Chapter 105

"Because of that right there. Smart people always think too much. They always sit, contemplate, and consider. They're always calculating or trying to comprehend something. Simply put, they're always in their mind. Stupid people? We just do. We don't think too much. Is it good? Is it bad? We don't consider that. We just do and I can tell you now, sister. If you want to survive being alone, you need to 'think' less and 'do' more."

"..."

Aurelia remained silent. Even with her intelligence, she couldn't quite make sense of Igor's words in that exact moment. She tried to think upon it but all she saw was Igor's condescending grin.

"You won't understand if I just tell you. Come on. You'll understand once I show you."

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|DxD|

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Igor was walking along with Aurelia to the main building in the time chamber. With three doors in front of them, he walked towards the one on the left which would lead to the gym.

"You see, Sister Aurelia. Everyone has little voices inside their heads. They can be positive, they can be negative, or they can be neutral. They're like…the good angel and the bad devil. The problem is, people tend to have more negative thoughts than positive thoughts, so the devil voice is usually stronger."

Aurelia nodded along to his words, his examples making sense. She was about to ask why he was speaking like this when he suddenly stopped.

"..."

Igor had his head down in contemplation. He occasionally glanced at Aurelia almost as if he was deciding something. But after taking one final look at Aurelia, he sighed.

"Look, sister. It sounds stupid, but I trust you enough to tell you something…personal to me."

Aurelia looked at his serious expression and nodded.

"This will stay between us."

"..."

Igor looked at her for a moment longer before nodding.

"Alright."

They walked forward in silence for a bit before the blonde spoke again.

"When I…discovered that I had the time chamber, my father, mother, and little brother were dead. I would never be able to see them again and I had to accept that. I had to but I couldn't. I could suppress the grief, but I couldn't acknowledge it."

When they got to the door, Igor placed his hand on the handle, yet made no move to open it.

"So when I finally entered the time chamber, you know what I did?"

It was a rhetorical question.

"I trained. Not even an hour passed before I threw myself into training. The initial excitement and awe at seeing the time chamber was suppressed by the fact that no matter what I did, I would never see my family again. So what did I do in that scenario?"

It was another rhetorical question, one with an obvious answer.

"I trained like my life depended on it."

He opened the door to reveal a large room filled with all sorts of training equipment. From weight benches to treadmills, it had it all. There was even a cleared-out section where techniques and other martial arts could be practiced.

Aurelia stepped into the room with an expression of wonder. The room itself was relatively large with white plastered walls and red rubber-flooring. There were small fluorescent lights running along the edges of the wall to provide much-needed visibility in this windowless room.

Stepping in after her, Igor presented the gym.

"This, Aurelia, is where any and all thoughts I had were killed."

He walked around the gym, his eyes showing the reminiscence in them. Igor could see phantom versions of his much younger self training as much he could to block out the painful thoughts he had.

'Why are you training when your family is dead?'

'What are you doing? You'll just lose them again anyway.'

'You were weak. You are weak. And you will stay weak. Acknowledge it.'.

'What are you doing? No matter what you do, you can't beat a gun, idiot!'

'Gun? One nuclear bomb and you're dead. Just accept your wishes were stupid, stupid.'

'Yeah. You're a human. All this ancient human stuff is nonsense. Think YOU can break God's curse? Ha!'

He shook his head at the memories and turned towards the woman who was looking at him in concern.

"Everyone has voices in their heads. Mine were…hehehe. Mine were…particularly nasty."

Igor then began taking off his torn shirt and tossed it to the side. His body was covered in dried blood but any wounds he had were completely healed without scars.

"I didn't know how to completely suppress them for a while until I realised something. Become stupid. Don't think. Don't think any more than you have to. Don't contemplate 'what if'. Just train. Train like an idiot. Train until I lose all feeling in my body. Logic be damned. Don't think. Just do."

He then walked over to two panels that displayed the temperature and the current gravity setting.

"Did you know that in my tenth year, I almost got killed by a stray devil?"

Aurelia looked at him in surprise since this wasn't something that Cleria mentioned.

"How?"

The blonde chuckled.

"I had put on some muscle at the time so I thought I was strong. I trained like hell and I had put on some weight. I could run faster than normal people could hope to and for far longer than they could believe. I had built up a decent amount of ki so I thought I was crazy strong. So when I was outside the time chamber for a month, I decided to see if I could run to Kyoto without stopping, just as sort of a test for myself."

