“Yo, Kanda, not bad. Quite the dark horse. I was worried you wouldn’t be able to handle being crushed by Shiina and Misaki’s natural talent.”
That evening, a hot pot bubbled at the center of the dining table.
After listening to Misaki finish speaking, Mitaka Jin smiled at Sorata, who was carefully wiping sauce from Shiina’s face.
“What dark horse? I just got lucky that the novel I wrote could be published.” Sorata shook his head.
Taking a swig of beer, Chihiro Sengoku suddenly asked, “Kanda, what are your plans from here?”
“Plans? What plans?” Sorata looked at her.
Chihiro drained her can in one go and let out a small burp, her eyes slightly unfocused.
“You’ve got two volumes of drafts due next week, right? You’re also taking care of Shiina, handling illustration coordination, and attending school. Can you manage all that?”
“Oh, that.” Sorata sounded unconcerned.
“I’ll just do what needs to be done. The drafts can be finished if I spend a bit of time on them after school each day.”
His relaxed tone made it unclear whether he truly wasn’t worried or simply didn’t grasp how difficult it was to produce nearly two hundred thousand words of quality writing in a week.
Chihiro nodded.
“Fine. If it gets overwhelming, say something. Misaki can help look after Shiina, or Jin can take over your cleaning duties for a few days.”
“Hey, hey, Sensei, did you forget yourself?” Jin reminded her.
“Kohai, don’t worry. I’ll take care of little Shiina.” Misaki stood up and patted her chest confidently.
“It’s really not that serious. But thanks,” Sorata said with a smile.
Writing novels?
He had no intention of exhausting himself crafting original prose.
He was simply copying from memory to cover his living expenses.
With his current typing speed, as long as the computer could keep up, twenty to thirty thousand words an hour was easy.
Two volumes under two hundred thousand words could be completed casually over a few afternoons.
He had nothing to worry about.
After dinner and baths, Sorata lay in bed, preparing to rest.
At noon, he had used his True Spirit again, placing a heavy strain on his still fragile soul.
On the surface, nothing seemed wrong, but mentally he felt drained.
“So this is the effect of cosmic energy absorption? It’s not as fast as direct sunlight during the day, but overall efficiency has doubled.”
Across the vast universe, they passed through endless space and entered his body, transforming into energy that fueled the continuous evolution of his cells.
As his Kryptonian cells strengthened, so did his physical force, the durability of his titanium like body, his raw strength, heat abilities, defensive field, and energy absorption and conversion.
Silently feeling the power surging within him, strong enough to tear a dragon apart with bare hands, Sorata estimated that from noon until now, his strength had increased by another fifty tons.
The growth rate was astonishing.
It was not as explosive as the period immediately after completing bloodline conversion, when his strength had surged by dozens of tons per hour.
But under sunlight, his Kryptonian physique improved constantly.
And as his base strength rose, the rate of growth increased as well.
Now that he had integrated the energy absorption ability of the mutant Havok, he could maximize stellar energy absorption even through buildings, without needing to stand directly under the sun.
Countless cosmic rays and faint magnetic shockwaves released by distant stars were absorbed and converted into energy, accelerating his physical evolution.
No one could guess that within his ordinary looking body lay nearly a hundred tons of raw power beyond human limits.
To measure it another way:
A 1.5 ton car crashing into a wall at 120 kilometers per hour can generate over 800,000 Newtons of force, roughly equivalent to eighty tons of impact.
Now imagine Sorata, whose body was harder than steel and who possessed a hundred tons of strength, charging at over three hundred meters per second and throwing a punch.
The faster the speed, the greater the kinetic force.
Even excluding heat and shockwave effects from his abilities, a single purely physical strike could unleash tens of thousands of tons of destructive force in an instant.
Unlike the blunt impact of a massive warship, that power would be concentrated in a fist.
With such density, one punch could level a skyscraper.
And that was only a simple application of strength.
Having traveled through countless worlds, Sorata knew many techniques for using raw physical power.
Basic methods like condensing force like steel or refining it like silk could multiply output several times over.
There were even rule level forbidden techniques capable of amplifying strength a thousandfold or more.
Just as sleep was about to claim him, the door opened.
Wearing only pajamas that barely covered her hips and revealed her long, pale legs, Shiina walked in and climbed onto the bed, kneeling beside him.
“Sorata, look.”
“You finished reading the novel?”
Opening his eyes, Sorata took the manuscript pages from her hand.
Earlier that afternoon, after Uemura Yuriko left, he had printed out the first volume of Toradora and given it to Shiina to familiarize herself with the characters before drawing illustrations.
The drawing depicted Aisaka Taiga.
She stood with her head slightly turned, one hand on her hip, the other gripping a wooden sword behind her back.
A few simple strokes gave her eyes a faint, defiant edge.
Technically, it was impeccable.
The lines were vivid, almost lifelike.
But Sorata frowned slightly.
“It’s not good?” Shiina asked.
“It’s too beautiful. The proportions are a bit tall, which doesn’t match Taiga in the story. Make the eyes a little larger. That will give her more cuteness.”
He pointed to the page.
“In the novel, her personality is tsundere, violent, and willful. Not unruly like some heroic figure.”
“I understand.”
Shiina nodded simply and prepared to return to revise it.
Judging by her expression, she intended to stay up all night again.
“Wait. I’ll come too.”
Knowing her persistent nature, that she would not rest until satisfied, Sorata followed her upstairs.
“Why is the room messy again?”
The moment he entered, he saw clothes scattered everywhere.
Various garments lay across the floor.
“I couldn’t find what to wear after bathing,” Shiina replied calmly.
“That doesn’t mean you throw everything everywhere,” Sorata muttered.
“Don’t revise that one yet. Draw the other main characters from your first impression. I’ll look at them later, then you can adjust.”
After saying that, he sighed, bent down, and began tidying the room.
Shiina showed no reaction to him handling her clothes.
She simply nodded.
“Okay.”
Then she lowered her head and began to draw.