Chapter 9. First sword practice, principles of Healing Magic

After lunch, in the early afternoon was the time for my training with Paul.

Paul was already aware that I have been diligently doing physical training every day, so for that day he instead prepared me a short wooden sword fitting my body size.

I was supposed to begin serious sword practice now that I was already 3 years old.

Normal kids start sword training at around 5 years old, but I was of course not a normal kid.

But first he made me jog around the house for a while.

I guess even this world knows the importance of warm-up!

Afterwards, Paul began showing me various sword moves in a slightly disorganized manner.

His teaching method was very straightforward, as he was only able to perform the strikes to show them to me and at most tell me whether I replicate them well or not.

He was unable to tell me what exactly I did wrong or how I could improve.

For example, he would show a sword strike while saying: 'Slash! Like that.'

And if you did it wrongly, he would say, 'Wrong! This is how you slash.'

But it was still a far better method of training than pointlessly swinging a sword with no idea of what was right and what was wrong.

I had no complaints here.

In truth, I already have a little bit of experience with HEMA fencing from my previous life.

But I never did any real sparring with someone.

It was just sword drills by myself done for fun while watching videos from youtube using a steel bastard sword I bought online.

In essence, I already knew a few basic stances, guards, slashes, thrusts, blocks and counters.

I have also watched many videos on sparring and swords, so while I might suck at actual fencing, I had some theoretical knowledge that Paul was not quite able to share with me.

But because of just that, Paul seemed to think that I have a natural talent for swordsmanship and praised me endlessly.

He called me an 'instinctive type', just like him.

Since I grasped the various moves he showed me very easily.

But I knew that it wasn't that I necessarily grasped them easily or that I'm a genius, but I already had a general idea of what swordsmanship should look like.

Either way, I didn't let Paul's praise get to my head.

I was not a 3 year old kid, but secretly an adult.

And my target of being the strongest was still far off.

I expressionlessly continued repeating the sword moves that Paul taught me with focus.

My magic is strong, but if possible, eventually mastering all three sword styles would also be ideal.

At the very least, I have to give it a try and give it my all while I'm young.

If I have no talent for Battle Aura, then so be it. Just knowing how swordsmen fight would be useful enough.

After performing various sword drills for a long while, I was then made to strike a sandbag dummy that Paul also prepared in advance.

I kept striking at the dummy over and over again while Paul watched over me and pointed out when I was doing something wrong.

…

While Seraphim was training under Paul, Zenith had a conversation with Roxy at the porch while drinking tea.

"He's very hard-working, isn't he, Roxy?" Zenith said with a smile.

"Mm. He's a bright and talented boy. I expected him to be more conceited," Roxy said expressionlessly as she also watched the practice.

"Right?" Zenith smiled. "But Seraph isn't like that. He's an angel."

Roxy remained silent whilst her mind wondered.

Zenith didn't pay mind to Roxy's absentminded expression and continued, "He was always like this. Always sincere, charming and hardworking. He's my sunshine."

"..."

"He's amazing, my son. And so cute! My son is the best!"

Roxy forced a small smile as she saw Zenith looking at Seraphim with some kind of obsession.

But she also found it natural. The boy was a prodigy.

'I guess any parent would dote on their child.'

She then thought of herself.

Were her parents also like that when she was young?

Roxy's expression dimmed down. 'I don't think so.'

…

"Okay, that's enough!" Paul announced the end of our training, with a satisfied smile.

And at those words, I dropped the wooden sword and plopped my butt on the ground, soaked in sweat and panting.

My arms were like rubber.

I placed a hand on my chest and silently used Intermediate-ranked Healing magic.

Instantly, all of my pain was gone.

However, the fatigue and lack of energy remained.

Healing magic can remove wounds and muscle pains, but it cannot restore lost stamina.

In spite of common sense, even when using Healing magic to restore the damage done to the muscles during training, a person would still experience strength and endurance gains normally.

But it is not that Healing magic makes the restored muscles instantly become stronger.

A person would still require time to grow. It is only that Post Exercise Muscle Soreness could be avoided.

Based on the principles of hypertrophy back on Earth, you need muscular damage and fatigue to stimulate the growth of muscles.

So when you remove the fatigue and through it that stimulus, there is no reason for your muscles to grow.

It is the same way when athletes on Earth use ice baths after training. Studies proved that doing this does indeed reduce fatigue and post-exercise muscle soreness, but it simultaneously reduces muscle gains.

However, Healing magic denies this.

I suppose because *magic*. It seems to be a more mystical phenomenon.

The result of it was that I probably don't need to worry about overtraining and overtaxing my muscles, and I can train to the maximum of my ability to cause the strongest growth stimulus possible.

It means I can be more extreme with my strength training, which I did. 

With Healing Magic, the phrase 'Maximum Recoverable Volume' takes on an entirely different meaning. Utilizing it, I can train with higher intensity and closer to failure, or even always to failure, because I can instantly recover from any abuse.

After training, my muscles can instantly recover to baseline, the damage I caused being healed, and already begin growing, speeding up my growth tremendously.

However, I am still limited by my ability to recover my energy in the form of glycogen and ATP, and would run out of breath during exercise. In other words, at one point I would simply have no strength to move the weights around or would be limited by my cardio.

