“Come on! Nine… ten!”
“Gnnngh…”
As he pressed with all of his strength, I breathed out slowly and resisted with all of my own, pushing his hand back.
“Okay. Swap.”
I exhaled and relaxed.
And we just kept going like that, piling up basic muscle and stretching exercises. Arms, legs, abs, back — each day, the place I focused on was different, but I made sure to train every body part I used in battle. Having a flexible and strong body underpinned everything, and I would lose it if I didn’t keep up my training and consume enough food.
Back in the city of the dead, I was able to train every single day, but once I started getting work and needed to be on the move, that wasn’t so easy. Having finally established a central base, I had recently become able to train sufficiently again, and without that, I probably wouldn’t have been able to overpower the cernunnos physically. Blood had done well to keep up that much muscle power while being a traveler. I wondered if he’d used some kind of trick. I should have asked him.
“Okay, so next is…”
“Swings,” I said, and picked up what I’d be practicing with. It was not a sword, but something about three times as heavy: a long and thick block of wood with a handle attached. I gave it a test swing to start off. It made a satisfyingly low sound as it gouged a path through the air.
Blood had told me that being able to swing around training equipment heavier than a weapon was the best indication that you’d be able to swing around your actual weapon in the heat of battle. I saw no faults with that argument, either.
Menel let out a short, incredulous laugh. “Ridiculous strength. You’d never know it from looking at you.”
Being a descendant of the elves, Menel had a slim body, amazing agility, and was able to burst into action incredibly quickly. But that wasn’t all; he had his own share of strength, as well.
“But I wanted people to know it from looking at me!” I said.
Of course, even with the way my body looked right now, people were getting the impression that I worked out. That was good. But for some reason, I wasn’t turning out like Blood. No one would describe me as “a commanding, heroic-looking man!” or “a giant of muscle!” My skeletal structure and that kind of thing was probably part of the issue, but I was also starting to suspect that in this world, muscle mass and muscle strength weren’t entirely proportional. Maybe mana or some factor like that had something to do with it.
In any case, I wanted more of a “tough guy” image, but both my body and my personality were finding it very difficult to complete the transformation, and I thought that was a tremendous shame.
“People like you. Why change?”
“Look, people long for what they don’t have, okay?!”
“Learn to be satisfied…”
After that brief yet heated discussion, we started practicing our swings, Menel with a practice pole that was skinnier than mine. We practiced downward swings and upward cuts over and over, each of us counting out the repetitions.
We moved our legs, torsos, arms, and swords with purpose, making sure to keep them working together so that the movement that started with the legs was conveyed all the way through the tip of the blade.
Verify the current state of your movements and sharpen them toward the future.
“Hm…?”
I felt someone’s gaze on me. Reystov and other adventurers sometimes came to join in with my morning training, and sometimes kids who lived nearby came around as well to peek at what we were doing.
But I got the feeling that wasn’t quite it.
Suspicious, I searched for the source of the gaze — and there it was. On the other side of my small vegetable garden, someone was peeking at us over the hedge. It was someone with black hair. I didn’t recognize them.
“Menel, wait there a moment,” I said, and walked over there.
I didn’t mind them watching, but if they kept on doing it sneakily like that, other people might mistake them for a burglar or something. This world was pretty rough, so when something like that happened, it would sometimes result in angry shouting and possibly even bloodshed. There was no need to peek; all this person needed to do was call out to us, come straight into our yard, and watch. Neither Menel nor I would mind that very much.
“Good morning,” I called out, and the person behind the hedge cringed in fright.
Trembling, they raised their head.
It was a male dwarf with a hunched back and braided black hair. It was hard to tell his age, but his beard was short, so he was probably still young.
“Nice weather, isn’t it?”
“U-Umm… G-Good… morn…ing…” He stood up, flustered.
As we faced each other standing for the first time, I realized he was quite tall for a dwarf, and big-boned, too. But because of his stoop and nervous behavior, his body had none of the intimidating presence I would have expected.
“You’re very welcome to come in and watch, instead of watching from there.” I figured he was introverted, and spoke to him in the calmest, kindest manner I could.
“U-Uh…” His restless eye movement was just starting to calm down, when—
“Hey, Will, what are you fussing about over there?” Menel stopped practicing his swings and came over. He was probably wondering why I was taking so long. “Hm? Who are you? Haven’t seen you around here before.”
After seeing that a new person was now talking to him, the dwarf’s shoulders twitched and he let out a small, frightened squeak.
“All right, brother, I’m not gonna eat you. You interested? Come watch if you want.”
“N-No, I…!”
Menel spoke to him kindly, but the mistake had been made. If you spoke to someone like this in that tone of voice—
“I, I, I’m fine, thank you! I’m sorry for interrupting your training! Bye!”
He bowed his head, hurriedly and yet pretty politely, and then scampered away, almost tripping over himself. I kind of wanted to stop him, but there was a hedge between us, and nothing had really happened to call him all the way back, anyway.
“Mmgh…” After watching him disappear in no time flat, I sent Menel a slightly reproachful look. Maybe it sounded offensive, but I kind of felt as though a cat that was just starting to get used to me had gone and run off…
“Yeah… my fault.” Menel raised a hand as a gesture of mild apology. He was obviously aware. “Turns out that has the opposite effect on guys like that.”
“Of course it does…”
“Not sure if he was interested in the training or you.”
When someone came to peep on us, it was usually one or the other.
“The training, don’t you think? Dwarves are a race of warriors, after all.”
“Did that guy look like he was warrior material to you? My bet’s on him wanting to see the paladin everyone’s been talking about.”
As we talked to each other, I returned to practicing, slightly disappointed. For some reason, I felt like he and I could have gotten along well. I wondered whether he would come to watch me train again.
As I focused, that feeling slowly melted away inside my heart and disappeared.
Hammers clanged, and saws rasped. I could hear looms at work weaving cloth, children playing in the streets, and a boss calling for his apprentices. And together with these, I could hear work songs being sung to set a rhythm for their labor.
Having finished all kinds of jobs of my own, I stood at the entrance to Dwarftown — the common name for the area around the streets where the dwarves lived — listening to these bright and pleasant sounds.
As I looked around, I noticed that quite a number of extensions and modifications had been made to the stone houses, and many of them now looked more like workshops. Laundry lines were strung everywhere, and clothes were blowing about in the breeze. Thinking to myself that this place always felt alive, I walked in.