Chapter 78: Rain (1)

For a moment, I had forgotten that this place was a forest.

And what is a forest?

A place full of lush trees, grass, and animals.

A true ecological treasure where countless plants and creatures live while maintaining a natural balance.

And in a place like this, rain is something completely normal.

The problem is that sometimes it rains far more than expected.

Shhhhhhhhhhh!!

The downpour falling outside the cave right now was exactly that kind.

I had spent the entire dawn circulating mana, then slept a little, and had only just woken up.

And in that short time, it looked as if a hole had opened in the sky, because the rain was pouring down in sheets.

“……Wait, wait, wait, wait!”

I stood there stunned for a few seconds after seeing rain again for the first time in so long, but I quickly realized this was serious.

First were the smoked foods.

Then the charcoal.

And finally, the clothes I had left out to dry.

I couldn’t lose all the charcoal I struggled so hard to gather because of a single rainstorm.

And the same went for the smoked food. If the rain washed away the salt, it would be a disaster.

“Ugh…”

As best I could, I retrieved the charcoal container, the smoked food, and the clothes.

Fortunately, since the rain hadn’t been falling for very long, they weren’t that wet yet.

‘Guess I’ll have smoked food for breakfast.’

I could eat fish inside the cave.

But cleaning up afterward would be troublesome.

In any case, going outside was impossible.

Even if the rain stopped, moving around would still be difficult.

The ground would probably turn into a muddy mess, and the river level would rise.

And that last part was exactly what worried me the most.

Maybe I would have to change my plans.

Title) Forced isolated training begins

WildGrills

(Video of the rain falling outside the cave)

As soon as I woke up this morning, this shitty rain started pouring down, so my forced isolated training has begun.

Does anyone know how that’s actually done? Honestly, I heard the term somewhere before, but I don’t even know what it really means.

ㄴHeavenlyDemon) Isolated training… what a nostalgic term.

ㄴWildGrills) Do you have any advice or something like that?

ㄴHeavenlyDemon) You must cut off all forms of contact, even the gallery, and focus solely on martial arts.

ㄴWildGrills) That honestly sounds difficult. How long did you do that for, HeavenlyDemon?

ㄴHeavenlyDemon) One month. During the process I fell into demonic deviation and nearly died, but I survived thanks to your help.

ㄴWildGrills) Though cutting off the gallery really does seem a bit difficult;;

ㄴHeavenlyDemon) If you truly concentrate, nothing is impossible.

ㄴSwordmaster) Isolated training isn’t a bad idea. The problem is exactly that part about leaving the gallery.

ㄴWildGrills) Have you ever done it before, Swordmaster?

ㄴSwordmaster) Me? No. Aside from my time as a sword user, I never had level walls or anything like that. I simply broke through everything easily.

ㄴWildGrills) ;;;

ㄴHeavenlyDemon) What curious words. Then what level are you at now?

ㄴSwordmaster) Quite high, but honestly I don’t feel any need to advance further.

ㄴHeavenlyDemon) Tsk tsk. How arrogant. You’ll end up regretting it.

ㄴSwordmaster) I don’t think there’s anything for me to regret. There’s no one stronger than me hahaha.

ㄴHeavenlyDemon) You ignore how high the sky is and how terrifying nature can be. Even I, who stand at the summit, revere nature.

ㄴSwordmaster) You really sound like an old murim lady. I didn’t understand a damn thing you just said.

ㄴHeavenlyDemon) It means you’ll stay single your whole life.

ㄴSwordmaster) What the hell did this lady just say to me?

ㄴWildGrills) Hey;;

ㄴShe hit her with an absolutely brutal fact hahaha

ㄴThat comes from years of experience;;

ㄴThen HeavenlyDemon, are you married?

ㄴHeavenlyDemon) I never took a partner. And I have no intention of doing so.

ㄴSwordmaster) Then how old are you?

ㄴHeavenlyDemon) Last year I reached the age of twenty.

ㄴWhat does that mean?

ㄴFor men, twenty years old is called “yakgwan,” and for women it’s “bangnyeon.”

ㄴNo way hahaha. With the way she talks, there’s no way she’s 20 hahaha.

ㄴShe’s just trolling Swordmaster lol.

ㄴAt that age already being in the Profound Realm? Don’t make me laugh. Even geniuses only enter the Flowery Realm after their thirties.

ㄴHeavenlyDemon) Because I possess a talent granted by the heavens.

ㄴSwordmaster) It’s not impossible. I also became a Swordmaster in my early twenties.

ㄴSeriously, both of you should stop talking nonsense;;

The comments started turning into chaos.

It seemed Swordmaster also felt provoked, because she began replying furiously.

If this continued, the situation would spiral out of control.

I needed to stop them quickly.

