Chapter 8

Chapter 5 Only Losers Talk Nonsense About Cowards “It’s time for Shinichi’s three-minute training! Yay!” Shinichi yelled excitedly. “Yay!” mimicked Rino happily. “…What’s this?” inquired Celes, abandoning her normally judgmental attitude. To avoid suspicion, Shinichi and Celes had left the city as the merchant and his maid, casting the Fly spell in the middle of the night once they were on a southern road near Boar Kingdom. It was the day after their return to the Demon King’s castle. “Hey, Rino, is it all right for you to play here?” asked Shinichi. “Yup! Daddy’s busy with work, so it’d make me so very happy if I could play with you!” “…A Demon King’s work? Like paperwork and stuff?” Shinichi sounded skeptical. “Paperwork? Um, you know Daddy’s job is to beat up the bad guys and keep getting stronger, right?” “Okay! You know what? That doesn’t even surprise me anymore!” said Shinichi, forcing out an energetic laugh to fake some enthusiasm. “Actually, I’m going to do the same thing: train to get stronger. You think you could help me out, Rino?” “You can count on me!” “Why exactly are you suddenly interested in becoming stronger?” interrupted Celes sharply, finally returning to her senses. “I’m preparing to defeat the heroes,” replied Shinichi, also reverting to his normal self. “So you fully admit you’ll fail if you continue to be weak?” “Yep. Also, I feel like I’ll die outright if I don’t train a bit,” Shinichi admitted. Since he was the Demon King’s advisor, the King or Celes would probably bring him back using the Resurrection spell if he died. But if things kept escalating, someone was going to want him dead permanently. So a little preparation seemed important. “Okay, but one day of training isn’t going to change anything.” Celes raised a valid concern. Just as on Earth, the quickest path to strength was slow but intense regular training. But Shinichi was starting to learn rules could be bent with human intellect and magic. “You’ll see in a minute. Rino, can you cast the Pain Block spell?” Shinichi requested. “Yes! It’s the first type of magic we learn. Daddy says we must fight with all our strength till the moment before we die.” “Ah…um, sure. Could you cast that on me?” “Yes! Mm!” said Rino as she puffed out her cheeks. Adorably calling upon her powers, she chanted, “Pain, pain, go away, come again another day! Pain Block!” “Wait, that cute incantation was a spell?” asked Shinichi, thinking of the time Celes cast Pain Block so he could burn his face. She’d used a much simpler incantation. “Yep, spells don’t have any set incantations, so they’re different depending on the caster,” related Rino. “I see,” Shinichi said as a light sprang from Rino’s palms and enveloped his body. He pinched his arms, and sure enough, he couldn’t feel any pain. “All right, now for some high-speed strength training.” Shinichi placed both hands on the ground and started doing push-ups. “One, two, three… This is amazing! I feel like I could go on forever.” Were he in his natural state, his chest and arms would go numb after twenty push-ups, and he’d reach his limit just before forty. But that number came and went. He couldn’t feel anything but did, however, reach a physical limit where he just couldn’t do any more. “One hundred and two, one hundred and three… Augh, that might be it.” Shinichi was unable to move his body no matter how hard he tried. He’d used all his strength doing push-ups. Collapsing on the ground, he pulled up his shirt to look at his pectoral muscles, red and swollen. He was bleeding internally after tearing a muscle by pushing it past its limits. “Ah, that looks like it hurts.” Rino winced. “If I didn’t have that spell on me, I probably would’ve died from the pain.” For a motivated athlete, this amount of training was entirely possible on Earth, but his next trick was only possible in a fantasy world. “Rino, can you cast a spell to heal my torn muscles? I don’t want a spell that’ll turn back time or reconstruct my body or something. I want something that’ll increase my natural healing process.” “Ah, um, I don’t think I understand,” stammered Rino, confused and shaking her head at Shinichi’s complicated explanation. Celes let out a heavy sigh and came over to sit down next to Shinichi. “What if I improve your body’s restorative capacity?” she suggested. “Ah, that would be perfect.” “All right. Self-Healing Power Boost!” she said, casting the spell by placing her palms on Shinichi’s