35. The Head's Training Ground (3)

The underground prison felt like a place that had swallowed the very concept of time.

“In a place where not even sunlight reaches, the one and only way I can mark off a day is thanks to the drop of water clinging to the tip of a stalactite on the ceiling.”

Plip.

One full day, and a drop would fall. So when today’s drop broke free with a plip, I picked up a stone and scratched a single tally into the wall.

Scrape.

That made it the ninety-first.

Three months already, living in this underground training ground.

A thick, bushy beard had grown in over my face, and my palms were caked with calluses. I was still skinny, sure, but no longer the wretched kind of skinny I’d been before.

The three months I’d spent down here had changed me considerably, and that change wasn’t mine alone.

“Because it’s got romance to it.”

My daily routine was simple. I worked out to build raw strength, ate Illusion Mushrooms, and sparred against an illusion of Kairon. When I dropped from exhaustion, the next day came around; I notched another tally and got moving again.

“The hero locked in a dungeon grows a bushy beard, carves the days on the wall, and engraves his vengeance into his bones… famous cliché, isn’t it?”

“…The world?”

Even as I kept the back-and-forth with Eve going, I was hoisting an iron shield up and down. I’d turned into a genuine gym rat.

“Look at those triceps eating well again today.”

Eve shuddered with disgust and shook her head hard.

The dark, dingy air of the underground training ground was clearly getting to Eve. But what was I supposed to do about it? The work had to be done.

“Hraaagh.”

True to the day’s routine, I settled the shield across my shoulders and started into my squats. Three months ago, lifting that thirty-kilogram slab of iron had taken both hands and a hard grunt of effort; now I could handle it as lightly as an ordinary sword. If anything, I felt almost cheated that there was nothing heavier to load on.

Never thought I’d live to see the day.

Only in a game world could any of this be possible, of course. And that a basement-dwelling game addict like me could ever end up thinking this way at all was honestly a small marvel.

“Ninety… nine!”

Shield still riding my shoulders, I cranked out the hundredth squat, sweat pattering down in fat drops. My breath had climbed all the way up into my throat, but the kill-me-now agony of before was gone. All that remained was the pleasant, taut burn of muscle being stretched.

So this is how someone becomes a gym rat.

I closed my eyes and pictured it. Seraphina was raining ice magic down on me, and beside her, Valerian’s sword loosed a slash blazing with blue light. So I kicked the shield up off the floor to block Seraphina’s ice, caught it mid-air, and swung it through Valerian’s slash to cancel the blow out.

Eve watched me, lower lip pushed out, and gave a sniff through her nose.

“What’s gotten into you this time?”

At that, Eve crossed her arms with a face full of grievance and machine-gunned her complaints at me.

She must have had a lot pent up, because it all came pouring out at once.

“What’s Overclock?”

“You could just call it ‘fusing.’ Why slap such a grand name on it?”

A fairly thick streak of madness ran through her voice, so I decided to take a step back.

“We agreed we wouldn’t use that often anymore… you were the one who said we shouldn’t let you get hooked on Overclock.”

Fair enough. Just as she’d warned, somewhere along the way I’d let myself fall under the spell of her Pain Suppression function.

This time I had to admit she was right, so I went along with it. But in the process, I’d picked up a new skill.

“Out of the blue, but — pop in here for a second.”

I scratched my head as I spoke to her.

“Got something to show you.”

“Faster to show you than to explain in words.”

As if she’d been waiting for it, her form vanished, fusing into me.

The moment Eve was inside, I tossed a fistful of Illusion Mushrooms into my mouth. She shrieked at me to spit them out, but I chewed and swallowed in silence.

“Quit fussing and just watch.”

A foul taste flooded my tongue, my head went hazy, and my vision started twisting into shades of purple. The world spun in slow, lazy circles, and my reason began to blur.

“No way!”

Eve cried out at the sight unfolding in front of me.

Kairon, Seraphina, Valerian, Lucius.

The four of them knelt on one knee, in a row, before me.

And not in their ordinary human forms, either. They’d taken their Demon Knights-era shapes, clad head to toe in black plate armor and radiating a battle aura like hellfire.

“W-what is all this? I didn’t manipulate anything!”

I held tight to my fraying consciousness and spoke.

“This whole time you’ve been manipulating my brainwaves to show me illusions, right? Well, about two months in, I got a feel for it.”

“A feel?”

“Mm. The sensation of you sending signals into my brain — I could feel it. So I memorized that sensation and mimicked it.”

To put it simply, the ability Eve had been running while inside my body, my own brain had mistaken for one of its own skills and learned.

“In a way, that’s not even wrong. The thing happening is happening in my body, after all.”

“Even so, the fact that something like this is possible…”

“I know. I’m a genius.”

I’d quietly nursed the hope that choking down Illusion Mushrooms until I was sick of them might earn me Hallucination Resistance. Enemies who wield illusion magic aren’t exactly rare, after all. But Hallucination Resistance wasn’t what I’d gained. I’d gained something even better.

“Now I can summon illusions in a hallucinated state, just as I please.”

In the days since, I’d been testing how far the ability could go, how much of it I could control on my own. The conclusion was simple.

