“When it comes to working out, perseverance and effort are the key. There’s no such thing as a magical potion that would make you grow muscles overnight, at least, none that wouldn’t turn you into a mass of bulging muscles that had lost its mind instead.” - Bon-Jon Ojiv, physical trainer for young nobles in the Fifth Elmaiya Empire, circa 602 FP.

“So this will- huff- help me- ugh- grow stronger like you?” asked Celia as she struggled mightily to pull her entire body upwards with just her arms. She hung from a sturdy tree branch with just her hands holding onto it, and kept raising and lowering her body until her chin reached above the tree branch, like Aideen suggested.

While she was quite fit and healthy since she spent her youth helping at the farm, Celia still struggled to pull herself up like that, and after the second time, her arms ached mightily as she struggled to repeat the feat once more. After the fourth time, she only managed to pull her chin above the branch by the barest margin, and lost all strength as she dropped off the branch right afterwards.

The young woman exasperatedly looked up and to her left, where Aideen did the same exercise to give her an example. Except, unlike Celia’s struggles, Aideen did the same repetitive movements as easily as she breathed, as her body rose and fell in rhythm with her breath, all without giving the slightest impression that she was exerting herself at all.

And to top it all off, she did it with a single hand rather than both.

“It will, as long as you keep at it and don’t get lazy,” said Aideen as she effortlessly lifted the weight of her whole body until her chin reached above the branch with only her left arm, her right arm folded behind her back. She made it look so effortless Celia couldn’t help but to look at her own trembling arms with doubt and worry. “We have to do it the old fashioned way, though. Grandpa and I experimented a lot in the past, but artificially forcing growth just doesn’t work on us. In fact, any artificial alteration we do to ourselves would undo itself over time.”

“So that means…” pondered Celia after Aideen leapt down, having finished a set of twenty-five with ease, then helped the girl hook her legs to the same branch they used to exercise with. Celia hung upside-down from the tree, held in place by the branch held under her knee, between her thighs and calves. Aideen then bent her knees, and leapt upwards as she pulled off a reverse somersault that landed her legs in the same position. “Lots of training over time and no shortcuts?”

“You got it in one, girl,” said Aideen as she crossed her arms over her chest and folded her body until those arms touched her knees, holding herself in the posture for a second or so before she unfurled herself back to the hanging position, and repeating the exercise with similar ease and effortlessness. “If you had been alive, you could simply train until your body broke down, then have a healer fix it for you, and repeat as necessary. For us unliving though, trying that would just negate all the exercise you did. We have to let our bodies reshape and reform itself naturally instead.”

“So nothing but effort, pain, and suffering will work- grunt- got it,” said Celia as she attempted to replicate Aideen’s feat and only managed to do it with a grunt and a lot of effort that left her breathing hard as she uncurled herself. She managed a second repetition, but only with notable difficulty, and could barely lift her torso past the perpendicular on her third attempt.

“Hmm, better arm strength than abdominal strength, to be expected I guess,” muttered Aideen as she watched Celia’s struggles amidst her own flawless, near-effortless repetitions of the same exercise the younger woman struggled mightily with. “This is still the easier method to do it, I’d suggest you do the simpler exercise where you try it while laying on the ground, though.”

Celia looked at Aideen somewhat askance when she heard the older woman mention that what they were doing was already the easier method, but then, as if she heard Celia’s unvoiced question, Aideen gripped the branch with her arms as she did one last curl, then unhooked her leg from the branch before she looped them under and over to the other side, her feet resting on top of the branch now.

Then Aideen repeated the exercise while her entire body weight hung from her feet, all the while making the whole thing look effortless and easy.

******************************

When the two women continued their travels the next day, Celia actually had her weapon out, not because she was using it to fight, but rather to use it like a walking staff. Her whole body ached, even in places she had no idea could ache, after the workout Aideen made her do the day before, and she needed the staff to help her walk at her current state.

On the other hand, Aideen walked beside her with a completely relaxed gait, as if the strenuous physical training from yesterday - and Celia knew all too well that Aideen did several times more repetitions than she did - was effortless to her. Her step was light, though she deliberately kept her pace down in consideration of Celia’s slower, stumbling pace.

Some part of Celia was glad that Aideen told her not to exercise two days in a row for the time being, to take a break every other day to give her body time to recover and rebuild itself from the damages she inflicted to it with the strenuous exercise. Yet that also meant that the day after, she would be exercising again, with all the pains and aches that followed.

At the same time though, the once helpless peasant girl cherished the opportunity. When she was just a lowly peasant, helping out at her family’s farm, she never really had much choice or direction in life, other than striving to live on from day to day.

Aideen gave her a direction she could pursue, and a way to gain power with which she could forge her own path in the future. Those were already far greater an opportunity that Celia had ever had in her life prior to that point of time.