Chapter 102: Edelweiss's Training!
"Ms. Edelweiss?"
"Edel-chan?"
"Edel?"
"You are not allowed to call me by such strange names."
"Then could you let this humble one down now?"
The wooden fibers snapped and crackled, while the firelight illuminated the girl's slightly annoyed face.
In the previous battle, Torajirou Shiro had tried cutting a conceptual object for the first time, and what he had chosen was the distance he could see and feel. Judging from the result, it could be called a success, because he had indeed cut away the distance between himself and Edelweiss.
However, since it was his first time using that move, Shiro failed to properly grasp the distance. As a result, he crashed straight into Edelweiss, and his hand ended up somewhere it absolutely should not have been.
For a pure maiden who had never experienced such things, how could she endure that kind of humiliation? And so, the annoyed Edelweiss tied Shiro up tightly and hung him from the beam of her wooden cabin.
Right now, Shiro was swaying left and right inside the cabin like a swinging bell. Every now and then, he would knock into the wood and make a heavy "thud" sound.
"On top of the previous conditions, I want more of those special ingredients."
Edelweiss spoke with some dissatisfaction. Although most of her anger had faded, she was now even more worried about her marriage prospects.
Would she never be able to get married after this?
Thinking that, Edelweiss could not help feeling sorrow rise in her heart, and she shot Shiro a vicious glare.
"Fine, I get it! Hurry up and let me down! I feel like all my blood is gathering in my head!"
Although she was unwilling in her heart, for the sake of those ingredients, Edelweiss still let Shiro down.
After rubbing his sore wrists and looking at the puffed-up Edelweiss, Shiro began calculating in his heart when it would be suitable to bring up that matter.
"I want to ask you to teach me how to control my body and magic power."
After hesitating several times, he finally said it.
"No."
Naturally, Shiro was rejected.
"That kind of thing is far too troublesome, and there's no benefit for me... Huh? Wait."
When she mentioned benefits, Edelweiss's eyes lit up.
"How about this? If you can provide ingredients every day and help me chase away the people at the foot of the mountain, I will let you stay here and teach you that knowledge."
"The foot of the mountain?"
Shiro remembered seeing structures like a village at the foot of the mountain when he looked down from high above.
"That's right. Every time I come home, a group of people gathers at the foot of the mountain saying they want to defeat [Twin-Wings]. The relaxation time I finally managed to get is always ruined by them, so if you want me to teach you this kind of knowledge, you have to go down every day and repel those annoying people."
As she spoke, she swung her fists twice into empty air, looking as if she held a deep grudge against the people at the foot of the mountain.
But that was only natural. It was like someone who had worked hard all day finally getting off work and curling up comfortably on the sofa, only for people to keep coming to challenge them.
And if you refused, they would even smash your front door.
Anyone would get annoyed by that.
"Deal!"
Shiro agreed immediately.
By only providing the special ingredients inside his Gift Card, he could receive guidance from the world's greatest swordsman. No matter how he looked at it, he was the one profiting.
What? Repelling the people at the foot of the mountain?
Learning always required testing one's growth. If some unlucky people were delivering themselves to be beaten up, then that could not be better.
"Hold this sword and swear."
Seeing Shiro agree so readily, Edelweiss released a gentle white light from her hand, and a Device appeared.
Then she stabbed the sword into the ground and asked him to swear upon it.
"Is this your ability?"
"Mm. My Device is called [Testament]. As the name implies, this sword's ability is [Contract]. Anyone who makes an oath before this sword and breaks it will immediately have their heart torn apart by this Device and lose their life."
She revealed a gloomy smile.
However, paired with Edelweiss's neighborly older-sister image, not only was it not scary, it actually carried a cute contrast.
Shiro placed his hand on Edelweiss's Testament and made his vow.
Immediately afterward, pure white magic power followed the sword and entered his body. Shiro sensed that a connection had formed between him and the sword in front of him.
This was exactly what it looked like when Edelweiss's ability activated.
"All right, that should do it. Come with me next."
Edelweiss nodded, then brought Shiro out of the cabin.
