The Forgotten Spearman
Slow, yet natural as flowing water.
Shweeeek!
…The spearman was charging straight at me.
Finally found him.
Chwaruk!
I raised my sword and deflected the thrust. The spearman closed in even tighter, tracing successive arcs through the air.
Parry, and he clung. Attack, and he latched on and dragged the exchange out. He was exploiting the spear’s reach to its absolute limit, making himself as troublesome as possible.
A master of the spear. Someone who had spent a lifetime honing spear arts until he reached the realm of true expertise—that much was certain.
Strange.
But something was off. For all the refined technique he possessed, I felt no hostility from him. No killing intent. No malice. He was simply moving on instinct.
Not calculating. Not thinking. The pure extreme of the unconscious.
Someone who can wield spear arts of this caliber entirely unconsciously…
Interest stirred. And on top of that, he had set his restrictions to the maximum—just as I had. Yet he still moved like this. He didn’t even have a Hidden Trait like my Mutant.
He’s lived like this for at least a year…
Complete adaptation. Proof that he had lost every sense and swung nothing but a spear. A year at minimum. Possibly far longer.
Not normal. But then again…
Easy to say. How many people could swing a weapon for years on end with every sense stripped away? Was pure obsession with reaching a higher realm really enough to make that possible?
…I’m not normal either.
I smiled inwardly. Meeting a master of such pure technique was rare. So I decided to play along. I needed a sparring partner myself, after all.
How much time passed after that?
Only after trading sword and spear without rest did I feel a strange familiarity. I couldn’t be certain, but the spear arts he used were clearly different from ordinary ones.
A typical spearman’s attacks were clean and concise. The one before me, however, fought almost entirely in consecutive strikes.
Maximum eight-hit combos. Each successive strike smoother and stronger than the last. This…
Something about it felt familiar. The feel of those consecutive strikes. Didn’t it resemble, to an almost maddening degree, that class which trained primarily in multi-hit combos and unlocked Rampage upon reaching a ten-hit chain?
No way…
No. Impossible. It couldn’t be.
But the longer we fought, the more denial turned into certainty. In this entire world, I knew of only one spearman who stuck like glue and hammered out consecutive strikes like this.
Is this the spearman character I abandoned mid-grind…?
Good God. It fit.
Two years ago, I had planted him on the Mountain of the Cultivator, logged out, and never logged back in—that ill-fated character. It had been the period when I was focusing on finishing Wilhelm, and the proficiency grind showed no sign of ending, so I had simply left him there.
Insane.
I was speechless. So why was he still here, still alive? It wouldn’t have been strange if someone had killed him long ago.
And for good reason.
Eight-hit combos after two years? He really did have no talent.
The spearman character had no talent. The Spearman class itself was decent enough with a proficiency cap of Level 20, but the problem was that its most important skill—Rampage—only became available at a ten-hit chain. Reaching nine and ten consecutive strikes required the ability to project Outer Qi, and even maxing proficiency at Level 20 didn’t grant that. Outer Qi needed talent of its own: sensory aptitude, an affinity for natural energy, that sort of foundation.
I had invested some basic talent when I created him, of course, but it was nowhere near enough to produce Outer Qi.
…Setting the restrictions to maximum was a mistake.
Stacking heavy restrictions on top of insufficient talent had backfired. Raising him stopped being fun. Spending all day swinging a spear at a black screen—what joy was there in that? Proficiency climbed at a crawl, and there was still endless busywork to manage. I remembered dropping him without a second thought.
And that same character had survived alone in this hell and was now swinging a spear at me.
Looks like he hit proficiency Level 20, at least.
Two years had been enough to max the proficiency level. But he still couldn’t project Outer Qi. Was it simply a lack of the talent required?
Normally, Outer Qi needs both talent and a master.
Even with talent, you had to learn the knack from a teacher. Of course, someone with overwhelming talent like mine didn’t need that process. There was also the option of dedicated Outer Qi training—meditation methods or internal cultivation techniques that refined Inner Qi into Outer Qi. Those definitely existed in the game.
But two years should have been more than enough to produce Outer Qi under normal circumstances. This was the Mountain of the Cultivator, after all.
The Mountain of the Cultivator wasn’t merely a place to raise proficiency.
The real reason the Mountain of the Cultivator exists is Outer Qi training. Hit Level 20, meditate at the summit, and Outer Qi blooms on its own.
Something was wrong. There had to be a reason the spearman still couldn’t produce it.
…This is my karma too.
If I hadn’t known, fine. But he was right in front of me. I couldn’t turn away. Like Isaac and Isabella, he was a character I had raised. I couldn’t abandon a spearman who had trained alone for two years all over again.
I need to look into this.
I would examine the problem properly. The me of then and the me of now had entirely different experience and entirely different eyes.
“Lady Aria. Are you heading to the Chaos Domain again today?”
A practitioner asked, but Aria didn’t even react as she descended the mountain. Her proper place was the uppermost tier of the Mountain of the Cultivator—land saturated with the energy called the Celestial Realm. She had no need to go down. Yet once a week, whenever the Chaos Domain opened, she made her way there.
The reason was simple.
She beats that spearman half to death every single time…
When the Chaos Domain opened and the spearman appeared, the sparring began. Sparring in name only—it was one-sided violence. She drove him to the brink of death, then returned.
Lady Aria despises those without talent.
The spearman had none. What good were maximum restrictions? What good was ceaseless effort? Years had passed and he still couldn’t produce a single wisp of Outer Qi. So the pressure was deliberate: give up and leave the Mountain of the Cultivator.
That had already gone on for well over a year, and still the spearman refused to leave.
Though that’s also why he’s still alive.
