125, 126… 127, one more 128 He said to himself was doing push ups until he collapsed under the shade of one of the giant oaks, its leaves glimmering in the sun's embrace. He sat up, taking a moment to look up and admire the mural before starting to absorb the mana again.
The boy had come a long way from only being able to do 5 push ups in the area but there was still a long way to go.
3 hours later, the boy finally stood up from meditating and decided that it was time to move on from there so he took his belongings, if you could even call them that, being only a crudely made canteen, and small bag filled with fruits, each made from the leaves of the massive oaks and some plant fibres from the grass, and set forth.
An hour passed, yet Axel's pace was still undeterred. His weight was now 8 times the normal, causing his bones to start creaking with every step, yet the boy's only reaction was a massive grin building up on his face.
At the pace he was going, the end would have a gravity reaching 30 times the normal, which would make most people dread or give up, but a certain glint shone in the boy's emerald eyes, to reach perfection, someone must have an able body to do so.
When the gravity reached 10 times the normal, he took a drink from the canteen and looked up. The mural was his only companion in this wretched temple, drowning out his loneliness by showing him what his goal should embody,
Perfection.
At this point the distance to the edge of the temple was around 100 km, so Axel took a final sip of water, glanced once more at the mural, and continued.
…
The forest was silent as usual, except for a lone teen seemingly strolling through it. But at closer inspection, the boy was struggling immensely, sweat glistening off his skin, a single foot required a mountain of force just to take a step. The creaking of bones and slight tearing of muscles were getting louder and louder.
A wide smile adorned his face as he slowly trudged along, uncaring of any damages he may receive from this endeavor.
This was Axel and he was currently at 15 times gravity, surviving on sheer will and grit
I'm halfway there. He thought as he approached the nearest tree and promptly collapsed under its protective shade, starting his recovery by absorbing mana and sending it to his muscles and bones.
He then repeated what happened at 5 times gravity, eating from the abundance of fruits lying in the trees and drinking from the river he hadn't strayed too far from. All of the rest of his time was spent training, practicing simple punches and kicks or meditating.
Every month was a time to test his progress, to show it wasn't pointless.
Isolation was creeping in, its whispers clawing the mind, but he brushed it off, he didn't have time to waste on this nonsense, he was busy training to surpass the next milestones.
…
Axel finally crawled to the end, reaching the wall on the left-hand side of the temple, it took him a year and he was now 16. He was finally done with his fruitless task when he noticed something far in the distance, placed on the wall.
It was hard to discern what it was, but Axel didn't care, he had done a fruitless task and was going to see it to the end, so he started crawling. The gravity here reached 30 times the normal, just as he predicted. It was something no Seedling or Bud should have been able to experience.
He began crawling towards the thing in the distance, slowly making his way there.
Only a kilometer He thought.
It took only 6 hours to reach the anomaly on the wall and what he saw caused a mad grin to erupt on his face.
A weapon