Chapter 57

 First Session at the Training Ground

For a moment, the spectacular scenery—something rarely seen in the real world—had made Minjun forget the purpose of this place.

It had been remodeled specifically for his training. This was not a tourist attraction.

“Should I assume the training will work roughly the same way as before?”

“It will be slightly different. Mind training for using Dragon Tongue, and sparring to draw out the dragon power sleeping inside you. Those two parts are the same as before, but one additional method will be added.”

“What is it?”

When Minjun asked about the new training method, Rokan answered with a smile whose meaning Minjun could not quite read.

“This is where you first managed to use Dragon Tongue properly, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I genuinely thought I was going to die that time.”

The memories of that day were still painfully vivid. There had been pain so intense that death itself seemed preferable, the exhilaration of successfully using Dragon Tongue for the first time, and the aftermath that had left him suffering for days.

Rokan’s words seemed to bring all those complicated emotions back in sharp detail. It was not a pleasant feeling. The pain had outweighed the exhilaration by an incomparable margin.

“So I’ve decided to add a new kind of training modeled after the conditions from that time. That eccentric bastard went to all the trouble of creating it for his precious successor who dreams of becoming a dragon while trapped in a human body. It would be rude not to make use of it.”

“I understand that, but…”

Was he telling him to go through that horrifying pain again every single time he trained?

Rokan seemed to believe it was the most efficient method for helping Minjun grow in the shortest possible time. Minjun also thought it was probably the best method available to them so far. Even so, the thought of experiencing that pain two or more times was difficult to accept.

Once had been more than enough.

Apparently, merely remembering the pain made Minjun’s expression twist without him realizing it.

“Don’t worry. It won’t be completely identical to what happened then. I don’t have some strange hobby of deliberately inflicting pain on people.”

Rokan reassured him in a gentle voice.

“I have no intention of pushing you that far either. I’ve modified the existing magic circle, so I can finely adjust the difficulty. You won’t experience pain like you did back then.”

His reassurance helped, but something about it still bothered Minjun. Did that not basically mean he intended to work him until just before he passed out?

“…”

Minjun knew he had to do this. Even so, he could not help being nervous because of the fear that experience had carved into him.

“You’re making too much of it. If it’s for Shasha, shouldn’t you be willing to jump into a pit of fire?”

“Yes, absolutely!”

Right. Minjun was afraid, but he simply had to keep his head together and do it. If the conditions really were similar to last time, he would not die, and if anything genuinely dangerous happened, Rokan would intervene.

Minjun pulled his sword from subspace and gripped it. Then, as a way of steeling himself before training, he lightly stroked the ring Sia had given him.

“I’m ready.”

“Good. We’ll begin lightly at first. I’ll watch for a while and adjust the difficulty in real time to suit you.”

To begin the training, Rokan took a crystal sphere out of subspace and poured mana into it. Figures of soldiers identical to the ones Minjun had seen before began appearing one after another across the previously empty field. Then, just as he suspected, Wyverns started materializing in the air as well.

It looked far too similar to that day. Even their numbers seemed close to what he remembered, as though Rokan had perfectly recreated the original environment.

“…Rokan, didn’t you say we’d start lightly?”

“There are many of them, so it looks worse than it is. You should be able to handle this.”

Even if the difficulty was lower than before, the memory was so vivid that fear made Minjun’s body tense. He had used Dragon Tongue for the first time against enemies like these, but the experience had also brought overwhelming fear and pain strong enough to eclipse the exhilaration.

Maybe this really was a kind of PTSD.

‘Even so.’

Only by overcoming that fear and learning to dominate it could he approach the level he wanted to reach. The situation might look similar on the surface, but everything was completely different now.

He would face it without fear.

Minjun’s sword emitted a faint gray aura as he charged forward without a shred of hesitation and began cutting through the enemies.

✦ ✦ ✦

Rokan had apparently meant it when he said they would start lightly, because everything was much easier than it had been that day. The aura along the edge of Minjun’s blade grew steadily denser, while soldiers fell like leaves in autumn without managing to counterattack.

Then, at some point, aura began extending outward from his sword without him consciously trying to make it happen. Sword Aura shot from the blade and struck the Wyverns flying overhead.

There was an enormous difference between merely coating a sword in Sword Aura and being able to release that aura toward an enemy. Sword-type Hunters were naturally weak at long-range combat. But if they could go beyond generating aura around the blade and actually project it, that limitation could be overcome to some degree.

Back at the academy, one professor had even said that sword-type Hunters could be divided into two broad levels: those capable of releasing Sword Aura and those who could not.

That alone showed how dramatically Minjun had improved. This was an advanced technique he had never even imagined himself being capable of in the past. He could hardly believe he had begun using it with his own hands without even realizing it. As far as he knew, only a minority of B-rank sword-type Hunters could use this technique.

The Sword Aura Minjun released was still relatively weak, but successfully manifesting it at all was meaningful.

When he glanced back, Rokan was watching his training with a satisfied smile.

“Good. Between the presence I sense from you and the aura forming on your sword, I can clearly feel just how much you’ve grown.”

They say praise can make even a whale dance. In that case, perhaps it was time to let his sword dance properly too.

An ordinary Hunter should probably have focused on practicing precise control of Sword Aura. Minjun’s own training priorities, however, were completely different. That was important, but it was a separate matter from his main goal.

[Freeze.]