There should also be a maximum growth stimulus and maximum growth rate that a body can experience, so I'm limited by those. 

Effectively, there is a kind of 'maximum effective volume' that I aim to do each day for the most optimal growth.

Still, compared to a trainee back on Earth, you can train *hard* and grow *very quickly* in this world.

Theoretically, a person could approach their genetic limit much quicker in the Mushoku world if they utilized Healing magic and trained hard, experiencing a rapid transformation.

Putting strength training aside, I am not completely sure yet, but I have an idea of the underlying principle behind Healing magic.

Healing magic in this world is not based on boosting natural recovery or cell duplication, or anything like that, as one might think.

Firstly, the body itself does not know what it is supposed to look like as a whole after being healed. When it heals through cell duplication and natural recovery, it never perfectly returns to the previous state, but just kind-of tries to patch up the holes; it forms scars as well.

Secondly, if Healing magic was based on boosting recovery, I should have experienced accelerated strength gains after each training+healing session, but it is not like this. It also does not improve the rate of stamina recovery, even though it really should.

Thirdly, if Healing magic enhanced recovery, in other words duplication of cells, it would greatly increase the rate of a person's cellular aging. After all, cells can only duplicate so many times - once they pass that limit, it is what is called 'natural death'.

With considerable wounds being healed over and over in case of warriors, the effect of accelerated aging might have been noted by now. Something like the case of swordsmen having a shorter natural lifespan than normal men, but I haven't heard about anything like this yet.

However, I am not entirely sure about this, because people in this world in general seem to die quite early natural deaths - in their 70s. But it is not limited to swordsmen, but it includes magicians and everyone else as well.

Putting everything into consideration, I believe that Healing magic is all about <restoring an organism to a perfect healthy state>.

It is similar to Time Magic type healing in some novels, except that the time when the wound was caused has limited implications. 

It is about the conceptual power of bringing the body to a healthy state, like a healing spell in a game restoring the character's health bar back to full.

It is more mystical and wondrous than simply boosting recovery.

Because of this, I could not simply do four sets of push-ups, then heal myself to restore my strength and receive gains through cellular repair/recovery, then do another four sets, heal myself again, and then keep repeating the process until I max out my genetic potential within weeks.

I had thought of this kind of cheating training method before, but it appeared to be impossible.

Further supporting my hypothesis, by using Healing magic it is also impossible to remove inborn or genetic diseases like poor eyesight.

I believe it's because this kind of condition is considered to be the natural state of the body, and Healing magic itself is only about restoring the body to that natural 'healthy' state, not beyond it.

For example, someone like Lilia wears glasses and even Advanced or probably Saint ranked Healing magic and above would not be able to fix her eyesight.

It's a pity though because I personally think she would only look better without glasses.

At any rate, Healing magic has a mystical power of bringing the body to an ideal healthy condition.

Animals and plants can also be affected by Healing magic.

However, plants would not grow up rapidly, but only be restored to their ideal (previous) healthy state.

The scene from the anime when Roxy made a tree bloom while healing it could not be replicated in reality. I guess it was just the animators wanting to make the scene look cool.

Otherwise it would be possible to grow vegetables and fruits in an instant by flooding the fields with Healing magic, or during travel you could plant some seeds in the ground and cast a healing spell to grow some tomatoes, but it was simply not the case.

Other than this, a common rule is that more serious injuries can be healed with a higher ranked healing spell, and do it quicker. Simple logic.

Even when casting healing magic silently, there still seemed to be tiers to it.

That's all that I know about healing magic that I learned from Zenith.

I do not yet have much practice with actually healing people apart from healing small cuts or bruises on myself, but I plan to research it thoroughly in the future.

After all, I believe that Healing magic at least might be able to offer a solution at extending a person's lifespan and vitality infinitely.

As long as Healing magic could be applied in conjunction with Time magic in a way to restore the body to a state from the past instead of a 'healthy one', it might be possible. If it has limitations, it could be used repeatedly.

Of course, first I would need to study Time magic and combine the two, likely in the form of a modified Magic Circle healing scroll, but this possibility existed.

I thought of this while keeping in mind the ancient ruins with information on Time Magic Teleportation to a point in the past that Old Rudeus was said to have found.

So far, it was my first and main idea to research on my path toward achieving Eternal Life.

It was not an ideal solution, but it was one idea.

Right now, Paul was walking back to the house with swagger whilst I was plopped on the ground, restoring my breath.

His face was smiling.

I guess he was happy that his 3 year old son, capable of powerful silent magic, was also very enthusiastic about learning the sword.

"My son is a sword genius! He's going to be a Sword King, no, a Sword Emperor at least! Haha!" Paul laughed and bragged while talking to Zenith.

I faintly smiled.

Well, thanks for training me.

I'm not fully just his son, but I'll do what I can. Our wishes aligned.

***

***

***

(AN: A small note: Canonically at 3 years old Rudues only started his physical training under Paul like squats and push-ups, and we don't quite know when he started swinging the sword. Officially it was only at 5. In contrast, Seraph has already been doing his physical training and was even more skilled in magic, so we can see it as Paul bringing forward his sword training by 2 years.)