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Chapter 99

When I heard the monstrous bird cry, I got up from my seat.

And then I ran.

I ran as hard as I could.

I ran until I couldn’t squeeze out another ounce of energy and collapsed on the spot when I reached my limit.

And then I immediately began circulating.

Of course, I wasn’t simply doing what I had been doing before. Instead, I was constantly adjusting the formula to see if I could increase my physical regeneration even a little bit more.

“Uwek!”

I spat out another glob of blood.

I suddenly wondered how much blood there would be if I pooled together every drop I had spat out during this endeavor, but I knew that was a stupid question.

There was definitely at least enough to fill a beer keg.

I wiped away the blood.

Even though my body recovered automatically, that wasn’t true of my clothes.

I’d had to learn to spit blood without getting any on my clothes. Now, I could spit without a single drop landing anywhere near me.

[FAD’s one-line comment: very impressive.]

“...”

I waited for my damaged body to recover as I let my thoughts drift, imagining what I would do after these hundred days were over.

In my imagination, I faced off against the Demon Lord of the Black Swamp. The monstrous entity overwhelmed me even in my thoughts.

Still, it wasn’t to the point that I couldn’t recover from it.

Rather, the more I imagined it, the more I felt like I was getting used to its aura. This became a form of training as well.

The authority of a demon lord...

How could I respond to this power that could turn its enemies into nothingness in an instant?

Do I Flame Dash and accelerate as fast as I can? Or should I use the flames to disturb its vision...?

When my body recovered, I stopped imagining the demon lord and began running again. When I again became exhausted, I sat down, circulated, adjusted the formula, and imagined again.

...

...

[Current Progress: 23.3%.]

...

...

Repeating a simple routine every day to become stronger.

People usually called what I was doing exercising and training.

[Current Progress: 25.9%.]

...

...

Eventually, I lost count of how many times I had repeated this simple, familiar, and tedious work. At this point, I probably could have done it in my sleep.

I would be lying if I said the process wasn’t boring.

Of course, there were a few people who could enjoy such training... but generally, humans adapted to things at a frightening pace.

To put it another way, humans become numb to repeated stimuli and lose their enjoyment.

If this symptom worsens, the act of training itself becomes torturous.

[Current Progress: 27.1%.]

I... didn’t particularly hate training.

But that was only when I was certain that the training was helpful.

[Current Progress: 33.2%.]

The 50th day.

After spending half of my total days, I suddenly had a thought.

Was I doing this properly?

Of course, my body was constantly becoming stronger. I could now run for an hour without a problem.

However, I still wasn’t at all convinced that I was going about this the right way.

I thought about it a dozen or more times each day.

Was there a better method? Was the method I was using wrong? Was I unknowingly running in the wrong direction...?

It was on another such day.

—You trash.

Through the fog, I saw the form of my master.

“...”

Of course, I knew that he wasn’t real.

—Do you really think you are at a level where you can adjust my martial arts?

It was obviously a hallucination. To begin with, Master didn’t talk like that.

Whenever I did something stupid, his first reaction was to hit me over the head.

Then... was this one of the trials of Spirit Mountain?

Or had I just gone insane?

—I shouldn’t have taken you as a disciple.

“...”

A sigh echoed out from within my heart.

Even though I knew it was a hallucination, seeing Baek Nogwang’s face and hearing Baek Nogwang’s voice say that to me, I found it difficult to keep my composure.

I had been having more and more negative thoughts recently.

Although I wasn’t a pessimistic person, I’d not had anyone around to talk to for weeks at this point. I’d just been alone with my own thoughts.

I’d also randomly become impressed with trailblazers.

This wasn’t a path that someone could walk just because they were talented. Walking a path that no one else had walked before was only possible if one had confidence and certainty in their beliefs.

At every moment, I doubted myself, regretted my past, and wondered what might’ve happened if I had made a different choice.

But I couldn’t continue thinking about those things.

Even while wandering, I chastised myself and did my best to take one more step forward.

[You seem quite exhausted.]

The hallucination spoke.

No, was it something else?

It sounded like Fourth Senior Brother this time.

[You can give up here.]

...Was it not a hallucination?

I could hear the voice coming from FAD.

I rolled my eyes as I lay down on the ground.

“I don’t think I remember calling you.”

[I know. That’s why I’m talking to you through FAD.]

“...”

[As of today, 70 days have passed.]

Time had passed by pretty quickly.

I hadn’t realized it because I’d stopped counting after the 50th day.

[This is your current state.]

At that moment, FAD’s screen flickered before reflecting my face like a mirror.

There, I saw a battered and weakened young man.

For some reason, my current self didn’t look like the fifteen-year-old Luan Bednicker but instead the Luan who’d died in the war at 25.

“How’s my progress?”

[Thirty-five percent.]

“I’m not even halfway there.”

I got up again.

Fourth Senior Brother hurriedly spoke.

[Are you going to keep going?]

“Yes.”

[Do you think you can descend the entirety of the mountain in the remaining 30 days?]

“Who knows? It’s not very likely...”

I stopped talking.

My current emotions were too difficult to explain with words.

“...But I think I’ll figure something out.”

