[Year 1: You find a site of volcanic eruption and begin cultivating Hundred-Forged Body.]

Inside the room, Banxia glanced over his substantial reserves and felt a surge of confidence.

Three thousand eight hundred and thirty years of monster time, sitting right there on the panel. Given his natural talent, that was more than enough.

[Year 2: You have gradually grown accustomed to living within molten lava.]

[Year 5: The power of the lava can no longer harm you in the slightest. You begin training for the next process.]

"Not bad. Finished the first process in five years." Banxia nodded, satisfied.

At this rate, all one hundred processes would take five hundred years, tops.

Even if he doubled the estimate to be safe, that was still just a thousand years. Nothing to lose sleep over.

[Year 6: You gather all the poisonous herbs recorded in the book and carefully place them into your mouth.]

[Year 7: You collapse from poison, unable to get up.]

[Year 8: You remain collapsed from poison, still unable to get up.]

Banxia: "..."

He genuinely hadn't expected his poison resistance to be this abysmal.

Seriously? He was at least a fairly well-known adventurer at this point. Could mere poison really hold him up for this long?

Under his increasingly pained gaze, time kept flying.

[Year 20: Your body finally develops sufficient resistance. You are completely immune to most low-tier toxins in the world, while high-tier poisons cause nothing more than a brief bout of diarrhea and mild discomfort.]

[Second process complete. You begin the third process...]

Banxia now understood completely.

Each process required a completely different amount of body-forging time depending on what it was. Simple ones like lava tempering took five years. Troublesome ones like ingesting poison burned through twenty. He had previously sworn that doubling his estimate would still leave him comfortable. Now he stared anxiously at the panel as his time evaporated before his eyes.

[Year 385: You descend into the deepest ocean trench in the south, tempering your body beneath tens of thousands of feet of water pressure.]

[Year 1,560: You ascend to the peak of the world and leap from the cliff's edge.]

[Year 2,400: Your physical body, honed to its absolute limit, finally reaches the last threshold.]

[Year 2,600: Without any outside assistance, you complete the heroic trial of the dwarven race alone.]

[Hundred-Forged Body (Chroma) lv.0 → Hundred-Forged Body lv.1.]

[Held Monster Time: 1,230 years (fusible).]

That peerlessly formidable body, the kind worthy of being written into an epic, surged into Banxia's frame all at once.

He closed his eyes and sat with it for a moment. Then he opened them and looked down at his hands, mildly surprised.

His strength had roughly doubled.

Which meant something, because before this he was already at the level where he could beat Great Demons to death with his bare hands. His baseline was not low.

Doubling that was not a minor boost.

If he squared off against someone at Geist's level again, Banxia was completely confident—

Close the distance. Three punches, maybe fewer.

If the guy somehow survived that, Banxia might as well go find a nice spot and dig himself a hole.

But raw physical strength, as impressive as the jump was, wasn't even the most important change.

What was truly valuable were the invisible stats. Fire resistance, poison resistance, ice resistance—all of it. Every single one had received an unprecedented boost, and Banxia knew it.

Physical defense just needed to be sufficient. The more ways he had to stay alive, the better.

Besides, he wasn't an idiot. He wasn't going to stand still and let anyone hit him.

"..."

He looked at the remaining thousand-plus years of monster time on his panel, then glanced over at the mountain of books piled in the room next door.

Using what was left to level up two Chroma skills was obviously not going to cut it. And among his current skills, there wasn't anything that screamed worth pouring more time into either.

Time to expand his skill slots.

---

Over the next few days, Banxia shut himself inside again and went through every single one of those thousand-plus books from cover to cover.

The combat arts were a bit of a letdown.

Most of them required Battle Aura to execute, and he happened to have none of that. He'd been hoping to find a footwork technique to boost his speed, but after going through the whole stack, nothing suitable turned up.

The few remaining ones that didn't need Battle Aura were uninspiring—too bland to get excited about, yet too decent to fully dismiss.

He recorded them on his panel one by one, figuring he'd come back to them someday when he had more time than he knew what to do with.

"It really was a waste, what happened that day..." He closed the last combat arts manual and let out a quiet sigh.

After days of heavy reading, he finally understood why Geist had suddenly erupted with seemingly limitless Battle Aura all over his body.

That was no burst of power.

He had been burning his own lifespan.

All of that should have been mine.

Just thinking about the more than five thousand years of total lifespan that had gone up in smoke made Banxia's chest hurt so badly he almost wanted to cry.

"From now on, whenever I run into a Great Demon, it ends fast." He gritted his teeth, set that rule for himself, and finally shifted his gaze to the magic tomes sitting beside him.

