‘Should I accept it?’
For a moment, hesitation came first.
The part of me saying, ‘Of course! Why refuse when they’re giving it to you?!’ was locked in a fierce battle with the part asking, ‘Do you really want to get screwed by this fucking trash game again?’
‘Yeah. Trust my gut.’
There had been choices before, but none of them had caused any negative effects. I trusted myself and chose to accept it.
The moment I decided, an intense light wrapped around my body, and I recovered in an instant. The muscles that had been trembling, knotted, and screaming in pain returned to normal in the blink of an eye. Even the minor injuries this body had already sustained before I woke up in it were healing cleanly.
Not a bad reward. The physical pain had vanished in one shot. My body felt so light that I could even start over from the beginning...... Better keep my mouth shut. Just in case.
Still, maybe because I had expected too much, I could not deny feeling a little disappointed. After going through all that, all I got was super recovery.
......Super recovery?
‘Wait, this......’
Now that I thought about it, this was incredible.
Super recovery as a ‘Daily Reward,’ not something for ‘reaching a level.’
Depending on how I used it, couldn’t this become a kind of invincibility? For someone like me, whose highest priority was survival, a reward like this was rain after a drought.
In other words, exaggerating just a little, even if I were on the verge of death, all I would have to do was swing a sword properly once and—ta-da!—super recovery would activate.
In game terms, wasn’t that basically the same as having an extra revival coupon?
‘Now that I look again, it’s a fairy!’
Very nice.
This reward was extremely satisfying.
‘Hah, as expected of me! No wonder I wanted to buy the moment I saw it!’
I had long since forgotten everything I had said earlier about refunds and protest trucks.
Let’s stay together for a long, long time, .
[Daily Reward received.]
[From now on, failing to meet the Daily Training quota will incur a penalty.]
......What was that, punk?
***
Click-
Click-
Click.
The pieces on the chessboard moved rhythmically, creating an indescribably vast number of moves.
Romero, who held complete dominion over the board, glanced at the masked man prostrating himself before him and spoke.
“That neck of yours is quite impressive.”
“My apologies.”
The handprint Lucas had left was still clearly visible on the masked man’s neck.
“Yes. We provoked him enough. Enough that it would not have been strange for him to suddenly lose his temper.”
It had been something Romero carried out with considerable care. There could never be exceptions in anything Romero did.
‘But he cried out before he discovered the hidden guard...... What on earth could the reason be?’
Romero tapped the knight in his hand against the chessboard—click, click—as he sank into thought.
The recording magic had captured a groan—Ghhk—before the masked man was seized by the collar. The masked man claimed it was the sound Lucas made when the anger he had been suppressing finally exploded, but something did not add up. It was more suited to...... yes. Pain. Severe pain.
“Deyan. When you go to Lord Kraus, find out whether he might be suffering from an illness.”
“......An illness?”
“Yes. There is something about it that troubles me.”
“As you command.”
Romero turned his gaze back to the chessboard.
One of the pieces on his board moved heavily.
***
“Hrk!”
Five in the morning, as usual.
My eyes naturally(?) opened.
I showered, went through another battle between reason and self, and headed to in uniform.
I summoned an iron sword and was about to naturally start with a downward slash when-
“Ah, what now?”
The translucent versions of me reflected in the mirroring system were taking every stance except the downward slash.
Apparently, since I had gotten a taste of the downward slash yesterday, it was kindly telling me to try the others. A smile naturally spread across my face.
“Fine. I’d rather die than suffer.”
This time, I chose the horizontal slash.
One thing I had noticed while practicing the downward slash was that the sword was fairly heavy, so simply holding it up often became difficult.
The horizontal-slash stance looked comfortable because it seemed like I would be able to rest it against something.
......I changed my mind about that in exactly five minutes.
Whether I held it overhead or to the right, after a hundred swings it was all the same, and this one was even more grueling because it wrung effort out of muscles I had not been using before.
Only after wrestling with it for about an hour did I finally manage one proper swing. Still, shaving thirty minutes off my first day made it feel like I had improved somehow.
But-
[ Proficiency increased.]
[Basic Swordsmanship - 0.0101%]
[0.0099% remaining to today’s target.]
Seeing that kind of thing killed the feeling immediately.
‘Yeah. Exactly one hundred. One hundred.’
At least having a visible goal gave me motivation. And once I got going, watching that number change gave me a strange sense of accomplishment.
[ Proficiency increased.]
[Basic Swordsmanship - 0.02%]
[Daily Training complete. Reward granted.]
And the super recovery that came at the end of the grueling training felt unbelievably sweet.
Training demanded a different stance every time, and each time, new muscles screamed in protest. But the time it took to complete Daily Training was gradually decreasing.
‘Is this what growth feels like?’
A sensation I had never felt even once in my life tingled through my entire body.
[ Proficiency increased.]
[Basic Swordsmanship - 0.08%]
[Daily Training complete. Reward granted.]
And so, over eight days, I swung a hundred times in each basic stance for all eight directions.
Now I felt like I could easily manage a hundred swings in any stance.