It was a little vague, but that was all I could say.

Walking through the fog, I spoke as if talking to myself.

“Senior Brother, this might be random, but I’ve come to respect the trailblazers who create their own path in life.”

[Why?]

“Don’t those people live their lives like this? Always wandering through fog and running a race alone?”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“It seems the path to truth is crushingly lonely.”

[...]

Even if I’d gained something, I couldn’t tell right now whether it was the correct result or a mistake.

If I had to choose everything alone, by myself, wasn’t that the continuation of suffering rather than freedom?

Finally, I asked my fourth senior brother something I had been thinking about for a while.

“Did Master feel this way as well?”

I thought about the Strongest Under the Heavens, Baek Nogwang.

He was always confident, prideful, and arrogant, but he was worthy of being like that.

Had he suffered like this as well?

If he had, then how had he overcome it?

“...If this was difficult even for our master, I don’t know if I am even qualified to think about creating my own martial arts.”

[What are you afraid of?]

I hesitated for a minute before replying, “That I won’t be able to meet his expectations.”

I had experienced it in my first life.

I’d had expectations placed upon me by my house, and I’d walked the path of those expectations.

The result had been brutal and horrible.

I’d become too familiar with failure, and even more so being ignored by others.

However...

“Maybe I am a stain on Master’s legacy... That is what I am most afraid of.”

I was familiar with not meeting people’s expectations.

But I was still afraid.

If it was anyone else, it would be fine, but at least Baek Nogwang...

I at least didn’t want to disappoint my master, the person I respected more than anyone.

What would Master think of me?

What expectations did he have for this kid named Luan Bednicker?

Was he comparing me to his other four disciples?

At the lowest point of this person called Luan Bednicker, these thoughts of inferiority still circled my heart.

It was then...

Fourth Senior Brother suddenly spoke.

[My real name is RAN-4700 Type-A.]

“...Pardon? Ah, yes, I heard from FAD.”

Despite my dull response, my senior brother continued to speak.

[I am a fourth-generation android. My original purpose was as a military unit.]

“What do you mean...?”

[My first master was a soldier. After one of his arms was cut off in a war, he retired.]

Was this... the story of Fourth Senior Brother’s past?

I couldn’t remember ever hearing about this before.

As I realized the context, I carefully said, “Were you a slave?”

I didn’t say, “like our master.”

[It was similar, but my master didn’t treat me like a slave. Even after he retired, he always sparred against me so he might be able to return to the battlefield.]

Fourth Senior Brother’s voice lowered a little. His voice was still steady, but I could sense that he was nostalgic about his past.

[My master didn’t like easy victories. He didn’t spare any effort in making me stronger. In a short amount of time, a lot of data was input into me, and I repeated the spars I lost in my mind throughout the night to create new patterns. Even still, I couldn’t defeat him. Even though he only had one arm, he was a master martial artist.]

“...”

[But one day, I suddenly thought about combining two different moves in my mind to create a new movement. My master wasn’t able to respond to it and was defeated. He was very glad, then, and he said something to me...]

“What did he say?”

[That I was now a martial artist.]

“...”

[I think that was when I was born.]

I couldn’t understand most of what my senior brother had said.

The world he had lived in seemed vastly different from mine.

However, that world still had people, and emotions were not something you understood but instead accepted.

I accepted all of my fourth senior brother’s words through his emotions.

[See, Luan. I don’t have a heart. I don’t have muscles, nor do I have blood. I don’t have an inner core, so I can’t accumulate internal energy, and since I don’t have muscles, exercising doesn’t make sense. But does that mean I cannot strive for the martial truth? Is just speaking about the martial way an unforgivable sin for me?]

“...”

[From the moment I was born, I thought about it continuously. For a long time, though, I was unable to find an answer. ‘A machine that strives for the martial path’ wasn’t recorded in any database.]

While listening, I suddenly felt that Senior Brother was smiling beyond the screen.

[At that point, I met Master, and he said this: why couldn’t I just make a martial path that doesn\'t care about any of that?]

“Pft.”

Although Fourth Senior Brother hadn’t attempted to sound like Master, I still imagined it in my head and ended up laughing.

[I won’t say anything about the qualifications needed to be a trailblazer. However, everyone has the right to aspire to their own martial path. Even a tree knows to lay down its roots so it won’t shake in the storm. From the way I understand it, that tree has its own truth it follows.]

“Its own truth it follows...”

[My martial truth isn’t anything grand; it’s just to never lose my heart in my pursuit of strength. Because power is always relativistic, and battles are bound to be inconsistent.]

Fourth Senior Brother spoke to me.

[Luan, what is your martial truth?]

“...”

Although it could be a question that defined me as a martial artist, I didn’t feel particularly pressured.

Senior Brother was right: martial truths didn’t need to be grand.

“My martial truth... is to improve every day, even if it’s just a little bit.”

It didn’t need to be obvious.

It didn’t mean that my body had to become stronger, that my internal energy had to intensify, that I needed to realize the formula of a technique.

Just the improvement of my mind by gaining new information was a big step forward in my growth.

And so...

“Thank you, Fourth Senior Brother.”

I felt myself take another step.