Chapter 12

The Wastrel Has Changed (1)

Heavy but steady breathing. Someone was training at the Frost Trial Grounds.

The Frost Trial Grounds were always open for training and conditioning. Any soldier who wanted to train independently could use them at any hour.

But not once had a soldier arrived before Kai to train.

Curious, Kai entered the frosty training grounds. And there—

HUFF! HUFF! HUFF!

He found Adrian working out. Adrian had stripped off his shirt, and firm muscles had already taken shape across his bare torso.

Was that why? The predawn air was bitterly cold, yet even that chill could not overcome the heat pouring off Adrian.

'Again today...'

It was already the tenth day.

Of course, Kai had heard the rumors that Adrian had changed. Everyone, from the county's soldiers to the maids at the lord's residence, talked of nothing else. He could hardly have missed it.

Besides, Adrian practically lived at the Frost Trial Grounds, so Kai ran into him every day. But he had paid little attention, thinking it would only last a little while.

When the first day passed, he paid it no mind. Nor did he on the second. Around the third day, he thought Adrian would soon give up.

On the fourth day, he began to waver. Only after the fifth and sixth days did he briefly wonder: Could he really...?

The seventh day passed, and on the eighth, Kai acknowledged that Adrian wanted to change. But he thought that was all it was.

On the ninth day, he deliberately put it out of his mind. And today, the tenth—

HUFF! HUFF! HUFF!

Adrian was at the Frost Trial Grounds, conditioning his body as faithfully as ever. By now, even Kai had no choice but to reconsider.

Of course, ten days was not very long. It was far too short a time to declare that someone had changed. But not just anyone could train like that.

Frankly, enduring even a single day would be difficult, let alone ten. Kai never neglected his own physical conditioning, but he was not confident he could go that far. That training went well beyond the limits of the human body.

Admittedly, Adrian possessed bizarre regenerative powers. Kai could not imagine how he had acquired such powers... but even so, they only healed his body.

What did it take to push his muscles to their limits? In the end, it came down to willpower and mental fortitude. Without those as a foundation, even a troll's regeneration would be meaningless.

Moreover, exceptional regeneration meant sustaining less damage. Without sufficiently intense strain, he could not even condition his body.

That made this training literally impossible unless the mind ruled the body. It demanded surpassing his physical limits through mental fortitude alone.

But that was far easier said than done. Mental fortitude without the protective shell of physical stamina was flimsier than a sheet of paper.

Adrian had kept up that training for ten days. With a wastrel's body, he had pushed beyond his limits every single day for ten whole days.

The soldiers of Whitewolf Castle no longer thought of Adrian as the count's wastrel son. Neither did the maids at the lord's residence. At this point, only the county's residents, unaware of these changes, still regarded him that way.

In other words—Kai, too, was accepting that Adrian had changed. That this was not merely a fleeting effort.

And yet, as Kai watched Adrian...

"..."

He still could not shake the distrust and suspicion in his eyes.

* * *

◆Y-you're an absolute lunatic!!!!

An extravagantly alarmed message appeared before my eyes. I threw the barbell to the floor, sending a tremendous tremor through the ground.

THUD!

The soldiers' attention immediately swung toward me, but I had no attention to spare for them. My muscles were so thoroughly ruptured that even breathing was a struggle, let alone moving a finger.

I crumpled to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

◆You can use the skill 'Regeneration[C+]' to regenerate your ruptured muscles.

◆Required nutrient - Protein.

◆Would you like to consume protein to regenerate your ruptured muscles?

The instant I mentally accepted—

GURGLE! GURRRRGLE!

Muscles writhed throughout my body as their torn fibers began regenerating, rebuilding themselves more tightly and densely than before.

"Grrrgh...!"

It truly felt as though my entire body was being torn apart.

Somehow, the intensity of my workouts increased exponentially with each passing day. Stronger muscle fibers naturally required greater force to damage, but the pain increased exponentially as well.

I must have really wrecked them this time, because they were taking forever to heal. Apparently, the damage had exceeded my Regeneration's grade. It seemed about time to hunt ice trolls for more genetic material.

I lay sprawled on the floor, waiting for my body to regenerate. Then something caught my eye: Kai was supervising the soldiers' training on one side of the grounds.

Kai had always been like that. He trained the county's soldiers personally. At first, I had wondered why a noble knight would bother with such work.

