I believe I’m doing something foolish. Or rather, should I say I’m attempting something foolish in this case?
With a wry smile, I brought the Ore Tree down with a ‘buon buon,’ starting slowly but steadily picking up speed, sharpening my senses.
Whether this challenge would be in vain or rewarded, I couldn’t tell in my current situation.
However, the ideal I should aim for remained clearly in my memory. It reminded me of a daring feat my instructor once performed: smashing through the wall between dungeons and annihilating the dimensional barrier.
Logic wasn’t relevant. All that existed there was a phenomenon born from the sublimation of his own skill.
I don’t know the logic governing how the world and dimensions are constructed. It’s not as if I, in my current state, could easily devise a way to escape this space that can only be described as abnormal. It was a natural course of action to try and do what I could.
“…Suhha.”
Taking a deep breath.
With my mind calmed, I slowly swung the Ore Tree down. This was the beginning. The technique my instructor had easily performed with a laugh, as I remembered. Though he made it look easy, I knew it wouldn’t be that simple for me to replicate it just by thinking I could. I understood and accepted this in my head. I understood and accepted that it was reckless.
Still, the perception that it wasn’t impossible led me to choose this path. Honestly, I thought it was a gamble. And not a favorable one at that.
In my current situation, if I were to place any conditions, I figured a few hours would be the limit of the available time. In fact, I even thought the real work would begin once I was so exhausted that I couldn’t think of anything extraneous. Such a reckless challenge, requiring mastery of a superhuman feat in such a short time, was beyond merely reckless.
Indeed, the weight I felt when swinging the Ore Tree was as usual, and I knew that at this rate, fatigue was only a matter of time. I also understood that my actions were akin to carefully reeling in a spider’s thread stretching to the horizon without breaking it.
But, that perception was betrayed in a good way.
“?”
At first, I thought my body was just in better condition than usual.
“???”
I continued swinging the Ore Tree for more repetitions than usual without getting tired. But even after continuing to swing it to an extent that couldn’t be attributed to mere good condition, the lack of fatigue made me realize something was strange. Still, I couldn’t afford to waste time, so I kept swinging. Perhaps my stats had increased again, giving me an advantage, allowing me to continue swinging like this, I thought.
“Hm?”
However, that excuse wouldn’t hold up for long. After about another hour, I might have reached my limit. How long had I been swinging the Ore Tree? Subjectively, I felt like I’d been at it for about three hours.
“This is strange, it’s really strange.”
Yet, I wasn’t getting tired at all. Not even a little. My stamina wasn’t decreasing. I felt no fatigue. Normally, the muscles in my arms would be strained, my grip strength would weaken, and I would be struggling to swing it cleanly like this. What should I do about this? Was it a “swinging high” instead of a “runner’s high”? A hybrid Japanese-English phrase emerged, questions popping up in my head, but I didn’t stop my body’s movement and continued swinging.
I was continuing to swing because I didn’t want to waste time, but this was starting to feel suspicious. Questions began to pile up. Even after my predicted time had passed, fatigue hadn’t arrived. Moreover, I didn’t even feel hungry. My concentration wavered, but my body didn’t stop moving.
Concluding that this was abnormal and that I should examine the phenomenon with my unhindered body and arms didn’t take long. As I began my examination, the passage of time provided more information, gradually allowing me to grasp the current situation. My current situation, I surmised, was that my body was fixed in the state it was in when I was first imprisoned in this world. Otherwise, a state of constant max HP, without hunger or fatigue, would be impossible. I even suspected I wouldn’t get injured, but to confirm that would require self-harm, so I postponed that verification. For now, I understood that if this was a space where the spirit had removed all restrictions, it was effectively a situation with no time limit.
“Hmph!”
I focused my strength and concentrated on my swinging again. I didn’t quite understand the spirit’s purpose, but I sort of understood how this trial was designed to eliminate participants. It was a method of waiting for me to break down and quit on my own, a tactic I frankly disliked. But, easy for them. I, who had spent my entire Salaryman life forging a defiant spirit, had a pride that I wouldn’t lose to anyone in my will to rebel against the unreasonable. I could feel the corners of my mouth curl into a smirk.
If there was no time limit, it was convenient. From here on, it was a battle of endurance. Let’s see who breaks first: me, succumbing to frustration as they expected, or me, tearing this world apart. Beyond that, it was a battle of how much I could concentrate. Yet, strangely, I didn’t feel like I would lose.
