Chapter 46 CH 41: HELL AND INTENT

After Sol managed to enter his own dimension, he thought that what would follow would be a simple training. Something to adapt himself or so.

What's more, he didn't really have that much time before his birthday and his official party.

How wrong had he been, he had totally forgotten that Edea could accelerate the time difference between her world and the outside one.

What he lived through was hell, his training was divided into mana use with Lilith and magic with Freya and Edea, they had decided to focus first on his mana use, since he had a ceremony to go through–fighting in the colosseum.

He didn't need to hide his capacity to use magic, but he did not want to display it either. Not for any weird reason like hiding his true power, but simply because his mirror dimensions was simply too much of a powerful trump card to be exposed so easily.

Just how much information could he steal with this power? It would completely change the war that would happen in a few months.

As such, they decided to focus on his martial art and mana use first before focusing on magic.

On the day he took Camelia's virginity, he had already about two weeks before his display in the colosseum where he would fight against the gladiator and the queen of gladiators. Since he had already awakened, the two parts will be fused, this was what happened with Mars since he also awakened early.

Now that about four days passed since his night with Camelia and now he only had ten days to go. It definitely wasn't sufficient for any meaningful training, but that was only when one didn't have someone like Edea on your side.

Edea could manipulate time quite freely in her own world. She could reach a 1 to 4 times difference. Meaning that those ten days could be changed to forty.

Forty. Absolute. Days. Of. Hell.

*****

At first, he expected a period of “basic training,” where Lilith would grind him across the washboard for a while to break down any bad habits he had and prepare him to receive her wisdom and knowledge, and in this, Lilith did not disappoint.

He expected something hard, he just didn’t expect to literally crawl back in through the door that night feeling as if someone had shot needles of salt into every inch of muscle tissue he possessed. Lilith had run him for the equivalent of a hundred or so kilometers, then made him move boulders that weighed more than nine hundreds kilograms around a clearing, then push logs up the hillside, then carry a boulder on his back as he ran another twenty kilometers.

It was more of the same the next day, and the next, as Lilith systematically broke down his ability to regenerate and then physically exhausted him.

She broke him down so severely that his regeneration couldn’t completely recover to face the next day, a day that was even more strenuous than the last. She pushed him beyond his physical limits, pushed him so hard that he would collapse daily, physically incapable of carrying out her tasks, and that was what she had been waiting for.

After a ride of this torture, he finally demanded to know why he had to kill himself daily when she intended to teach him how to use mana, which had nothing to do with the body.

“Pfft,” she had snorted in her typical manner. “I thought you’d know better than to ask such a stupid question, the limits of mana are physical limits, how much power your body can handle. You can increase it by being fit, if I wasn’t in such good shape, I wouldn’t be able to do half of what I do.”

“That’s why dragons are so strong in magic,” Sol said in a moment of clarity. “Because they’re so big and powerful.”

“Size has nothing to do with it,” Lilith said in a scathing tone, bursting his bubble. “Dragons are strong in all magic because of what they are. If you want to find the most powerful mage or mana user, pound for pound in the mortal world, then don’t look any further than angels.”

In the afternoon, he would have sparring sessions with her where she would proceed to absolutely trash him within an inch of his life. What's more, since he had such a high regeneration power, she didn't hesitate to give him wounds that would have been potentially fatal to anyone else in his position.

During the night, she would instruct him on different strategies for one VS one or one VS many situations. She would also instruct him on some elements he needed to pay attention in situations of war both as a general or as a soldier.

As he laid down while breathing heavily after taking out a sword from his gut, he remembered now why his cousin had fled from the house and joined the academy. He knew that she had completed her training, but after that, her relationship with her mother had never been the same.

Lilith was simply too harsh. So harsh that sometimes he wondered if it was really the woman who had always spoiled him rotten.

Still, he held on.

He cursed, vomited, cried, entertained thoughts about killing her, about giving up, was ready to use his mirror realm to flee in another kingdom, entertained suicidal thoughts.

But every time, every damn time he was about to give up, he would simply grit his teeth and continue.

Only one thought holding him up.

'One day, I will spank her so hard her ass will redden.'

It was a rather lascivious thought, but since he couldn't win in a fight, one day, he would win in bed.

For the time being, giving up wasn't an option.

But truthfully, what made him held on, was the knowledge that Lilith wasn't acting by some sense of sadism. Every time she hurt him, every time he suffered, he could see it in her eyes.

The way she was wincing, the way her eyes would redden, the way she would look ashamed.

He knew she did not wish to make him suffer. But it was necessary.

It was better for him to bleed here than to die on the battlefield.

Still, during all his training, one problem nagged at him.

It was something briefly mentioned by the goddess. It was something Camelia leaked by mistake but refused to explain.

Lilith had a big secret. Something related to the previous king, his grandfather.

Sol decided, on the last day of his training, he would ask her.

He didn't want to force her, but he hated ambiguous situations.

Generally, it was the kind of secret that always get out in the worst possible moment and fucked up everything.