“I can deploy them however I want now.”

Kairon, Seraphina, Valerian, and Lucius rose from their knees. Now on their feet, the four of them joined hands around me and began to spin in a circle.

“Check it out — cool, right?”

When their ganggangsullae finally wound down¹, Eve slipped back out of my body and took her own form again to speak.

“I wanted to perfect it first and surprise you.”

Instead of answering, Eve showed me a single message.

The world itself was vouching for my growth. I took it as proof that I’d grown stronger, and the thought lifted my mood.

“It’s all thanks to you, you know?”

At that, Eve burst out laughing.

With Eve’s mood restored, it was time to play the real game.

Aerondight.

The hell I’d been through because of this heavy chunk of iron.

“Phew.”

I drew one big breath, then clamped my grip around the sword’s hilt.

I’d told Eve not to tell me my current Strength stat. If I failed, I’d just go back to working out, no harm done; I didn’t want to grind out reps only to close some number gap.

My heart was pounding. Feeling that thump, I forced strength into my arms.

Shrring.

“…Huh?”

It was light.

So absurdly light that a half-laugh slipped out before I could stop it. Three months ago, lifting this sword had taken both hands and gritted teeth; now it sat in my grip lighter than a wooden practice blade.

Ding—!

A crisp chime rang out, and the system window flickered up before my eyes.

At the same moment, a faint blue light welled up from the blade.

“…One filthy hard sword to lift, honestly.”

This, at last, was the moment Aerondight acknowledged me as its master.

Eve was even more thrilled by my success than I was. She bounced up and down as if all that earlier sulking had never happened.

They say the surest sign you’ve had a successful life is having a friend who genuinely celebrates your successes.

For the first time, I felt like I understood that saying, at least a sliver of it. But I pushed the giddiness down, settled my grip on the sword, and steadied my stance.

“It’s no time to be happy. This is just the beginning.”

“For a blacksmith, a forge hotter than lava and the finest hammer are important — but you know what matters even more?”

I started walking, slow, the sword still in my hand. The countless sword marks crowding the dark walls of the training ground, the traces left by Kairon and by every head of House Arne for centuries, came into view.

“What he uses them to forge — that comes down to his skill.”

The equipment was up to spec; now it was time to fill in the skill to make use of that spec.

“This place isn’t simply Kairon’s training ground.”

The sword strokes carved into the walls, the boulders, and the floor held the very essence of the swordsmanship that the heads of House Arne had spent their lives refining. There was only one way to put it.

“It’s the finest secret-arts manual there is.”

Eve’s growing knack for reading me lightened the workload. I rested a hand against the wall and tugged one corner of my mouth into a crooked grin.

“Let’s copy every last one of them down, every single one.”

Whisk—!

Aerondight’s blade carved through empty air. It wasn’t a simple slash. I traced the sword marks left in the wall, branding each trajectory into my brain through dozens, then hundreds, of mindless, brute-force repetitions.

Eve corrected my form even further through Overclock. Pain Suppression, though, I left switched off. I wanted to know how far the me gripping the sword could push his own limits.

Until Eve declared the form perfect. Until my muscles remembered and the motion was carved into bone. I let not a single movement slide as I swung the sword.

One hundred, one hundred one, one hundred two…

Once I’d barely mastered a single sword mark, I moved on to the next.

I treated Eve in earnest as my teacher and silently followed her every instruction. The upward cut of the second head of the house, the thrust of the fifth, on down to the footwork of the current head, Kairon. Centuries of Arne swordsmanship poured into this miserable body of mine.

Under the guidance of the strictest teacher of all.

.

.

.

And just like that, another month passed.

How were things going in the world outside? Had Valerian passed the Trial of Wisdom? Was Seraphina safe, back in the Empire? What if the Crown Prince’s coming-of-age ceremony had been pushed up, and the continent was already a sea of fire?

A queue of anxieties tried to chain themselves together one after another, but I shook my head.

Scrape.

I’d long since cut down all such idle thoughts with the tip of my sword. What mattered now was nothing more than clearing the towering wall in front of me.

I swallowed the last remaining Illusion Mushroom.

Krrrang—!

Wooden sword and real blade crashed together, sparks scattering. Blows that at first had sent me flying without so much as grazing me, I now took without staggering. The next one I deflected; the one after that, I countered.

Clang! Cla-clang!

My muscles screamed and sweat blurred my eyes, but I couldn’t stop.

This sensation. The thrilling sensation of Arne swordsmanship, refined across centuries, reproduced at the very tips of my fingers.

Until the boundary between reality and hallucination collapsed and only the sensation riding the tip of my sword stayed vivid. I became a single swordsman and swung my blade like a man possessed.

And then, at last.

Whish—!

My sword cut through the air. I’d hit him; I was sure of it. And in that sliver of a moment when the illusion should have wavered and scattered apart…

Tk.

A sword had caught mine. But it was no hazy illusion. It carried the weight of a real blade, heavy and solid and undeniably there.

“You handle my sword as if you were its true master.”

Where the illusion had lifted, the real Kairon stood, looking down at me.