“This is…”

Waiting for the steaks has not been easy. The more I trained, the more I thought I was really going to die. Like, sure, maybe I could come up with something. I even realized that Magister Mulligan didn’t really talk about not using magic. But would a few spells really save me from the onslaught of a level 20 [Champion]?

Now, though, eating the steak made of Ethereal Cattle that Flaminia cooked, I couldn’t believe that it was actually this effective.

“The inflammation is going down all over my body,” I look at my arms, the reddest part of my entire body, since they are the main point of contact for any training exercise. The redness is visibly fading.

“Joey Luciani,” Magister Mulligan approaches me, something I am not even sure he needs to do, and he lifts the arm I’m not using to eat the steak and brings it right in front of his eyes. “This…”

The [Archmage] shakes his head and steps back, looking at me as if I was an attraction in an amusement park.

“As your kind would put it, ‘you did it again.’”

“No,” I wiggle my finger in his direction, “not me. Flaminia.”

I see a faint smile on the [Archmage]’s face, but he says nothing more. I don’t inquire as I am already walking back to one of the machines Magister Mulligan has crafted for me, eating the steak with bare hands, ripping it apart like a caveman.

I don’t have time for table manners, I tell myself, already grabbing the handles and starting to work on my back muscles.

Now, the pain feels more muted, and that’s why I can increase the weights much faster than before.

“If my people had this,” Magister Mulligan ponders out loud, “they would have been even more formidable. A [Chef]-[Hero] would have been truly a sight to behold.”

“Oh, that’s a thing?” I say as I breathe out after a series of tremendous deadlifts. “Well, maybe I’ll become that. That’s the one kind of [Hero] I wouldn’t mind being.”

“Young Luciani, you…” the old man sighs but doesn’t continue.

“Are there any [Lover]-[Heroes]?” I say jokingly while I put another set of plates on the barbell.

“Focus on your training.”

“Heh, you are right,” I shrug, looking at the bar.

A 250-pound deadlift, I reflect as I bend and start lifting with tremendous spikes of pain shooting through my whole body. But the food has seemingly had effects that I didn’t anticipate. The [Greater Nourishment] rune must have done something to my nerve endings and my mind because I wasn’t able to withstand this much pain before without instinctively letting go of the weights.

…

Thirty hours had passed when I finally stepped away from the weights.

The lack of sleep is taking its toll, but nothing close to what I would have imagined. I don’t know if it’s the runes, the food, or the fact that I must have more adrenaline in my circulation now than I ever had in my entire life.

Hard to say, really.

“Is there a particular reason you don’t want me to sleep?” I ask Magister Mulligan as I come closer to the huge Vanedeni greatsword.

But when I turn, I don’t find him there.

Huh? Why is he… it doesn’t matter.

The fact that the [Archmage] has disappeared clearly means something, but whatever it is, my only option is to trust the man. The clock is ticking, and my leisure time has run out.

It’s time to get serious, I tell myself, squatting down and grabbing the sword with both hands.

My strength has increased by leaps and bounds, but I have already reached a point where I’m starting to see slightly diminishing returns. Whatever the ceiling on this kind of training, I’m finally running out of the low-hanging fruits. From now on, it feels like every advancement will come at a greater cost.

I can’t switch out the plates easily anymore. The compound lifts have stagnated at a massive 400 pounds on my deadlift, 330 on my squat, and 280 on the bench.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Christ, becoming a gym rat in another world is truly the last thing I ever imagined for myself, I laugh in a moment of pure exasperation.

It was a massive increase in strength, but now?

I look at the sword and swallow.

Lifting the sword while keeping the tip on the ground will be relatively easy compared to actually wielding this monster.

“Yo, old man, are you sure we can’t lower the weight?” I speak out loud, but again, there’s no answer.

You know, while training, I’ve actually calculated the amount of strength involved in lifting something like this. Even with the runes, the magical food, the crazy training, and perhaps the blessing of whatever Gods reside here, I’m not sure how this would be even possible.

“Old man, are you sure you are not pranking me?” I speak out loud again. “I can most likely lift one end of this sword. But how can I wield the damn thing?”

The torque needed to lift this thing off the ground is ten times what I think is the torque exercised by a fucking world-champion strongman, who probably weighs two times my weight.

I tighten my grip on the handle, trying to figure out how the hell I’m supposed to do this.

The Dreamscape thing? Not reliable enough.

