I awake with a gasp as soon as I see the list of skills, and my eyes go wide.

“What the—that’s more levels than I have earned so far! How?!”

I prop myself up and walk up to the sword, stopping in front of it and looking at my hands. There’s nothing wrong with them, nothing different. But then, what’s [Reinforced Grip]?

Shrugging, I squat down and squeeze the hilt as strongly as possible. With a deep breath, I try to make the same movement that I did the very first time, but this time, my eyes almost fall out of their sockets as the sword lifts off the ground almost effortlessly.

“What the—”

I don’t understand.

I look at the vertical sword and then at my arms, much less red than before.

“[Lesser Strength], I guess?” I shake my head and, on the first try, place the sword over my shoulders. “[Lesser Dexterity], maybe?”

It doesn’t matter.

I start spinning in place, one foot after the other, trying to get a sense of how I could swing the blade for maximum effect. This time, even though I can feel my forearms straining, my grip is solid. The sword, albeit precarious, doesn’t fly away from me.

I manage to spin for a good thirty seconds before I stumble, and, as I’m about to drop the sword, I take a sharp turn and make the sword jump up from my shoulders barely half an inch and grab it midair. I try a mad swing, but it simply falls to the ground tip-first.

Damn it, I strain myself, trying not to let go of the handle, though even with the skill, the torque is too much, and it escapes my hand.

My arms are turning red again, but it doesn’t matter.

I widen my stance without picking up the sword. I need to understand how this works.

I start spinning slowly, trying to guess where my feet will land during the motion. I look like a drunk idiot as I feel my balance shift, and I try to imagine how the weight on my shoulders would change things.

I take a look at the barbell that Magister Mulligan made for me and smile.

“Hey, old man, I need you to do something for me.”

…

I balance forty pounds of a magically enhanced barbell on my back. Magister Mulligan didn’t even appear, but I can feel the weight shift.

Replicating the weight of the sword with a weight I can handle.

I start to map the movements extremely slowly in order to get the right feedback from every muscle fiber across my body.

“Ok,” I mutter, shifting the weight of the barbell and feeling the heavier side starting to slip, which forces me to spin more rapidly. But then, instead of accelerating even more, I allow the bar to slightly decelerate its momentum.

With the same snapping movement as before, I shuffle my feet as fast as I can to swing the barbell after getting away from below it.

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With this weight, it’s more maneuverable, but I can still feel too much torque to be able to replicate it with the sword.

I scratch my head while the barbell falls to the ground with a clang.

I pick it up and try again.

This time, though, I try to imagine what kind of a slash I would replicate.

Let’s say I’m trying to swing diagonally from below.

The result is much more satisfying. I have to twist my back so that the handle rests 30 or 40 degrees lower than the horizontal axis.

When I execute the movement, I can finally feel the barbell doing what I want, but as soon as the slashing motion is over, the barbell flies out of my hands.

Goddammit, I swear internally.

I try again, now seeking to swing the blade slightly slower than before, and, using my feet to generate more torque in my body, I try to realign myself with the sword.

“FUCK,” I swear as I feel my grip slip again, my forearms screaming in pain.

I ended up being too slow and redirecting too much weight with my body.

If I want to do this, it must be seamless. There’s no other way for me to wield a sword like this than to move according to the sword itself. I have to judo my way through this because there’s no other way for me to survive against the stupid puppet.

And so, I continue spinning in place and slashing with the sword, then catching it again by rotating faster than the sword, all the while keeping up the spinning motion to match its speed.

But it’s not easy.

It’s not easy at all.

…

Magister Mulligan entered the temple in a separate dimension.

The tall staircase leading to it was made of large, squared steps; the edge of each of them seemed capable of cutting a man in half. There was something testing, something ominous about the building.

For its owner, however, it was a simple, ghostly stroll.

Reaching the inside of the temple, the man saw a massive library in front of him, and he started pacing through the tall bookshelves around him. There was enough magic theory in there that it would make even the hoarding Black Dragon salivate if she had known what he had been holding in his pocket dimension.

Magister Mulligan was less worried about the young man now. He had started thinking that perhaps he had forced his hand too much—that he had exaggerated. But it seemed that he had been overthinking it.

He approached one of the few Relics of his people that he had managed to scavenge for himself in his past life: an observatory.

It was a very simple construction, similar to what the Earthers would call a telescope. But it was a Relic of his people, a tool to monitor the energies in Kome, no matter how far. The lenses inside had been enchanted by one of the greatest and most secretive [Heroes] in Vanedeni history, the man whose name bore the merit of inventing the greatest number of Relics among them all. Not even the [Blacksmith], the one who gave birth to the Rodinia noble family, had managed to rival this madman.

Magister Mulligan lowered his head to peer through the Relic but again, nothing.

“The South of the continent has been emptied. Half a continent has disappeared…” he kept musing over who in the [Heroes]’ nightmares could have ever done something like that.

Magister Mulligan had been an extremely high-level individual when he wasn’t yet a soul and still had his living body. He had managed almost to touch the apex; he had been closer than all he had known in his lifetime. But the closer he had gotten to it, the more he felt that doom had been looming closer and closer.

The more he had leveled, the more something from above seemed displeased with him. It had been as if his leveling had turned luck against him—no, not just luck but fate itself.

He sighed, stroking his beard.

The way he had lost his body… Magister Mulligan shook his head and refused to think about it.

Instead, he turned back to the library, to the great repository of wealth, knowledge, and Relics.

“Joey Luciani,” he muttered, “Could you be the one who finally manages to pass my tests? How foolish have I been in life… How arrogant and short-sighted. Am I repeating my own mistakes? Or are you different?”

…

Magister Mulligan observed from his invisible pocket of space as the young Joey Luciani spun in circles. It almost reminded him of some of the [Blademasters] that adopted extremely flowery fighting styles with their sabers. But in Joey Luciani’s case, it was easy to see why he was doing such a thing: the young man had realized there was no way for him to brandish a sword this heavy if he kept working like he did before.

“I thought he would try to learn the Dreamscape,” Magister Mulligan smiled, complacent. “Good. Once again, assigning him an impossible task has helped. If he keeps training like this, I won’t even need to reduce the weight of the sword to the Vanedeni standard.”