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67.9% Redacted1111 / Chapter 52: Training.

Capítulo 52: Training.

There was a deviation from our daily peaceful routine as we entered the final months of middle school. The volunteering club activities changed for the worse.

There was a change in members because students graduate and enroll.

But even the fresh blood in our ranks didn't change the fact that I was mistreated... evident by our current situation-

Standing right next to the middle school entrance, our volunteering club was getting ready for our activities. The sun was far from setting and the day was far from cold. In the midst of our preparation, JiiJii clapped his hands.

"Listen up everybody." He called as he circled around our group on a sunny afternoon. He had an even more serious look on his face than the usual one. "We are in what many would call a pinch. You see, the principal finally cracked and decided to push down on our volunteering activities to show results. A classic tale of oppression."

"Aren't we doing good deeds? Why would the principal restrict us on that?" Pepe rightfully asked.

For the past years, we had been spending our evenings helping the elderly and getting cookie points. There was no way a school wouldn't appreciate that.

In fact, I was half expecting them to celebrate us on a podium. I, for one, was a brilliant helper.

"I don't know. Apparently, getting things in return for having underaged kids work after school didn't sit right with him." JiiJii clicked his tongue. "So stupid."

.

.

.

I wasn't even surprised by this old man's B.S.

"So you were secretly doing business, after all." I sighed.

"Look, a little more produce sent to our farm didn't harm anyone. Plus if you're talking about underhanded business the fact that Yuuno and you are the only ones staying at our plac-"

"SHHHHH!" Yuuno, worrying about her image, covered the old man's mouth with her sleeve. She wanted to be the dependable, cool senpai. Having our kouhai know about how we bribed our way into an exclusive house would have been a blow to her image.

'It will help through the tough times' she said a month or two ago.

"Tchk." With a click of the tongue, the cranky man stepped back. By his attitude you'd expect him to be menopausal but I mean- guys are technically menopaused since birth. "Anyways, the principal is now asking for tangible results." He reiterated.

"Just show them all the work we've done around town." Shady business aside, we had nothing to do with it.

JiiJii was the one responsible for everything. We had been helping out without compensation. Any way you looked at it we were the victims!

"Nope. The results need to be limited to the club and our activities within school." He finally stopped circling.

"SO I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG! WE WERE WASTING ALL OUR TIME OUTSIDE SCHOOL! Haah! None of you listened when I said that years ago."

"Yes, Mao, you were correct I was wrong. But now we are in this boat together. I made some misjudgements. I might be going senile with age. I am sorry everyone."

"Oi, old man. Stop playing the pity card-"

"Did you decide on something?" The new concerned recruits cut me off.

"I wouldn't be so confident if I didn't." He finally put his stick down. "I- as your sports teacher- will teach all of you the art of self-defence. That will yield results and it's also the only other thing I'm good at."

We all stopped thinking for a while before I said what was on everyone's mind.

"Stop kidding yourself old man, your withered body can barely stand without a stick. So why don't you just sit back and forge some evidence like you usually do." The sly fox was more than capable of doing that.

"Ohoho~ Quite the assumption you got there. I'll have you know that I was somewhat of a warrior back in my days." Pff.. as if!

"Yeah, maybe back in your days, right now the only war you can fight is the war to age more than a century."

"It isn't like I have to fight… I just need to teach you all to produce some decent results."

Looks like he was hell-bent on this. But his little declaration had an unintended side effect. Yuuno, who came back to stand next to me was smiling wide.

'Oh noooo.'

I grabbed her upper arm slightly.

[Just so you know, I'll do the bare minimum to get stronger. No- I won't get noticeable strong at all!] I clarified. If I got excessively strong, she'd start with her 'JoIN ThE MILiTAry' crap again. It took her three years to get off my back. I won't let her climb back on!

[Sure sure, whatever you say~] Yuuno's smirk grew wider.

"Where is our gym then?" Popo asked. He looked the most excited of the bunch.

"Gym? Right there." A finger pointed straight at a tree… a tree with a tire hanging off it. "Line up next to it. Remember from now on this is how I'll grade you." JiiJii directed those words right at me.

We were all lined up in no particular order.

"Yuuno, you can sit this one out. The rest of you squat."

"Squat?"

Make a 90-degree angle between your thigh and calf and hold.

"What are we doing? Warming up for tennis?" I quipped.

"Just do it. There's no way you'd get through training with those supermodel's legs. You need muscle boy." The man shamed my skinny legs.

