Starting Over, But Perfectly
After Choi Daeun had gone out of sight, I finally began to sort through what had just happened with a clear head.
Has my mind gone completely mad?
Only moments ago, I had been fighting tens of thousands of monsters, only to be devoured and die in the end, hadn’t I?
When I looked down at my body, my arms and legs were still slender from having never truly trained, and my height and frame were pathetic, still far from full growth. Back when I was called the Sword Saint, I had trained through explosive growth and relentless physical conditioning, building a body packed with muscle and density. Compared to that, this was a useless shell no different from an infant’s. I couldn’t believe I had returned to a body like this.
Calm down.
I was confused, but I recovered my reason quickly. Everything I felt in my body was vivid and real. There was no way this was a dream. No—this couldn’t be a dream. A hallucination? Impossible. My body and mind, back when I was known as the Sword Saint, were not so fragile as to fall prey to something like that. My mind had been worn down through years of hardship, to the point that even an S-rank mage’s illusion had no effect on me. And even if I had somehow fallen under an illusion, there was no way my body would fail to notice how wrong it felt.
Every logical judgment and every shred of evidence pointed to one conclusion.
I had returned to the past.
No need for pointless thoughts. Searching for a reason is meaningless.
The single most important lesson I had learned through sword training was not to deny the reality in front of me. It was hard to accept, but I had regressed. As if answering my wish before death, I had returned to the time before I lost my arm.
My arm...
I had been right-handed. And then a monster took my right arm.
Because of that, my sword training had become even more painful. I had to learn everything from how to move a limb I had never properly used to how to control it with precision. With a body that had no talent to speak of, I had struggled with my left arm like a man trying to drag himself out of hell—no, like someone who wanted to die hundreds of times over just to stop the pain. Every time, I had wondered whether it would have been a little easier if the monster had eaten my left arm instead.
But now things were different. I no longer had one arm. I had both.
Before losing my arm, I had only known how to use my right hand. After losing it, I had trained only my left.
Which means...
Now that I had both arms again, it meant I could use either hand as my main one.
-Whoosh.
I rotated my hands back and forth. My right hand still felt awkward.
If I really regressed, then my body should still be right-handed. So why does my right hand feel more awkward than the left?
The reason was obvious without even thinking about it. My mind and body were not the same thing. In the end, the body followed the mind’s command. In short, the body was influenced more by the mind than by habit.
I had used only my left hand for decades, so it was only natural that the right felt unnatural now. Even if I had regressed to the period before I ever lost my arm.
Wait. Then that means... my swordsmanship... the sword skills I had forged through all that death and suffering, all the way to the realm of the Sword Saint, I can use them right now in this body?
If the mind exerted such a strong influence over the body, then techniques that belonged to the mental realm would be affected just as much.
I need to test it.
I didn’t have a proper sword on me, so I searched the ground until I found a branch that could serve as one. Then I moved to an open clearing and stood before a massive boulder. The large stone and the surrounding walls were covered with sword marks.
Someone must use this place for training. Since no one’s here, I’ll just borrow it for a moment.
Before swinging the makeshift sword, I held my breath and steadied my breathing. Then I slowly settled into my stance. I felt the flow of every muscle in my body one by one. Using the bare minimum of mana, I compensated for my lack of strength.
Damn it... My mana is ridiculously low.
A pitiful body. Not only had it never undergone proper strength or stamina training, it was even lacking mana—a worthless, broken body worse than that of an ordinary person. That was unavoidable, since at this point I was practically a ruined man. And yet I didn’t give up. Even with the same resources, efficiency changed depending on how you used them.
I gathered the tiny scraps of mana I had, little by little. The mana I collected began to rotate again, circulating through my entire body so that nothing was wasted. And instead of letting the mana that lost its force during circulation dissipate, I transferred that energy back into the sword. I chose a perfect method of mana consumption that wasted not even a single handful, and my efficiency began to rise to the limit.