swollen chest. A colorless energy flowed from Celes’s hands and ran through his body. His chest was on fire as all the cells reproduced at an abnormally fast pace. “Ooh, I can see it healing!” The internal bleeding would’ve normally taken at least three days to heal, but it completely vanished in about a minute. That’s not the only thing the magic did. “Now we’ll see if my idea works. One, two, three…,” said Shinichi as he started doing push-ups again once his muscles were fully recovered. And he kept going, even after he hit his previous limit of 103. “One hundred and twenty, one hundred and twenty-one… I can still move! It worked!” “What? Did you get stronger just by doing that?!” asked Rino in shock. Shinichi didn’t stop his push-ups to explain in more detail. “It’s called post-workout recovery. Muscles get stronger because they repair themselves after their fibers are broken. Normally, you’d need to rest for like two or three days for it to fully heal, but I sped that process up with magic,” explained Shinichi, reaching his new limit of one hundred fifty push-ups. Celes cast the spell again, and Shinichi’s muscles healed again, becoming stronger. “It’s not high-speed leveling up, it’s high-speed strength training. Man, getting strong is fun!” “You’re cheating again. Do you ever feel bad for those who put in constant and steady effort?” asked Celes. “Searching for the most efficient training method is its own kind of effort. It doesn’t take much effort to stop thinking and do the same thing over and over again,” replied Shinichi. “And how do you really feel?” “I love that I can cheat and take the easy way and still manage to do better than others!” “You degenerate.” Shinichi started doing squats, enduring the insults to which he’d become accustomed. “Rino, I’m sorry to ask you this, but could you run to get me some food and something to drink? I’ll start to lose mass if I don’t get enough nutrients, even with all this exercise and muscle restoration.” “Yep! I’ll go prepare a feast for you!” beamed Rino, excited he was relying on her. She ran off toward the dining hall. “Wow, she’s such a good kid! Nothing like the Demon King at all.” “If you touch her—,” warned Celes. “Yeah, yeah, I know what’ll happen. But that’s beside the point—I won’t do anything!” “……” “What’s with that look? You know what? I know exactly what you’re thinking: That’s something that a pedophile would say.” “That’s something that a pedophile would say.” “So I was right? That’s what you’ve been thinking all along?!” Shinichi’s cry carried a bit more force than he’d intended, which broke them out of their normal comedic banter. Shinichi had a feeling the maid would enjoy manzai-style comedy. “Okay, on a serious note, I think Rino’s cute and all, but there’s seriously no chance of anything romantic happening between us.” Though it was entirely possible Rino was actually older than Shinichi, as they were different species, it still was out of the question. He couldn’t shake the moral standards of his home country. “I don’t have any siblings, so I just see her as a little sister. I want to spoil her, that’s all.” “…As do I,” agreed Celes, uncharacteristically responding in a serious tone. In fact, her face seemed a little softer. Her relationship with Rino was beyond that of a maid and her master’s daughter, and she seemed to really care about her. “Just to be clear, I’m more into big boobs, so I actually prefer busty women like you, Celes!” declared Shinichi, intentionally saying something rude to break out of this embarrassingly tender moment. He’d thought she’d call him out for sexual harassment or being a pervert, but— “……” Celes said nothing, turning her face from Shinichi and looking down. “Um, Celes?” “……” “Are you blushing, by chance?” “Hyper Gravity!” “Ah?!” Shinichi’s body suddenly became so heavy he was unable to remain standing and sprawled on the floor like he’d been nailed down. “I am going to help Lady Rino. I will be back shortly,” quipped Celes. “No, wait—before you go! Could you undo…?” “It’s my gift to you. Good luck on your training.” Celes smiled like a flower in full bloom as she left the room. Just before the doors closed, though, she looked back at Shinichi as if he were a pig awaiting slaughter. “She’s…surprisingly innocent…” Shinichi found this glimpse of a cuter Celes somewhat endearing, but the bones in his body were starting to make a horrendous creaking sound, and he prepared himself for his first death.