The Long-Awaited Mission

Well, of course.

I had never expected some grand reason anyway.

I was simply curious and asked.

It let me recognize my position once again.

It was not exactly a pleasant feeling, but if it reduced the number of future mistakes by one, then it was a gain.

That was how I chose to look at it.

“Well… since it’s a recommendation.”

It would not be far from the truth to say I had simply given up.

There was nothing wrong with being drawn to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠expensive things.

Besides, it was not as if I could ignore Malphas’s words to his face, so what choice did I have?

If told to do it, I had to do it. It was something I had been good at since my previous life, so it was nothing new.

I picked up the secret manual that had fallen to the floor.

Its thin, light weight felt at odds with the grandiose name, leaving a faintly bitter taste in my mouth.

A clear chime rang out.

The moment I checked them, the last function of my System authority—the mission window—sparkled, and the three confirmed missions moved into standby.

Since there was something I needed to confirm before making a choice, I turned to Malphas before selecting any mission.

“The first and third make sense, but what the hell is the second mission about?”

Asmodeus had already conquered that world. If anyone could stir up chaos there, it would be him. I wondered why he had gone out of his way to present it to me as a mission.

The unlimited deadline, the mission details, the rewards—there had to be some ulterior motive, or he would not have offered it like this.

I understood.

The second mission itself seemed to be a kind of warning and gift at the same time.

In that case, I would enjoy the non-urgent second mission later and choose among the remaining ones.

Fortunately, Malphas was right beside me.

“Hey, Malphas. Which one looks good to you?”

At my question, Malphas gave me a look that said what a pathetic bastard, then flapped his wings and vanished.

“No, after giving me all those hints earlier, now you just leave?”

I knew the first mission was the most rational choice.

Yet earlier they had kicked that very rational option around and asked me about it.

Once again, I was left alone in the empty white space.

There was no reason to jump into a mission immediately, so I decided to use the remaining time a little more tightly.

What mattered right now was learning the Taishan Giant Strength Axe and checking my abilities.

“Ah… the axe.”

Come to think of it, I would need to buy a weapon again.

***

I gripped the axe tightly in my hand.

The way it clung perfectly to my palm, along with its heavy weight, felt satisfying.

“This body has better strength than I thought.”

Guan Yu’s Blue Dragon Crescent Blade was said to weigh forty kilograms, wasn’t it?

Even with a larger and heavier axe head, the weapon was still perfectly usable.

My swinging shoulder felt light, and my waist did not buckle under the weight.

It was not quite like chopping firewood, but at this level there would be no problem.

Having grown accustomed to the axe, it was time to test the Taishan Giant Strength Axe.

One page, then another. I flipped through the secret manual with my foot.

“Hmm…?”

After turning all ten or so pages, a puzzled groan escaped my lips.

I went back to the beginning and read through them once more.

“What the hell. You call this a secret manual?”

There was almost nothing written in it.

A total of four ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠forms… no, could these even be called forms?

Downward strike, horizontal slash, kick, and blocking with the axe.

A severe case of buyer’s remorse threatened to hit me, but I endured it.

What mattered was not the forms themselves.

The most important part was the external cultivation method called Taishan Giant Strength Axe and how it handled qi.

That section did not disappoint.

First, sense the qi that fills nature through meditation.

Second, once sensed, draw the qi in through breathing.

Third, use specific movements to settle the absorbed qi within the body.

What was this kind of training called?

Repetitive movement training? Body forging?

Body forging sounded better.

“Hup!”

I moved my qi according to the four forms.

The manual had warned that this was a dangerous practice that could lead to qi deviation by absorbing turbid qi scattered throughout nature all at once.

But for me now, it posed no problem whatsoever.

In my small world, the only thing capable of leaking qi was my main body.

My main body, still untainted by any color, continued axe practice for several hours while receiving pure qi.

-Ding.

A frivolous notification rang inside my head, and a new skill was added to the Status Window.

