The Weight of Training
As the Qigong Master Yujia, my sub-character who has been developed next to the main avatar Aria, and a character on par with Aria in terms of charm and wealth. Just like Aria, the swordswoman who specializes in two swords, Yujia was a character in the fighting arts lineage that specialized in close-range combat using qi.
If Aria and Yeonha fought with a distance comparable to the length of a sword and Kama and Meiel were barely visible, Yujia would stubbornly close the gap with the enemy and engage in zero-distance combat. And the fighting techniques that induce such zero-distance battles require no special teaching tailored to each individual; they become an excellent second method of combat for every job class from swordmasters to archers to assassins.
That was why the simple assignment I gave to everyone the moment I began the fighting arts lesson was straightforward.
The training ground was soaked with sweat. I raised my voice and shouted as I looked at the students who were on the verge of collapse.
“Run! Twenty laps left!”
“Hah… hah… haaa…”
“I’m… going to die…”
“Hea…vy…”
The legs of the students who had started to stop at my roar moved again. And on the arms and legs and waist of those students were attached fifty-kilogram lead plates each.
As I said earlier, the most important thing for a fighter who induces zero-distance combat is to stubbornly stick to the enemy. Therefore, the task I gave to my students was to run the training ground one hundred laps while wearing lead plates weighing a total of two hundred and fifty kilograms on their bodies.
But of course it was not easy. I had already told them there would be no penalty for failing, and I started running right away. Most students dropped out after forty or fifty laps.
The training ground was four hundred and fifty meters per lap, so forty or fifty laps meant they had held on quite well at that point.
Anyway, out of fifty students, thirty-seven had dropped out at that level. Even among the thirteen who were still persevering with sheer will, their faces were nearly dead except for a few who still had some life left in their eyes.
And among those students who were persevering with sheer will, the ones who still had life in their eyes were Riana, Arin, and Park.
Representative characters as they were, Riana and Arin were running the training ground with adjusted pace while receiving respectful glances from the students who had already dropped out.
Additionally, Park, the representative fighter character, was seeing the class for the first time today, as he had not attended my lesson outside of fighting arts. But he was incredibly tough, and I liked that. Beyond toughness, even if only slightly, he was ahead of both Arin and Riana in the fighting arts class, as if he could never lose to anyone.
Just by looking at them I could see their innate talent and the effort they had accumulated so far. I looked at Park, Arin, and Riana in turn, and finally, while running the last hundred laps, I shouted loudly upon seeing the three students collapse to the ground.
“The first passers are the three of you! All three of you worked hard!”
“Kk… kk! Ha… ha…”
“My legs… won’t move anymore…”
“It’s too much…”
My easy praise had no power left to respond to. The three students crawled toward the bench while lying on the ground.
I wondered if it was a bit harsh, so I gave a wry smile, glanced at my watch, and whistled softly.
“As expected, the real prodigies are terrifying.”
Only one hour and thirty minutes after starting to run, they had completed one hundred laps. With the two-hundred-and-fifty-kilogram lead plates I had given them, no less.
I swallowed the sigh that naturally escaped me and turned my gaze to the students still running. But perhaps because I had said that passers had appeared, the running students were leading sluggish bodies as if their motivation had vanished and were walking toward the bench without completing the one hundred laps.
After all, even I would have given up quickly if I lost the goal I was running for as my last hope. I could not help but understand.
Then, with only the three passers left, it was probably fine to end the class soon.
“There are no more students running. The lesson today is over! You are free to rest until the end of the class!”
“Waaaa!”
“Finally…!”
“Ha, I survived…”
The students who had nearly died let out sighs of relief at my words and shouted that they were glad they did not have to wear the lead plates anymore. The clattering sounds of the plates being tossed echoed from everywhere as the students flung them away.
But honestly, I had not made the lead plates just to force them onto students for a short moment during the class. And I had not planned to let them go so easily after making them so difficult.
These lead plates had taken hours to craft carefully. If I made the balance off, it would only harm their bodies, so I had worked with utmost care.
Looking at the students removing the lead plates, I showed them a smile like a demon.
“By the way, the lead plates you are wearing now are to be used continuously except when you are bathing or taking a shower. Otherwise, training will not proceed.”
“Eek?!”
“No way!!”
“It’s a lie?!”
The students who could not accept my words protested. But when I turned away without answering, they must have realized there was no withdrawal, and with a heavy sigh different from before, they attached the lead plates they had just removed back onto their bodies.
For a moment I felt proud of the satisfied expression that showed my effort was worthwhile. Then I looked at Riana, Arin, and Park sitting far away, chatting as if they had already become close, and pulled out the ‘product’ I had forgotten.