Honestly? Thicc legs? You wouldn't see me complaining.

Squats? EZ.

.

.

.

EZ MY ASS! ASS THAT HURTS!

We had been doing this for at least 20 minutes and even in my somewhat strengthened body, I could feel my gluteus maximus tearing into smithereens.

Was this torture? Was the whole talk with the principal a ruse? I wouldn't put it past that sadist fox of an old man!

'I DON'T CARE ANYMORE JUST GET ME OFF THIS!'

I tried to straighten up, but JiiJii slapped the back of my knee which made me fall shin first. It was either get cramps or do squats. Both were terrible choices. I reluctantly got back up again. The kids around me were in just as much pain.

The worst thing about this was that it had nothing to do with martial arts. Or maybe that fact alone was a saving grace. I mean it meant that I-for one did not have to worry about getting much stronger.

The point is I was almost certain that if I did this for a month my ass would look like two planets playing derby. Hell nah! I didn't want to be a Pixur mom.

The whole ordeal lasted for 15 more minutes. 15 minutes that felt an eternity longer than an hour.

"And up!" JiiJii said.

None of us stood up, we just fell on the ground together. He let us catch our breath. This was actually horrendous. I think the man broke child protection laws by subjecting us to that.

"Next up, you will kick that tire." He hit our spines and forces us to get up.

"Our legs are dead… you can't possibly expect us to-"

"Grades, Mao. Grades." DAMN IT!

"Screw you old man." I whispered under my breath.

"Ah, another thing… Wear these before you do it." He handed some bracelets and braces to us. I originally thought they were there to keep our joints in check, but nope. Each one of the accessories weighed at least 10 kilos.

"Oi geezer, this isn't dragon ball… Stop tryna act like a hermit teacher. There's no way I'm putting thi-"

"I'll give you the 20 kilo weights if you complain."

"As if-"

He replaced them with 20 kilos weights.

"You real-"

"30 kilos?"

"N-No." I gave in. If he weren't that much older than me, I would have unapologetically knocked the lights out of him. Not only did he have control over my marks, but he was also my landlord.

This sucked. Even a dictator would have been more compassionate.

Under his command, all of us stood up. The others with 40 kilos on their body and me with 80 on mine. Needless to say, everyone noticed that I was slightly stronger than a normal human (probably because I had been working that chonky hoe on the farm). But even for me, these weights were a chore. I was barely able to keep my back straight.

One thing I figured through this life was having a normal body was difficult.

In my previous life, I didn't have to go through anything as tedious as training or learn anything as pointless as martial arts. I could do an infinite amount of actions with that strength of mine. That was all still a possibility in this life. A possibility that I rejected.

My mind kept getting worn out earlier than my body. There was no scent of motivation left behind any of my actions.

From what I have studied, around 20-60 per cent of a person's personality is strictly based on the body. The way the physically mass of the brain functions means that hormones dictate our temperament.

At this point, both Yuuno and I should have lost our original identity and taken the role of the kid in our bodies. But just because of how solidified our souls were into our roles, we maintained what we were.

As time went on, I started thinking about my past memories as just some wisdom imparted to me, rather than the separate entity I once was. And that is somewhat scary.

A real-life example of whatever philosophical words I spouted was my immediate instinct to throw a tantrum.

It was my turn now and lifting my leg was so- UUU!

I overshot my strength and instead of kicking the tyre, my leg went through its hole and the bottom hit the place where the sun didn't shine.

"GAH!!!" I shouted before cupping the two eggs that hung below. Even I- who was numb to pain felt this. "Noooo. Mao Jr please don't cripple... You need to make baby batter!" For a second I forgot that demons didn't shag. And then I fell to the ground.

"Oi, Mao get up! Who said that you could rest?"

"Leave me aloneeeee."

"Just know that you need good grades to make good money."

What was this some S&M training?

I reluctantly got up and huffed for a minute, as Yuuno patted my back.

"Get to it."

"UUUU!"

With that, I spent the rest of the training kicking the tyre while cupping my balls.

###

"Okay that's it!" JiiJii clapped. With me- the final member getting the shit beaten out of me by an inanimate tyre- the task at hand was over.

I fell to the ground and reached out to the braces.

"What are you doing?" A stick hit the back of my palm. I immediately pulled my hand away knowing that it was also the stick JiiJii used to check manure.

"I am taking these shackles off." I pointed. Did age make him blind?

"Why?" He asked.

"Why not?"