To start, I banished the concept of time from my body and focused. Then, I permeated my body with demonic power, from my toes to the tip of my sword. I swung the Ore Tree down, steadily preparing to cut something invisible.
After one swing, I felt nothing. After ten swings, I felt nothing. After a hundred swings, I felt it had gotten slightly faster. After a thousand swings, it felt even sharper. It was simply a process of repeated trial and error, refining my movements. Each movement demanded optimality, my gaze fixed forward, thinking only of slicing through the space before me. To cast aside the distracting thought of “it won’t cut” and instead resolve to “cut.”
After ten thousand swings, the speed of my downward swing began to plateau. After one hundred thousand swings, hesitation began to creep into the downward motion. After one million swings, the swinging motion started to stiffen. Despite concentrating intently on my concentration, the thought of how to sublimate the act of cutting was also racing at high speed. As I repeated the process countless times, my reason began to urge me to stop this action, deeming it fruitless. *Is this really okay? Is there any meaning in doing this? Isn’t this act itself wrong?* It was a thought process like an impatient superior scolding a subordinate who shows no results.
I didn’t try to push that thought away. The thought itself wasn’t wrong; rather, it was a thought that would eliminate waste in my pursuit of the summit. And it should have slowed me down, but my emotions, rather than reason, drove my body, so my movements didn’t falter. Instead, as if extraneous weight had been removed thanks to the elimination of waste, my movements gradually accelerated.
After ten million swings, I stopped forcing unnecessary strength. After one hundred million swings, I began to convert waste into effective power. After one billion swings, I could re-examine my own single stroke and find areas that were still immature. My swing could still be honed. Gradually, my purpose began to shift from “cutting this world” to “bringing this single stroke to its highest level.” Or rather, at that moment, the timing changed. The act of cutting the world became a process, and I swung the Ore Tree in pursuit of the ultimate single stroke.
After ten billion swings, it might have been my imagination, but I felt something touch the tip of my blade. As I swung it a hundred billion times, I repeatedly tried to grasp this sensation, sometimes feeling it, sometimes not. I was convinced that if I could grasp this feeling, something within me would evolve. The exhilaration that this conviction brought was an indescribable pleasure. The act of hesitating seemed like a waste, and I wanted to swing more. With each overlapping swing, I could feel it being forged, much like a blacksmith hammering a heated blade. It was a minuscule result, something that could easily be dismissed as imagination. Even if it was a result that would quickly disappear if I slacked off, I could clearly see it accumulating if I continued.
Continuing this for a trillion swings, though I hadn’t been counting from the start, I somehow understood the magnitude, and I could feel something brushing against the tip of my blade. I felt like I could see the realm of the summit I needed to reach. Once that was visible, I became curious about the scenery beyond. Even though I intended to swing mindlessly, I couldn’t hide my excitement at my impeccably honed single stroke. I no longer knew how many times I had swung. Only that excitement began to consume my heart. And then, finally.
“!? Ka!”
I sneered. What had been escaping, hiding, observing from afar. No, I reached out to something that had been beyond my reach. I felt that grip from the tip of my blade. Though it was the same swinging motion, this stroke felt completely different from the first. With no tangible resistance, I felt the sensation of cutting. I made an incision into something thick and thin, something hard and soft. Without needing to tell myself not to rush, I believe I exhibited the highest concentration I had ever achieved in that moment.
Light began to stream into the white world. With each downward swing, the light grew brighter. A small cut became a large crack, and that crack eventually transformed into a path wide enough for a person to pass through. Ah, this is fun. And regrettable. I wanted to hone myself further in this space, but the end, I knew, would inevitably come. As if amplifying my loneliness, the heat of my momentarily stopped body began to cool.
“It can’t be helped,” my reason, now aware that this was the purpose, urged my body to leap into the opening. Feeling a sense of accomplishment, yet a strange sense of dissatisfaction, I entered the gap, experiencing contradictory emotions of feeling tired despite not being tired.
“Yo, sorry to keep you waiting.”
The existence I found myself facing, in a world neither white nor my original one, was there. I could be sure. I understood without needing to speak.
“Are you Master Spirit Valse?”
I looked up at the figure seated cross-legged atop a Giant White Snake, its body snaking and coiling, my voice rough from the lingering excitement.
Today’s word: If someone else can do it, there’s a possibility you can do it too.
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