Hah... Hah...
"I am tired. I have been training for an hour," I muttered as I looked toward the sky above. My muscles ached, and a thin layer of sweat covered my body. Even so, I could not just give up yet. Physical training was only one part of my routine; I still had to enter the mental space and continue improving my swordsmanship.
After I took deep breaths to calm down and finished all my physical exercises, I sat by the veranda. The chilly air touched my skin as I shut my eyes and concentrated my thoughts. As soon as I stepped into the mental space, I found myself back in the same dojo again, and Zoro was already there waiting for me. He didn't have to say a word. I went straight to the weapon shelf, grabbed a wooden sword, and got into the correct position he showed me the day before.
As soon as Zoro saw my posture, he gave me the first compliment since he had started teaching me."Well, it seems that your understanding is quite good. You learned the proper stance quite quickly."
A smile immediately appeared on my face, as getting praise from Zoro was definitely not easy. Unfortunately, the moment lasted only briefly before his expression returned to its usual stern and strict look.
"Well, today you will make cuts," Zoro said. "Just make cuts in any direction as you please. Horizontal, diagonal, vertical, anywhere. But every cut should contain the full strength of your body."
After hearing his words, I nodded and immediately began. First came horizontal slashes, then vertical slashes, and then diagonal slashes. Throughout all of it, I maintained the same stance, not changing my footing at all and continuing to stand exactly as Zoro had taught me before.
After completing one set of those random cuts, Zoro looked at me and asked, "Well, how did you feel?"
As soon as I heard the question, I answered honestly. "Well, when doing the horizontal slashes, I felt quite normal. But while doing the vertical slashes, diagonal slashes, or cuts from different directions, my body felt uncomfortable. It felt like it didn't have to be like that."
After hearing my answer, Zoro nodded. "Well, your feeling is absolutely correct. A stance is not some exercise or rigid posture that you hold while swinging your sword. Rather, a stance is something that needs to change. A stance exists to let you exert the full strength of your sword strike. Different cuts require different stances. A stance needs to be shifted."
"Well, I thought as much," I thought inwardly after hearing Zoro's explanation.
Without wasting any time, Zoro demonstrated it himself. He began performing different sword cuts, and with every slash, his stance shifted naturally. His feet moved, his hips turned, and his entire body aligned differently depending on the direction of the strike. Every movement flowed smoothly into the next without any unnecessary motion.
I carefully observed each detail before starting to mimic him, repeating the cuts again and again. Whenever I made a mistake, Zoro immediately corrected it. Sometimes he adjusted my footing, sometimes he corrected the angle of my shoulders, and other times he simply pointed out where my balance was off.
Under his guidance, I continued swinging the wooden sword over and over. Gradually, the awkward feeling I had experienced earlier began to lessen. The cuts felt smoother, and the strain on my body decreased whenever I shifted my stance properly.
After around an hour of training, Zoro finally allowed me to stop. With my current physical body and mental strength, this was about the limit of the strain and fatigue I could handle for now. The dojo around me gradually faded, and my consciousness began returning to reality.
I closed my eyes, and the moment I opened them again, I found myself back on the veranda, still sitting in a meditative posture exactly as I had been before entering the mental space. Unlike yesterday, I did not lose consciousness.
Of course, the mental fatigue hit me immediately after the training ended. My head felt heavy, and my mind felt drained from continuously practicing under Zoro's guidance. Even so, compared to yesterday, I had improved; the exhaustion was still there, but it was no longer enough to make me pass out.
I simply remained seated on the veranda, quietly recovering. After resting for around a quarter of an hour, I finally felt well enough to stand up and walk properly. Once I had recovered a little, I went to have an early dinner with my parents, and after that, another day came to an end.
From then onward, my life continued moving forward in a straight line with only the smallest of changes. Every day, I woke up early in the morning and went for a run. After that, I completed my physical exercises before heading to the fields alongside my father. When the work was done and I returned home around evening, I would continue with my physical training drills. Then, after completing all of that, I would enter the mental space and learn swordsmanship from Zoro.
Day after day, week after week, month after month, my life settled into a simple routine without any major changes. To the neighbors and the people who knew me, I looked like nothing more than a hardworking boy who liked exercising, building a good physique, increasing his physical strength, and staying fit. Nobody knew what I was truly training for.
…
Four years later.
Ryuma stood outside the farm hut in the middle of the fields. The once-young boy had grown noticeably taller and stronger over the years.
At this moment, he was holding a roughly five-hundred-kilogram dumbbell between his jaws. Despite the tremendous weight hanging from his mouth, there was not the slightest sign of discomfort on his face. His expression remained calm and focused, a testament to just how powerful his jaw strength had become after years of relentless training. In each hand, he held a five-ton weight. His muscles remained tense as he stood completely still, maintaining a simple standing position while supporting the enormous load.
A few minutes later, he moved. Right away, he started swinging all the weights. The weights in his hands and the dumbbell hanging from his jaws moved through the air as he swung them with huge power, the heavy mass of each movement making a soft whistling sound in the air. The longer he kept going, the more his face showed signs of tiredness, with sweat starting to fall from his forehead and the veins on his arms slowly becoming more noticeable. Even so, Ryuma continued.
Half an hour went by before he stopped that exercise, and without taking too much time, he went on to the next one. He started doing push-ups with big weight plates piled up on his back. After finishing those exercises, he moved on to doing push-ups upside down while having a huge five-ton weight tied to his legs, which put even more stress on his body.
He stopped only after completing the whole set. Ryuma sat by the farm house and gazed up at the sky as he took deep breaths.
This was his usual way of doing things for the last four years. As his strength kept getting stronger, the weights he trained with became more and more crazy. Because of that, he had moved his training from home to the fields a long time ago. Keeping such big weights close to the house was really unsafe.After all, his mom worked there every day, and if one of those weights rolled, slipped, or fell, even a small accident could lead to serious injuries. Even though he had trained his body to become really strong and powerful, his parents couldn't deal with those dangers because they were still normal people. Because of that, Ryuma decided to do all his tough physical exercises close to the farm hut in the fields instead.
Over the past four years, Zoro had guided him through nearly every aspect of swordsmanship: step by step, swing by swing, and correction after correction. Zoro had taught him almost everything he could regarding the fundamentals and techniques of the sword. The only exception was Haki. Until now, Ryuma had not even fully mastered the Breath of All Things, so he had yet to awaken any form of Haki, whether Observation Haki, Armament Haki, or Conqueror's Haki.
Still, Ryuma's progress could not be denied. Through sheer diligence, strong comprehension, and years of serious training, he had mastered most of the sword techniques Zoro had taught him. Compared to the boy who had first entered the mental dojo four years ago, the current Ryuma was on an entirely different level.
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