ㄴWildGrills) That’s enough already. So basically, short isolated training is useless?

ㄴHeavenlyDemon) At minimum, two weeks must pass for it to have real meaning. But first, let me ask you something.

ㄴWildGrills) Go ahead.

ㄴHeavenlyDemon) Even if you entered isolated training, do you truly have enough confidence not to enter the gallery?

That part genuinely made me hesitate.

For about three seconds.

ㄴWildGrills) No.

ㄴHeavenlyDemon) What a fast answer.

ㄴHahahahaha.

ㄴOf course hahaha. You can’t quit the gallery.

ㄴIt wasn’t “thinking three times,” it was “thinking for three seconds” hahaha.

ㄴAnyone doing isolated training while still using the gallery is seriously insane hahaha.

If I’m going to do isolated training while abandoning the gallery, I’d rather just train normally instead.

I was already starting to miss human contact, so abandoning even the gallery—

It would be like pulling the life support off a critical patient.

From the way they talked about it, isolated training was something you only did when you had plenty of time and resources.

And while I might have time, I definitely didn’t have resources.

So it was better not to do it.

‘Besides, I don’t even know when this rain will stop.’

The rain kept pouring endlessly.

And judging by how heavy it was, it didn’t look like it would stop anytime soon.

Maybe I’d lose the entire morning.

“Wonmo. You’ll eat this today.”

“Kyuu!”

Wonmo’s food was monster meat bought from the auction house.

Since he ate anything, he seemed to enjoy it quite a lot.

I also had smoked food for breakfast.

And the sloth’s main food was still the fasting pills.

While eating, I absentmindedly looked outside the cave.

And that made me feel strange.

‘Back in the military, I liked rainy days.’

Indoor inspections.

Only indoor work.

Even when there was training, we usually just watched videos.

Well, though sometimes we did have to train wearing rain ponchos.

And that was absolute shit.

I even caught a cold because of it.

Fortunately, the battalion commander was a good person and gave me a day off.

I remember how happy I was back then.

He really was a good man.

‘I wonder if the armies here are similar.’

This was a world where people fought with swords and magic, not rifles and artillery.

A system where military power depended directly on the individual strength of people.

And more than each nation’s military power, what really interested me was how they lived.

‘There are probably soldiers in the gallery too.’

I had nothing to do until the rain stopped.

So after finishing my breathing method practice, I entered the gallery.

Title) There are soldiers here too, right?

WildGrills

What do soldiers do when it rains? Do they just do indoor inspections and that’s it?

ㄴNormally they train indoors. What the hell is this “work” thing? Why would a soldier do manual labor?

ㄴWildGrills) Then do they not shovel snow either?

ㄴAh. You mean cleaning up trash that falls from the sky? Yeah, they do that. Also clearing leaves from drains and things like that.

ㄴNormally they call civilians, but if the situation gets bad, they send soldiers too.

ㄴBut why are you asking?

ㄴWildGrills) Because it’s raining and I can’t do anything, so I remembered the military.

ㄴ??? You were military?

ㄴSwordmaster) No wonder I felt you weren’t an ordinary person. What organization did you belong to?

ㄴWildGrills) South Korea.

ㄴSwordmaster) That’s the first time I’ve heard that name. Is it a knight order from some remote region?

ㄴWildGrills) It’s the name of my country. And I wasn’t a knight, I enlisted and was later discharged.

ㄴSwordmaster) You’re saying strange things again. But I’ll believe you.

ㄴWildGrills) It’s true.

ㄴGrills. Then tell us the shittiest experience you had in the military.

ㄴWildGrills) The day before I was supposed to go on leave, an emergency happened and they canceled everything.

ㄴI believe you.

ㄴEuk hahaha.

ㄴThat really would ruin anyone’s mood hahaha.

ㄴSwordmaster) But then, why did you enlist? Was your country at war?

ㄴWildGrills) No. We were in a truce. It was a divided country.

ㄴSwordmaster) That’s rough;; Then was it forced conscription?

ㄴNo, wait a second. Didn’t you say you were an orphan? Then why did they recruit you?

ㄴThat’s weird too. Why would an army recruit orphans…?

ㄴDid you come from a war or something? Because if they recruit orphans, that’s seriously bad.

I don’t know what misunderstanding they were having.

The military in my country was definitely pretty crazy, but I enlisted voluntarily.

Normally I would’ve been exempt, but at the time they were so short on people they sent anyone.

And since I wasn’t attending university either and was drifting aimlessly through life, I didn’t really have any complaints.

ㄴWildGrills) I simply enlisted as an active-duty soldier. Looking back now, maybe I should’ve made it a career.

ㄴHeroDontThrowAway) U-uh… stay strong!

ㄴWildGrills) Suddenly? ;;

ㄴIf even the moderator says that, how miserable must his life have been?