But my time in the allied army had taught me that this was a knight's duty in the first place.

Knighthood was both a title and an office. The lord was the supreme military authority, but in wartime, knights served as operational commanders and directed most military operations. Thus, the head knight was the army's chief commander. Directing operations and training soldiers were both part of his job.

But commanders, as a rule, were reluctant to get off their asses. Training soldiers? They dumped that on the so-called underlings.

Kai was different. Not once, as far as I remembered, had he shirked his responsibilities or duties. He was a man devoted to chivalry, who fulfilled every responsibility entrusted to him.

Though he had fallen to become the Legion Commander of Bitter Cold, Kai had been the very model of a knight when he was human.

Just look at him now. He was wearing metal armor. Surely a knight would naturally wear metal armor, you say? Not a chance.

Iron armor weighed about forty kilograms. A suit of full plate weighed twice that, around eighty. Nobody was crazy enough to wear that all the time.

Above all, these were the snowy northern mountains. Did you know what happened if you wore metal armor somewhere that was bitterly cold all year round? Your skin tore.

That was not a figure of speech. Metal exposed to the cold rapidly absorbed the chill, and when it touched bare flesh, the skin instantly froze and tore.

That was why Whitewolf Castle's soldiers wore leather armor. Wearing metal armor in this cold was suicide. Yet Kai was perfectly fine because—

'He's protecting his body with aura.'

All day long, at that.

'That lunatic.'

He really was an absolute lunatic.

Even his reasons for going that far were something else. What were they again? First, apparently, it was because he was a knight. He had to be fully prepared for battle at any time, anywhere.

His second reason was training.

'He said it let him constantly train his aura, even during his daily routine.'

Kai never took off his armor, even at mealtimes. Hell, he thought of rest as a form of training, too. In that sense, he did more than train every moment of every day—his very existence was training and conditioning.

He was the craziest bastard I had ever met, including in my previous life. He made me think you had to be that insane to turn yourself into a lich.

How did that saying go? Genius could not beat hard work, hard work could not beat someone who enjoyed it, and someone who enjoyed it could not beat a madman.

Kai was both a genius and a madman. If I wanted to kill him, I could not afford to sit still. I had to go mad right along with him.

◆Your muscle-fiber tissue has surpassed human limits!

◆Your muscle fibers are being restructured!

◆Your Strength stat increases by +4!!

I stuffed the innards from my packed meal into my mouth while adding still more weight to the barbell.

* * *

After the soldiers finished their basic military training, physical conditioning came next. Kai participated alongside them.

Even an aura-wielding knight could not afford to neglect physical conditioning. The efficiency of aura depended on the body that supported it.

For a knight, the body was the foundation. No matter how brilliant one's swordsmanship or prodigious one's talent, they were useless without a solid foundation to support them. Talent alone made one second-rate at best.

Kai conditioned his body alongside the soldiers. Unless there was a particular reason not to, this was his daily routine and training.

"Everyone. Match your breathing and run."

With Kai in the lead, the soldiers began running in unison. At first, everyone kept up well. Gradually, however, some began falling behind.

Even so, Kai did not urge them on. Soldiers differed in stamina. It was wrong to force identical training on people with different levels of endurance.

Physical conditioning was not a competition. All they needed to do was push themselves as far as they could and keep doing so every day.

True training and conditioning meant discovering one's limits in that process and developing the grit and perseverance to surpass them.

Mental fortitude without the protective shell of physical stamina was no more than a sheet of paper, but physical stamina with a broken spirit was just as hollow.

"Hah...! Hah...!"

"I-I can't go any farther...!"

After about an hour, some soldiers began giving up. Around the two-hour mark, most had collapsed from exhaustion. Only the centurions and instructors remained.

But even they could not last beyond three hours. A few managed to pass that mark, but not by much.

Only then did Kai pick up the pace further. Now it was time to test his own limits.

"Wow...!"

"He's incredible..."

As he accelerated, exclamations rose from the soldiers. Naturally so, since he was speeding up after running alongside them for around three hours.

At first glance, then—their admiration seemed directed at Kai. But he knew those cries of amazement were not for him.

Kai slowly turned his head. Looking back, he saw someone keeping close on his heels.

"Huff! Huff! Huff!"

... It was Adrian.