Without Aria, the spearman would have died long ago. Word had spread that he was someone she had marked, so no one dared touch him. Here, she was king.
From the moment she appeared on the Mountain of the Cultivator, she had been the fastest to reach the Celestial Realm. That overwhelming talent and terrifying ability had been enough to stun every practitioner and trainee alike.
He’s going to get wrecked again today.
The practitioner shook his head. Why wouldn’t the spearman give up? By now he should have felt the full weight of his own lack of talent. And even with restrictions set to maximum on the Mountain of the Cultivator, pain and the sensation of pain remained fully intact.
At this point it’s past stubbornness and into pure stupidity. Tsk tsk.
Clicking his tongue, he followed her down to the Chaos Domain. Then Aria suddenly stopped.
“……?”
The practitioner could only tilt his head. The spearman was there, yes—but there was someone else as well.
“Ah… I heard a human recently entered the mountain with all restrictions set to maximum. That must be him. Strange, though. How is he already in the Chaos Domain…?”
He had only heard the news a week ago. A foolish human who had just entered the mountain. All restrictions maxed, proficiency level pathetic—everyone had been certain he would die soon.
“Wait. Level 19?”
The practitioner rubbed both eyes, then opened them wide. He hadn’t misseen it. He had clearly been told the proficiency level was worthless—Level 19? In that short a time?
“T-twenty! He just hit Level 20!”
In that instant, the level-up flashed before the practitioner’s eyes. Level 20 was a kind of threshold—a realm even those called geniuses struggled to cross.
But something even more astonishing followed immediately after.
“…Sword… Qi…!”
Outer Qi—Sword Qi—bloomed from the blade. Producing Sword Qi the moment he hit Level 20. Even overflowing talent shouldn’t have made that possible. In all his long years as a practitioner, he had never seen anything like it.
“…….”
A faint spark of interest rose in Aria’s previously emotionless eyes.
Sword Proficiency has risen to Lv. 20.
Sword Proficiency has reached Lv. 20.
Sword Qi has been unlocked.
You have manifested Sword Qi. Damage increased by 20%.
Sword Qi damage scales with Sword Proficiency Level.
Usage conditions for Creation of Heaven and Earth — Ji (Earth) have been satisfied.
Reaching Level 20 and manifesting Sword Qi unlocked the technique I had used in my previous clash with the Supreme Dragon. Ji of Creation of Heaven and Earth—the sword art that resonated with every attack and dismantled it. The same technique that had received the Supreme Dragon’s assault. Its minimum requirement had been the manifestation of Sword Qi, so of course it was available now.
I see what the problem is.
At the same time, I grasped why the spearman couldn’t produce Outer Qi.
The unconscious. That was the issue.
Too long spent in darkness had given birth to an unconscious self. That unconscious had been his only means of protecting himself from every threat. But that deep unconscious had also been blocking any new learning.
Then I had to wake him. Wake the spearman’s consciousness.
The method was simple.
Until one of us falls.
Just keep fighting! Only by releasing everything he had built over two years could that unconscious be broken. And I guided him through resonance, drawing his consciousness toward awakening.
By the time even the length of the fight had grown hazy—
Thud!
The spearman collapsed onto the ground and passed out cold. Faint Outer Qi still clung to his spear.
How long had it been since she felt interest like this?
No—interest of this magnitude might have been a first. For a long time, Aria had been bored. A year of stagnation, and everything in the world had come to feel trivial. That was why talentless, tedious people only made her angry.
The human spearman had been the same. Unable to produce even a scrap of Outer Qi, yet buried on the mountain for years, wasting time. She had never doubted he would remain stuck in place for life. So she had always pressed him: give up, you have no talent, leave the mountain already.
Outer Qi…
And yet. At the very end, the spearman had produced Outer Qi. That shimmering energy on his spear was unmistakably it. But what had made it possible was entirely thanks to the newly appeared human—the one who, like the spearman, had set his restrictions to the maximum.
A genius.
He seemed to be the same kind of being as herself. The moment he reached the domain, he used Sword Qi, and he possessed enough overflowing talent to draw Outer Qi out of the spearman. She had never seen anything like it.
Not even in Kramdel—not from the White King, not from the Four Lords—had she felt this. She had met countless powerful figures, but none had ever moved her like this.
Thump! Thump!
Looking at him, her heart pounded madly.
The spearman Valté had sunk into the deep sea.
For more than two years, his own lack of progress had filled him with despair. Even so, he never released his spear. He never stopped believing that someday his effort would bear fruit.
But every time he left the Chaos Domain, Valté was forced to confront frustration all over again.
Radiant talent I could never compare to.
He didn’t know who it was. But someone always crushed him with an overwhelming gap in skill. And every time, that presence seemed to say:
—You have no talent.
—Those who only work hard have no place on this Mountain of the Cultivator.
—Give up and go down.
As if mocking his effort, his opponent grew stronger with every encounter. At first the gap hadn’t been so vast, but now it had stretched so far he could no longer even see the other side.
Surely someone chosen by the heavens—a bearer of brilliant talent. Talent he could never hope to match.
Valté. Swing the spear. If a hundred times isn’t enough, a thousand. If a thousand isn’t enough, ten thousand!
He clenched his teeth and drove himself even harder. But the saying that effort never betrays you was a lie. As the gulf in skill and the difference in talent grew more stark with time, Valté could only despair.
Valté, don’t grow weak. Think too much and you’ll be swallowed.
In the end, he locked himself inside his own unconscious and began swinging nothing but the spear. Right up to this day.
Who is that?
Before he knew it, someone else stood right in front of him. Someone who, like him, had clearly set every restriction to the maximum.