Chapter 80: The Knight Seeks More Growth (3)

“I’ve only removed the evil nature of the heart and left the poison intact. You told me that you have poison resistance, right? The poison will help you increase it…”

Derrick was completely spent, as if he had participated in two consecutive triathlons in half a day time. However, even though he seemed like he would collapse at any moment, his eyes were still full of life since he did not regret what he had done.

“The medical properties of the result are too strong, it will definitely create an imbalance in your body, so I prepared three different elixirs for you, each containing water, earth, and wood energy. Please take them all in that order.”

“…Thank you.”

Lee Han expressed his gratitude by giving the boy a simple thank you for his efforts.

He could have expressed it by giving him a long and winding speech, but that wasn’t in his style at all. Besides, such a thing would only make the other guy feel burdensome.

Derrick was aware of this too, so he just let out a smile.

“You are welcome. Also, the rest of it, I’ll do it la—”

Thud-!

Then, he collapsed without even finishing his words.

“You’re the one who needs to take medicine…”

Already expecting him to collapse, Lee Han grabbed Derrick and laid him down on a hammock the boy had set up in a corner.

He then looked at the medicine on the desk.

“It looks dazzling.”

And said those words with a flat tone. However, it was clear that his eyes were filled with surprise. He only wanted Derrick to make something simple, yet the boy produced something that was beyond his imagination.

Anyone could tell that it was a peerless medicine. One could say that it was merely medicine, but seeing it made him shiver.

As for the three elixirs Derrick had told him to take, each looked like beautiful pearls that emitted aqua, gold, and green light respectively. They looked like they would melt in his mouth if he took them.

Growing the earth energy with water energy and growing wood energy with earth to protect the body. Does this guy specialize in oriental medicine?

Those elixirs were things that had achieved the harmony of yin and yang, and the five elements. It went without saying that they were extraordinary elixirs.

However, even such extraordinary elixirs couldn’t compare to the single medicine on the table.

“Can you even call this thing medicine? It’s like a ‘monster’ among medicine…”

If a red sapphire could be melted into water, it would probably look like this.

The beautifully shining red liquid glowed like fluorescent material, and Lee Han couldn’t help but wonder if it really was something that a human could eat.

However…

“He told me to eat this first.”

Like a real adult, he didn’t hesitate. After all, Derrick had poured all of his heart and soul into this elixir.

I need to eat them all.

So, he immediately took the three elixirs. Contrary to his thoughts that they would melt like water, the elixirs didn’t dissolve until he swallowed them.

However, the moment those three elixirs entered his esophagus.

Wooong-!

“!!!”

A shock unlike any other thing he had experienced hit his body. It didn’t make his body explode or anything, it just made him feel like something had exploded inside his body.

These things…! Are taking all of my energy…!

The three elixirs were not only using each other’s energy to increase their energy, they were also eating away all of Lee Han’s energy. Because of that, he felt that all the vitality and energy that he had recovered through painful treatment from the priestess was being taken away.

Someone who saw his current state would think that he was being poisoned and had to take this medicine on purpose. His life was being shortened in real time to that extent.

But, even though he felt such a strong sense of rejection and wanted to spit out the elixirs right away…

…It seems like I just need to leave them alone…?

And so, Lee Han just watched his energy being eaten away until it was almost completely spent.

He had faith that Timid would not put him in danger. Above all, he did not feel that the elixirs’ energy was threatening his life. On the contrary, the more the energies absorbed his vitality, the more his body felt refreshed.

Besides, his energy didn’t feel like it disappeared into thin air. Instead, it felt like the elixirs used it to increase the [capacity] of his body. Just like a bowl being emptied.

Just like that, Lee Han let the three elixirs run wild for a few dozen minutes.

“…Keuk!”

Suddenly, a great dizziness struck him to the point that he became unable to speak. Even his vision turned blurry, and he wished he could lose consciousness right away.