“If I were that strong, I could punch through concrete,” I muse. “No way the Vanedeni are that strong.”

It is the kind of conundrum that doesn’t seem to have any straightforward solutions.

I release the handle to stand straighter and think about what to do next.

I solved the training problem with food, but there’s no actual way for me to get strong enough to lift this without skills or special help. What the hell am I going to do?

I circle around the sword in a huff, stretching my sore arms and back in the meanwhile.

The only logical solution would be to use the momentum of the sword once it’s already up. I can just… lift it over my shoulders and… spin it.

Even though it sounds like the most idiotic thing ever, it was the only thing that made remote sense to me. Plus, it made use of my great sense of balance and spatial perception.

“Well, let’s get to work,” I say, grabbing the hilt as I would a barbell for a deadlift and taking a deep breath.

This time, starting to lift the sword while keeping the tip on the ground is not impossible. I feel stabs of pain all over, but it’s nothing compared to when I first tried. Now, I can at least slowly but confidently raise the hilt up to my waist. I widen my stance to have more balance and look at the hilt in my hands, just below my navel.

“Fuck me, this will be a mess,” I mutter.

The next thing I need to do is to quickly transition into a squat and push the sword even higher. All considered, the sword is roughly 5 feet and 7 inches long – enough to make it impossible to wield but not enough to get a nice Tinder date.

With my nerve endings screaming, I manage to get it perpendicular to the ground. Now that I stand beside it, it does remind me of some of my worst exes: unwieldy, uncompromising, and impossible to bring anywhere.

I look at the sword and then at myself.

If I break a vertebra doing this…

I could put this on top of a rack to make it easier for me, but there won’t be any racks to help me out in real life.

So, I lower myself until my other hand reaches the flat side of the sword near the tip, with the rest of the blade lying on top of my shoulders and arms.

This is so damn stupid.

It is, really. But at the same time, there’s a specific figure this reminded me of.

If you have ever tried to look for spicy channels on cable, there’s a chance you might have ended up watching some truly weird shows. Not weird, as in NYC-drug-addict-about-to-stab-you-in-the-kidney weird, but more like who-would-watch-this-on-television weird?

So once, I watched this show late at night when I couldn’t sleep that had these weird monks spinning in place for hours on end.

And guess what I am about to do now?

The first time I tried to put the sword on my back, I fell on top of it. Thankfully, I fell on the flat side, even though when it clanged on the ground, it almost bisected me with a bounce.

The second to seventh times, I managed to let go of it before I could actually lift it over my back as I would have with a barbell.

It took twenty more attempts to finally balance it over my shoulders.

I breathe heavily—I would have never had the stamina to do this before training with the runes and eating the magic steak.

“Well, one step down. Now comes the hard part.”

I start spinning in place, trying to get a feeling of how much momentum the sword would carry if I were to suddenly launch it off my shoulders while also grabbing its handle.

This is not going to end well.

And it didn’t.

Spinning in place with a sword gathering momentum to launch an attack is perhaps one of the stupidest things I’ve ever attempted in my entire life. It doesn’t beat the string of mental cases I’ve dated one after another in a streak worth of an Olympic gold medal, but it does claim an uncontested second place.

Still, as I spin, I can feel that there’s something there.

It might look stupid, but I could theoretically manage to swing the sword if I could spin fast enough.

Another thing that I have not considered, though, is my grip strength.

I realize the missing part of the equation when my right forearm cramps up, and the sword spins away from me, once again almost killing me in the process.

I look at my cherry-red forearm as I make my way to the steaks that Flaminia sent me. I start chewing on another one without even savoring the great taste as I think about the problem at hand.

Ok, grip strength… how can I make this easier?

I can feel all my joints straining and screaming already after this small bout of spinning with a giant sword on my back. I sit down to concentrate better. Without noticing, I close my eyes, too tired to keep them open.

[Training Addict Class Acquired!]

[Training Addict – Level 1!]

[Skill – Lesser Stamina Acquired!]

[Skill – Lesser Strength Acquired!]

[Training Addict – Level 2!]

[Skill – Lesser Dexterity Acquired!]

[Training Addict – Level 3!]

[Skill – Muscular Efficiency Acquired!]

[Training Addict – Level 4!]

[Training Addict – Level 5!]

[Momentum Warrior Class Acquired!]

[Momentum Warrior – Level 1!]

[Skill – Reinforced Grip Acquired!]