The blonde shook his head at the memory.

"I ran, alright…straight into a devil. I wish to say I could've killed it. Would definitely sound a lot cooler than say I ran with my tail between my legs. The only reason I even survived was because there was a river nearby. Can never forget that day…because that was when the voices came back with companions."

His fists clenched briefly before he forced himself to continue.

" 'I told you to give up. You trained for so long without rest for this? Forget the gods, you can't even handle a simple devil.' "

Aurelia could tell he was recounting the words he heard when he failed. Even if it was so far in the past, she couldn't help but want to comfort him.

"Igor-"

"It's fine, Aurelia. I'm not sad. I'm just narrating for you to understand. Since you told me about yourself, it's only fair you understand some parts about me. Besides…"

He released a coy grin.

"You still want to understand how I survived, right? Well listen closely."

He walked over to a weight rack where there were dumbbells ranging from three-kilograms all the way to a preposterous one-ton. Igor picked up a pair of 100kg dumbbells and began doing a standing shoulder-press.

"When I got back to the time chamber a few days later, I almost wanted to give up. I mean, I trained, sister. I really, REALLY trained as hard as I could without rest."

5, 6, 7, 8

"So for me to lose to a weak stray devil of all things was a heavy blow to my mind. Like you guessed, I was already feeling the loneliness…and losing did not help things."

12, 13, 14, 15

"So I trained in order to try and take my mind off things. I can remember that day vividly. I was doing a chest press on that smith machine right there."

19, 20, 21, 22

"I trained for a while and kept on adding weights out of anger everytime the voices in my head told me to give up, told me to quit, told me I'm a failure and that I should…kill myself."

"?!"

Aurelia couldn't believe it. For the life of her she could never imagine that he, the one who proudly claimed to be the strongest fighter in the universe, once contemplated suicide. But thinking of the circumstances, he had already endured a decade of complete solitude. Time chamber or not, it was a feat all on its own that he didn't succumb, especially when he had no family to hold hope for, to keep him strong.

26, 27, 28, 29

"Whether it was by fate, dumb luck, or sheer coincidence, I almost did die. You see, in my anger, I added two 50 kilogram weights to the bar instead of twenty. I was so out of it that I didn't even notice how heavy the discs were."

34, 35, 36, 37

"I'm pretty sure you can guess what happened right, sister~?"

"..."

Aurelia did not find it amusing like he did. She found himself getting angry at how he was grinning at such an event that could've almost gotten him killed.

She did not want to imagine how-

"When I rolled that bar back, it immediately fell and crushed my chest-"

"Igor!"

"What? Hehehehe. It's in the past, sister."

"But it's not a laughing matter!"

"Anything is a laughing matter if you live to tell about it."

"...but still."

Igor couldn't help but smile at the concern she was showing.

"Fine, sister. I'll skip that part then."

He then continued where he left off with his reps.

38, 39, 40, 41

"In that moment that I was in pain, I quickly mobilised my ki and pushed the bar off my chest. But after that, I couldn't move. I even passed out a few minutes after just from how painful it was."

"Igor…"

The blonde had to suppress a chuckle at the glare she was giving him.

"Okay, okay. Anyway…"

45, 46, 47

"When I woke up after a few hours, I stayed in that position for some time. The gnawing pain on my chest was still there and I couldn't help but focus on it every time. Even when I was breathing, the pain was still there."

48, 49, 50

"But, I came to a realisation."

Doof! Doof!

Dropping the dumbbells, there was a satisfied grin on his face.

"When I was in pain, I realised that all the voices disappeared. The moment I even subconsciously tried to think, the pain acted like an anchor that pulled me back."

Stretching out his neck and rotating his shoulder, he faced Aurelia.

"You can guess what I did, right?"

"..."

It was a rhetorical question and Aurelia knew it. She hated it, but she knew what he would do. She was absolutely sure of what he did when he came to that realisation.

"You…"

"...trained like I had deathwish. And that, Sister Aurelia, is why I am proud to be stupid. Because a stupid decision may have potentially-no. It did save my life. Because that stupid decision made the Igor von Dimori of today. That moment of thoughtlessness, of sheer idiocy, changed my life forever. If I was smart, I wouldn't have done what I did. I would've thought things through."

He walked over to Aurelia and looked into her eyes.

"You wanted to know how I survived? That is how I survived sixty years alone. By being stupid."

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AN

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