Chapter 18 - The Satisfaction of Progress!

“Hahhhhhh…”

Letting out a big breath, Leo headed towards the cart and put the sword back into its sheath before collapsing on the ground.

‘This much should be enough.’

Having spent two hours on sword training, Leo didn’t have any strength to do anything straining left. He simply stared at the bright sky as he inhaled and exhaled to flush out the exhaustion.

Although he didn’t spend as much time as he did on weightlifting, Leo was more satisfied with the result of his sword training in comparison! That was especially the case after he inspected the personal book!

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Personal Skills:

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‘Swordsmanship’ - Prologue - page 7/10

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Despite only doing minimal practice like basic sword moves and getting familiar with handling a real sword, doing so for two hours after an intense workout was half-torture. However, the result was enough for Leo to call it a great day!

Progressing one more page didn’t seem like much, but considering he was barely on page two with all he knew on Earth including the few days he tried kendo as a hobby, this page meant a lot more.

Furthermore, this page of progress wasn’t even the complete result of realizing and digesting what he received from ‘Skill Reading’, Leo had merely familiarized himself with part of what he received.

In fact, if he didn’t know that exceeding certain limits could cripple him, Leo wanted to spend more time training, at least until he digested everything!

‘I finally got a taste of it myself.’

Having been a reader since he could remember, Leo had lamented the lack of certain abilities that various protagonists had like the rest of his fellow readers. A status panel and the measuring device were definitely on the top of his list.

The reason behind that was simple. Exerting effort for the sake of a certain target was great and all, but feeling great only at the end of the road wasn’t. If goals or achievements had some sort of progress bars attached to them, people would have been more productive in general. Otherwise, people on Earth wouldn’t have too invested in games that provided them with that step-by-step satisfaction!

Precisely because of that, the only side hobby that Leo managed to persist on was working out. After all, not only could he see visible progress directly in the form of changes to his body, but he also enjoyed the satisfaction he felt after successfully finishing a workout session.

Nonetheless, Leo believed that he would have been more invested if he had some sort of a status panel that showed the result of each training session in numbers rather than progress that could only be confirmed every few weeks or so.

Even protagonists of some novels emphasized that they felt more motivated after receiving a ‘system’, a ‘watch artifact’, or anything similar to a progress monitor!

‘Bookie has been silent since then.’

After congratulating himself for receiving a taste of the ability that he wanted for so long, Leo went back to analyzing the nature of his ability while resting.

‘Book’ was none other than the name that he gave to the mysterious voice as it was both awkward and cumbersome to call it ‘the voice’ every time. Since the words he spoke out got written into the ‘Personal Book’, then naming it ‘Book’ didn’t feel too strange.

He was originally wondering if he would receive another message from ‘book’ after his ‘Swordsmanship’ progressed by a page or more, but Leo had now confirmed that this wasn’t the case. It didn’t seem like he would receive spam messages for every slight ability increase like some protagonists did.

‘That’s better.’

Putting the ‘Personal Book’ away, Leo stood up as he patted the dirt off his clothes, taking out the second bucket of water to re-refresh!

Regardless of there being monitored progress or not, nothing could beat a shower after exerting a lot of physical effort!

‘Time to hit the Blackbird…’

Despite feeling slightly sleepy, Leo put away the thought of taking a nap as he left the cart in its place and marched on to the town; he didn’t plan to incorporate mid-day sleeping into his routine until tomorrow.

After all, there was still a lot that needed to be prepared for the sake of his ‘home defense’ plan, and considering that a great part of it relied on Crane to forge it, Leo had to spend a big deal of his time today to discuss the blueprints he had in mind with Crane.

The reason he even spared some time on the first day for training was just so he would start getting used to it as time was tight. Otherwise, he might have just spent the whole day in the Blackbird.

‘It’s already different.’

As he reached the blacksmith district, Leo lightly smiled as he observed the visible change that had taken place. Unlike before when the Blackbird could be easily overlooked, the strongest sound of hammering now came out from it even though only a day had passed.

Various onlookers were attracted to the enthusiasm that seemed to radiate from the Blackbird, only to be greeted by a tightly shut door.

“heh…”

Leo couldn’t help but laugh about the irony of the situation. It was mentioned in ‘The Sword Master’s Second Life’ that Crane named his shop the Blackbird to symbolize a furnace that has lost its heat, only producing burnt ashes as a ‘failure’, yet the shop currently appeared to be the most active in the whole district.

‘Motivation is a strong feeling.’

Wishing to be pushed this strongly by the same feeling, Leo was infected by the radiating enthusiasm as the accumulated fatigue seemed to be leaving his body.

“Who is it this time?!”

A slightly irritated voice came from behind the door as Leo grinned once more, it was likely that Crane had a few earlier visitors thanks to his enthusiasm.

“It’s me, Arthur.”

“Oh! Arthur! You came just in time!”

Just as Leo was wondering about the quick change in the mood...

[ Plot change confirmed. Unique event occurrence has been detected. ]