Not the Spring Already Gone, but the Spring Still to Come

"Grrrgh...!"

A groan tore free between clenched teeth. His lungs swelled as if they might burst, and sweat streamed madly down his forehead. A crushing pressure slammed over his whole body, ready to grind him to paste at any moment.

"Huuuu!"

Somehow, he hauled himself up.

His abs burned as if they were about to split. The thighs bracing him felt one strain away from snapping. This training did not end at simply forging the flesh.

I have to lock my focus so the Gravity Field doesn't come apart!

His Gravity Field was a skill that spread a force field over an area and raised the gravity inside it. It had never been this strong to begin with. He had heightened it by shrinking the field's range.

Reworking a skill whose form had already been fixed demanded tremendous ability and effort. Once that craft grew fluent through experience and repetition, it was classified as an entirely new skill: a Derived Skill.

The mage in the underground prison had used one as well. He had taken Fire Boom, an ordinary D-rank skill, and pushed its blast to the limit, reshaping it into the D+ Fire Boom: Explosion.

Which means narrowing Gravity Field and driving the gravity to its extreme takes enormous mental strength and mana control.

It was brutal work—driving the body past its limits while still regulating mana down to the finest degree. And yet a smile kept slipping from his mouth.

"Ghhh! Three thousand eight hundred seventy-two...!"

He looked ready to black out at any second. His stamina was breaking its own limits in real time. Heat pooled in his skull and cooked his brain into a dizzy haze.

"Keheh...! Hehehehe!"

And still, for some reason, he was happy. Happy enough to cry. Had anyone been standing beside him, it would not have been strange for them to flee in horror.

He had lived his whole life buried in regret. Regret for the body that could no longer use mana. Regret for being reduced to watching Earth's destruction with his hands tied. He had not even been qualified to shoulder a share of the burden humanity carried.

Not until he regressed.

Only after he had thrown everything away did he receive a chance. A chance not to repeat his foolish choices. A chance, beyond that, to seize a better future.

"I was given that... and I'm supposed to care about a little hardship...?!"

He ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bit down on his lip hard enough for the taste of iron to flood his mouth. Pain tore through him as if the muscle fibers were fraying and splitting, but he twisted his body and forced the ten thousandth sit-up through anyway.

"Ten thousaaaand!"

Next he rolled over, braced himself on both arms, and pushed up.

Kuguugu!

The gravity pouring down felt as if it would snap the joints in his arms. Each time, a weak thought rose from somewhere inside him. Should I ease the gravity, just a little?

"...Not a chance!"

He shook it off at once and bent his arms. Sweat seeping from his whole body soaked the training-room floor.

Kkaduk!

The sound rang in his ears. The sound the man he had been before the regression had lived with, day after day. The bursting crack of a Mana Capsule caught between his teeth.

Odok!

Again and again. He had chewed Mana Capsules. Without them, he could no longer exist as a Player.

Kkadeuk!

Stay exposed long enough to external mana that was not your own, and the senses—physical ability among them—slowly degraded. He was the only one who knew that side effect. Mana Capsules had been made in the first place for those in the Mage position, a way to top off the mana they lacked while preparing a large spell.

Kwajak!

His body pickled in capsules. His stats dwindled. Now and then a headache stabbed through his ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠skull. He suffered every side effect, and he kept using them anyway.

But not anymore.

"Graaaaah!"

The gravity bearing down on him now was gravity his own mana had made. He had taken back a body that no longer needed to lean on such things. How could he not be glad?

"Ten thousaaaand!"

Glad that he could go farther. Glad that he could set his feet once more upon a starting line others were given only once.

Seeing the clear marks on both entries, he rose to his feet.

"...Hk!"

His muscles spasmed, and he nearly folded, but he caught his balance in a hurry. Only one entry remained.

This.

Without hesitating, he took up the hammer lying right beside him.

"Hup...!"

A tremendous weight traveled up both arms. Made several times heavier by the Gravity Field, it felt less like a hammer than like tearing a boulder the size of a house out of the earth and swinging it.

"Huuuk...! Hk!"

His breath came short. Every swing sent the recoil of that weight straight through his whole body. His shoulders creaked. His legs screamed. Bone and muscle twisted.

Crrrack!

The fissures scored into the floor slowly widened. Whenever his mind tried to blur, he bit the inside of his cheek and dragged himself back. Then he swung.

"Four thousand... one hundred eighty...!"

He could not do any more. This was not something a person did. Keep this up, and he really might die.

"Five thousand...!"

If he rested a little, no one would say a word. Training this murderous only got in the way of growth. Giving up what you could not do was a method too.

"Six... thousaaaand...!"

Give up like that. Give up again, and run. Regret the things you had already left behind.

