The Knight Is Powering Up (1)
"...Wow."
The girl let the little breath of awe slip out before she could stop it. Golden hair, lovely as drawn gold thread, and clear blue eyes made her striking even when she was only staring.
Thud! Thoom! Thooom—!
"How is he even doing that while holding that thing?"
Right...?
The two of them could only gape.
The girl and the ghost girl had come next door to pay their respects after hearing that the master of the neighboring house, gone for more than half a month, had finally come home. It was the first time they had seen him in a while. She had even tidied the hair that had tangled into a mess and put on makeup, and the mere thought of standing in front of him and actually talking had her terribly excited. If they could share dinner while they were at it, she had thought, so much the better.
The master of that house, meeting her for the first time in a fortnight, handed her a request.
Her reaction to it was—
Huuuh?
—that.
It was a rather foolish look. Then again, anyone who heard a request like that would probably have come out looking just as foolish.
Thoom!
"He picked it up again."
The girl, Irene Windler, had made the thing herself, and she could not stop asking the same question over and over. Was it even physically possible for a person to lift that?
A disc of water. A disc that boasted a size nearly that of a bull—no. Calling it a disc was already nonsense. A gigantic mass was the honest name for it. At a glance it might have looked light, being nothing but water. But whatever anyone else failed to understand, Irene Windler, who had made that mass, knew.
I compressed that thing how many times, and he lifts it that easily...
She had taken the water of a flowing lake and compressed it more than twenty times over until it held that shape. It carried a far more enormous mass than the eye suggested, and Irene had burned through half her mana to make it. When one remembered that her mana was easily twice as vast as that of any ordinary mage, the waste of it was enough to leave a person dumbstruck. So the mass was woven of magic's Mystery, and each lump weighed roughly eight hundred kilograms. There were two of them. Together they boasted sixteen hundred kilograms, and yet—
"Whew. Mind making it a little heavier?"
"A-are you sure you'll be all right?"
"I can still manage."
Irene had nothing to say to that.
The discovery that this weight was not yet the water-mass's limit was dumbfounding enough. Worse, the way he seemed to feel no weight at all, as if the thing were too light, felt even less real than the water itself.
He was never really human to begin with, but he seems even further from human now...
What on earth had happened to him over the past fortnight? Irene could not help wondering.
"Ah. Sorry for keep dumping annoying chores on you. I should have treated you to a meal, or at least brought a gift, before asking something like this..."
Perhaps he thought forcing the troublesome request on her had put her in a bad mood. The apology was plain on his face, and Irene shook her head at once. It was not like that at all.
"I-it's fine! ...Though dinner does sound pretty tempting."
"Then I'll treat you somewhere nice later."
"Hehe."
Thoom!!
She raised the weight gladly, and the earth caved in under it. One thousand kilograms a mass. The bar that had to bear those masses boasted another three hundred kilograms of its own. All told, the barbell came to twenty-three hundred kilograms—
"Add another seven hundred on top of this."
Irene's mouth fell open in that same foolish daze.
Three thousand kilograms, now.
And he, once again—
Krrrack!
—hoisted the enormous barbell. It clearly cost him. He looked strained. Even so—
He made no sound at all.
He simply began to squat. A three-ton squat. He broke the repetitions into thirties and ran through ten sets of them.
Neither of them spoke.
I just became completely sure people built the pyramids.
"...Me too."
Looking at a thing like that, yes. People really had built the pyramids in ancient times. There was only one correction worth making.
The instructor could probably stack a pyramid all by himself.
A belief close to certainty settled over her as Irene stared blankly at the strongman she had fallen for. No—
Would Hercules suit him better?
Hhh—!
Watching the muscles of a man who might as well have been a living Hercules heave and breathe with raw power, Irene Windler felt saliva gather at the corner of her mouth.
...Is she that hungry?
Lee Han caught the mage chick drooling from the corner of his eye and decided he had better not keep training too long.
Mm. Next time I'll just call that magic-slave brat.
He told himself not to torment a youngster who ought to be out playing with friends, all for the sake of his workout, and resolved to buy her something good for dinner since she looked hungry. Then he went back to the barbell squats. Being sorry was one thing. When the chance came, training came first, didn't it?
It'll hold!
Huuuk!
