[Romani Oyama]
After getting home, I threw my tired body onto the bed, letting the mattress absorb me as if we were one.
In a single afternoon, I had gone through some rather intense things.
Releasing a sleepy yawn, I raised my arm and studied it for a moment, realizing that my ⟨pugna constitution⟩ was far more troublesome than I had thought.
Honestly, I had been in such a state of euphoria and ecstasy during the fight against Viser that, even if I had permanently lost a limb, it wouldn't have bothered me in the moment. In fact, that sensation probably would have felt almost orgasmic.
I couldn't help but sigh, recognizing the disastrous path being laid out before me.
I need to be more careful with this constitution, or I'll end up turning into a sadomasochist. A dry smile tugged at my lips as that thought settled in.
But my primary objective for now was clear: I needed to become stronger.
Seeing the stray devil standing before me in that abandoned theater made me brood more deeply on what would happen if, by some chance, I became one of them.
It was a little funny to picture myself in Viser's place.
But it wasn't hard to do at all.
For the time being, Rias was a good woman, someone who seemed genuinely concerned about her peerage. Even so, there was still the possibility that she might change someday, or that all of it was nothing more than a well-rehearsed performance. If that turned out to be true, obviously, I wouldn't hesitate for a single second to abandon her without caring about the consequences.
Though the second option seemed far too unlikely to be taken seriously.
Either way, if you abandon your king, you automatically become a stray devil who will be hunted down by every pureblooded demon out there.
As exciting as that sounded, it wasn't something I wanted for myself. Besides, staying as Rias's servant forever wasn't part of my plans, no matter how beautiful, caring, and loving she might be.
My current plan was to remain under the wing of the Gremory Clan, using Rias's influence for protection as I grew stronger. Obviously, I wouldn't be a parasite without giving anything back. I would certainly repay everything I owed her.
But...
In the future, somewhere not too close, my desire was to become independent of her nobility.
It was somewhat surprising that everything ultimately came down to getting stronger.
But I suppose that's the only universal law: the weak can only sit and watch, while the strong take what they want with their own hands.
So, how would I solve that problem? Simple, my dear villager: I would just become stronger.
Fumu! I'm a genius, aren't I?
Puffing out my chest with pride, a yawn escaped my lips.
But for now, my only wish was to sleep and dream of sheep girls leaping across a green meadow.
Rolling over in bed and hugging my pillow, I closed my eyes, not wanting to miss my rendezvous with my dream girls.
✧°✦°✧===✧°✦°✧===✧°✦°✧
Waking up earlier than usual, I rolled out of bed and onto the floor.
I hate mornings!
Using every last shred of my willpower, I moved my hand and pushed myself up off the floor with the dignity of a man who had just survived a battle against himself.
Every step I took in the morning felt like walking through quicksand.
Why, every single morning, do I have to go through this drama?
While yawning, I dressed in something more comfortable, thinking about my goal of becoming stronger. Like it or not, there was a way to gain more resilience, endurance, and even some muscle mass. Unfortunately, that way was savage and brutal.
How so?
Running. I was simply going to go for a morning run.
For me, that was the same as a death sentence.
Fight a stray devil? Please, give me two.
Morning run? Kill me, please.
Setting that aside, I tied my shoes in the most sluggish manner possible, preparing to start the day with some physical exercise.
I grabbed my backpack, which carried a few dozen of my minor healing potions. It was time to find that eye of the tiger and build a little more muscle mass.
If my plan worked, I would achieve a decent level of physical conditioning. If not, I would just be wasting my morning for no reason at all.
Stepping outside, I felt the cold pre-dawn air hitting my cheek, which wasn't really a problem considering my demonic ice powers.
Filling my lungs with the sharp morning air, I started running.
And, because I am the strange sort of person that I am, I started humming.
Softly, at first. Just the percussive rhythm, that guitar riff that any human being with two functioning neurons would recognize instantly.
Bum. Bum-bum-bum.
Then, inevitably, came the vocals.
"Rising up…" I murmured between strides, my lungs still relatively cooperative. "Back on the street…"
It was not, objectively, a good performance. I was already winded, the timing was completely off, and my voice had the acoustic quality of someone singing in a moving train's bathroom. But there was something about the rhythm of that song that synchronized perfectly with the sound of my feet hitting the asphalt, as though Frankie Sullivan had composed it specifically for ridiculous pre-dawn moments like this one.
"It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight—"
The street was completely empty. No witnesses. How convenient.
"Risin' up to the challenge of our rival."
My knees started aching on the same beat I hit the chorus, which, come to think of it, was a flawless poetic metaphor for my current situation. Rocky at least had Mickey yelling at his side. I had the sound of my own breath progressively deteriorating in the pre-dawn silence.
"The last known survivor stalks his prey in the night," I sang, my voice already starting to crack at the edges. "And he's watching us all with the eeeeeye—"
I stopped singing.
Because I stopped being able to sing.
