Ian felt mentally exhausted.
He didn’t know if bringing Zoro along for physical training was a mistake.
While running around the village, Ian had to correct this directionally challenged idiot’s path a total of one hundred and twenty-eight times.
The entire morning was spent with Ian roaring in frustration.
After finally finishing their run, Ian led him to a small grove near the seaside.
“Next up is sword swing practice!” Ian said, panting heavily.
“Once we finish the sword swings, we’ll move on to strength training!”
It was another full thousand sword swings, and each one required absolute concentration to truly feel the movement.
However, perhaps he was gradually getting used to it; after finishing his swings, Ian noticed the muscles in his arms weren’t as weak and sore as yesterday.
Ian finished his sword practice first.
He then found some ropes, tied up two large rocks weighing dozens of pounds, and looked for a sturdy tree.
Tossing the ropes over a thick branch to use it as a pulley, he grabbed a rope in each hand and began pulling them down rhythmically, mimicking a punching motion.
‘I guess this counts as a simple form of equipment training?’
While Ian desperately trained his strength, Zoro was still doing his sword swings.
Having grasped the basic swinging motions yesterday, Zoro had picked up two bamboo swords again today, fiercely attacking the target stump.
It seemed he was determined to stick to the Two-Sword Style to the bitter end.
Ian didn’t bother interfering.
The two were essentially training independently now, merely using each other as motivation.
At most, Ian would occasionally correct Zoro’s posture.
By the time Zoro finished his sword practice, Ian’s strength training was also coming to an end.
Covered in sweat, he wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the ground.
“My turn!” Zoro couldn’t wait.
He snatched up the ropes Ian had dropped and started pulling them just like Ian did.
For a young child, two rocks weighing dozens of pounds were no easy feat.
Watching Zoro grit his teeth with a fierce expression, Ian suddenly chuckled.
He used the remaining rope to tie up a slightly smaller rock and handed it to Zoro.
“Here, bite down on this!
Keep a good grip on it, don’t let it fall,” Ian instructed.
“Why?” Zoro asked foolishly, clearly confused.
“You didn’t do this just now!”
“Just listen to me, you’ll need this in the future!” Ian flashed a mysterious smile.
‘That’s right, you’ll definitely need it in the future.
Because the path you’re going to walk isn’t the Two-Sword Style, but the Three-Sword Style!’
‘You should thank me.
I’m helping you train for it in advance.
You’re going to have a great set of teeth…’
Thanks to Ian’s mischievous trick, Zoro began his Three-Sword Style training early.
He clamped down hard on the suspended rock with his mouth, keeping his body as upright as possible while his arms pulled the other two large rocks.
His entire body began to tremble, but he persevered, pulling bit by bit.
Leaving him to it, Ian picked up an even larger rock, lifted it over his head with both hands like a weightlifter, and began doing continuous squats.
This was a training method he had just thought of.
It would build strength in his core and legs, effectively improving his speed.
As it stood, his stat growth came from two sources: card bonuses and leveling up.
Beyond that, Ian wondered if his stats could also be increased through physical training.
Therefore, all the training he was doing now was essentially just trial and error.
There wasn’t much conversation between the two.
Sweating profusely, they trained straight through until noon.
They finally stopped only when their bodies ached so much they couldn’t continue.
Lying flat on their backs, both gasped for air.
Ian adjusted his breathing, trying to recover his stamina as quickly as possible.
After an unknown amount of time, he was finally able to sit up.
He was just about to call out to Zoro when he realized the guy had actually fallen asleep!
‘So this habit of sleeping anywhere started when he was a kid too?’
Ian shook his head helplessly, hoisted Zoro onto his back, and slowly trudged back toward the dojo step by step.
Unbeknownst to them, Kuina had appeared slightly further up the mountainside from where they were training.
She was equally exhausted and covered in sweat, but as she looked down at Ian and Zoro’s training spot, her eyes were filled with stubborn determination.
After eating lunch and resting, Ian took Zoro to the dojo’s fields, where they swung hoes and began their farm work.
When evening fell, they resumed their training.
In between all this, whenever Zoro caught a chance, he would seek out Kuina to challenge her.
Unfortunately, he was taught a harsh lesson by her every single time.