I gripped the branch with both hands and forced strength into them. At the same time, I relaxed my shoulders. I made sure not to tense my trapezius muscles or any of the surrounding muscle groups too much. Slowly, I raised the branch. In the process, I felt the movement of the wind. I calculated in my head which angle would meet the least resistance.
The last step. I calculated and, at the same time, swung.
-Whoom!
-Kzzzzk!
I used every ounce of strength in my body without wasting a single trace of it. As a result, a deep sword mark and a crack appeared in the boulder.
“Ha... haha... haha...”
If I had still possessed the body I had in my Sword Saint days, if I had the mana I used to have back then, I would have shattered a rock like this with a single finger. But now, all I had done was leave a sword mark. Did that disappoint me? Absolutely not.
I approached a boulder that looked to be about thirty kilograms and tried to lift it. But it didn’t budge at all. As expected, my physical strength was absurdly weak.
This pathetic body, and not even a real sword—just a branch. My mana is laughably poor.
To leave such a deep sword mark with a body no better than an infant’s and a fragile branch was astonishing. If I had used a real sword, I was certain I could have cleanly cut the boulder in half.
A half-wit who had never even held a real sword once split a boulder with a blade? If I trained my body and mana properly, I could grow three times faster than in my previous life... no, maybe even several times faster. Maybe I could even reach the realm of the Sword God and kill that bastard Creator too.
Above all else, I still had to get used to having both arms again.
Until now, every technique I used had been centered around wielding a single left arm. If I learned to use both arms perfectly, revised the swordsmanship I had customized for my own body, and let my physical growth support that development at the same time...
If someone else saw this, they’d call it unfair.
At first glance, it might have looked like I was falling behind, but my foundation was completely different from everyone else’s. While others were scraping sand off the ground to build a castle, I was laying down thousands of finished bricks and stacking them one by one. Once I passed a certain point, I would have a fortress no one else could reach—one built sturdier than anyone else’s.
I don’t know why I regressed in the first place.
The reason didn’t matter. In this life, I would change everything.
If I was going to regress anyway... I wish I’d gone back to before my little sister died.
Regret lingered, but I shook my head. That was already something I couldn’t change. I shouldn’t look back. If I let emotion cloud my mind, my body would slow. And if my body slowed, my steps would become that much more sluggish.
For now, I need to go to the academy.
If I truly had regressed to the past, then after the academy entrance exam ended, Choi Daeun would be attacked by monsters. Back then, I had saved her by protecting her with my life, and if I hadn’t helped her, she would have been devoured. So this time, too, what I had to do was obvious.
I’ll save her. If I can save her, why would I let her die?
The problem was that I couldn’t remember exactly where the monster attack happened, or at what hour, minute, or second. Since it had been over a decade ago, all I remembered was that Choi Daeun was attacked after the exam ended, and that while protecting her, my arm had been eaten by a monster.
If I’m off by even ten seconds, Choi Daeun dies.
Should I ask for help from the people around me? Should I tell the academy to tighten supervision and management? If anyone believed me, there’d be no need for me to take the risk myself. There were several possible ways to handle it, but all of them required me to go to the academy first.
Yes. Let’s move.
-Swish!
Just as I threw away the branch I had been using and was about to head for Flote Academy—
“You. What are you?”
A woman with a real sword strapped to her back called out to me. A cold gaze, as if she looked down on everything in the world as beneath her. I knew who she was at once. This girl was the prodigy of the age, the one who was said to be a once-in-a-century sword genius and who held the undisputed top spot at Flote Academy. I could never forget her.
Min Sua...
For the record, Min Sua died alongside Choi Daeun in the academy explosion incident.
“I asked what you are. What was that just now?”
“What do you mean, ‘that’? And why are you talking to me so casually?”
“You’re not wearing a uniform, and from your clothes and the luggage you’re carrying, you look like you’re on your way to take Flote Academy’s entrance exam. You can enroll starting at twenty, so we’re the same age anyway.”
“Well... I guess so.”
She must have guessed from the way I was loaded down with baggage. As expected of a born swordswoman, she had a sharp eye. Of course, at this hour, anyone outside in full gear was probably headed to the Flote Academy entrance exam.
