Chapter 272
Driving one’s body until mind and flesh were shredded. For Leon, that mode of awakening was both familiar and unfamiliar.
With nothing but sheer grit to rely on, he could ignore even the screams of his own body. His inborn disposition and the ferocity he had honed afterward fused together, and from that time on, Leon’s mental fortitude had risen to a superhuman level.
He hadn’t even learned secret swordsmanship, let alone the most basic methods of Aura manipulation. At the Academy, all he could do was repeat a handful of fundamental drills over and over again, snapping a thousand wooden swords in the process.
Meaningless effort. Worthless pain. When his screams finally reached beyond the sky, that ordeal—one that should never have been rewarded—bloomed into fruition.
Like a lotus that preserves its color and fragrance no matter how tainted the ground it grows from, the realm Leon had stepped into was one that even Masters would not dare belittle, regardless of talent or destiny. He had blossomed pure despite blooming in filth.
“Ah.”
Leon jolted upright the instant he regained consciousness. His sense of time was still frozen at the moment he had been trading blows with Sisyphus, and he looked ready to clamp down on his sword hilt at any second. But before he could even stand fully, his knees gave out.
“W–whoa?!”
Just as Leon was about to topple over disgracefully, something behind him caught his weight. It had the appearance of a small girl, but its true form was the core of a giant golem. Rodlin had returned to her core body state.
“Master’s consciousness has been confirmed. How is your physical condition?” she asked.
“M–my condition? Uh, wait a second.”
Startled at being lifted, Leon closed his eyes and examined his own body. Over thirty percent of his muscles were torn or damaged. There were no cracks in his bones, but his ligaments and cartilage had swollen slightly from sustained overload.
He thought, Looks like I recovered quite a bit while I was out. I’d have expected more internal damage, considering I couldn’t even use Aura to speed up regeneration.
It was a state that could hardly be called minor injuries, yet Leon was instead surprised by how intact he felt.
Every clash with Sisyphus had been purely physical. Sisyphus had clearly held back, but surviving repeated collisions with a Grandmaster without drawing on Aura at all should have been impossible to begin with.
“I’m fine. Not fully healed yet, but if I rest a bit more, I’ll be back in top shape,” Leon assured Rodlin.
“Shall I execute recovery magic? I have already applied thirteen instances of Great Heal, Cure, and Refresh, but the fact that you are not fully recovered indicates an error in my calculations.”
“No, that’s fine. The reason your recovery magic didn’t fully take hold is probably that it conflicted with the power of my Stigmata.”
The Holy Power concentrated within a Stigma surpassed even high-tier Holy Law.
Enough that even an unconscious Leon could negate more than half of the high-grade magic Rodlin cast at full output.
“Where’s Sisyphus?”
“He is over there.”
Following Rodlin’s gesture, Leon turned his head and saw a hulking figure sitting atop a massive boulder, nodding off. Sisyphus, one of the legendary figures of ancient myth, was dozing in a posture so pathetic it was almost laughable.
“Master,” Rodlin continued. “Immediately after you lost consciousness, I attempted to disengage from the entity designated ‘Sisyphus’ and evacuate this area with you.”
Leon caught the troubling implication in her wording and asked, “Attempted... meaning you failed?”
“Yes.”
Her fine, flowing hair swayed softly as she nodded once. Turning only her eyes toward Sisyphus, she explained.
“I carried you and activated flight, departing this location at a speed equivalent to five times the speed of sound. No obstacles or anomalies were detected during transit.”
“So?”
“The moment we reached a distance of exactly two kilometers from the entity designated ‘Sisyphus,’ both you and I were returned to our point of departure.”
“What?!”
Leon stared at Sisyphus in disbelief. That monster—still snoring away—had trapped them here?
Rodlin continued her report with an emotionless expression. “I attempted evacuation multiple times—into the air and underground. All attempts resulted in an immediate return to the original location. Upon determining the futility of further attempts, I ceased evacuation efforts and waited for your consciousness to return.”
“You did well. Anything else I need to know?”
“Based on my judgment, no.”
“Alright.”
Leon nodded once, then pushed himself up, strength having returned to his knees. The sword hilt at his waist clinked faintly.
As if drawn by that metallic sound, Sisyphus, who had been dozing with his head bobbing, opened his eyes. With a bright smile, Sisyphus leaped down from the boulder and closed the distance to Leon in a single step.
“πολεμιστής!”
Even watching him approach at close range, Leon could not read his trajectory. Feeling once more the overwhelming gap between their levels, Leon let out a long sigh. His memories were hazy, but even in the state of selflessness where he had drawn out the greatest power of his life, he hadn’t managed to leave so much as a scratch.
“Sisyphus,” he called.
“Γιατί?”
Even if words didn’t carry, gestures would. He pointed to himself and Rodlin, then to the ground at their feet, and finally back to Sisyphus.
“Was this your doing? You kept us here. Both of us.”
Understanding the meaning of the gesture, Sisyphus let out a wry smile. Then, he pointed behind himself, at the boulder he had been carrying.
“What...? What about that rock?”
Leon tilted his head, not understanding the point. That was when El-Cid chimed in.
—Ah, I see.
See what, exactly? Leon asked inwardly.
