Striking Power, Quadrupled! Five Major Targets, A Transformation at the Everworld Factory (68k)

Inside the shower room.

Scalding hot water streamed down Uesugi Tetsu's full, sharply defined muscles, mixing with black-red blood and sweat as it fell into the gaps between the crosshatched tiles. After giving off its last wisps of steam, it gurgled down the drain.

Water temperatures of sixty or seventy degrees were nothing to Uesugi Tetsu now.

After completing the Tough Hide stage of his training, his resistance to extreme cold and heat had increased considerably.

At least, using his body temperature as the baseline, water temperatures within a hundred degrees above or below it could no longer cause Uesugi Tetsu much harm.

Uesugi Tetsu lowered his head and met his own blurry gaze reflected in the tiles.

He thought silently:

Unlike Ririko's constant inward search for the eternal within herself—"seeking it within oneself"...

If he wanted to turn the mirror in his heart into a qualified Heart Embryo, he probably needed to achieve it through repeated "stimulation" from the outside world.

In other words, "seeking it in the world, people, and things beyond oneself."

He had realized this only after feeling Ririko's heated gaze, filled with delight and joy, moments earlier.

After locking eyes with Ririko in that state, Uesugi Tetsu had inexplicably found one corner of the mirror in his heart becoming slightly clearer.

It was not an illusion.

But what exactly this "stimulation" referred to, Uesugi Tetsu still had not figured out.

The road ahead had appeared, yet he remained lost.

Still, cultivating the state of mind is precisely this difficult and demanding. There is no definite path that can simply be copied.

If he wished to touch the sword heart that could illuminate his true self, he had to forge his own path from this untempered "Heart Embryo" right here and now.

"This is probably one