She led him to play at rock climbing on an almost vertical cliff. Even the steep mountain peak was like flat ground beneath her feet, forming a sharp contrast with Shiro, who relied on his physique to leap across the mountain.
Of course, if Shiro had not treated this as part of his training, he could have flown up long ago with [Unbound].
He slowly climbed upward along the frozen wall. After passing through fierce winds and snowstorms, the scene at the mountain peak appeared before his eyes.
Just as its title as a sword peak implied, the summit of Edelberg Mountain, which was 9,350 meters high, was a sword forged from ice.
It was built upon eternally unmelted frozen soil, and the constant blowing of cold winds over countless years had created the sight before him.
Edelweiss walked along the icy surface until she reached the lower part of the sword's tip.
"Watch carefully."
Under Shiro's gaze, she walked across the slightly uneven ice surface and placed her index finger on the very tip of Edelberg Mountain. Her feet left the ground, and she stood upside down on the mountaintop.
"This is my method for training control over my body and magic power. You must maintain a magic output just strong enough to touch the mountain peak while also keeping your body balanced in the blizzard, without letting yourself fall."
After saying that, Edelweiss flipped lightly and landed beside Shiro, then signaled with her eyes for him to try as well.
Driven by curiosity, Shiro placed his hand on the tip of the sword peak.
In the next moment, he understood why Edelweiss had said he needed to maintain a magic output just strong enough to touch the summit.
A stabbing pain came from his fingertip. The index finger he had placed on the sword peak had been pierced by its tip, and scarlet blood slowly flowed down the sword peak before freezing in midair into deep red ice.
"The tip of this sword peak has been polished for hundreds and thousands of years. Its sharpness has long surpassed most Devices. Even someone with an absurd physique like yours will be injured if you press your bare hand onto it."
This was the method Edelweiss had prepared for Shiro to train his control.
"I'm going to prepare dinner. Until then, do your best on your own. It's fine even if you can't do it. We have plenty of time."
After leaving those words behind, Edelweiss left the summit to Shiro and returned home.
Once Edelweiss left, Shiro climbed onto the sword peak again.
However, this time, he was not simply touching it. Instead, he copied Edelweiss and stood upside down on the sharp peak, supporting himself with a single finger.
No.
It should not be like this.
Shiro's magic power was far too massive. Even if he deliberately tried to control it, just a small amount flowing out was enough to wrap around his entire body.
Simply releasing magic power would not achieve any training effect at all.
So he began trying to compress his own magic power.
He slowly compressed it from a surface into a line, then finally condensed it into a point on his finger.
Whoosh—
A fierce wind carrying chunks of ice suddenly swept in from all directions.
Crap.
Boom—!
Shiro's body instantly lost balance under the force of the wind. He instinctively shifted his focus to maintaining his balance, and as a result, the magic power he had been slowly compressing lost control and expanded.
Then it exploded.
Shiro, who had been blown away by his own magic power, fell straight down from the mountaintop. Fortunately, he had flight magic, so he did not have to climb the mountain all over again.
The difficulty of this mountain peak did not lie in standing upside down at all. It lay in simultaneously controlling body and mind within an extreme environment.
Even the slightest wavering of the heart would result in failure.
Boom—!
"I really don't believe this!"
After being blown away by his own magic power for the fifteenth time, Shiro made that declaration.
Boom—!
Boom—!
Boom—!
Finally, after being blown away by his own magic power for the eightieth time, he found a block of ice and sat down, beginning to think about where exactly he had gone wrong.
The path walked by the strongest was clearly right before his eyes, yet no matter what, he could not reach it.
Wait.
Shiro seemed to have discovered the problem.
Since when had he started thinking he could complete the training of the world's strongest swordsman in a single day?
In the Dungeon world, he had gone from Level 1 to Level 5 in three months. His growth had been so fast that even his mentality had become somewhat unstable.
This was a task that needed time to complete from the very beginning.
Feeling the wind blowing in from every direction, Shiro waited until his heart calmed down.
Then he climbed onto the sword peak once again.
…
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