ㄴNo parents. Joined the military. And now ended up in the Forest of Four Seasons.

ㄴSeriously, that’s the complete hard mode life collection haha

ㄴIf you think about it, isn’t he risking his life every single time he does anything?

Suddenly a lot of people started pitying me.

I don’t know what misunderstanding they had, but it didn’t really matter much.

‘In the end, people live similarly everywhere.’

It seems thinking the military is shit is something universal.

While continuing to chat about random things, I looked outside the cave.

The rain seemed to have weakened just a little, though it was still falling.

‘It’s starting to get cold.’

Maybe because of the rain, the atmosphere was no longer simply cool, but freezing.

I grabbed some wood and lit a campfire.

Pleasant warmth slowly began wrapping around me.

Wonmo and the sloth also gradually approached the fire to enjoy the warmth.

‘I’ll train until the rain stops.’

Just sitting around like this wasn’t good.

I stood up from the ground.

If I wanted to use the sword and shield better, training was mandatory.

Just as I picked up HeavenlyDemon’s sword and the adamantite shield I had oiled recently.

Scratch scratch—

Something small entered my cave.

At first I thought it was a rat.

But it wasn’t.

It had a thick tail.

“Kkiuuung.”

“……”

It was a raccoon.

An ordinary raccoon had just walked in on two legs.

And the first thing it did was stretch its paws toward the campfire.

The scene was so absurd that neither I, nor Wonmo, nor the sloth could do anything except stare.

“……”

“……Wonmo. No.”

I silently stopped Wonmo.

Because he had started slowly approaching it.

Judging from the curious expression on his face, he seemed ready to hunt it if the opportunity arose.

But out of all animals, raccoons were exactly the kind you had to be careful with.

If I somehow caught rabies, I’d be finished.

I didn’t know whether the elixir could cure diseases too, but just in case.

‘And if something happens, the sloth will stop it.’

I think it was best to keep training.

If I saw signs of Wonmo trying to hunt it, then I’d stop him.

Though more than that, I wondered where that raccoon got the courage to enter the cave.

Even after seeing us, it calmly kept warming itself by the fire.

‘How long is it planning to stay?’

I glanced at the raccoon before focusing on training again.

Carefully reading the texts posted by Swordmaster while trying to learn.

It was something so easy and yet so difficult at the same time.

She explained things very simply, but.

How should I put it?

The limitations of text were far too obvious.

If I had a master beside me, it would be different, but that was impossible.

‘Still, it’s better than nothing.’

After all, Swordmaster’s texts had excellent reviews.

Just following them should already be enough to produce great results.

And above all, since my style was focused on sword and shield, it was enough to focus solely on the basics.

‘Not the advanced parts, I’ll just focus on the basics.’

Doing mental training, I simultaneously practiced swordsmanship and shield handling.

Meanwhile, I also accelerated the mana inside my body.

I could feel my breathing starting to grow rough.

‘I want my breathing to absorb mana unconsciously.’

Breathing while gaining mana.

That was the level I wanted to reach.

If I managed that, I could use mana infinitely as long as I kept breathing.

Of course, it was only theory.

But the absurdly abundant mana of the Forest of Four Seasons might make it possible.

“Haa…”

Even though the cave was colder than cool, sweat poured down my body.

I wiped the sweat with my clothes and looked toward the campfire.

“Hm? Where did it go?”

It was no longer near the fire.

I turned my head, thinking maybe it had moved somewhere else.

And then I saw a rather funny scene.

“Kkihihing.”

“……”

The fasting pill trapped between the sloth’s claws.

And the raccoon gently pulling it out and happily running away with it.

It had literally stolen it right in front of his face.

The sloth’s, of course.

Dash dash!

The raccoon escaped outside at full speed.

And just now the rain had stopped falling, the perfect moment to flee.

If this kept up, we’d lose a fasting pill for nothing, but.

Whoosh!

And what was the sloth?

A completely “serious” guy when it came to food.

The sloth appeared behind the raccoon as if he had teleported.

Thud!

And with the claws I personally maintained yesterday, he pierced straight through the raccoon’s back.

“Kuueeeek!”

“……”

Well, who told him to steal someone else’s food?

I laughed inwardly.

He should’ve been satisfied just warming himself by the fire.

I never imagined he’d even try to steal.

Slash slash slash!

Looks like the sloth got pretty angry.

Piercing him with his claws wasn’t enough, he completely shredded him too.

The result was a raccoon turned into something worse than torn rags.

And the funniest part was that the fasting pill was still completely intact.

“Nomnomnom.”

Wonmo happily ate the raccoon’s remaining corpse.

A completely savage scene.

I slowly shook my head as I muttered.

‘He brought it on himself.’