My actual age was much older, but that hardly mattered, so I let it go. She looked at my reluctant expression and asked,
“That boulder. You just did that, didn’t you...? How is that even possible?”
“That, you say? More importantly, why were you spying on me?”
Watching someone secretly while they train in swordsmanship was a tremendous breach of manners. Especially for someone of greater skill, it was one of the things you absolutely shouldn’t do. The path of the sword, the way force was used, one’s personal training methods—all of it carried enormous intangible value.
Min Sua answered with a flustered look.
“I wasn’t spying. I always train here. You were using my training spot, so I actually gave you the courtesy of waiting for a long time.”
Her back was strapped with several swords. And when I thought about it, the sword marks on the clearing walls and boulders I had noticed when I first came in looked as though they had been formed over a long period of time. Those must have been traces left by Min Sua.
“If that’s the case, then I’m sorry. I won’t use this place again.”
With that, I was about to leave. But the girl grabbed my wrist.
“Wait... I asked how you did that. How did you do that with a branch?”
“The rock was already cracked. There’s no way a branch could do something like that.”
Wanting to avoid trouble, I brushed her off with a convenient excuse. The girl looked at me suspiciously, but I ignored her and tried to leave anyway.
“How long have you been learning the sword?”
Min Sua didn’t believe me and pressed the question, and I was about to get irritated when the explosion incident suddenly came to mind.
She’s one of the poor souls who dies in the end too.
The academy top student. A girl who trained harder than anyone else, only to die miserably in a monster attack in the end. Feeling a sudden sting of pity, I changed my mind and decided to indulge her a little.
“I’ve never learned the sword, and the rock really was already cracked.”
“Lies. You’ve never learned the sword? Don’t joke around. You weren’t the first person to ever swing that stance.”
“It’s true. I can swear on everything. I’ve never swung a sword with this body before. If you don’t believe me, why don’t we use a lie-detection spell by mutual consent?”
It wasn’t a lie. This was the first time I had swung a sword in this body, so if a lie-detection spell were used, the result would be the truth. I naturally shifted the focus of the conversation toward my sword experience, burying the question of whether the crack in the boulder had already been there.
Min Sua’s expression turned cold.
“Is that so. You’re telling me you tried swinging a sword for the first time and managed that? Then I can do that much too.”
She picked up one of the branches nearby. Then she gathered her energy, steadied her breathing in the exact same way I had shown her earlier, and brought the branch down.
-Crack-!
Of course it wouldn’t work.
Min Sua’s talent was impressive, but she was still just a young fool. This wasn’t some trick that could be done merely because your body was gifted. You had to control the flow of the air around you, refine your mana with precision to strengthen the branch until it was comparable to stone, and then swing at the optimal angle without letting it break while paying attention to its durability. If anyone could just do that, then I wouldn’t have needed to fight hundreds of thousands of monsters before becoming the Sword Saint, nor would I have needed to swing a sword for more than eighteen hours a day.
“Don’t look... my hand slipped...”
Min Sua muttered with her head hanging low.
“I said don’t look this way...”
Her face turned bright red with embarrassment, and I silently shook my head.
I hope she doesn’t take it too hard.
There was no need to comfort her here. In any case, Min Sua was still destined to be the Flote Academy entrance exam’s top scorer. She would realize soon enough that her failure wasn’t because she lacked ability. The truth was simply that the technique I had just displayed was far too difficult for someone of only twenty years old to imitate, far too difficult to master just because a few years of sword swinging had gone by.
I already have enough to do at the academy. First, I need to take the entrance exam.
In my previous life, I had received an F-grade and failed the entrance exam. I wondered how it would be this time. My body was the same, but my mind was different. How much would that difference affect my grade? I was curious. Laughably enough, even in a situation like this, my heart began to pound.
I was starting from the beginning. But this time, I was starting with two arms.
Leaving the stone-stiff Min Sua behind me, I headed for the entrance exam hall.
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