Holy Muscle!
I name thee Holy Muscle!
“But you know, Grandpa.” I asked while strapping the training devices onto both wrists, both ankles, and my waist. There was one thing I still didn’t get. “These things have mana-blocking enchantments on them too, right?”
“They do.”
“Then wouldn’t that make it harder to sense mana?”
“Hmm… Saintess Candidate, do you know what happens when a person loses their sight?”
I’d asked about sensing mana, but somehow the conversation had taken a hard left into blindness. Losing your sight, huh…
“Your hearing gets sharper?”
“You understand well. Then do you know what happens when a person grows hungry?”
“Their sense of smell gets stronger…?”
Obviously. If you’re starving and catch even a whiff of meat grilling in the distance, you basically lose your mind.
“Mana works the same way. Does this old man’s explanation make sense?”
It more or less clicked. Train your body to sharpen every other sense while mana is blocked, then once training ends, that heightened sensitivity lets you feel mana even better… That seemed to be the idea.
When I asked Grandpa Carlo if I’d understood correctly, he nodded and confirmed I had it right.
“Any other questions?”
It wasn’t related to training, but I suddenly remembered why I’d come looking for him in the first place.
“I passed out after yesterday’s subjugation and didn’t get to see what happened to all those corpses. How do you even deal with that many?”
Hundreds of monster bodies piled across that vast plain and hillside would cause all kinds of problems. Did they stuff them into spatial pockets or something?
“Ah, you needn’t worry about that, Saintess Candidate. There is the Moneylord Merchant group, with whom our diocese has a long-term contract.”
Carlo told me everything would already be cleaned up by now.
“If there is anything you desire, simply tell this old man. I will buy it for you. The eight-legged corpses fetch quite a high price, so we should have plenty of money coming in. Whatever you ask for, it won’t be a problem.”
Hmm… Maybe I should ask for those books I’d been thinking about?
“Then shall we begin training?”
“Yeah.”
“The mana block activates the moment you put the devices on, so there’s no need to chant anything special. You only need to remember seven spells.”
Three weight spells, three gravity spells, and one release spell. Since they were artifacts, no verbal activation was strictly necessary, he said. The three stages per spell represented progressive levels of intensity.
“Would you like to try activating only the first stage of both magics?”
The incantations were… Groweight, Gravio.
Groweight — Stage 1
Gravio — Stage 1
The moment I spoke the words, the heavy rings (I’d thought they were bracelets at first, but discovered they went on my ankles too, so I’d decided to just call them rings) suddenly felt twice as heavy. It was like someone was pressing down on my entire body.
“Whoa…!”
So this was what a pseudo-gravity training room felt like…! These training devices—no, calling them that every time felt awkward. Let’s go with Training Artifact. Yeah, that sounded good.
Anyway, the artifact worked exactly like I’d imagined. Magic really was incredible. It could turn imagination into reality. If I, someone without mana, could learn to sense it and hold it inside myself… could I learn magic too? Maybe I could even become one of those so-called holy demon mages who wield both divine power and sorcery!
“Can you move?”
This much was… no problem at all.
“As you know, even though you can use holy power, you must not use it.”
“Of course.”
“Then let’s start with a light fifty laps around the training ground.”
“Okay!… Wait, what?”
“Did you not hear? Fifty laps.”
Uh… yeah, that’s actually a lot.
Training with Grandpa Carlo was brutal. I ran until I collapsed while wearing the Training Artifact, rested a little, then moved on to strength exercises. Good lord. I never dreamed this world would also have squats, bench presses, and deadlifts. When I asked Bowt when they’d been introduced, he said one of the previous Heroes—the Hero of Super Strength—had brought them over. That guy was definitely a gym bro.
At first I’d wondered if this training was too harsh for a child, but surprisingly, I could handle it. I really could. After finishing fifty laps plus the big three lifts on the first day, I passed out completely exhausted. I expected insane muscle pain the next day, but what do you know? I was totally fine. Not only that, the same course that had wiped me out now felt difficult but manageable.
When I told Grandpa Carlo, he suggested we increase the intensity the following day, and that’s exactly what we did. On the fourth day, the same thing happened—it became manageable again. Grandpa Carlo and I both felt the need to check what kind of changes were happening to my body while I slept. That night, he agreed to observe me while I was unconscious.
On the morning of the fifth day, Grandpa Carlo told me that my holy power had moved on its own while I slept, recovering my exhausted body. However, he still couldn’t figure out why I was adapting so well to the increased training intensity.
