Chapter 306: Seventy-Sixth Floor, Maze of Choices (1)
[7 hours 32 minutes until the rest period ends. Please take a rest.]
Generally, during my training bouts, I lost all sense of time, absolutely immersed in my movements.
Today was no different. It felt like hardly any time had passed, yet six hours had already slipped by. This had been happening more frequently as of late, a noticeable change from how I used to train.
In the early stages of the tower, back when I was still unfamiliar with combat, I had set specific blocks for training.
Even then, I would often find myself grumbling, “Ugh, still forty minutes left?”
It was like pushing through a backlog of overdue work.
No matter how determined I was to improve, it wasn’t something I enjoyed.
To someone like me, who had been juggling part-time jobs and school, combat was completely foreign. The burden placed on me and the weight of expectation often forced me to push forward out of obligation. I couldn’t relax until I had completed the day’s quota or reached the set goal.
Now, things are different.
The process of growth itself had become fun. The more I learned, the more I found to discover, even when facing opponents weaker than me. There was still something to gain, even from familiar sparring partners.
Besides, one couldn’t drill the fundamentals too many times.
To swing an axe unwaveringly, even on the brink of collapse, it is necessary to practice it a thousand—no, ten thousand—times over.