Stronger

"I need to concentrate, forget about everything else, Anne is keeping an eye on the skeleton. She should warn me if anything happens," Char told himself as he disregarded everything else.

He could picture his body with the help of his reconstruction magic. The mana enveloped his body and gave him a clearer picture of his body.

Char concentrated the mana into one hand just like he did with the physical boost, the clarity of his perception for his hand increased by several folds.

The skeleton never used the magic as he did. He thought it might be possible, but for it to actually work was a gamble.

He only dared to do that because concentrating mana on his hand would not actually do anything yet; he would need to alter his bone and muscle manually for the magic to take effect.

"This is good enough, concentrating it further is beyond my ability, I can only do this far with physical boost, and trying to go further with this magic is utter suicide, I still cherish my hand!" he thought.

Char could feel his muscle fiber, his bones, his skin, even the callus on his palm from all of his sword training.

"let's start slow," he concentrated on his little finger. In the worst case, he would lose the finger and he would rather lose the one he uses the least.

He decided to reconstruct his bone since it was a known territory; he had two goals, first is to increase its strength and density so it could take more strain, second is to increase its size.

Having longer fingers might not give him much in combat ability, but if he could get taller, then he would have increased range.

He did like the skeleton usually did; he let the muscle absorb the mana and initiate its growth toward what he wanted, but he felt a strain on his finger, so he stopped before the strain turned into pain.

"Damn! The skeleton doesn't have a problem since it doesn't have many muscles, but the change in bone structure is giving the muscle a lot of strain. It got stretched because of the bone's growth!" he realized.

"I will need to reconstruct the muscle at the same time if I don't want to get injured, but that leads into another problem, I still need to experiment with the muscle part," he lamented as he concentrated on his finger once more.

He pulled out his sword and made a little cut on his finger. With the magic activated, he could perceive the injuries and how his body's natural regeneration tried to repair the damage.

After a while, he understood how the body repaired injuries and the mistake that happened during the process.

"This is why wounds left scar or discomfort, it doesn't heal the wound to a perfect condition. It was as if it tried to cut corners in the process," he realized.

After understanding how natural healing happens, Char got down on all four and started to do push-ups.

"I need to understand how muscles grow stronger," he thought as he observed the cycle of destruction and reconstruction of his muscles. Of course, that was so slow that he could not see them until the process ended, but he got the idea.

"Let's see if I can replicate this," he thought as he concentrated on his little finger once more.

He simulated a gripping motion, so he knew how the muscle worked so he would not make a mistake and caused his finger to be paralyzed.

The moment he stimulated the cycle of destruction and recreation, he could feel stinging pain from his finger.

"Ah!" He realized that stimulating muscle growth would give him pain. It compressed all the pain that should be felt over a long period into one moment.

He gritted his teeth and continued with the process, "I'm not afraid of pain, only through pain that I can grow," he thought resolutely.

Seeing that it was working, he started to work on his bones as well; the pain gave him cold sweat, but he did not stop.

After a while, he succeeded in making his little finger longer and bigger, but he did not know yet if it did the job.

"Luckily there is no mutation during the process, I don't want to have something extra on my hand," he thought as he continued with the rest of his finger.

At first, he did one at a time, but after a while, he started to do multiple fingers to save some time.

"Let's test this," he picked up a rock from the ground and tightened his grip as much as he could.

He could not break the rock into pieces but he could see fractures on its surface, his grip strength had increased from the little modification he made.

"let's continue with the rest then," he thought after witnessing the result of his modification.

He was working on his arm when suddenly a complication arose. A wound opened and blood started to flow from it.

He quickly stopped his work and healed it as best he could. He also drank a potion to help with the healing process.

"Shit, I made a mistake. Going too fast would damage muscle tissue, luckily it only causes a flesh wound instead of resulting in mutation," he lamented.

He slowed down after that and only finished after spending three hours tweaking his body. He needed to balance between flexibility and power, he would not want his body to be stiff.

Char pulled out his sword, which attracted the girl's attention. She was shocked by his growth. He grew by two inches just in a few hours, and his body grew some more muscle that his clothes seemed to be a size too small.

He swung his sword, and it sent a gust of wind even though he did not use any mana to increase his power.

"With this, I just skip a year of physical training, but it's not the best part!" he grinned as he walked toward the orcs that were still trying to kill the undead. He was impatient to unleash his newly gained power.