We didn’t gain any major insights, but we agreed to slowly raise the intensity at a pace that wouldn’t overtax me. We increased it gradually, leaving two or three days between each jump.
And now, two weeks after starting training with Grandpa Carlo, I still didn’t have the character for “ghost” carved into my back… though I had developed a perfectly reasonable suspicion.
The suspicion in question was: Am I even human anymore?
It was impossible not to wonder. The intensity kept rising, yet instead of building muscle or even calluses, my body had become smoother than before. My skin was so soft it was almost addicting to touch. Despite that, my strength had increased dramatically. I could now lift a hundred kilograms with ease even without using body reinforcement.
Oh, and this world used the metric system too. No yards, pounds, or weird local units—thank goodness. When I asked Bowt about it, he said it was another achievement of one of the previous Heroes. What was the name again… the Hero of Management, I think.
Anyway, I was seeing clear training results with zero visible changes to my body. It was such a bizarre situation that I naturally started questioning whether I was actually human. It got so bad that even Grandpa Carlo asked, “Saintess Candidate, are you truly human? Or perhaps you have elf blood?”
Wait—elves exist?! I absolutely have to see one!
“What do you mean by elf blood?”
“Elves also have difficulty building muscle. That doesn’t mean their strength is weak, however.”
Strong without the muscle growth. Apparently both male and female elves have beautiful faces and equally beautiful bodies. It was actually a pretty reasonable theory.
First, I’m an impossibly beautiful girl. Second, I’m strong. Third, no muscles. Maybe it really was the answer…?
“However, that cannot be the case… The mixed blood of elf and human carries those characteristically long ears for up to three generations. Yet our Saintess Candidate has perfectly normal human ears, does she not?”
Ah, too bad.
“Hmm… If it’s not elf blood but I still show elf-like traits, maybe there’s some other common factor?”
“Common factor?”
Grandpa Carlo pondered my question for a long time before suddenly grabbing my arm as if he’d realized something. He began to chant a prayer.
“Show me the path to aid this young lamb who fights against disease and injury.”
It was a prayer I’d heard many times. He always recited it whenever he examined my physical condition.
“It seems you were correct, Saintess Candidate.”
After finishing his examination, Grandpa Carlo gave a positive response to my theory.
“The reason elves don’t build muscle easily is because their mana constantly reinforces their muscles.”
Muscles grow through a cycle of damage and regeneration. But elves, blessed by mana, have that same mana preventing muscle damage while simultaneously making the tissue stronger. Put simply, for elves, physical training was essentially mana training.
Whoa… what a broken race.
“But the same applies to you, Saintess Candidate. Only instead of mana, it is holy power performing that role.”
I’m broken too. Well then. At least I won’t feel embarrassed pulling out my reincarnator business card anywhere.
If my body worked like an elf’s, did that mean physical training was also holy power training for me?
“But my holy power hasn’t really increased at all.”
“Yet your body has grown stronger, has it not?”
That was true. Muscles strengthened through holy power… That actually sounded pretty cool. I name thee Holy Muscle!
Yeah! It has a nice ring to it…!
Chunbong clicked his tongue as he watched Levia, who had been training under Archbishop Carlo for the past two weeks. It was impressive enough that she could endure what was basically torture, but Levia wasn’t just enduring it—she was gradually increasing the intensity and actually enjoying herself. He simply couldn’t understand how that small body could withstand training without any mana.
The paladins of the Saint Front wanted to stop her, but since she was clearly having the time of her life, they couldn’t even bring themselves to try.
“Good grief… We knew she was special ever since the monster subjugation, but I never imagined she’d be this special.”
“To think she actually enjoys that…”
“Still, it’s nice to see her working so hard.”
All they could do was cheer and marvel.
“We swore to protect Lady Levia, but I have a feeling our positions might end up reversed someday?”
One of the paladins tossed out the joke. It was entirely possible. When you combined the power Levia had shown during the monster subjugation with this kind of effort, it seemed more than likely she would soon surpass even Archbishop Carlo.
Chunbong chimed in as if answering the joke.
“Yeah, maybe someday she’ll train us even harder than that old man.”
The other paladins burst into laughter at his words.
“Puhaha! No way that’ll happen!”
“Our sweet Lady Levia?”
“Chunbong, you’ve gotten a lot better at telling jokes!!”
But they didn’t know.
That in just a few years, Chunbong’s joke would become reality…