"Because you'll be wearing these for a month."

And I was legitimately screwed.

The rest of our year was screwed.


REFLEXIONES DE LOS CREADORES
bligboi bligboi

How do you like the new training arc? You might be curious about why I had 48 chapters of build up. The answer is pretty simple. It was because this would all come together. Even the stupid jokes would evolve into full plot points. Like what steinsgate did with its first half... except these 48 chapters are ideally a 20th of my story.

next chapter

Capítulo 53: Roundup meet.

Before I knew it I was already in the first year of Junior High. The final leg of the compulsory journey that I had to run to get the opportunity to become rich and buy an island. The gateway to my life of peace and pacifism.

But to get to that life, our club had to pass this final challenge. A challenge proposed by the principal. It was D-day. The day when we showed what our club was capable of. The strength we had been working on for the past couple of months.

What this would get us, on top of perfect co-curricular grades, was a special letter of recommendation applicable to Korean high schools.

And we had it in the bag. This wasn't complacency but confidence.

Our kicks were incredibly strong when we took those heavy braces off. Needless to say, our club was the master of kicking. I believe we could have squared off against the taekwondo club on equal footing.

They definitely had better technique, but our kicks were explosive. But not by a lot in the grand scale of stuff.

But as soon as this year started, the principal decided to do a switcheroo. He said that we were already proficient in kicking from middle school so reusing that meant that there was no progress since 1 year ago. Complete horsedung. But I didn't make the rules.

So why, you might ask, was I still so confident about scoring that letter of recommendation?

Because too bad for the principal, the resources we got from volunteering were excessively important for JiiJii's farming addiction. So instead of focusing on our leg strength, the old man taught us how to punch effectively this year. Like there was no problem with him exploiting us.

It worked in my favour a little too. Since the old man and I shared the same house and hence the same surplus of ingredients. Let's just say that we were eating like kings.

Learning how to punch like a real man consequently turned out to be a pretty good move.

We would:

(1) Woo the principal and get the promised goods.

(2) Ensure the safety of the club.

(3) Become stronger but not to the point Yuuno would start her cult admission.

(4) Be more respected amongst our peers and get our family value up with reference to these village folks.

This was the least I could do for my parents. Yep, that was totally the only reason.

I would say that the strength I had gained from training was within reason. I mean think about it. In the global stage where they are training supersoldiers or in the domestic stage where people like Yuuno exist… I was still a pretty mundane existence. Especially since there were 5 others in our club who had about the same amount of strength as me.

We all learnt from the same master and I was still relatively weak under my own volition.

I could still easily avoid being drafted for war while being just strong enough to defend myself against non-mana users.

"Are you all ready?" The principal asked. Yes, the same one who gives the same redundant speech at the start of every new academic year.

"Yes, sir." We said in unison as we stood in a line.

Our club was stationed outside the gym and we were presented with a log held up by a string. Our goal was pretty clear. Get rid of the log and do as much damage as you can with a single punch.

The first one to go was Greg. He pulled his fist back and blew up a log with a punch. To be honest, Greg was probably capable of turning the log to ash just by rubbing it with that ginormous chad chin of his. But this display was sort of grand too.

He stepped back.

We weren't going by age, just by the order we coincidentally happened to be standing in. Which meant that-

"I'm up then." I said while walking up to my log and immediately stopped at its sight. The dang thing was infested with termites.

I turned towards JiiJii.

'Was he staging this? No way right?' His confident eyes didn't leave mine.

I- to test the log slightly tightened my fist and with the bare minimum amount of force required to call the move a punch, punched.

As soon as I did, the log crumbled.

'SO HE DID FORGE THIS RESULT

.

.

.

GOOD JOB OLD MAN!'

I gave him a thumbs up and he thumbs upped back.

After us, it was the newer recruits' turns and they too nailed theirs.

With everyone done, the turn of the monster amongst our ranks came. Yuuno carried her own fresh wood. Probably to brag. Probably because she wanted to show off the strength she had built over the last couple of years.

In that case, the log was barely strong enough to even serve as a mini display of her strength.

Her wrists flicked the large log in the air and as it fell slowly from the sky she extended her fist out forcefully.

First scattered the wood, then the air. There were palpable shockwaves as the sound got robbed from my ears.

Wind. And debris. Everywhere.

The trees around us were blowing and bending from the air pressure. It was legitimately insane.

It took a second for air to come back to our lungs. I half expected the old men to just die off a hard attack by now.

