Ackster had experienced different kinds of pain before. When he had ingested the poison goblin’s poison, gotten his forearm broken, or when he had harmed himself, he had felt pain in different forms. He had experienced pretty heavy physical pain during his brawls with monsters and beasts during his training. His body had been pretty rattled with pain when he fought the rock lizard and now, most recently, when he tanked the bull’s series of charges and rams.

But none of it could compare to the pain currently overriding his brain and turning his toe bone, or current lack thereof, into everything he knew. His entire world and awareness were the neverending pangs of pain in his toe.

There was slight solace in the fact that he didn’t convulse with pain as long as he held the toe and the rest of his body still. The slightest movement, even breathing, sent tremors down his skeleton and into his toe.

‘Yep. I got it now.’

During a brief, shallow respite from the pain when he held his breath, Ackster reflected on his naivety as he used the secret technique. But as he got his breathing under control, he realized that it was mostly the initial shock of how intense the pain had been that was overbearing.

The pain was overbearing, even after several minutes had passed, and it came back in waves with each movement. But it wasn’t unbearable as long as he got through the worst.

What was close to being unbearable, however, was the thought of repeating the process several hundred times to get through even a single go of the first stage of the secret technique. And if Ackster wanted to improve his chances at getting further with the later stages and bringing out more of the potential hidden within his skeleton, he would have to repeat the entire cycle several times.

He could understand why people went crazy trying. But he wasn’t going to let that dissuade him from trying.

Based on his limited experience with his body regrowing stronger after breaking down through injuries or sheer use, he could sense that as long as his bones healed correctly, they would become a lot stronger. It was also a brutally efficient way to train Strong Body and Pain Tolerance. So, even if the rewards weren’t as great as promised, Ackster still considered going through with it, at least for as long as it made sense.

So, while eating some of his food and waiting for his toe to start healing, Ackster looked at the sky and enjoyed the view of the sun passing through the white clouds. He did his best to relax and let his body concentrate all of its efforts on his toe so that it would recover as quickly as possible and hopefully help him acquire a self-regeneration skill in the process, even if it was empty hope.

He continued eating the meat he had prepared and put right next to him until he realized there was no more.

Since he had expected he wouldn’t necessarily be able to move shortly after pulverizing his toe, he had set out a sizable portion to bathe in the sun next to him. But it was gone without him even thinking about how much he ate. At first, he thought maybe something else, like a small monster or beast, had stolen some for themselves. But all the signs, including the ones Mio made, pointed at him.

Healing his toe bone was surprisingly taxing, and Ackster was still hungry.

Ackster threw a pleading glance at Mio atop his hill.

“Can you bring me a refill, Mio?”

Mio created a pair of tentacles and transformed them into a pair of arms. But Mio didn’t use them to carry any more meat to Ackster. Mio used them to demonstrate his weakness by turning them stick-thin.

“Fine. I’ll do it myself, then.”

Ackster crawled on his back over to the pit with his foot in the air as he did his best not to shake it too much. But the pain had him stopping every meter, breathing and sweating heavily.

“Fucking hell.”

When he stopped in front of the pit, he realized how much smarter it would have been of him to stay there from the very beginning, even if he risked rolling into the piles of bleeding slabs of meat while training his secret technique.

He sighed while chewing a piece of slightly grey meat and once again looked at the sky, admiring the spider web-like cracks spreading from a point to the south. It looked like they were gradually fading, beginning from the outer edge and eventually only leaving a needle prick in the blue skies.

‘Wait….’

Ackster admired the spectacle, the pain from his training delaying his brain ever so slightly. But when a wave of yellow light flooded out of the dot in the sky like the fire from a cannon muzzle, his eyes shot wide open in realization.

“Fuck!”

Even if he didn’t know what it would look like exactly, it didn’t take a genius, especially considering what he knew and was waiting for, to figure out that the phenomenon happening at this very moment wasn’t a simple heavenly beauty display or something physics related. The cause was much more straightforward, albeit a little less believable.

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The healing cracks in the sky were proof of the barrier between the mortal and divine realms being breached. And the hole was the entry point of someone or something entering the mortal realm.

And at this point in time and place, considering the overarching plot, at least as far as Ackster knew, there was only one thing that could be happening.

Karandiel had fallen. She had lost her position as one of the immortal servants of the gods in the divine realm and had been sent to Millmeria for punishment or to repent for whatever caused her Fall.

And Ackster was in the middle of butt-fuck-nowhere, barely able to walk because he had just shattered and practically pulverized one of the bones in his pinky toe, which, when he thought about it, sounded like an inconsequential injury.

Ackster gritted his teeth.