On the ninth day, I finished a hundred downward slashes. On the first day, it had taken over ten hours. Now, three hours was enough. Even the muscle pain seemed less severe. Still, super recovery was always sweet...... sweet...... it should have been sweet?
‘Why isn’t anything happening?’
The Daily Reward that had always followed as a matter of course was gone.
Fear suddenly clutched at me. The plan I had made when I first learned about the Daily Reward had practically been crumpled up.
‘Wait......’
Something was strange.
Normally, once I completed a hundred repetitions, the translucent figure projected by the mirroring system would disappear.
But now-
‘No, why is that thing still holding a stance?’
The projected ‘me’ over there was standing ready, as if urging me to move on to the next stance.
‘Don’t tell me......’
You want me to do two other stances a hundred times each?
I had not asked expecting an answer, but the thing I saw through the mirroring system looked as though it nodded. Ah, no. That was just distortion caused by my damp eyes.
And here I thought it was a friendly system that answered when I asked questions.
“Fuck that, I’m not doing it!”
Adding another hundred repetitions in a different stance was not simply a matter of increasing the count. The strain on my body got squared. I could do a hundred with a smile. I could even understand adding another ten or so.
But adding a whole extra set?
Wasn’t this too much?
I just lay down flat.
[Abandon completion of Daily Training?]
I don’t care. Do your worst.
[Daily Training abandoned.]
“Wait, don’t tell me it’ll be deleted?”
The razor-sharp warning from the first day suddenly flashed through my mind, and I shot upright. Fortunately, was not deleted.
Instead-
[Daily Training failed. Penalty applied.]
SNAP!
At the sound of something breaking, my consciousness went black.
***
Enormous faces swallow my field of vision.
Familiar faces, and faces I never wanted to remember.
-Hey, you utterly incompetent bastard. I told you not to stop me when I go after this bastard, didn’t I?
-Corporal Park, I’m fine. Please don’t provoke that bastard Sergeant Kim for no reason. Just pretend you didn’t see anything.
-Your direct junior was suffering badly enough to hang himself, and you, his direct senior, just stood by and watched!
-It’s all your fault. All your fault.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
The faces cling to my body and slowly gnaw away at me, starting from my fingertips and toes.
“Ghh, stop. Please stop!”
The pain stabs vividly into my mind. But I cannot shake them off, nor can I do anything at all. I have no choice but to endure the pain and torment in full.
SWISH- TAP.
The pain continues, but only the cut changes.
The memories I had struggled so hard to forget slowly creep back up.
-Son, I’m sorry. You should be a good son to your mother, right? Let’s die. Die for me, son......
The knife in her hand keeps stabbing into my body.
“Ghk, stop. Stop!”
Once, twice. Forever, as though it will never end.
And that is not all. Every joint is crushed like bubble wrap being pressed down, and my entire body is twisted into grotesque shapes.
But even more painful than the physical agony are the words those things spit at me.
“Please stop...... I think I’m going to die like this...... please......”
But the pain does not end.
And so, eons pass.
***
“Ghhhh! Haaah, haaah. Hah, hah......”
Hyperventilation. I’m hyperventilating. Where’s a bag? Ah, do they not have those here? Anything, hurry, please.
“Ghk, haaah.”
The severe muscle pain crushing my entire body is bad enough, but not being able to breathe is unbearable. Like someone who nearly drowned and was barely pulled out of the water.
Only after gasping breath after breath for a long while did I finally calm down.
I seriously thought I was going to die.
‘What the hell happened to me?’
My last memory was seeing the notification saying a penalty would be applied.
I remembered nothing after that.
But one thing was certain: I had experienced something unimaginably horrific, and I never wanted to go through it again.
I needed fresh air right now.
I tried to raise my sweat-soaked body, but the muscle pain was so severe that I could not move at all.
“Ha, this is fucking awful.”
More than the physical pain, I felt filthy and gloomy.
“Aaaaaaaaaaah!”
I stayed sprawled out and screamed.
Nothing changed.
My body was still buried under pain so immense I could not move, and the fucking awful feeling would not go away.
I spent an entire day lying there like that.
[Daily Training completion reset.]
What finally made me raise my body was the notification that appeared after the day changed.
***
[Grasco Freshman Admissions Guidelines]
The admissions guidelines for selecting new students at Grasco and academies across the various nations were distributed throughout the continent.
This year, the academy drawing the most attention was none other than Grasco.
The Hero of the Eastern Front, who had once set the entire continent abuzz, had been appointed as a professor, and people’s curiosity had reached its peak.
For a while, people talked about little besides Grasco and Lucas.
“Just how strong is he? I heard he wiped out all his enemies with a single swing of his sword!”
“No, no, I heard he crushed them with his bare hands?”
“I heard you can hear the roar of a wild beast coming from him?”
The rumors grew increasingly exaggerated and distorted.
“I heard a new class that professor will be exclusively in charge of is opening this time?”
“Think I could get stronger too if I got in?”
“Give it up. No matter how much Grasco may be declining, they only accept talented people. They don’t even allow donation-based admissions there. You really think someone like you could get in?”
“I was just saying. Just saying.”
Naturally, attention also gathered around the new course Lucas was said to be opening at Grasco.
All eyes were turning toward Grasco.