Yuuno bowed politely and joined our group as if she did nothing special. And by her standards, it really wasn't much.

I placed my hand on her shoulder.

[You didn't have to flex that hard.]

[Hehe~] She chuckled happily. [I wanted to flex a little harder though.]

Do you understand what I meant when I said that growing up mentally was becoming harder?

That little display ended this year's, and our junior high's roundup meets.

Needless to say, it was a success. And the rest of the year was smooth sailing. Just the pleasant usual daily lives of kids living in peaceful countryside.

###

There was a little discrepancy when it came to academic years in our institution. It wasn't 3 years of schooling for Junior High but rather 2 and a half.

Most of the high schools started their admissions early on. And the coronation for nobility occurred every July as per tradition. So it only made sense to end the final year halfway through.

That meant that today marked the midterm break of the second year for me and Yuuno's last day at Amone's academy.

"Are you all packed up?" I asked.

The entire house's population was standing outside the house. Yuuno was sitting on her bag as Clintarou incessantly licked her ankle before biting it.

It was his way of telling her not to go.

She just let him stick to her ankle. It wasn't like that hurt her solid skin.

"Yep. You were there when I packed it yesterday."

"Just checking. But did you get every single piece of cloth?" I started turning her around for inspection. And I checked her handbag while I was at it too. You could never be too sure.

"Unnhnn. In case I missed anything you can just toss it out."

"Do you have enough food for the way?" I put a water bottle in the bag.

"I think so."

"Did you go pee?" Patted her shoulders.

"Bruh wording… I did go to the washroom. And there is one on board."

"What abo-"

"STOP! I am going home not on a journey!" She put an end to my barrage of questions.

"Well, I mean it depends on what you consider home… We did spend more time here than there."

"But that's where the family i-"

"Yuuno-chan! Did you not think of us as your family?" Obaa-chan barged into the scene and looked at her with a pout.

"N-No I do! But."

"I know that you just thought of us as some convenient landowners. I am devastated!" Obaa-chan wiped a tear.

"I DIDN'T!"

"It's really fine. After all, we couldn't do a lot for you."

"NOOOO!"

And thus started the waterworks.

Four minutes and thirty seconds.

"Well, I was only kidding. Do visit us again as soon as you can." The crying ended abruptly and Obaa-chan wore her usual poker smile again.

"I think I'll be away for 5 or so years. How about you guys move to the city?"

"And abandon our farms? Girl, we don't like you thaaat much." JiiJii finally huffed. He was grumpy outside... but everyone in the house knew that he was more of tsundere than both Yuuno and I combined. Which is a huge achievement.

"But you will miss me right?~" Yuuno decided to tease the old man.

"I mean, you were a useful person and a decent pupil."

"Well, that's enough for me. If you can't live in the city at least consider dropping by every winter. That's when we have our breaks."

"I'll think about it but I won't make any guarantees."

"Then that's about it I guess."

The ultimate farewell was rather short and abrupt because this time we had been doing this for a week or so.

There was a lot of sorrow and the parting was by no means foreshortened. At the same time, we knew that this wouldn't be the last time she would ever meet them.

The last couple of days were either spent crying, hugging, or packing. Everyone except for me had dry eyes from all the weeping.

"Yuuno." She looked up while petting Clintarou.

"What?"

I opened my arms.

"Oooh... So this time you're the one who's offering! I remember 9 years ago when I had to force... You sure have grown." This smug littl- I threw my hands down.

"I didn't want to hug you. You're getting pretty old now so I thought you'd miss me as old people do by staring at a picture of me while hugging your dakimakura. That's creepy... So I just wanted to get it over with."

"Tch. I didn't want to hug you either... But I really didn't want you to think of something nasty while imagining me."

"Jeez." -!!

A palm pushed both her and me forward and then enveloped the both of us.

"You won't see each other for months. Stop bantering." Luha trapped us in her arms in a three-way hug. That lasted a while before the big black familiar bus came right in front of our door. This time they took the courtesy of not having us walk a mile and back.

There was a lot of waving before the doors shut. And right after they did the wheels rotated horizontally as the bus started to hover. It quickly turned invisible. That explained the odd sensation of gaining and losing altitude the last time I came back from the winter holiday.

Technology had grown in the past decade. The world went past just flying cars. We even had flying buses now.

It reminded me of how long of a time I had spent in this new life.

It reminded me of how I was older now than I was when I died as a demon lord.

Yuuno would be there too. Our lives were catching up to us.


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