"Grrrrraaaaah—!"

Like a bird in winter, chewing over fruit already rotten. Spending an entire life regretting the choices of the past—

"Seven thousand!"

He was sick of it.

Whoooom!

The heavy hammer split the empty air. His body had hit its limit long ago. He flopped like a doll whose threads had all come undone, and every joint rattled like a rusted gear. His form, of course, was a complete mess.

Whoom!

Even so, he was swinging. Somehow he was still holding the hammer. Blood dripped from palms torn open, and the feeling had left his fingers, and still—

"Eight thousaaaand—!"

The hammer kept swinging.

He was no longer a bird clutching a hungry belly, thinking only of fruit that had already fallen. What he was now was an insect. Compared with the moment just before his regression, both his stats and his rank fell short. But a far more brilliant future was waiting.

An insect looking not at the spring already gone, but at the spring still to come. And when the snow at last melted and the warmth of spring settled over the world, an insect that would finally shed its chrysalis and spread its wings.

"From here on... a lot of things are going to change...!"

At least it would be more fun than before the regression. All that remained was gaining the strength to advance at the head of a world like that. Fortunately, that did not seem like something to worry about.

The hammer—before the regression, and now.

He was more confident swinging it than anyone alive.

"Ten thousaaaaand—!"

With a shout like a cheer, he drove in the final blow.

Kwaaaaaang!

The hammer slammed into the floor. The ground around it split, and the whole area shook—power great enough to break the reinforced plates of a Player training room.

"I... did iiiit...."

Thud!

The moment every condition cleared, he collapsed to the floor. He wanted to black out and sleep right then. But the message that rose at once set fire to a consciousness already slipping under.

With that message, a mysterious sensation swirled through his whole body. If he had to name it, it was the feeling of something writhing beneath his skin while bone and muscle were taken apart and put back together.

Ssshhhh!

Violet energy surged, and a pleasant vitality poured into him.

"Clearing the trial without a single rest was worth it after all."

He had received the Trial of Gravity before the regression as well, but he had had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠no choice but to stop partway through and pick it up again in pieces. Every time his mana ran dry, he had been forced to chew a capsule. Now there was no need for that, so he had gritted his teeth and carried the trial through in a single stretch. As a result, the awakening of his constitution was unfolding more intensely than it had before the regression.

The density of his muscle rose, settling through his body firm and solid. His mana circuits grew tougher still, expanding again ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and again until the flow of mana ran even purer.

And above all—

"S-rank?!"

The moment he saw the grade of the evolved constitution, a cry of shock burst out of him before he knew it.

Before the regression, the constitution he had gained from the trial had been A-rank.

A constitution that slipped free of eighty percent of enhanced gravity's influence. That alone had made him strong enough to crush his opponents one-sidedly, and he had climbed all the way to Grandmaster.

"Gulp."

He swallowed dryly and opened his status window.

The moment he confirmed the constitution, his heart pounded like mad. It was not merely that the grade had risen.

"What kind of broken constitution is this?!"

Abilities insane enough to live up to the name Master of Gravity were strung on one after another. For reference, only about five S-rank constitutions existed in the entire world. Every last one of them belonged to a top-tier player reigning over the leagues. And now he had obtained a constitution of the same grade as theirs.

He sprang up onto his feet. He was still exhausted, but with his stats raised by the awakening, he could move far more easily.

"...Hoo."

Steadying his breath, he spread the mana inside him outward.

A violet force field unfurled. The air grew heavy all at once and crushed everything around him.

"Ha... hahahaha!"

He was still light. In this heavy world, he had become the only being who could move freely.

Whooom! Whoong!

As a test, he gripped the hammer and swung. A heavy boom of splitting air burst out and crashed into the training-room wall.

My body and the hammer have still grown heavier under gravity's influence.

But he could not feel it, and it did not affect him. A mystery possible only because of the Channel's system, which transcended ordinary scientific sense. Within this gravity, he could deliver attacks heavier and more destructive than anyone else's.

Pabat!

Training dummies generated just then. Grinning, he walked toward them.

Crack! Creak!

With every step, the reinforced plates of the floor split. When he reached the dummies, their bodies sagged under the strengthened gravity.

"Now it finally feels like a swing worth making."

He took the hammer in one hand and brought it down on a dummy, lightly.

A huge explosion erupted. When the thick haze settled, the dummy had vanished without a trace, and part of the training ground lay smashed to pieces.

"Well. This should be enough, right?"

Enough, that is, to win the bet with his hyung—reaching Silver within a month. What remained now was obtaining a Class.

Classes only open after your rank is set.

From here, the real race began. The event that could be called a Player's once-in-a-lifetime exam.

It was time to raise the curtain on the rank Placement Matches.