"So, all this time you have been sleeping because you used one of the 'God Powers'. Is that right?" Rhea questioned as I explained to her about the reason for my absence for so long. She just looked at me with a slightly dumbfounded face before she took a deep sigh.
"Thank the heavens… I really thought you were gone for good…" she muttered with an extremely relieved expression before her eyes turned at me and she explained,
"In the past 18 years, I waited for you for the first 8. After that, I started venturing around to find some people whom I thought could help me find you. I did meet up with a couple, but they said that it was as if your existence had vanished from the very plane. Despite their expertise, they couldn't locate you at all.
Normally that would have been considered as one being dead, but because the [Shop] was still connected to your [Room], and the owner of the Libra Dungeon was still alive, there was nothing more definite proof than that, you weren't dead."
I listened to her carefully as I kept observing her expression.
'I can't read her at all, even now. Is it because she is special or something?' I thought as I maintained my poker face while hearing her story.
"Well, a lot many things happened in the last 18 years, but mostly it was me searching for you. To think that it was the System that was protecting you all this time, hiding you from people… I didn't know something like that was even possible,"she spoke with an expression of complexity.
"Well," I began speaking as I stood up and spoke,"all that has been done is in the past now. Let's focus on the future, shall we? It's not like our end goal has changed, has it?"
She looked at me and nodded with a smile,"I guess that is true… so you said that you returned today. Huh? I guess… Welcome back!"
There was a bright smile on her face as I looked at her smiling face before I turned towards the [Shop] gate and said,"Let's start sword practice then? I guess I can spare about hmmm… 480 hours now."
After speaking that, I moved towards the [Weapons] Section and Rhea nodded before I bought the wooden stick and moved into the Trial Room.
"Take a proper form," I thought before taking a deep breath and setting myself in the most appropriate form and concentrating at my max level.
"Focus," I muttered under my breath as I stopped breathing and activated my title [The Slumbered Once] where I didn't need to breathe to function.
Then I began raising the sword up slowly and slowly, not messing up even a single step of mine… It took time… I don't know how much… I was too concentrated on that slash and once I reached up, I began moving my arms down without wasting any excess of energy.
And once I was done with that…
"Phew… tell me it's less than 8 hours," I said with slight expectations. I wonder if changing the title did make any changes to it. And the answer was,
"2 hours… 12 minutes… 14 seconds."
Hearing her voice, a dumbfounded expression appeared on my face as I looked at Rhea, who was much more shocked than I was.
"And… Zero mistakes," her voice was shaking as she looked at me with a questioning face.
For the next few minutes, we both just kept looking at each other, before I spoke,"let's continue," and she too nodded at that. We might have been curious about it, but honestly, we both didn't have any concrete answer for this improvement.
Once again, I made another slash up, and another done… and then continued it over and over again… for the next 480 hours, I was just slashing up and down, without any breaks.
While Rhea did tell me the time in the beginning, later I asked her not to speak anything as I just wanted to concentrate on practicing rather than focusing on getting faster.
After 480 hours, Rhea called out to me telling me the time was already up and with a half exhausted mind and body, I looked at her and asked,"How much?"
As usual, her eyes were shaken, and she spoke with slight disbelief,"48 minutes, 27 seconds. 3 mistakes on an average with 0 mistakes in the last one."
I looked at her before a bright grin came on my face as I looked at my hands before standing up and then moving out of the [Trial] Room as I spoke,"it won't be long before I hit 1 minute or less… hopefully."
Though she spoke something that made me stop in my tracks.
"Now, even if you make a fast slash, you should be strong enough to slash through most of the things in your path. It doesn't matter, speed… if you want, we can move to other kinds of slashes… "she spoke and it made me turn at her for a few moments as I chuckled before speaking,
"What's the fun in that? Let's finish this one first. Let's make it reach less than 1 minute before we move to another. It might take some time, but hopefully we will reach it faster than we anticipate."
She looked at my confident face before speaking,"well… whatever you say. Just know that you have been practicing this slash with a wooden sword all this time. If you use a normal sword, even a steel sword, you might end up slashing a mountain now without much difficulty. Unless, of course, you fight someone like a divine being or someone really strong; I don't think you will need to worry about dying or something.
What I mean is, don't end up slashing someone in practice or something… you are way powerful that you can think of. That doesn't include your Stats at all."
Hearing her words, I kind of understood what she meant. All in all, I am more powerful than I look and even if I use a stick as a sword, I should be able to make a slash strong enough to cut down most of the surrounding enemies without much of a problem now.
Though I need to make sure my stance stays in accord with my slash… that sums it up?
Anyway, I just nodded at her in agreement before moving to take out the Cronas that should have been collected until now.
[Total Cronas: 10012]
"Let's get another upgrade for now," I thought a little before moving to the [Dungeon] Screen and buying another upgrade
[Capacity Increase:
Current capacity to hold workers: 50 (Grade 2)
Cost of increasing the capacity to Grade 3: 100,000 Cronas]
"Nice. Now I need to collect enough Cronas to buy more D-Grades Zombies working for me," I smiled before looking at Rhea as I spoke,
"See ya then."
She looked at me with a smile before nodding and I too just moved into the outer world. I saw Alissa just sitting there in front of me with her chainsaw on her lap, as she kept her eyes open and vigilant.
I then stood up, making her turn at me suddenly before a sigh escaped her mouth and then she smiled as she asked,"refreshed?"
I nodded at her with the same smile before speaking,"Kind of. How's the situation?"
And the answer was,"Yeah… a couple of unexpected things, actually."
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