บท 44: A Brand New Day

She was holding a hammer, striking it again and again upon an object above the anvil near an ancient furnace that was crackling its fire to my ears and the shadow of the dancing illumination that gave a bright orange color to the floor and steel in front of it.

Adust, what the hell were you doing?

I wanted to know whether this vision had some kind of meaning, or it was just me hallucinating after a harsh day of work.

In the end, my own fatigue bested my eye and I continued my journey within a visionless dream.

By the time my pocket watch struck four in the morning, I woke up and immediately prepared the beginning of my day.

Nothing changed, but to my suspicion, I immediately checked the sheathed Adjust that was laying on the corner of a hole-of-one table.

With my eye being sleepy, and the other was nonexistent, I sloppily unsheathed the weapon and checked the whole thing from the diagonal angle of its long guard.

Nothing changed. Maybe it was the quality and the strength of the vessel?

Regardless, I wanted to extract both the kinetic energy converter part of the multilayered coat and the firearm that was as useless and wealth-leaching as it could be.

But before that, and before doing anything else, I went with my daily routine that kept my skill as fresh as a cinnamon roll throughout the year.

Stretching and exercises! The fundamental activity to prevent my lean muscles from turning into noodles.

I removed my white shirt, before tying my flailing left arm to my body with a leftover rope.

Then.

A burst of 100 sit ups.

Another 120 push ups. I only have one hand, so I could only muster that much. Normally, I could reach two hundred or so.

Doing that might slow down the healing of my broken ribs, or even further damage it, but I won't be letting these wounds stay the way they were after I got the money from the Streetlight Talon.

It might be crazy to a normal person that I even managed to stand, to begin with. Back then, the pain that was raging within my mind and body exceeded my mental barrier. It had been a long time since I felt such pressure and stress.

I'm not at my prime currently, yet. Still, the voices in my head always told me to lay down and rest.

But that would be bad. It had been a long time since I had that much motivation. If I didn't force myself, I'm afraid that I would lose my newfound light.

Humans were fragile, their brain was an amalgamation of forest in the beginning. As time went on, it got clearer with a path that represents habits and the desire to reach that sense of comfort.

I'm already at my 43, the fear of doing something new and childish has long gone.

I grabbed my wooden spear and held the very end tip of the handle in-between my middle and ring finger.

And thrust it at the same spot of thin paper plastered on the wall, making sure that the tip didn't pass the paper, while still making contact with the paper. After a strike, I quickly changed my position, and hurled another strike at the very same point.

I did it again and again within this cramped apartment without clashing against any objects other than that sheet of paper, making sure that I always hit the same spot, the very same dot, all while mustering as much power that I could put into the thrust.

"Yeouch, having a broken pinky made this worse."

Today, I managed to get 78 consecutive strikes without mudding my accuracy. Usually, I changed hands and did the same thing with the same amount of thrust, but my left hand was a goner by now.

"Yeah… I need to increase my daily reps from now on."

After that, I went to shower. Electrocuting myself with cold water was a must if I'm not living on the alley.

"Tallyho~"

It was refreshing.

Like usual, but instead of performing it on top of the table, I did it on the floor. Hopefully, I'm not dumb enough to destroy the floor and ended up making an unnecessary problem for myself.

"Aight, let's see if I can strengthen you far more than my old companion."

The first catalyst used for the concept extraction for today was the kinetic converter. As the semi-liquid that was manifested by Adust was currently drowning the item, this MIND had just sent me information about something related to her thought.

"Hmm? You're wondering about my old companion? My, my, what a curious summer child."

She was attempting to strike an interaction with me, in the middle of a jugular process of conversion! I don't know if I should be impressed or not, as there would be a chance that Adust was keeping the information input aside in the hope of the conversation attempt.

"Well, that one was currently in the possession of someone, and the soul within it would definitely not allow me to touch it ever again.

Adust notified me that she had guessed that it might be related to my way of treating my own MIND in the past.

"Well, maybe. Though, because of it, I learned some manners to synchronize with another."

It took an hour of fully comprehending the mechanism behind the technology, before focusing on the phase where the MIND began to reconstruct its vessel according to the schematic that was acquired and modified by my guidance.

Well, now that I know the composition of the kinetic converter technology, I have indirectly acquired the developing tech used by the Streetlight Talon.

I have a generous amount of options. One of them was just to sell this information for more money, or I could use it for myself in the future where I could tinker with some of the schematic to avoid the patent copyright infringement.

Welp, it's your loss for giving this to me, Cheshire Cat.