Two days had passed since Zanshin stumbled out of the First Labyrinth's entrance storehouse, leaving behind the echoes of Ryo and Hayabusa's final words.
He hadn't stopped running for the better part of a day, eventually finding refuge in a small, isolated settlement far south of the Town of Beginnings—a dusty cluster of merchant stalls and a poorly stocked inn nestled against the edge of the second field area.
His HP and physical exhaustion had recovered, but the emotional exhaustion was a perpetual weight.
His time was now divided between silent grief and relentless, desperate activity.
The first thing Zanshin realized was that the Blackened Knight Cuirass was a liability.
The armor was stunning—a masterpiece of black and gold that screamed RARE DROP.
In the initial confusion of the death game, high-tier armor was nonexistent; everyone wore cheap leather or cloth.
This armor was a beacon, marking him as someone who had both been in lethal danger and, critically, survived it spectacularly.
He spent his limited initial currency (mostly drops from the four Rusted Reavers he killed) on the shabbiest, largest, and darkest cloak he could find from a traveling vendor. It was thick, coarse wool, designed for cold weather, and entirely unnecessary on the mild First Floor.
He equipped it immediately.
The cloak draped heavily over the imposing armor, obscuring the jet-black plates and the razor-sharp gold trim.
It was heavy, hot, and slightly ridiculous, but it successfully muffled the striking metallic gleam, making him appear merely as a heavily built, unremarkable player struggling with poor fashion choices.
The armor's AGI +0 property was its saving grace; despite the massive bulk, his mobility was unimpaired.
He found a secluded training area: a small, unused practice ground behind the town's Blacksmith shop, far from the eyes of the few remaining local players.
He stood in the worn dirt, the simple starter sword in his hand.
Zanshin's white hair was damp with sweat, even in the morning coolness.
He still wore the Cuirass beneath the heavy cloak.
The armor was a constant, metallic reminder of the price of his survival.
He was trying to execute the basic one-handed sword technique, Horizontal Slash.
This was the most fundamental skill in the Sword skill tree, designed to be effortless and intuitive.
For Zanshin, it was a battle.
He raised the sword.
The tremor, his old nemesis, was not gone.
It was still a constant, low thrum, like a faulty engine running beneath the hood.
When he had fought the Reavers, the adrenaline and the immediate threat had channeled his focus, allowing him brief, necessary control.
Now, in the calm, quiet training ground, the psychological block returned, amplified by the memory of Hayabusa's disintegrating hand grasping his wrist.
He tried the first swing.
His entire shoulder was tense.
The muscle memory screamed at him: Don't commit, you will hurt someone, you will break the sequence.
The blade sliced through the air, jagged and clumsy.
It was too fast at the start, too slow at the finish, and the entire motion failed to activate the System's Sword Skill assist. It was pure, pathetic physical flailing.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
He repeated the swing, dozens of times.
He was clumsy. His feet were too far apart, his center of gravity was wrong, and his stance was rigid—the opposite of the fluid, short-range specialist he had once been.
A week of using the heavy, slow Glaive had rusted his reflexes and replaced finesse with brute force inertia.
"Focus the swing, not the shake!" he snarled to himself, the words Hayabusa's final, painful gift.
He stopped fighting the tremor entirely. He let the vibration exist, a painful feedback loop of his own trauma.
Instead of trying to stop the shake, he poured all his attention into the target point.
He didn't care if his hand wobbled; the System didn't care about his hand, only the final trajectory.
The difference was excruciatingly subtle.
It was the difference between trying to stop the noise and trying to hear a single instrument in a cacophony.
Focus.
He tried again. Horizontal Slash.
The swing was still rough, but this time, the System recognized the intended trajectory.
A faint orange glow pulsed around the blade for a millisecond—the bare minimum for the Skill Cue.
[Skill: Horizontal Slash (Rank 1)]
It wasn't fast, it wasn't elegant, and the momentum was weak.
But it was a Skill.
It was the first time he had successfully executed a Sword Skill since the accident.
The tiny success felt like a mountain conquered.
He dropped the sword and leaned against a wooden post, panting, a raw, ugly cry escaping his throat.
For two days, Zanshin did nothing but this. He shunned the mobs in the field, choosing to fight himself instead.
He worked through the basic movements: Vertical Square, Horizontal Slash, and Slant.
Day 1: He was lucky to land one successful Skill Cue in twenty attempts.
The failures were agonizing; they reminded him of the fatal flaw that had defined his life.
He felt the phantom pain of Ryo's axe charge, the cold dread of Hayabusa's final advice.
He was constantly fighting the urge to drop the sword, to re-equip the Glaive, or simply to log out and admit defeat.
Day 2: The consistency improved, fractionally.
He was still clumsy, still relying on sheer willpower and a desperate mental separation between his fear and his action.
He could now execute the Skill Cue for a basic attack roughly three times out of ten.
The execution was always rough, marked by a slight hitch in his shoulder, and the azure glow was weak, but the system was registering the attack.
[Skill Progression: One-Handed Sword Mastery 18/100]
He had not yet attempted a combined chain attack, which was necessary for true combat efficiency.
He was still too focused on controlling the entry point of the skill.
He was far from good.
He was a Level 3 player whose real-world experience and muscle memory were struggling to surface beneath the rust of disuse, trapped in the mind of a Level 1 survivor.
But the rust was starting to flake away, piece by painful piece.
He wiped the sweat and dust from his face with the back of his trembling hand.
He looked down at the short sword, no longer seeing the instrument of destruction, but the tool of his continued, reluctant life.
The Town of Beginnings felt like a century ago.
The burden of guilt was still present, heavy and black beneath the golden trim of his armor.
But now, it was a duty.
He picked up the sword again.
Not the shake, Tsurugi. The swing.
Zanshin returned to the training post, the sound of his rough, heavy cloak a soft counterpoint to the clack of his sword meeting the air.
He was done running, done hiding in false safety. The climb had begun.