With a fierce shout inside his chest, Lee Han lifted the water barbell. It was the signal to deploy Diamond Body in an instant, and the moment the signal fell he unfolded it within half a second. He was still unskilled, though, and sometimes it took more than a second. Every time it did—
Crrk!
—a scream rose out of his whole body.
"...Ngh."
Fortunately his body was sturdy enough to endure this much weight, and for now he could still bear it. The real problem lay elsewhere.
...I'm seriously dizzy.
Forcing set after set while holding Diamond Body was the greatest problem of all.
Throb!
His head hurt. Diamond Body, by its nature, demanded considerable mental strength even for a single use. It spread Gyeong through the entire body and reinforced the flesh like armor. Said aloud, it sounded simple. Tried in earnest, it was anything but. Of all Lee Han's arts it was the most difficult, and exercising while he held it was, how to put it...
...like riding a unicycle with a foul-tempered zebra on my back.
There were too many places demanding his focus at once. His insides reeled, and one mistake would drop him or break him. But lifting three tons in succession without Diamond Body would have strained even him, and thanks to the art, the danger of injury under this much weight stayed small.
Above all—
Yeah. This is the right way.
He had felt it in his body. There was a limit to forging himself the way he always had. If that was true, then he had to try something bolder. Something mad.
Especially this.
A body like that man's.
This latest mess had shown him a human being with a physique even more outrageous than his own. Maximus, the man heaven itself had granted a perfect golden body. The strength and reaction speed he had displayed overflowed with things that simply overwhelmed Lee Han's own numbers. Who would believe that a mere stamp of the foot could match the speed of Divine Bow, Elastic Shadow?
...An absurd man.
And yet that was exactly why the man's body had poured inspiration into him. Fighting him in person had only made the inspiration sharper, and Lee Han had found a new direction in which to develop his flesh.
Raise the density of his muscle. That, he already did, and always had. What mattered now was something more inward: the unification of technique. He would have to make Divine Bow, Elastic Shadow as natural as running. He would have to hold Diamond Body even in the middle of ordinary life. He would have to retrain his senses until he could use Strike the Mountain, Hit the Ox like another hand, another foot.
Which meant—
This is the moment that calls for Bone Reforging.
He would force an artificial Bone Reforging upon his own body. If the most fundamental arts he possessed had begun as active skills, he would remodel himself until he could wear them like passive ones. That was the answer Lee Han had found, and to reach it he would bring every art he had named into a state where it could stay fixed to his body at all times.
Once, it would have been impossible. But after leveling up to Lv. 8, or whatever the number was, he knew the Vessel of his flesh had grown wider. This was no reckless challenge. It was only a new one, matched to a limit that had expanded.
The target is ten thousand squats.
Build the strength to lift ten tons as he pleased. If he managed even that much—
At least nobody will be calling me frail.
He would never again fall behind anyone on the raw measure of the body.
Kwaaang!
He finished the ten sets and carefully set the barbell down. Even then the ground shuddered, which proved the thing was certainly heavy. Apologies to the frail earth, however.
"Whew. Next is barbell lunges."
Today's training was not over. As for the weight—
Bump it up by another five hundred or so.
Just how much could he do with Diamond Body deployed? It was nothing short of a new challenge, and in that very moment—
"Sir Knight!"
"...Miss Maid?"
Thud.
Lee Han dropped the barbell the instant he saw a woman approaching. If he kept hold of it and so much as brushed her, someone would be hurt.
Mm. Would the maid be all right, though?
Given her uncanny sturdiness, he thought she might be fine. Then he shook his head. He did not want to do anything awful to her, if to no one else.
Meanwhile Layla Winter came on in a bright rush of energy, wearing a smile that seemed to freshen everything around her just by existing, and held out a newspaper politely in both hands.
"Hehe! You said you needed a newspaper, Sir Knight, so I brought one!"
"You brought it?"
"Yes! I bought it from the Royal Capital paper the moment it was published and came straight here!"
"You didn't have to. It would have been delivered later anyway."
The newspaper office lay roughly ten kilometers from his house. How in the world had she bought the thing and carried it all the way here? And judging by the warmth of the ink still on the page, it could not have been more than five minutes since the edition came out...
Could I cover ten kilometers in five minutes?
Possible or not, he could never have arrived without shedding a single drop of sweat the way she had. Even so, a suspicion stirred that if it was her, maybe she could, and Lee Han gazed at her steadily. The truth was, perhaps the one he ought to be aiming at was not that Black Lion or whatever he was called, but the maid herself...