He still had no idea what the city lord and those nobles were thinking, sending over spells restricted to nobility along with everything else. Maybe they figured his achievements were worth a title.

Since he already had Wrath of Finality, his firepower was more than covered for now. He recorded the offensive military spells onto his panel and left them for later.

The only thing that genuinely caught his attention was a single piece of folk magic.

[Magic That Can Make the Body Younger.]

According to its author, no matter how high one's proficiency, this magic could only ever be cast once on the same person. The effect was roughly an extra year or two of life for an elderly person.

Banxia wasn't elderly. But his remaining lifespan balance wasn't exactly far off from one's.

He took a slow breath, looked at the panel with what little hope he had left, and said:

"System. Max it out."

[Year 1: You begin cultivating this folk magic. Having never encountered the folk magic system before, you find it quite troublesome at first.]

[Year 200: You finally grasp this magic thoroughly.]

[Magic That Can Make the Body Younger lv.0 → lv.3.]

"Enough." The moment the consumption stopped, two hundred years of cultivated experience crashed into his mind like a wave.

He looked down at his still-youthful skin. Raised his right hand. Mana gathered in his palm.

"Magic That Can Make the Body Younger!"

A warm current slowly seeped into every limb and bone, quietly mending tiny flaws he hadn't even known were there.

It felt like soaking in a hot spring at exactly the right temperature, a lazy, bone-deep comfort spreading outward from the marrow itself.

He didn't know how much time passed before the effect faded.

"..."

He exhaled slowly and looked back at the system panel, a trace of nervousness in his chest.

[Heaven Rewards Diligence; every effort bears fruit.]

[Current Skills: Return to Fundamentals (Chroma) lv.1, Hundred-Forged Body (Chroma) lv.1, Execution Hand Blade lv.3, Sword Qi Slash lv.3, Hypnosis Resistance lv.2, Advanced Meditation Method lv.3, Wrath of Finality lv.2, Mana Concealment lv.2...]

[Current Remaining Time: 26 years.]

[Held Monster Time: 1,030 years (fusible).]

"Sure enough." He let out a long breath, staring at the twenty extra years that had appeared from nowhere. "Just like I thought."

This world really did have ways to extend a lifespan.

Even a common piece of folk magic, cultivated deep enough, could force out an extra twenty years.

He tilted his head back and looked up at the wooden ceiling, mood thoroughly lightened.

On the road north, he was going to collect every magic book he could find.

Maybe somewhere in that pile, there'd be a pleasant surprise, something that could buy him even more time.

He was still heading north. That much hadn't changed. Twenty-six years was nowhere near enough for someone carrying the kind of power he had now.

"The real dessert is still waiting up north..."

➤ Next: The Secret of the Church

Chapter 56 - The Secret of the Church

Since so much time had already been spent, there was no point keeping the remaining thousand-plus years.

Hoarding it on the status panel wouldn't earn interest. He might as well splurge today and burn through it all in one go.

Banxia's gaze swept across his skill list.

Ordinary martial skills and magic offered very limited improvement at this point.

Rather than continuing to pile more entries onto the skill list, better to simplify — see if he could fuse another prismatic skill.

[Sword Qi Slash lv.3] [Execution Hand Blade lv.3]

His gaze settled on those two.

At lv.3, Execution Hand Blade was no longer confined to the palms.

And this thoroughly tempered body of his was already the strongest weapon he had.

So, what would happen if he used his body as a blade and unleashed Sword Qi Slash through it?

A single thought. The time on the status panel began melting away at speed.

[Consumed 1,000 years of monster time. Obtained one Fusion Pill.]

[Year 1: A vague enlightenment takes shape. Sword Qi Slash is, in essence, a slash launched using a weapon as its medium. If your body is already harder and sharper than any weapon, then using the body itself as a sword is entirely possible.]

[Year 1,000: You have finally integrated the technique of unleashing Sword Qi Slash into every focal point of power across your body, fusing and refining the strengths and weaknesses of both skills.]

[Acquired skill: Blade Body (Prismatic) lv.1.]

"The success rate on this Fusion Pill is actually that high?" Feeling the changes surging through his body, Banxia was genuinely surprised.

Two attempts in a row, both succeeding without a hitch. Nothing like the terrifyingly abysmal odds he remembered from games in his previous life.

He looked down at his hands. After a full night's work, they seemed to have gotten even fairer and smoother.

He straightened one hand into a blade and turned his gaze toward the ants in the courtyard, ready to test it out.

Right then, shouting came from outside the gate.

...

"Lord Banxia!"

