Return of the Woodcutter

With plenty of time ahead of him before the staircases reopened and challengers started to flood the third floor to ascend the Tower, Aito set his mind on continuing training. Time was of the essence, after all.

Gwen had fixed three major goals for him to reach before the end of this month. First, be able to activate the skill Durability manually. Second, have his body and stamina reach Lv3. Third, be able to control Whirlwind fully. If he at least reached those goals, Gwen would consider the training to be over.

However, he wasn't satisfied with just that, so he set two other goals for himself. To assimilate what he deemed useful to him in Ogoro's knowledge, and to be able to activate his skill Weight Control manually.

His mind set, he first trained Weight Control by increasing the weight of his ax by 2.5 times. However, he did not deactivate it and let the skill last until the end to get a better feel for it. Something he had never really paid attention to before.

While waiting until the skill duration was over, he tried to get accustomed to the heavy double-edged ax weighing even more than before by executing chains of attacks.

Amidst his training, he remembered a part of Ogoro's memories about a certain Italian way of using greatswords. He couldn't make out the name since it was blurry, but the principles were there.

The technique allowed the user to endlessly chain attacks while keeping your balance. It resembled a tornado, much like his skill Whirlwind.

Except for the fact that he did not have to rotate with the blade, not entirely at least, and he could also move while executing a flurry of tornado-like attacks.

The principle was simple. He had to move his weapon in a circle, but not his entire body, which meant that his arms did most of the job. It wasn't as powerful as Whirlwind because he did not use his entire body to support the attack, but could be deadly nonetheless.

However, applying it to an ax proved to be more difficult than expected because of the single fact that the brunt of an ax weight was concentrated on the head.

His temporary inherited memories were about a greatsword that had a center of gravity near the hilt. An ax's center of gravity was located near the head. Taking that into account, the technique he "remembered" wasn't exactly the same since the conditions were different. It meant he had to adapt the knowledge to his own needs.

With that in mind, he trained the technique as best as he could, which started to show a few results, but he wasn't quite there yet.

He also thought about applying the principle to Whirlwind later until his weapon suddenly became lighter.

'Around 20 minutes,' he thought, gauging the time Weight Control stayed active. He had to gauge accurately without a timer, so it was the best guess he could take. 'That's pretty good.'

He trained continuously with his ax, practicing a few other techniques inspired or taken from Ogoro's knowledge he deemed useful.

After a while, he was exhausted, almost out of mana, and unable to replenish it with mana cores. He sat down on the grass to rest. With nothing better to do, he decided to give visualization a go.

Once again, he tapped into Ogoro's memories and tried his hardest to imagine himself using the techniques.

Various scenarios came up. One of them was Aito torturing a man to death by applying different torture techniques—not something he was necessarily fond of, but the anatomy knowledge could prove useful. Another one was him throwing all kinds of bladed weapons at targets.

Apparently, the grey-haired man could even throw a swiss knife accurately dozens of meters in front of him. Aito placed that thought aside and concentrated on the weapon he used the most, an ax.

Two hours passed this way without him noticing. Surprisingly, visualization was entertaining in its own way. Although, he wasn't proficient with it.

Sometimes the images in his imagination were blurry. Other times, his mind even wandered to other topics. Such as how Jack was doing. What kind of metal was the Ancient Shard. The gods and their unpredictable behaviors. Sam, the talkative baldy who had tried to kill him for no reason.

That talkative baldy was part of his current worries. Hours ago, Aito had seen Sam and his henchmen walking up to the third floor while he was training nearby. Their numbers made the group stuck out like sore thumbs. So, of course, he had seen them. Especially because of the light reflecting on Sam's crystal ball-like head.

Thankfully, the moderator had used some sort of magical invisible skill to dissuade them from causing trouble. But Aito had no doubt Sam would be back for more when the opportunity arises.

An opportunity he knew would come once he'd left the third floor. Then, a thought struck him.

Why would he leave the training grounds, anyway? Be it food or water, he had enough of it for a week.

Sleeping? He wasn't bothered with sleeping on grass or dirt.

Bathrooms? He'd just do it somewhere on the training ground, however unelegant it seemed. The moderator could make trashes disappear with but a thought, anyway.

Shower? Aito didn't care about that. The unpleasant scent could even help him ward off curious challengers who might want to ask unnecessary questions. 

Moreover, he could train peacefully at night while Gwen was training on her own. To his mind, he only profited from staying on the third floor.

Yes, it could be called cowardice by some. To his mind, however, it was called efficiency. A safe zone where he could live and train at the same time? What more could he ask for?

Eventually, he'd have to come down on the second floor to stock up on resources and also check up on his Ancient Shard identification results.

'But until then, I will stay on the third floor. Fuck Sam and his sect. I'll deal with them later. For now, I have better things to do.' He thought, before feeling his eyes closed by themselves.

And so, with a plan in the mind and a clear training regimen, he set out to sleep until the next morning.