Strangely enough, even though Ian and Kuina could now fight to a draw—meaning fighting Ian should be exactly the same as fighting Kuina—Zoro rarely challenged Ian.
Instead, he mostly followed Ian around to train together, yet he never tired of challenging Kuina.
Even though he was beaten miserably every time, he would go right back as soon as his injuries healed.
This happened at least three or four times a day, making Ian suspect for a moment that the guy was a closet masochist.
What Ian didn’t know was that Zoro, this single-minded idiot, actually had a very simple thought process.
Because Ian constantly led him in training to get stronger, Zoro viewed him as a senior brother and a mentor.
However, he viewed Kuina strictly as a rival.
These different roles naturally led to different treatments.
Getting beaten up occasionally by a senior brother was normal, but getting beaten by a rival was absolutely intolerable.
Aside from when he was challenging Kuina, Zoro was practically inseparable from Ian.
And just as Zoro was unwilling to lose to Kuina, Ian was equally unwilling to be outdone by a kid two years younger than him.
The two worked desperately to grow stronger together, which in turn spurred Kuina on, causing her to secretly increase her own training as well.
An inexplicable sense of competition formed between the three of them.
Koushirou naturally saw all of this, but he didn’t intervene.
He simply let them be, maintaining his usual smiling expression.
Just like that, over a month passed.
During this month, Ian’s body underwent a massive transformation.
The muscles all over his body had begun to take shape.
Although he still looked a bit thin due to his child-like frame, an aura of strength was already beginning to radiate from him.
His theory had been proven correct: self-directed physical training could indeed increase his stats.
However, this kind of improvement was relatively slow.
Take strength training, for example.
If, with 20 points of strength, his absolute limit was lifting a hundred pounds, then to gain another point in his strength stat, he had to break past that limit and lift a hundred and ten pounds or more.
Every time he broke his limit, it would yield a 1-point increase in strength.
Over the course of a month, Ian continuously increased the weight of the rocks he trained with, but he had only managed to increase his strength by 3 points.
It was slow, but it served as a supplementary way for Ian to get stronger.
After all, in a peaceful little place like Shimotsuki Village, there weren’t even any mountain bandits, let alone actual enemies.
The only opponents Ian could find on a regular basis were Kuina and Zoro.
Aside from them, there was no one else he could fight to gain experience.
However, he couldn’t beat Kuina—a draw at best—so he gained no experience from her.
He could certainly beat up Zoro, but the experience yielded was too low, only 50 points each time.
Right now, leveling up from Level 1 to Level 2 required 1000 experience points.
‘I can’t exactly go beat him up every single day, can I?’
In other words, Ian’s level wouldn’t see any significant increase in the short term.
Without leveling up, his cards couldn’t be upgraded either.
He had asked the system and learned that a card’s level could not exceed the host’s own level.
Therefore, the only way to increase his stats was through his own physical training.
Fortunately, after over a month of relentless practice, his basic swordsmanship proficiency had finally maxed out.
How to describe it?
The feeling was quite magical.
The moment his basic swordsmanship proficiency maxed out and upgraded to Beginner Swordsmanship, Ian held his bamboo sword and suddenly realized his muscle memory and perception of the blade had completely changed.
There was not a single trace of resistance or sluggishness.
The bamboo sword in his hand no longer felt like an external tool.
Gripping it felt as if it were a natural extension of his own body, allowing him to wield it with effortless precision.
Perhaps thanks to his long-term, unyielding practice, the elevation of his swordsmanship realm happened naturally.
The bottleneck Ian had anticipated never appeared.
‘I suppose this is what they mean by quantitative changes leading to a qualitative leap,’ Ian thought to himself.
[Beginner Swordsmanship: You have gained a qualitative understanding of the way of the sword.
Your sword strike speed +10%, destructive power +10%]
This was the system’s stat description for Beginner Swordsmanship.
Sword strike speed was easy to understand, but the increase in destructive power left Ian scratching his head.
Data was just data, but exactly how much a 10% increase in destructive power amounted to didn’t seem to have a quantifiable standard.
So, after some thought, Ian could only interpret it as being able to inflict more severe injuries upon striking an opponent.