My lungs began burning like coals, my legs ached and throbbed, my beautiful knees trembled, and my vision had gone blurry, my bed calling my name in a seductive voice.
Feeling as though I might vomit at any second, I moved my hand and steadied myself against a tree, sweating profusely.
My performance is at least moving…
In my defense, I was only just warming up my voice.
After a few seconds, looking absolutely ready to be buried, arms trembling slightly, my hand reached into the backpack and fished out a vial of minor healing potion.
Breathing with difficulty, I poured the red liquid down my throat.
It slid down with that sweet, slightly metallic taste I was starting to get used to.
Shortly after, within a minute, the sensation was as if someone had swapped my legs out for a brand new pair. The burning in my lungs faded, the throbbing in my knees vanished, and my vision sharpened enough that I could clearly make out the tree that had been serving as my crutch just seconds before.
I took one deep breath.
Then a second, before looking at the empty vial in my hand and then at the backpack.
Hmm...
The body grows stronger when it is damaged and recovers. That was the basic principle behind any physical training.
You stress the muscle, it tears on a microscopic level, and when it rebuilds, it comes back a little more resilient than before.
However, that process would yield results in a minimum of a week.
That was exactly where my plan came in.
The minor healing potion reduced my recovery time to under a minute. In that case, the entire cycle, from physical limit to rested state, lasted however long it took me to open a vial and swallow its contents. With that, I could repeat this cycle multiple times in a single morning, accumulating a training stimulus that would take weeks through conventional methods. Not to mention that the potions restored muscle soreness and micro-tears in the tissue, returning the body to its starting point and ready for another round of maximum effort.
That was my plan for increasing muscle mass, endurance, and resilience.
It was simple. It was brutal. It was efficient.
Now, how many potions had I brought?
Twenty-two...
Practically all of my minor healing potions, which amounted to several rounds of maximum effort concentrated into a single morning.
A lazy grin spread across my face.
Again, I am a genius, aren't I?
I stepped away from the tree, positioned myself on the sidewalk, and started running again.
Bum. Bum-bum-bum.
"Rising up…" I began, inexorably, again.
"Straight to the top—"
"Had the guts, got the glory"
I kept singing, running toward my glory.
The twelfth potion cycle was when things started getting interesting, and not in a good way.
It wasn't my lungs or my legs that were hurting anymore, thanks to the minor healing potions. It was something different. I was feeling a kind of weight spread across my entire body.
My steps began losing consistency, not from pain, but from a lack of motor coordination.
The chorus died in my throat before it could finish.
I stopped, steadied myself against something nearby, a power pole this time, and swallowed another potion while calmly assessing the situation.
The body was fine.
But something wasn't.
Interesting.
So there was a limit the potion couldn't reach. The muscle tissue recovered cleanly, but the system commanding that tissue, my nervous system, seemed to accumulate fatigue in an entirely different way, silent, insidious, one that no red liquid could dissolve.
It seemed I needed to respect that second limit.
Pushing past one was stupidity. Pushing past the other was potentially dangerous in a far more serious way, to the point where my coordination was beginning to deteriorate in a worrying manner.
Well... at least I think I can make it back home. It's not like I'm going to die from running, right?
✧°✦°✧===✧°✦°✧===✧°✦°✧
I want to die!
Sprawled across the living room sofa, my eyes settled on the ceiling light as I cursed myself for having blown past every single limit.
My legs felt like jelly, and moving an arm was harder than waking up in the morning.
In short, my body was a complete mess.
Fun fact: minor healing potions do not restore fatigue, whether physical or mental. The nervous system fatigue didn't recover by even one percent.
What did that mean?
My dear Watson, it means that after enough cycles, I reached a point of zero returns, with coordination deteriorating alongside fatigue that kept building and building.
That made sense. After all, my body had been entering and exiting a state of exhaustion repeatedly, not to mention that healing potions weren't exactly created for that kind of purpose.
There was also another problem: a symptom known as "potion sickness." The more potions you drink, the less effective they become, and on top of that, they can start acting in reverse or in unpredictable ways.
I need to be careful…
Either way, I needed to create a stamina potion, and I also couldn't rely solely on potions. ⟨Alchemy⟩ allowed me to create magical items and even attacks focused on material transmutation, a field I had barely scratched the surface of.
But even wanting to start practicing that part right now, I was a little more exhausted than I had thought, and it was almost time for Kuoh Academy.
"Sniff! Sniff!" Even though I wasn't reeking, I was certainly completely drenched in sweat, so I at least needed to take a shower.
As I tried to get up, my face met the living room floor with a dull thud.
So tireeeeeed~!
Author's Note: Romani has officially discovered that healing potions are not a substitute for common sense.
As it turns out, repeatedly running yourself into the ground and then restoring your body with magic does have a few side effects.
On the bright side, his experiment was technically successful. On the less bright side, his nervous system is currently filing several formal complaints.
Also, I would like to remind everyone that "I can survive this" and "this is a good idea" are two completely different statements.