If there was a mirror in the workshop, he would undoubtedly be shocked if he were to see his current appearance. His body looked like it was withering away. He looked so skinny to the point the word ‘skin and bone’ fit him perfectly.

Luckily for him, his vision turned blurry, and there was no mirror in the workshop.

Unable to even see the changes in his body, Lee Han reached out and picked up the bottle of red liquid with great difficulty.

Heavy—!

The bottle barely weighed 250 g, but Lee Han found it extremely difficult to lift it. Pain, suffering, sleepiness and hunger. All of those desires ran out of control inside him.

Two particular desires—the desire to eat anything, but not having anything to eat, and the desire to lie down and sleep—were surging like crazy. If his lust had not been sealed, it would have been an even more embarrassing sight to see.

In such a situation, Lee Han forcefully suppressed all his desires and suffering with only his ‘patience’.

He prided himself as someone who wouldn’t be defeated by anyone when it came to being patient, so he persisted even when the intense pain and desire tried to dominate his entire body like an uncontrollable current.

Shut up, shut up… SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Lee Han yelled to his uncontrollable body. As if he were ordering his body to follow his will.

Gulp-!

Then, he forced the red liquid into his mouth.

Crunch-!

Except that it felt like he was chewing the liquid rather than chugging it.

Even though he was clearly drinking it, the liquid kept wriggling in his mouth as if he was eating tough pig skin or a writhing octopus.

“━━”

However, Lee Han did not spill a single drop of the liquid. He just chewed and chewed, eating it in a way so that it would never leave his mouth.

And finally…

Gulp-!

He chewed and swallowed it all.

But little did he know, that was just the beginning of his ordeal.

Thump-!

Thump-!

Suddenly, he felt a tingle in his whole body, as if he had been electrified.

It felt like he had accidentally swallowed a person whose size was smaller than a finger, which in their rage repeatedly hit his stomach with an incredibly large war hammer.

The fact that Lee Han had such a delusional thought was the proof that the pain he experienced was just that intense. He flipped over without even thinking about enduring the pain.

“Keuuuuuk…”

He couldn’t even scream properly. If anything, he didn’t have the strength to speak. His eyes felt like they were going to roll over at any moment.

It wouldn’t be strange if he were to lose consciousness at any moment.

Somehow, the sky had turned yellow in his vision.

Is this perhaps the pain that a mother had to go through during childbirth?

But, I’m a man?

Lee Han was momentarily dumbfounded, wondering if he was actually right on the money. However, the fact that he had time to think such nonsense meant that the pain wasn’t painful enough to drive him to die yet.

Perhaps the energy of the three elixirs was blocking the ferocious, buffalo-like nature of the red medicine.

Fuck! This is supposed to be medicine—?!

Derrick did say that the medicine’s medical properties were strong, and he did say that he prepared the three elixirs because of that.

It was just, the pain that Lee Han experienced was too great for him to dismiss it as a mere side-effect of the medical properties.

He couldn’t even feel the pain of the poison, and completely succumbed to the pain that the medical properties brought him.

If the elixirs he took hadn’t protected his stomach, he would have lost consciousness from the pain long ago.

…It feels like it would be better if I were to just lose my mind here…!

A bitter smile appeared in his mouth as he thought that. He knew that losing his mind right here would be anything but good though.

Besides, he should at least try to find out what was going to happen to his body.

So…

Fuck! Let’s see who wins!!

Chew-!

He bit his tongue and let it bleed. Together with additional pain as well as the taste of iron filling his mouth, he finally managed to hold on to his fleeting mind.

“Huuuu, huuuu!”

Step-! Step-! Step-!

Then, he started taking steps.

Not normal steps but boxing steps.

After that, he slowly extended and thrusted his fists as if he was shadow boxing.

His body was devoid of energy, while his fatigue and desire to sleep endlessly increased. However, he couldn’t even sleep properly due to the pain, making him almost go crazy because of it.

So, he decided to force himself to move. He figured that it would be better for him to focus on something else, if only to protect his mind.