Kilian Black, the kingdom's former strongest warrior, strode into the courtyard. The wounded arm was still wrapped in bandages, but Kilian's color was considerably better than a few days ago.

Behind Kilian came the cleric Angela and the court mage Eva. All three had clearly made a special trip.

"Here to become my disciples, or to take care of me in my old age?" Banxia leaned against the doorframe, voice lazy.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kilian looked puzzled, having missed the joke entirely, then shook their head and turned serious. "We came specifically to say our goodbyes. Word is that the reports from the north have gotten dire again — a lot of towns have fallen. We need to get moving and reach the northern border before spring."

"Is that so?" Banxia's expression didn't change.

Kilian inwardly sighed.

Coming here specifically, aside from saying farewell, had carried some hope of bringing him along.

This young man's strength was genuinely something to covet.

But judging by his attitude, heading north clearly held little appeal.

Which made sense, really. The north directly bordered the demon heartland. The danger was in a completely different league from the south, the monsters there were several tiers higher in both number and quality.

Still, people had their own paths. Nothing could be forced.

And if they tried force, they'd lose anyway.

Leaving a bad impression on their Banxia would be far more trouble than it was worth.

"Sir Banxia, you really do hide your strength well." The court mage Eva laughed softly. It was the first time Eva had seen any human being so thoroughly outclass someone in magical attainment.

And not just in magic, on the warrior's path too, Banxia had left a certain former strongest warrior of the kingdom so far behind they couldn't even see his dust.

Such god-given talent, and somehow still younger than Eva. It defied imagination.

"It's alright, I guess." Banxia's response was flat.

He had a handle on this world's power system now. No reason to keep hiding.

Keeping a low profile before had only been because he hadn't yet gauged the strength of the Church or the demon race.

Now that he'd gone head-to-head with a Great Demon, that caution was unnecessary.

Besides, with his current reputation and strength, what blind fool would dare come looking for trouble?

"..."

Such a completely unboastful answer. Eva's gaze drifted, almost without thinking, across the youth's handsome face and the physique beneath his clothes that had already edged past what reason allowed. The memory of that grand spectacle as he returned to the city surfaced unbidden. Eva sighed.

"What a pity your interest lies in girls. Otherwise, giving up on the north and just clinging to Sir Banxia here for the rest of my life — that would actually be a pretty nice option."

"Hey, don't just casually drop lines that only a yandere would say." Banxia's eyelid twitched.

"Ha, just kidding." Eva straightened up, the heavy frontal armor shifting with the motion. "Though if I were a normal girl, after seeing the way you entered the city that day, I don't think I'd ever be able to forget it."

Banxia: "..."

"Ahem." Angela cleared their throat at exactly the right moment and took over. "Lord Banxia. After this parting, who knows if we will ever meet again.

May your days ahead be peaceful, and everything go well."

"Yeah." Banxia nodded.

This cleric wasn't a stunning beauty by any measure, but the impression Angela had left was a good one, none of the rigid, condescending air he'd expected from Church personnel.

Compared to the Church member who'd received them right after the summoning, Angela was worlds better.

The three were just turning to leave when Banxia spoke up. "Actually, there's something I want to ask."

"Go ahead."

"Is there any way to reverse the Church's summoning magic? Send someone back?"

Angela looked at him, not particularly surprised.

His origins weren't hard to trace, a Hero summoned by the Goddess's magic. Hero was the polite word for it. In truth, most were simply byproducts, dragged over incidentally during research into summoning arts.

As one of the Holy Church's senior figures, Angela had long belonged to the faction opposing continued use of the summoning.

The uncertainty was too great. No one knew what it might pull through next time.

If something even more terrifying than the Demon King were ever summoned, humanity would be finished.

That was why a clause restricting it to humans had eventually been written into the summoning ritual.

Even so, there were still people among the Church's leadership who wanted the magic sealed away entirely.

"As far as I know, there has been only one successful case of reverse summoning." Angela hesitated briefly, then decided to tell the truth.

The person standing before them was their Banxia. Surely even the Goddess would forgive revealing a Church secret for this.

"And that is the Demon King, who has reigned over the demon race for a thousand years."

"Huh?"

Not just Banxia, Eva and Kilian, both hearing this for the first time, went completely still.

...

Having seen off the kingdom's Three Heroes, Banxia settled into a chair in the courtyard. A long moment passed before he let out a slow breath.

"..."

He'd been in this other world long enough that he actually missed modern life.

What he missed most was how things were back there. Banxia wasn't a siscon, and his sister was old enough to live on her own by now, but he'd practically raised her himself. He couldn't quite let go of the worry.

"I'll look into finding the Demon King at some point."

➤ Next: Pure and Innocent