CLANK───
From the box placed beside the stage, what I took out was not the orange lead plate I had given them before running, but a peach-colored one.
Unlike the two-hundred-and-fifty-kilogram ones, these were special lead plates weighing a full five hundred kilograms. The time spent making them was also special, more than double that of the others.
“Passing my assignment means you are outstanding students, so it is only right to give outstanding students outstanding special products, right?”
* * *
If I had been pressed to death, would I feel this way?
I had never experienced being pressed, but Arin was frozen, unable to even lift a finger against the screams of the muscles crushing her entire body. Of course she could move if she wanted, but she had no desire to move her body at all, so Arin turned her head to the two students lying next to her like her own.
Riana, the elf with her light-blue hair hanging limply in sweat from the same class, and Park, the male student with sweat-soaked hair who was seeing today for the first time.
Until this morning they had not been friends at all, but having run the training ground together at the same speed, they had become close enough to understand each other’s words at least somewhat.
“Riana, Park… are you okay?”
“No… it feels like I’m about to die right now. Arin and Park seem the same…”
“Yeah, I’m going to die too…”
Riana, barely raising her upper body while shaking her head in response to Arin’s question, and Park, who brushed aside the blue hair stuck to his face.
Needless to say, both of them looked as heavy as the lead plates attached to Arin’s entire body.
And only after realizing it belatedly did Arin notice anew just how heavy the lead plates on her body truly were, and she removed the magnet from the plate she was wearing and dropped it to the floor.
CLANK!
With a weighty sound as heavy as its appearance, the lead plate fell.
Seeing Arin remove the lead plate, Riana and Park realized that removing the magnet would make their already heavy arms even heavier, and they followed Arin in removing their own magnets and letting the plates fall to the ground.
CLUNK, CLUNK. The heavy lead plates dropped with dull, resounding sounds.
After removing the plates from arms, legs, and waist, Arin, Riana, and Park, now feeling much lighter, let out lazy sighs with no one wanting to go first.
“Hah… now I can breathe a little. If I did something like this one more time, I might really die.”
“That’s true.”
“I agree wholeheartedly… these things…”
As fellow runners who had completed one hundred laps on the training ground together, they vented their frustration while forming a bond of empathy.
Yujia, who had assigned this task to Arin, was too cruel, and as Arin vented, perhaps she had not liked that kind of venting.
Yujia’s large voice, which was sitting on the stage, cut off Park’s words and echoed throughout the training ground.
“By the way, the lead plates you are wearing now are to be used continuously except when you are bathing or taking a shower. Otherwise, training will not proceed.”
…What kind of nonsense was that?
Arin unconsciously looked at Riana and Park, and as the two shared the same thought, they met Arin’s gaze at the same time and Arin blinked her eyes.
She hoped she had misheard, but the heavy sighs mixed with moans from the other students and the sounds of reattaching the lead plates that followed clearly told her that what Yujia had said was true.
Now I have to really put these lead plates back on?
Arin looked between the lead plates on the floor and Yujia, but if the professor said it that way, what other choice was there?
“You mean… wear these again?”
“And outside of class too…”
“…No choice. I have to wear them again.”
Arin genuinely did not want to pick up the lead plates she had just dropped, but in the end she did.
She muttered to herself that if she had to wear these, it would feel like hell.
Unfortunately, true hell seemed to start right now.
“Ah, you three, stop.”
“Eh?”
“Professor?”
“What’s wrong…?”
Yujia walked over holding something similar to the lead plate Arin had in her hand on one arm.
Riana and Park tilted their heads at the sudden appearance of the silent girl, but Arin, who had been looking at her from behind, suddenly felt a chill run down her spine.
For some reason, her intuition screamed that this smile was definitely not good for Arin at least.
Arin’s expression hardened abruptly as she sensed the same feeling, but Park, who alone did not know, asked her innocently.
“What is that, Professor?”
“Oh, this?”
Yujia laughed brightly, as if waiting for Park to ask that question.
Arin and Riana could only manage to smile slightly while wanting to cover that mouth that looked ready to open at any moment.
“Since you have passed my assignment, unlike the other students, you will wear the five-hundred-kilogram ones instead of the two-hundred-and-fifty-kilogram ones. Is that okay?”
As she said this and handed over the new special lead plate she had been holding, it looked as if the hell gate that had been hidden opened its mouth.
And soon, as Arin and Riana looked at the entrance of the opened hell gate, they thought the same thing.
If she could sense Yujia’s feeling from her brother’s sister, she would run away from now on immediately.