'More!'
He swung again.
'I need to get stronger!'
'I mean, I don't exactly need to get stronger. It's more like I want to get stronger. But hey, that's basically the same thing at this point.'
Kyle noticed that the flames around him were parting more.
This meant that his power was increasing.
'Dude, why is this so amazing? I would've never thought that it would be so great to see these tiny improvements after tens of thousands of repetitions of the same attack.'
Kyle's mind was in a state of focused improvement.
The world outside this flame had become irrelevant and timeless.
It didn't matter how many years passed outside. Kyle just loved seeing his power improving more and more.
During this entire time, Kyle wasn't even using his Law of Meteor or his Law of Yin-Metal to improve his attacks.
He was just swinging with his body while watching the Yin-Fire around him.
The Yin-Fire parted with every strike, showing Kyle more of its secrets.
He wasn't focusing on any aspect of the Yin-Fire in particular.
He was just looking at the entire thing while focusing on his muscles.
Up to now, Kyle had focused on the specific aspects of a Law while analyzing it with his mind.
But now, he was just swinging, watching, and feeling.
With time, he got better at predicting what the Yin-Flames were doing.
He didn't exactly know how it worked, but his instincts had gotten attuned to it.
He kind of just instinctively knew what the Yin-Flame would do.
This was also a way one could understand Laws.
Assume someone stood on top of a building with a basketball. The person's goal was to bounce the ball on the ground so hard that it bounced back to the person's height. How would that person accomplish that?
Well, if the person just let the ball drop, it would automatically bounce back to the same height… if this were a vacuum.
But it's not.
So, one had to include friction, which slowed the ball on the way down and on the way up.
More power equals more resistance and friction, which also had to be accounted for.
Then, there was also wind that might push the ball off-course.
With enough calculations, one could make a machine that shot the ball down with enough speed that it would reach the same height again.
That was one way to solve this scenario.
Another way was to simply throw so many balls that one just got a natural feeling for it. That was another way to solve this scenario, assuming the person had enough physical power to spike the ball hard enough.
One person reached the goal via pure understanding and calculations, while the other reached the goal via practice and instinct.
Sure, the second person didn't know how exactly all the forces interacted, but the end result was the same.
As Kyle swung his hammer, he was reminded of the time he had learned Ether Strike from Bonk.
Back then, Bonk had said that Kyle was using his mind too much.
He had to think like a dwarf.
He had to feel.
Kyle felt how his muscles moved.
With every strike, their movements became slightly different.
Sometimes, his strikes became a bit weaker, which elicited a feeling of dissatisfaction in Kyle.
These weaker strikes just didn't feel right.
As a result, he avoided striking in this way again.
Sometimes, the strikes became stronger, and Kyle felt satisfied.
When that happened, Kyle tried to turn these sporadic spikes of power into his regular strikes.
After many, many swings, he eventually managed to pull this strike off every single time.
And then, a new sporadic increase happened, which he chased after again.
What kind of processes and concepts have taken place to improve the power of these strikes?
Kyle had no idea.
He just knew that they were stronger and felt better.
Improvement became harder and harder as more time passed, but Kyle didn't stop.
He just kept swinging while taking everything in.
Several years passed.
In fact, far more years had passed than Kyle had anticipated.
Eventually, Kyle stopped swinging.
He couldn't improve his strikes anymore, but he had also not fully realized the full potential of his muscles.
'I'm still missing a bit,' he thought. 'I think I got pretty far, but this is as far as the mindless swinging gets me.'
Next, Kyle started to swing again, but this time, he actually used his brain and looked at how his Biological Ether moved.
After just three swings, his understanding of his muscles multiplied.
The concepts of his Biological Ether were new, but he was so familiar with them that their workings just seemed obvious to him.
Just 20 swings later, Kyle knew how his current body worked.
Then, he paused, closed his eyes, and calculated a bit.
'This goes here. This moves like that. It makes that happen, which makes that happen. This would help as well, but it can't do that because this thing is interfering.'
'Potentially… maybe… nah… although… nah, won't work. But if I… yeah… maybe.'
After around ten minutes, Kyle opened his eyes again and swung.
The strike was much more powerful than the last one, and a smirk appeared on Kyle's face.
'Yep! Works just as planned!'
'Now, we just need to incorporate this part, and then…'
BOOOM!
The strike became even more powerful.
In fact, Kyle's strike was more than thrice as strong as before he had started training in the Yin-Fire.
'And that's it!'
'Fragment of Muscles and Fragment of Bones, done!'
tg://resolv?domain=StrongestHammerGod
The author's patreon. If he gets more than 1000€ per month, he will increase the number of words in the chapter.