Productive day

[30th day]

I woke up again.

Life was getting monotonous again: it was just train after train.

I was starting to really want to stop it all. Why do I even bother?

I started in the frozen mountain range and could not even conquer anything, so why should I bother? Why even spawn someone here, where they just sit and wait to die?

No, I need to keep going, for my dream and for my country's citizens.

I got up, dusted myself off, with one hand, and walked back to my city.

I had 15 more than last week from the weekly lower demon spawning and the medium mission. Shockingly, all I got were lower demons, and now even the spawner had given up on me.

Damsel, Lexus, and Myer were all doing well, though. They had all awoken their elements, and I was shocked to see the results.

Myer, the old-looking guy, got the air element. Apparently, his parents were killed by a hurricane when he was young, so he thought of that, and so he got that.

Lexus, the tense teen, was assigned light as his element. It seemed to match him as he was always so energetic.

Damsel, the quiet woman, gets flowers as her element.

What even is the floral element? Like usual, we were awoken, and flowers grew around her, so I guessed it was flowers, and so far, that had matched up well.

Over the week, they had grown their mana by over 0.4 per day. That was twice my rate! They had already gotten to 3.8 mana, the same as me.

Alas, the student overtakes the master.

I am not planning to tell them they have already caught up with me, though I do need to think of new moon magic techniques I still only have Flashbang and I need more!

But that's for later. Right now, I have citizens to train.

When I walked out of my cave, I was greeted with the sight of my lower demon students.

Today was our weekly discussion of the sun element.

There were 27 students, to date, and all were growing like phoenixes—their growth was astounding, from 1/4 mana to 3 3/4 mana. That means they had a growth rate of 0.5 per day.

So why did they need my help, you may ask? Well, because they are dim and have limited reasoning and imagination, I help them in their envisioning of the sun.

"Good morning, my students."

"Good morning, lord."

"Today, like last week, I shall grant you more knowledge of the sun and its prowess. The sun is a mighty being, larger than all of the other celestial bodies in our solar system combined. It has the power to kill all life in mere seconds.

Tell me, what would you do with this power? "

This was part of my lecture that would continue for an hour. I had spent hours thinking about it, but for our citizens, I was a hardworking man.

The sun user would, in general, pick up a certain ability from studying the sun. Some could light a fire like a torch and breath it out like a dragon, whilst some could radiate warmth consistently throughout the day.

Some could emit light, and some could even not eat, as they now ate certain elements from the air.

The most powerful one went to the one with the blue hair. He could gather something in his hand and when he released it, everything would kind of disintegrate.

I think it was an imitation of a solar flare, but I am no astrophysicist or whatever deals with that sorcery, so it's just a guess on my part.

But power was my speciality, and I could say with full certainty that his power was terrifying. When he released it to test it, I was there to observe, and the second he started, everything inside me told me that I needed to run.

So, I did. I ran away. So did everyone else.

The blue-haired replacement was fine as he seemed immune to his OP power, but the surroundings weren't.

A 10m-by-10m radius around him was completely wiped out; no trace of even a molecule lived. He was the textbook definition of an atom bomb on wheels.

At least he seemed to be really tired out in that shot, so he could not just run round and use that broken power.

After that mess, he turned into the lower demons' role model and their de facto leader, so whilst I was teaching, he sat in the front row and occasionally I would see someone look to see how he was doing.

He seemed a bright guy, but it was a shame I could barely speak to him. Memories of that day still haunted me, and whilst I had mostly gotten over it, I still had many lingering scars.

I lost my left arm in my battle, and whilst I could live on, it made some things really annoying to do. Luckily, I was right-handed and could function (wink, wink) just fine, so I lived on.

My balance took a hit, but that just took some getting used to. I am fine now, though.

Thankfully.

As I was wrapping up my speech, I got a question from one of the students.

"Teacher, what power do you use then?"

Ah, it was Jin, the youngest and dumbest member of the group, who also did not know how to read social cues.

Luckily for him, I was expecting his question and had prepared an answer in advance.

"Young one, my power is of a different calibre to yours. You would not even be able to fathom what had happened by the time I had cut off your head."

Also put your hand up before you speak out again. "

He looked baffled at my wordy vocabulary, or was it the word calibre? They did not have guns after all.

Oh well, I got the point across at least.

Moving on, I was now going to be doing my sword training.

During the day in general, I would now do nothing but eat and train. Missions would be delegated to those below me, and I would only claim and set them.

I was going to have to do it eventually, so I thought I would do it earlier rather than later.

I walked up to my training area and picked up a maginite sword.

In the week prior, we had gotten a smelter, and Randol started to make swords. They were nowhere near perfect, but he could only set them in a casing for now, so they would do for training.

Maginite was a new ore we had found in the mountains that we had found to be light and also sounded nice when swinging.

For us, it was probably not thinking straight at the time, but for now, it did not matter. If it turned out we had used a super rare metal for training swords, we could always switch it out later.

I assumed sword arts were one of the world's major power systems. It was based on the skill of the user and was set in a 7-star format. From 1 being the weakest to 7 being the strongest.

Every level up was ten times more difficult but ten times stronger than the previous one, and I was only a 1-star swordsman.

As being 1 handed goes, that was pretty good, but I did not want to be the weakest rank. No, I wanted to be the strongest.

So, I swung and swung at the poor wall. My cuts were sharp and uniform, with no etching in the sides of the cuts.

For a 1 star, which was impressive, but for me it was not enough.

The enemy's head would roll off and it would. The fact that I had to swing and cut and shed sweat on every enemy meant I could be tired out.

And if I could be tired out, it meant I had a weakness.

I knew weakness equals death, so I was going to remove it as best I could.

I trained stamina and power to the perfect degree, and finally, on my final swing, I got it.

The perfect ratio, one where I would never tyre but instead swing forever until my enemy had grown old and died, I could still swing.

I got a notification that congratulated me but gave me no reward. Instead, it demanded a name for my technique.

I called it Never Again 0.2 and planned to name it up to 0.7.

Maybe it was just a dream, but I would never forget it.

What a day I had today.

My favourite days are productive and successful and today certainly fit that criteria.

I looked over my shoulder as I began my cultivation. What a sight to behold!

Danger lurked ahead of every corner of this world, and I was finally making good enough progress to be able to take it all in.

My comrades had died, but I was reborn, colder, and more manipulative. I no longer cared how much I lied. If it were for their own good, I would lie and lie again and again.

I never wanted to lose someone I cared for again, not now and not ever. I would protect them in this harsh world, and I would make them grow up to conquer this world by themselves.

Wait no, I'm going off-topic again.

Think moon, Alex!