Minjun focused completely on the energy of his sword, already warmed up by battle, and the faint dragon power he could feel within his body. Then he attempted to use Dragon Tongue on the enemies spread out in front of him.

It would have made for a perfect scene if it worked, but unfortunately, the Dragon Tongue did not take effect properly. Before trying it, he had even worried, ‘What if my Dragon Tongue works and cracks this whole space?’ so unlike before, he had chosen a command that would merely freeze the enemies.

Apparently, the concern had been unnecessary. Maybe the rapid progress he had made recently, combined with Rokan’s praise, had made him a little too confident.

“You still look as though you have plenty of room to spare. In that case…”

Rokan reached out and adjusted the crystal sphere. For an instant, light flashed across the soldiers and Wyverns before fading away.

“Let’s keep raising the difficulty.”

✦ ✦ ✦

“Haa… haa…”

Once training finally ended, Minjun collapsed where he stood, breathing roughly.

There had once been a time when he sparred with Rokan and swung his sword nonstop for an hour. This felt almost exactly like that. No, this might actually have been even worse.

For one thing, being struck by the monsters created by the system was not completely painless. Rokan had modified the magic circle installed here, so the pain was mild, but every hit still hurt slightly. None of those individual impacts was especially terrible, but after accumulating again and again, Minjun’s body was practically screaming that it could take no more.

There was also another serious problem with the training. Rokan had genuinely worked him until he was just about to collapse from exhaustion. He had watched the entire training session from behind and adjusted the difficulty in real time with fine precision. Because of that, Minjun remained trapped in a state where he constantly felt as though he was about to fall over from fatigue, yet never quite did.

God, he was out of breath.

On the verge of complete exhaustion, Minjun drank the potion Rokan handed him and recovered some strength.

“This was your first session in the new training ground. I’d like to hear your impression.”

“I thought I’d already experienced hell once, but I had no idea there was an even more painful hell waiting beyond it.”

Minjun had expected the first day to begin with relatively light warm-up training. He had not expected Rokan to work him this brutally from the start. If he kept training this way, he would probably see results faster than expected. It was also hard enough to make him want to swear.

“It’s exhausting, but that’s not the only thing. I was secretly hoping for something, so I’m a little disappointed.”

“You mean Dragon Tongue.”

“Yes.”

There was already a clear precedent for success. The Hunter Association and Rokan had both confirmed that his growth rate was absurdly fast, and Rokan himself had said this place offered ideal conditions for using Dragon Tongue. Minjun had thought he might manage it at least once by chance.

“You cannot expect to be full from the first spoonful. From what I saw, it wasn’t bad at all. Now I’ll give you feedback on the training you just completed.”

Rokan sat on a bench and patted the space beside him, telling Minjun to sit.

“Today, let’s start with what needs improvement. In your opinion, what was the single most important reason you failed to use Dragon Tongue?”

“Could you give me a moment to think?”

What had he been missing today? Minjun sank into thought, trying to find the answer. The way Rokan phrased it made him feel there was one clear thing he had overlooked. He had also felt vaguely unsatisfied during the training, but he could not put his finger on why.

Saying he had only managed Dragon Tongue before because the restraints had been removed and he could use all his power felt too much like an excuse. Even after combing through his memories of the full two-hour session, the answer did not come.

Seeing that he was getting nowhere, Rokan slipped him a hint.

“The fundamentals.”

“Ah!”

It was only one short phrase, but the instant Minjun heard it, something clicked.

“I think I focused so much on everything else that, just as you said, I forgot the foundation. The most important fundamental is… ‘will,’ isn’t it?”

The most basic foundation of all was intense will. Now that he thought about it carefully, that was what had been missing from him today.

Maybe he had unconsciously relaxed because the environment was supposedly ideal for Dragon Tongue and because of the achievements he had made recently. More importantly, unlike the last time he had successfully used Dragon Tongue, he had not possessed the desperate will to survive and escape from this place.

There was no excuse for that.

“…Now that I realize it, I’m embarrassed.”

Minjun’s head lowered on its own. Rokan and Sia were both doing everything they could to help him achieve his goal, yet he had been approaching the training too casually. Even if the environment and circumstances changed, he needed the same desperate determination he had possessed back then.

“Good. Realizing it is enough. Just don’t repeat the same mistake.”

Rokan reached over and lightly patted his back.

“That doesn’t mean you performed poorly. Your technique in using your strength was good, and your overall control over how much power you applied was solid. It was also commendable that you didn’t recklessly try to force an overly powerful command.”

Rokan continued explaining what he had done well and where he had fallen short.

“Thank you.”

“Well, you seem to have rested enough. Let’s finish today’s training with some mind training as a cooldown.”

There was more training after all this? The session had been so intense that Minjun assumed they were done, but apparently that was not the case.

Still, there was nothing else for him to do. He had taken a potion and rested long enough, so he had to finish properly. After the break, Minjun followed Rokan’s guidance through a light session of mind training and finally completed the day’s work.

“Ugh, I’m exhausted.”

“You worked hard. Today’s training was more demanding than usual, but you followed it well.”

“Thank you for everything today, Rokan.”

Minjun was so tired that he felt as though he would collapse the moment he got home. If his body had been in better shape, he would have liked to remain here and enjoy the scenery for a while longer. As it was, he felt so dazed with exhaustion that falling asleep right where he stood would not have surprised him.

Then one sentence from Rokan snapped him fully awake.

“Minjun. I thought about what you told me earlier, and I think it would be best if I created a guild.”