Shane first considered one possibility.
Maybe that warm current had repaired his frail body, boosting his basic functions.
But he quickly ruled it out. By yesterday his body had already mostly recovered, and no such change had shown up then.
He mulled it over, knuckles resting on his chin. Then a thought flashed through him, making his heart kick.
Perhaps the warmth flowing from the Heroic Spirit card wasn't primarily about healing injuries or restoring stamina at all.
Maybe it was fundamentally remaking this mortal body—nudging it, bit by bit, toward a true Heroic Spirit's vessel—and what he'd called "recovery" was just a side effect of that process.
As for how it did that…
Shane looked at his arms, still faintly trembling from work.
"Could it be like forging iron," a spark lit in his mind, "forcing the body past its limits through repeated drain and strain—then letting the warmth repair and nourish it into a molt?"
Yes. That was the one difference from yesterday: he'd run himself completely dry, and afterward, Archer had answered him.
"This is just level-grinding!" Shane sprang to his feet, scarcely feeling the ache in his muscles.
He choked down the hated black bread in a few bites, dropped flat, and—under everyone's gaze—started doing push-ups on his own.
If he could bump a few stat ranks before the plan began, his odds would soar.
Not far away, Erza elbowed Millianna and tapped her temple, worried. "Is something wrong with him… up here?"
"Millianna doesn't knooow, meow."
As a "reward" for his zeal, when afternoon work started a lanky overseer thoughtfully stationed him in front of a stone pile twice the size of the morning's.
Before leaving, the overseer even spat hard at Shane's feet, kicking up a puff of dust. The corner of Shane's mouth twitched.
He memorized the man's build, took a deep breath, and bent to lift.
Pain flared in his arms at once, but he didn't slow—he sped up—and this time he watched every shift in his body.
Whenever his strength was about to fail, a warmer, clearer current rose in his mind, threading into the sore muscle fibers like fine strands and easing them.
He'd never noticed such details before. His eyes brightened, and he worked even harder.
The sight of him laboring so earnestly even made the overseer on watch relax his brow. "Hey—send another load over there."
What they lacked here were obedient, tireless beasts of burden like him.
Shane accepted everything without a peep, taking whatever he was given.
By dinnertime there was still a small portion of the extra pile left, and—miraculously—the overseer didn't make trouble; he waved it off and told Shane to put it on the tab and finish tomorrow.
Dinner was the same black bread and mystery soup. Shane wolfed it down and flopped onto his back.
Honestly, he could handle the physical drain. But as a soul from a land of cuisine, this never-changing pig slop was unbearable.
"No—before I crossed over, pigs ate better than I do now!"
"This can't wait. Seriously can't." He ground his teeth, shut his eyes, and went to sleep.
Jellal had meant to tell him not to push so hard, but seeing him sweat-soaked and too beat to speak, he sighed and left him be.
Of course, Shane didn't fall asleep immediately. He opened the Book of Heroic Spirits to check the afternoon's results.
Sure enough, the last stagnant entry—"Agility"—had finally changed.
Agility: E– (coordination and reaction speed are at the lowest tier; you can perceive danger, but your body can't react in time)
That only further confirmed his hypothesis.
The other stats were basically unchanged; he felt he still had a little way to go before a rank-up.
Even so, the afternoon's sweat left his limbs less hollow and put a bit more strength in his chest.
"At this rate, maybe I'll get to enjoy the beauty of stat-crushing someday."
After a moment, his mood settled—focused, solemn. He planned to try falling asleep naturally first; if the dream still didn't come… he'd speak the True Name.
…
His consciousness kept sinking, as if falling into a boundless white abyss.
When his senses cleared again, he found himself riding within a tall man's body, sharing every breath and heartbeat.
They were climbing a near-vertical cliff. Knife-cold wind sliced their faces; thin air set their lungs ablaze; with each step up, their muscles wailed.
Yet the climber never hesitated, though his hands and feet were purple-black with frost. Sharing his senses, Shane felt the blaze roaring beneath the man's silence.
At last, after a long struggle, they reached the summit.
The view exploded open—mountains and rivers unrolled below; in the distance, dense encampments like swarms of ants stretched to the horizon.
The man didn't pause for breath, didn't linger. He planted his feet, took up his bow, nocked an arrow—movements smooth as flowing water, as if done a thousand times.
The bowstring thrummed; as the arrow flew, Shane felt his awareness ripped free and bound to the shaft.
The arrow traced a brilliant seven-colored arc—a rainbow slicing the gray sky.
Time stretched without end. His awareness raced with the arrow, sweeping over countless upturned faces:
soldiers' dust-caked eyes catching fire with hope; elders weathered by war, hands trembling; innocent children staring wide-eyed—
each face lit by that holy arc of light, devout and bright, as if witnessing a miracle.
He sped east with the arrow; the land blurred beneath him.
Vast plains, winding rivers, serried ranges smeared into blocks of color. Two thousand five hundred kilometers passed in a heartbeat, until a turbid, surging great river filled the far edge of sight.
At last the arrow that had flown so far settled softly down.
Unseen behind it, the earth slowly split; a deep fissure crept along the arrow's path, cleanly dividing two warring lands.
And peace arrived.
Shane's awareness snapped back into that scar-scored body.
The man gazed at the tender dawn and murmured, voice calm to the point of gentleness, "I am Arash…"
"Arash Kamangir."
"I know," Shane answered solemnly in his mind, unsure whether the other could hear.
As he'd suspected, the Archer-class spirit was the great hero who carved borders with bow and arrow and ended the sixty-year war between Persia and Turan—Arash.
And the conquered snowy peak beneath their feet was Iran's highest mountain, Mount Damavand—the "Roof of the Middle East."
Yet Shane couldn't feel happy. There was no joy in solving the riddle.
Because he knew what came next.
Arash gazed quietly at the newborn sun, a hint of satisfied smile still on his lips.
Then fine cracks spread across his body; like weathered stone he slowly broke apart, splintered, and became a squall of snow and light, scattering into the gale atop Damavand.
A mortal body cannot bear godlike archery.
…
When Shane jolted awake, he was gasping, his brow slick with cold sweat.
The flood of images—the fragments of legend and history, the emotions carried down the years—still burned in his mind.
He pressed a hand to his chest; the bowstring's vibration at release still thrummed there.
"What a dream… both fleeting and endless," he whispered, his voice still unsteady.
To become the arrow yourself, fly over all those upturned, waiting faces, race to the Oxus, and end in that final settling of dust—
The visceral impact dwarfed everything he'd ever felt. The mix of awe and sorrow jammed in his chest, unspeakable.