El-Cid alone seemed to grasp the meaning, nodding to himself. Unable to contain his frustration, Leon pressed him, and El-Cid began to speak in a low voice, as though recalling a memory from a distant past.
—According to ancient myth, that man, Sisyphus, was cast into Tartaros as a sinner who interfered with the gods’ amusements and insulted their authority. Remember that?
Yeah.
El-Cid continued, —He didn’t merely insult the gods. He beat down the god of death with sheer brute force and threw the world into chaos. For a time, the concept of ‘death’ itself vanished. Corpses walked, the boundary between life and death collapsed, and even the ecosystem fell into ruin.
All because Sisyphus subdued the god of death?
—Most likely. Because of that, he gained immortality. He got an undying body and an imperishable will. But even so, he couldn’t escape the wrath of Zeus, king of the gods. For daring to toy with the divine, Zeus sentenced Sisyphus to roll a boulder for all eternity.
Hearing that, Leon looked again at the boulder Sisyphus had pointed to. It was an utterly ordinary rock. And yet, that was Zeus’s punishment?
—According to records left by ancient priests, that boulder exists at the absolute maximum weight Sisyphus can endure. If he stops rolling it, he suffers the agony of being crushed alive. No matter how far he pushes it, it always returns to its original position as well.
This time, Leon couldn’t hide his confusion. “But... he’s not rolling it right now.”
El-Cid spoke in a flat tone. —Look closely.
Unlike Leon, his insight pierced straight through Sisyphus’s condition. Following that advice, Leon examined Sisyphus more carefully.
From within skin tempered like steel came faint sounds, creaking sounds that sounded like the muted screams of flesh being crushed and twisted.
There was no actual force pressing down on his body. Only the pain corresponding to it.
The agony of a weight that required his full strength just to move, a burden heavy enough to pulverize muscle and shatter bone. Even while enduring that pain, Sisyphus didn’t twitch a single eyebrow.
—Being crushed alive is probably something he’s long since grown used to.
Only then did the words “ancient myth” truly sink in for Leon. Ancient, a term referring to the distant past, not centuries ago, but thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years. In Tartaros, where even the flow of time itself was grotesquely warped, it was impossible to imagine how long Sisyphus had endured that pain.
—Don’t pity him.
El-Cid snapped him out of it immediately. —It’s not something you can fix, and you don’t even know how great his crimes were in life. This isn’t the time for misplaced compassion, and you don’t have the luxury for it. Focus.
“Right...”
—And if the reason you’re bound here is his punishment, then either move together with him or cut through the binding force. That’s all there is to it. Don’t worry so much.
Having shown Leon the path forward, El-Cid asked, —All right, let’s start again. How’s your condition?
“Almost fully recovered. Even with the Stigmata weakened, it’s far better than having nothing.”
—Good.
After checking Leon’s state, El-Cid gave his instructions. —Before you engage Sisyphus again, expand your domain for me.
“My domain?”
—You still have a vague memory of using it, even if you were in that mindless realm. You need to bring that blurred image back into focus.
Leon did as told, drawing his concentration inward. It felt as though time itself had stopped. The sounds that had been flowing in, the vibrations he felt through his skin—all of it vanished as if it had never existed. It was a solitude so complete it was almost oppressive.
Within that stillness, Leon opened his eyes and began expanding his domain as if drawing his awareness beyond his own body. Until even the sword’s reach—no, the very space-time he could dominate—could be cut through with a single swing.
“Huh...?”
Leon froze, startled as he realized his range had expanded several times over, broader and far more solid than before. Before his clash with Sisyphus, maintaining his sword domain had required his full concentration just to keep it intact. Now, he could manipulate a three-meter radius as easily as his own palm. It was growth that couldn’t be guaranteed even through years of training.
—That’s why I told you that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
A Grandmaster’s domain was, quite literally, another world. To draw out the microcosm constructed within oneself and manifest a reality governed by one’s own laws—that was the authority of a Grandmaster, an existence qualified to challenge the gods.
Under normal circumstances, Leon’s domain would have vanished the instant it overlapped with Sisyphus’s, unable to exert any influence at all. But the sword forged by the goddess herself, El-Cid, and Leon’s transcendent mental strength, endured to the very end, like a reef that refuses to break even under a raging storm.
El-Cid explained, —By opposing a transcendent being’s will, your Psychokinesis has advanced to an entirely different level. Normally, one would die nine times out of ten, and the one time they survive, they’d be crippled.
But Leon was one who could bear it. Sisyphus’s power was greatly diminished, sure, but when it came to sheer mental fortitude, Leon had reached a point where even El-Cid had little advice left to offer.
Leon possessed a mind tempered daily through self-mastery. A will that, if misdirected, might have warped into madness.
—Let’s move on to stage two, my admirable disciple.
“Stage two?”
—That’s right.
El-Cid chuckled to himself as he spoke. —Stage one of the Mind-Blade is turning your effective range into a domain through willpower, expanding your perception. So what do you think comes next?
“Hm...”
Leon thought for a moment. He thought the answer was rather simple but hesitated over whether it was correct. After witnessing powers that outright deviated from physical law, like permeation, there was no way it could be wrong.
“The aim for Stage Two of Mind-Blade is... Establishing one’s own unique law?”
El-Cid smiled in satisfaction at his reply. —Correct.
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