The Lord Who Levels Up by Devouring - LLD Chapter 12: The Wastrel Has Changed (1) (Part 1)

Rough but steady breaths.

Someone was training inside the Trial Grounds of Frost.

The Trial Grounds of Frost were open at all times for training and discipline.
Any soldier seeking to train freely could use it whenever they pleased.

But not once—
Not even once had there been a soldier training before Kai arrived.

With his curiosity piqued, Kai stepped into the Frost Arena.

And there he was.

Huff! Huff! Huff!

Adrian was in the middle of physical training.
He had thrown off his shirt, revealing his upper body—already sculpted with solid muscle.
Perhaps that was why.
Even in the biting cold of early dawn—worthy of being called Monarch of Frost weather—
His heat overwhelmed the chill in the air.

‘Again today…’

It had already been ten days.

Naturally, Kai had heard the rumors—
That Adrian had changed.

Everyone in the County knew.
Not just the soldiers, even the maids in the Lord’s Castle gossiped about it.

Adrian, who practically lived in the Trial Grounds, ran into Kai daily.
Still, Kai hadn’t paid it much mind.
He assumed it was just a phase.

He ignored it on day one.
He ignored it on day two.
By day three, he figured Adrian would give up soon.
By day four, he felt a slight twinge of doubt.
On the fifth and sixth days, the thought crossed his mind—“Maybe…?”
By the seventh and eighth, he had to admit that perhaps Adrian really was changing.
But that was all he admitted.

By the ninth day, he intentionally stopped caring.

And now, on the tenth day—

Huff! Huff! Huff!

Adrian was, once again, tirelessly pushing his body in the Trial Grounds of Frost.

By now, even Kai had to reconsider.
Sure, ten days wasn’t a long time.
Too short, really, to say someone had truly changed.

But this level of physical training—
Wasn’t something just anyone could do.

Frankly, even a single day would break most people. Let alone ten.

Kai himself had never neglected physical conditioning.
Yet he couldn’t imagine pushing himself to that extent.
What Adrian was doing surpassed the limits of human endurance.

Granted, he seemed to possess a bizarre level of Recovery.
Kai couldn’t quite grasp how Adrian had that kind of healing ability…

Even so.

Recovery only restores the body.

But pushing muscles to their absolute limit?

That requires willpower and mental strength.

Without those, even troll-like Regeneration would be meaningless.

And besides—
High recovery means less damage.
Without strong enough stimulus, you can’t even train.

Which is why that level of physical training—
Was quite literally impossible unless the mind ruled the body.

A training that could only be achieved by overcoming your limits purely through mental strength.

Easy to say.
Brutally hard to do.

Mental strength without stamina backing it up?
That’s nothing more than a scrap of paper.

Yet Adrian had been enduring that training for ten whole days.
With the body of a so-called wastrel, he was surpassing his limits daily—for ten days straight.

At this point, no one in the House of Whitewolf thought of Adrian as a wastrel anymore.
Not the soldiers of the County.
Not even the maids of the Lord’s Castle.

Only the commoners of the County, unaware of what had changed, still saw Adrian as the Count’s disgrace.

Which meant—

Even Kai had come to accept it.

That Adrian had changed.
That this wasn’t just some fleeting whim.

And yet, the look in Kai’s eyes as he gazed at Adrian—

“……”

Still carried a trace of doubt and suspicion he couldn’t shake.

◆ There’s no other word for it—this guy is completely insane!!!

The exaggerated system message popped up in front of me.
When I dropped the barbell I was holding, a massive thud shook the ground.

All eyes from the soldiers snapped to me.

But I didn’t have the mental capacity to care.

My torn muscles didn’t allow so much as a twitch.
Even breathing was hard.

My body collapsed to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

◆ Skill ‘Regeneration [C+]’ can be used to regenerate torn muscle tissue.
◆ Required nutrient: Protein
◆ Would you like to consume protein to regenerate the torn muscle?

The moment I accepted, gurgle—grrrggh!

Every muscle in my body trembled as my shredded muscle fibers began to regenerate.
They were rebuilding tighter, denser than before.

“Ghhrrrrrgh…!”

It felt like my entire body was being torn apart.

Why the hell did the intensity of my training increase exponentially day after day?

Of course, it made sense—
As my muscle fibers got stronger, it took stronger force to damage them.
And with that, the pain increased just as much.

This time, I must have pushed it too far.
The Regeneration wasn’t working properly.
It seemed the damage exceeded the limits of my healing skill.

I’d probably need to hunt some Ice Trolls soon to secure more genetic material.

Lying flat on the floor, I waited for my body to finish recovering.

Then, suddenly—

I noticed Kai on the other side of the Trial Grounds, overseeing the soldiers’ training.

He’d always been like that.
Kai personally trained the soldiers of the County.

At first, I found it strange.
Why would a noble knight lower himself to that?

But during the time with the allied army, I came to understand.

That this was the very duty of a knight.

Translatin_Otaku

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