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Nothing... just an idle thought."
"You're tired, that's why! Here, have some lemonade and lemon tart! It'll take the edge off."
"...Yes."
Lee Han silently downed the cool lemonade, admitting that he really was tired. If even her strangeness had started to feel like just another part of the day, was that strange in itself?
"Mm?"
—This is really good.
...It went without saying, but a great deal had happened in the Royal Capital in the meantime. And no wonder.
The greatest fertilizer works on the southern continent had collapsed overnight. A fall in the food to come was as obvious as a fire already lit. It would not have been strange in the least if anxiety alone had sparked a riot, and the Royal Capital's countless papers printed and issued dozens of editions in a single day. Crisis in the capital or not, in any world the tribe called journalists was a race that staked its life on a scoop. Even the fall of the Royal Capital—no, of the southern continent—would have been nothing but fodder for an article.
However.
News that overturned the whole despairing board in a single stroke was more than enough to flip public opinion. It even produced the sight of journalists who had been declaring the kingdom ready to collapse getting stoned in the street.
The royal house—no. She had moved. As if she had wanted the chaos until now to grow fiercer and draw every eye, she released a new fertilizer. One far more effective than the old, and cheap besides.
"Long live Princess Isis!"
"No, no, friend. You've got to call her Her Highness the Crown Princess."
"Ah, right. She is the heir. Of course."
"Heh heh. Pendragon's future is looking bright."
"That reporter bastard! Isn't he the one who wrote the piece badmouthing Her Highness the Crown Princess!?"
"Grab a rock! Traitors like that!!"
The farmers—no, the people—could not praise her enough. Word had gotten out that the fertilizer they had been using was made of monsters, and they had already been sick with unease and disgust. Ignorance had been better. The moment you knew, how were you supposed to keep using it? So even if surplus remained, in a season when they were loath to touch it, the princess of this country handed out an easy fertilizer in the form of a potion. Matching the old fertilizer's strength was one thing. Isis's swift answer was profoundly admirable, and she herself set out on a pilgrimage to look after the farmers...
How noble a course that was. How great...!
Their fervor was only natural.
...Well.
"But in the end, it was the royal house that hid what the fertilizer really was, wasn't it?"
"Aren't they all in it together?"
"It came out too fast, too."
"What if the royal house staged the whole thing?"
A few sharp ones cast wary eyes, saying a response this swift was all the more suspicious. More important than any of that was the fact that the ones who had tolerated the Tunnels were the royal house. Criticism ought to have been the natural thing, and yet—
"Have you seen these damned traitor bastards!!!"
"Have you ever gone hungry!? You talk like that because you've never starved! So what if it was monsters! Fertilizer is fertilizer! All it does is grow the crops!"
"The royal house knew too, and we all lived by eating what the land grew, didn't we? I hear even the royal farms used monster fertilizer. What's the big problem?"
In a war of opinion, lies and agitation mattered, but results that could be shown mattered more. Especially results the people felt in their own bodies. Remember that even a hundred years ago hundreds starved to death in a single day, and what did it matter what the fertilizer really was?
"B-but still!"
Even so, there were those who pressed their argument to the very end. It seemed they would not be satisfied until they wrung an apology out of the royal house. And to people like that...
"Then are you saying we ought to hold the Military God who departed for Avalon responsible—?"
"!!!?"
"If that's what this is, prepare yourself. Even if others forgive you, I will not forgive an insult to him."
"Uh, uhh, th-that's..."
Yes. In the end the Tunnels had been made in the age when the Military God ruled, and to curse the Tunnels was to disgrace the Military God. To insult the great king who had been revered as a god while still in a human body? This was...
"Kill him! Kill that man!!!"
"Set him on fire!"
Wasn't it the same as begging to be killed? Stoning was one thing, but even the stake would have stirred no sympathy. The crime fit.
Thus the situation was brought under control with startling speed, and Princess Isis's standing as heir grew all the firmer.
Truly...
"...What a terrifying woman. She's just playing with the whole thing. Playing with it."
Terrifying beyond words. Recalling the face of the woman who sat at a desk and tuned every part of this affair, Lee Han felt the sweat running down him go cold.
...Because it gave him the chills.