When Gavo's internal clock woke her up on time for her morning training, she saw that the place where Mir and the other two had slept was already empty.
Clearly, they had left without saying goodbye.
"Tsk. Seriously. They ate and drank here, and they still didn't even know to say thanks."
Gavo pursed her lips in dissatisfaction, then skillfully began doing one-handed push-ups.
[You are doing left-handed push-ups. Arm strength and left pectoral strength increased. Explosive power increased.]
"No idea when my leg will heal. For now, I can only train my upper body."
As set after set was completed, sweat poured off Gavo like rain, and hot mist began rising from her body.
After a while, her adoptive father also woke up from sleep.
As usual, he looked over at the self-disciplined Gavo, then prepared his things to head out.
Although a three-year-old girl doing alternating one-handed push-ups really was a bit abnormal...
Her adoptive father, who firmly believed Gavo was a Blessed Child, found nothing strange about it.
After watching him drag the cart out and leave, Gavo trained even harder.
After the three-punch fight with Mir, she had developed a stronger sense of crisis.
Although that noseless, lipless guy was clearly no ordinary person either...
That incident had truly proven that there were probably quite a few things in the underhive that could threaten her at her current level.
All along, her sense of danger toward the underhive had been what pushed her to train so hard.
And now that sense of danger had reached its peak.
The only reason this scavenger settlement remained relatively peaceful had to be because two or more major gangs were keeping each other in check nearby.
The moment those giant monsters decided to break the fragile balance, this place that was a gang buffer zone one second would be turned into a bloody meat grinder by bloodthirsty madmen the next.
She had to become stronger.
She had to gain the power to protect herself and her adoptive father as quickly as possible.
She had to surpass the limits of time, surpass the normal curve of growth.
She would tear apart her muscles through the cruelest training and forge her body into a weapon that walked the world.
As that nearly fanatical obsession with becoming stronger surged through Gavo's mind, a system notification appeared.
[New objective established: Break through your limits.]
[Shatter your restraints. Achieve the extraordinary.]
Gavo's pupils could not help trembling slightly.
This was a vague and oddly unsettling objective.
"Break through my limits? How am I supposed to do that?"
Gavo recalled a saying from the sports world of ancient Terra in her previous life:
Hitting the wall.
Simply put, when the body exercised to the point where blood sugar and glycogen were nearly depleted, it would switch to metabolizing fat and other non-sugar organic compounds for energy.
At that point, the body would believe that the current degree of exercise had reached the self-imposed maximum burden it could handle.
That feeling was like a runner crashing into a wall blocking the road ahead, hence the name hitting the wall.
But if one gritted their teeth and pushed through it, breaking the body's imagined limit, they would experience a smoothness almost like being reborn, and their physical performance would greatly improve.
"The theory is sound. Time to act."
Gavo's eyes turned resolute as she limped over to the corner where the recyclables were stacked and began selecting suitable items for weighted training.
...
As overfilled muscles were pulled and contracted once more by tendons already at the end of their endurance, fine streaks of blood slowly seeped from her swollen skin.
Pale red drops of sweat mixed with blood ran down from her forehead, where the veins bulged violently, while hot, rough breaths burst from lungs that were already congested and wheezing like broken bellows.
Under the endless training from earlier, all four of Gavo's limbs were letting out cries of protest, and the teeth-gritting creaks produced by her body rose and fell in numb repetition like a grotesque symphony.
Every sign pointed to the same truth.
Gavo's body was on the verge of collapse.
If she kept training like this, she would break.
[You are doing weighted push-ups. Arm and chest strength greatly increased. Explosive power greatly increased.]
[Your skeletal muscles are dissolving. Please stop training immediately.]
Looking at the warning pop-ups that kept flashing, Gavo gritted her teeth and finally stopped.
Even after pushing her body to the brink of destruction, she still had not encountered her wall.
The reason was simple.
Under her training, Infinite Growth kept raising her physical performance, which in turn kept raising her limits.
And in order to chase those new limits, she had to train at even greater intensity...
Her relationship with her limits was like Zeno's tortoise. She kept approaching them, but could never truly touch them.
In this dead loop, even if she trained herself to death, she still would not be able to complete the system objective through training alone.
Every cell in her body trembled like overloaded machinery, and an intense wave of dizziness instantly swept through her exhausted frame.
Forcing herself to crawl over to the sack of food, Gavo used all her strength to pull out a packet of corpse starch.
Then she lifted the water flask with difficulty and swallowed it down together with filtered water.
With food and water finally replenishing her, Gavo's body, which had been like a desert dried out by endless drought, regained some vitality.
But the intense weakness still lingered over her, and every time she moved a muscle, the pain made her bare her teeth.
"Tsk. Did I train too long? I should go outside and check what time it is."
"My leg's still half-dead today, so I won't go help Father pick through garbage."
Muttering to herself, Gavo dragged her aching body and limped toward the door.
"This time I really overdid it..."
Feeling every inch of flesh on her body protesting, Gavo felt helpless.
This time, she really had gotten carried away, thinking she could finish the system objective in one go.
But after thinking it over carefully, given how the difficulty of system objectives kept increasing, how could that have been possible?
And the truth had indeed proven it.
Her physical limit was almost impossible to reach through ordinary training.
Her greatest reliance until now, Infinite Growth, had at this moment turned into a vast mountain blocking the road ahead.
If she could not find the right method, she even had a feeling that she might never be able to complete this seemingly simple objective for the rest of her life.
"Sigh. It's fine. There'll be a chance eventually."
Gavo comforted herself optimistically.
At this point, being optimistic was all she could do.
"I'll go see Old Bill... ah, that hurts."
Drawing in cold breaths, she limped to the door, stood on tiptoe to unlock the heavy latch, and pushed it open.
The moment she opened the door, an overwhelming sense of unease surged over her like a tidal wave.
She looked up at the already dim sky, and her pupils shrank in alarm.
At this time...
Her adoptive father should have returned long ago.
...
On a slope of the garbage mountain, the dying light of sunset filtered through the smog clouds that blocked out the sky, spilling blood-red rays across this silent corner.
And there, in this desolate place rarely touched by human footsteps, lay an overturned old handcart.
In the wordless stillness, its slowly spinning wheel let out a shrill scraping sound, as though trying to tell a story...
(End of Chapter)
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