If others were to see it, they’d judge him as ignorant, but that was just how he was. He chose to wrung his sweat to overcome the pain.

Whoosh-!

He repeatedly extended and pulled his fists.

At first, his movements were endlessly slow. After all, just moving his body already caused him great pain.

Bang-!

However, he persisted.

As if declaring that he would not give in to pain, he did his best to extend his fist and move his body, and gradually, the slow punches began to speed up.

The punches that he aimed at the air…

At first, they were nothing but weak punches that couldn’t even kill a fly, but as Lee Han continued to punch and increased his speed…

Boom-! Boom-!

Strength filled his fist—no, his entire body.

The thing that he had realized before came to his mind.

There was strength even in softness. Strength existed everywhere, and even if his body had lost all its muscles like a deflated balloon, he could still release its strength.

Just like that, his punches that had become so fast began to take on a menacing sharpness. Although it still lacked strength, they were sharp like a needle or a nail.

However, it wasn’t like he gained any enlightenment or anything from this. He was just doing whatever he could, and this was nothing more than a desperate struggle to fight against the pain and the sleepiness.

And that struggle…

Crackle-!

Helped him to gradually absorb the medical properties of the Ghost King’s Heart Medicine.

Originally, this process should have taken an entire day, but Lee Han ignored common sense and forced his body to move around and absorb—or rather, adapt to the medical properties.

“━━”

At some point, he just threw his punches without thinking much, and his eyes became unfocused. But, even in that half-conscious state, his body moved as his will dictated.

This was why he couldn’t see it.

Sizzle-!

The steam that rose from his body.

Hoooooo.

Or rather, the ‘waste’ that had been accumulating in his body. Like the effects of the unknown medicine that the illegal mage had forced him to swallow when he was young, or the poisons that had accumulated while fighting in battlefields.

Things that had been accumulating without him knowing were flowing out like sweat from his body, and before he knew it, the heavy fatigue that had taken over his mind seemed to have all disappeared.

And then…

Bang-! Bang-!

The medicine went one step further and made his thin body swell up again. However, that wasn’t all. Before this, his body’s toughness was comparable to rock, but now, not only it retained its toughness, it also gained the elasticity of a spring or rubber.

Since he had trained his body to its limit, his body, which had seemed to have infinite room for physical development, was making a leap beyond encouraging growth.

This was the so-called ‘Strange Fate.’

However, this Strange Fate could not simply be attributed to the help of the medicine.

It was the fruit of the desperate life of the man called Lee Han who always did an intense and life-threatening training that ordinary people would not even dare to dream of attempting.

If someone other than Lee Han had taken the medicine, this kind of growth would be something they couldn’t even dream of. It would have been nothing more than taking an expensive nutritional supplement.

This breakthrough that [He] achieved only happened because he was him. It was not something that could be attributed solely to the help of medicine.

…However, at this historical moment when the results of his efforts were revealed, Lee Han, who was in a state of trance, punched the air without even knowing the changes taking place in his body. No…

Bang-! Bang-!

All he could do was doing the Hundreds Steps Divine Fist unconsciously over and over again.

Without stopping.

Ten minutes later, Derrick, who finally came to his senses, found himself completely shocked.

He was greeted by a wall that was about to crumble, but that wasn’t the reason why he was so shocked.

“Did you take the elixirs? You didn’t even wait until I woke up?”

“…”

“I clearly told you that you have to take them in a certain order before I collapse! Did you not hear me? N-No, more importantly, does it hurt? If you didn’t follow the correct order, it would be like adding fuel to the fire…”

“…”

“E-Enduring that pain would drive you crazy…normally…”

“…Mmm.”

“…So, does it hurt?”

“Ahem!”

Lee Han looked at the mountain in the distance.

Even though he couldn’t exactly see it because he was underground, he still wanted to do that right now.

At the same time, a thought popped up in his mind.

So that’s why…

…It was so fucking hurts…

The knight relearned a valuable lesson today. Being ignorant would end up making someone suffer unnecessarily.