Sweat Does Not Lie

The last words were not thoughts. They were shouted out. The old man could not help but be impressed by Darius' smooth and practised motions.

The sages were not wrong when they said that 'only sweat does not lie.'

Each strike of the hammer seemed independent to the untrained eye, but the old man knew otherwise. Each motion was carefully calculated and smoothly launched, almost rhythmically connected to the previous strike. Making use of the rebounding force from the previous impact, Darius would raise his hammer, bringing it down along an exact arc, hitting the same spot, at the same speed, in the same manner, along with the same trajectory.

From start to finish, each and every strike Darius performed was exactly the same. The old man was gobsmacked. He had seen Darius' work before, but it had not been at this level.

Could this boy have broken through mentally?

The old man was a Master Spirit-smith whose name thundered across the whole realm. No one who used a Smiter did not know of his achievements. If the old man dared call himself the second-best Spirit-smith on the continent, few would dare claim they were the best.

Yet, achieving what Darius had just done, performing ten thousand strikes that were exactly the same without fault, was something he had only been able to achieve when he was in his fifties!

This was not a mere question of precision. One had to breathe the same way, use the same precise grip, and exert the same force. One would need to have heaven-defying control over their body and extreme strength. This state where one had complete control of their body while working was called the Refinement Realm by Spirit Smiths. Right now, Darius was a bonafide Refinement Realm master.

While the old man was lost in thought, Darius felt a heatwave sweep through his body. It was one he was quite familiar with; except that, this time, something was different. The heat suddenly changed into a cooling wave that spread throughout his whole body.

It was such a pleasurable experience that Darius could not help but moan. This was truly unexpected. Magical runes suddenly appeared on his skin. The runes were incredibly small but taken together, they resembled chains that covered Darius from head to toe.

In a few seconds, the chains started to break, disappearing into the void. The moment they all disappeared, Darius could feel that something inside his body was different. Darius looked at his arms, trying to figure out what had happened, but the old man beat him to the punch.

"Congratulations, young man. You have broken a part of the curse!"

…

Darius could not comprehend what the old man had just told him. He had broken the curse? The very notion of it was absurd. Darius knew quite well what the conditions were for breaking the curse, and he knew enough to know that he had not achieved what was required. The old man saw Darius' confusion and sighed.

"Young man, more often than not, powerful curses can only be broken in stages. The Pretorius curse is one of these types of curses."

Darius' eyes glimmered with hope as he looked at his hands. He had subconsciously dropped the hammer during the odd phenomenon. He tightened his hands and loosened them over and over again as if trying to check something. The old man remained silent and simply observed the young man while stroking his well-maintained beard.

After a while, Darius looked at the old man and said, "I have to break the anvil."

The old man raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me, young man?"

"To break the curse, I have to break the anvil."

An enlightened sigh came from the old man's mouth. Darius continued, "The man who gave me this curse demonstrated it for me once. He hit the anvil with the hammer."

Darius remembered that day as if it had been yesterday. The sound had been no different from the boom of thunder. It had been so intense that his ears had immediately bled. He had screamed while rolling on the ground, wailing in agony. It was an unforgettable moment that stuck with young Darius, one that would torment him for the rest of his life.

"Somehow, that man imprinted that sound in my mind, down to the last detail, during his demonstration. Every time I hit the anvil now, I can tell how different the sound is from the one that man produced. He told me, that to break the anvil I had to produce a similar sound, but ten thousand times in a row. In addition, he warned that to delay the curse each day, I should hit the anvil ten thousand times."

The old man could not help but be shocked. He hadn't known the conditions for breaking the curse would be so stringent. Reproducing a sound that had only heard been heard once? Even if that sound was imprinted in Darius' mind, reproducing it, ten thousand times no less, was ridiculous.

"The volume doesn't have to be the same, but everything else does," said Darius as he closed his eyes. The old man stroked his beard in thought for a few minutes.

"Young man, why did you decide to tell me this?"

Darius had seemed to be quite wary of his presence only a few moments earlier, yet now he was divulging some of his most private information. This contrast stoked the elder's curiosity.

Darius scratched his head shyly and said, "My gut told me I should."

Darius was someone who valued caution above everything else. However, once those chains had broken, a change occurred within the boy. It was a small change, all-encompassing yet subtle. Like a small stone falling into a pond. The ripples faded from sight, but the energy never truly disappeared. A butterfly's flapping of its wings could result in a tornado.