So that was why the secret manual never mentioned a dantian. It was a pure external art that could not even create one.

I knew about murim, but not in great detail.

To create a dantian, did one need an internal art… specifically a mental cultivation method?

Did things like the Minor Devil Art or Black Killing Palm not require a dantian either?

Curiosity raised its head for a moment, but I quickly suppressed it.

It was not something I needed right now, so it was better to polish what I already possessed.

As for magic… I would set it aside for now.

Training beside my main body allowed me to gain experience without risk.

There was no need to half-heartedly dabble in other training methods.

***

The three hundred days had been a period in which I fully enjoyed the benefits of the Incubus trait.

Because an incubus is a mana lifeform, it has no physiological phenomena.

More precisely, as long as there is mana, physiological phenomena can be ignored.

The Taishan Giant Strength Axe absorbs qi throughout the entire body. Although qi is denser than mana, its essence is not fundamentally different.

In other words, performing the Taishan Giant Strength Axe causes qi to accumulate in the body.

By consuming a portion of that accumulated qi, physiological phenomena can be ignored.

This created an infinite power cycle.

Come to think of it, choosing incubus had been a divine move.

If I had started as a human, I might have wasted points buying food from the shop.

Thanks to that, my current progress was quite good.

Indeed, it had to be.

To spend nearly a year doing nothing but mindless axe swings in meditation and see no results would have been infuriating enough to make me charge at Malphas with the axe in a suicidal rampage.

-Whooooosh.

I had obtained monstrous strength that let me spin the massive axe like a ballpoint pen.

Seeing descriptions in murim novels of imagining an image and training to break through realms, I tried it, and it worked.

When I pictured splitting a mountain with an axe strike, a faint black aura flickered along the axe blade.

My intuition told me that the reason I could not sense any further progress was related to the lack of a dantian.

“Hmm… the Three Talents Mind Method secret manual costs 800 points. Should I buy it?”

The Three Talents Mind Method.

At a glance it looked like a mental technique for the Three Talents Sword, but I briefly considered whether it would be good to learn even something like this to create a dantian first.

It did not seem bad.

Even if I learned a different mental technique later and ran into problems, it would not be a great loss to discard it.

-Purchase of the Three Talents Mind Method has been completed.

Thud. A thin booklet fell that was no less substantial than the Taishan Giant Strength Axe manual.

I flipped through it, but the depth of its content was not much different.

The early section emphasized the importance of foundations and packaged the Three Talents as the basis of all swords.

The middle section covered meditation methods for sensing qi and ways to accept it.

The latter section explained how to form a dantian with the accepted qi and how to operate it.

It was short and simple.

It was simply the method of gathering the qi that had been spread throughout the body through breathing and concentrating it in one place to form a dantian.

And unlike the body-forging method that absorbed all kinds of energy indiscriminately, it was the method of filtering out turbid energy through the dantian.

That was all.

Thanks to the results of my training over the past three hundred days, roughly an hour after purchasing the manual I felt a heavy sensation of energy gathering below my navel.

Was this the dantian?

Until now, the qi that had wrapped my entire body felt like being embraced by smoke all over.

The formed dantian felt like holding a small teacup in my hand.

I could drink the water in this teacup or pour it out.

It was an entirely different sensation from dousing my whole body with smoke.

There were still twenty days left. Should I go ahead and practice qi emission here as well?

I considered it briefly but decided against it.

The situation was different from the Taishan Giant Strength Axe, which carried the risk of qi deviation ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠by absorbing turbid energy.

Since my main body was still weak, it seemed more beneficial to find a place in another world filled with natural energy.

Besides, I was already tired of doing nothing but axe swings for nearly a year.

The moment I accepted the mission, I felt a pulling force drawing me in.

Stepping into that place would finally mark the first step of my new life.

My heart pounded wildly with excitement.

Without even trying to hide the grin that rose uncontrollably to my lips, I threw myself toward the pulling force.

It was time to begin.