Now that Karandiel had fallen, he couldn’t afford to waste any time. Regardless of the pain he felt, he couldn’t miss out on the opportunity to recruit Karandiel.

Ackster stood up.

Bonfires of pain shot through Ackster’s body every second he put weight on his foot with the broken toe bone. But hopping on one leg didn’t make it any better since each bounce had his limp toe dangling and swinging like a sunflower caught in the budding currents of a tornado.

But he remained conscious, and he couldn’t let himself be stopped by something as trivial as pain, especially when it was weak enough that he could endure it just by gritting his teeth. So, he packed up his things while shoving as much meat as possible into his piehole.

Mio jumped into the bag, sensing Ackster’s urgency.

It was a shame he had to leave behind so much food, but there was no way he could bring it with him. If he got hungry along the way, which he almost definitely would, he would simply have to pick up something to eat while running. In the worst case, he would have to eat grass.

But as long as he arrived at Karandiel’s crash site, he didn’t mind.

So, with everything he needed in his bag or in his mouth, Ackster hobbled in the direction of the hole in the sky, which was already disappearing now that Karandiel had entered the mortal realm.

Ackster felt like he could see a tiny dot fly down through the sky when he used Keen Senses to the limit, but it was so small that he wouldn’t be surprised if he were hallucinating it or seeing it through the power of hope. In any case, he knew Karandiel was far away, and he probably wouldn’t arrive before she landed.

Ackster probably wouldn’t be first on site, either, since people closer to the hole in the sky would investigate out of curiosity. He only hoped he would arrive before someone took away Karandiel or Karandiel left on her own.

Ackster wasn’t sure what state she would be in, but he knew she wasn’t very strong after she first fell since she lost her angelic powers, and it took her a little while to regain her strength.

So, in order to make sure nothing untoward happened to one of his anti-Hero cards, Ackster hobbled along as quickly as he could. The pain was too insistent and stubborn to ignore, but he gritted his teeth and bore with it, occasionally venting it on an unlucky beast or something that happened to get caught up in his path.

Eventually, after a few hours, Ackster felt and heard a low, momentary rumble. It was like a short earthquake, and its epicenter was in the direction he was headed. He was still quite far away, but Karandiel had already landed. Well, maybe not already, considering it had taken her several hours to fall.

Ackster was a little surprised that it had taken Karandiel that long to hit the ground, but even if it was relieving that he had gotten a little more time, he couldn’t rest at ease since he was still far away. Thankfully, his toe had numbed slightly the last few hours. He could increase his pace through the waist-high grass.

It still hurt like someone was repeatedly smashing his toe under ten cinderblocks with each step, especially when it got caught in grass straws or roots or dirt. But the pain was becoming more and more bearable, even while he started running at his top speed.

Ackster considered dumping his training equipment in favor of reaching Karandiel quicker. But, while Karandiel would be a useful card against The Hero in the future, she wasn’t his only hope, especially when he couldn’t even guarantee her assistance. His primary hope for salvation was still himself. So, he would simply have to step up and make sure his training equipment didn’t slow him down too much.

If it did, it was on him to do better while still wearing it. Getting rid of his training equipment once would make it easier to do it twice. And his purpose in wearing the weighted clothes all the time in the first place was to make sure that he could handle even the toughest and most desperate situations under less-than-optimal circumstances.

He thought about trying to activate Limit Breaker and run faster, but it was too risky since he might need it in the future. If he ran himself ragged before even arriving at Karandiel, who would inevitably attract the interest of anyone nearby, he would be powerless to secure her.

Ackster’s eyes narrowed as he thought about it. Karandiel’s arrival could attract the attention of monsters, considering her angelic nature and aura, even if she had Fallen. But the majority interested in the celestial phenomenon and what had popped out of it would undoubtedly be humans.

If he wanted Karandiel for himself and without any witnesses that could connect him to the Fallen Angel, he would have to exercise his willingness to do anything to other humans instead of just himself. It was one thing to torture himself out of a desperate wish to become stronger, and it was relatively easy to kill monsters and beasts since they couldn’t communicate with him and wanted to kill him.

But killing humans was something Ackster hadn’t ever done. He vaguely knew already that he would have to do it one day. But he had just been an ordinary guy on a peaceful Earth. He wasn’t a murderer.

But poised with this eventual moral dilemma, Ackster didn’t really have a choice.

Either he didn’t do what was necessary and increased the odds of him and everyone else on Millmeria dying in ten years. Or he did what was necessary. And, in exchange for a few lives, everyone else, including himself, would live.

It was a no-brainer, really.

But it was easier said than done, and it was easier thought than said, which was why Ackster decided to stop thinking about it and focus on running, making full use of Sprint. He would do what needed to be done when it needed to be done.