Path To Godhood Begins With Marrying Wife And Gaining SSS Rank Skill

Chapter 228: 228:Tale Of A Labourer And His Pickaxe

Meanwhile, beside him, two small cries erupted as a girl wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

“Wuwuwuwuwu… What sin did I commit to be born in such a house?”

“Can you stop your acting, Drama Queen!” Ray reprimanded her sharply.

This only caused Miranda to cry even louder.

“Look… aren’t Hera and Nerion working without complaint?” Ray said, turning to glance at where Hera and Nerion should have been.

But then he paused.

“…..”

“Huh? Where are those two?”

Ray then searched for his two younger siblings

“Ohh… those two…” another worker replied awkwardly. “They passed out in the middle, so we carried them.”

“Wuwuwuwuw!” Miranda wailed louder again, her whole body shaking. Ray quickly reached out and grabbed her lips gently but firmly.

“Stop screaming.”

Miranda’s eyes watered even more, but she quieted down, sniffling miserably.

The dusty air settled slowly around the group. Ehan stood in the distance, watching the workers return to their tasks with heavy but determined steps.

Ray continued swinging his pickaxe, though his face was twisted with irritation and exhaustion. Miranda clung to him with a pout, while Hera and Nerion lay nearby, unconscious but safe.

The foreman looked at this oddly joined family and for a moment his eyes softened. It almost looked like he would shed tears.

“I wonder what causes such a family to do such work, yet I am eternally grateful for your work,” he said quietly, his voice carrying genuine appreciation.

Meanwhile, at the entrance, a man stood frozen with his jaw hanging so wide that it seemed it might drop any moment. His eyes trembled as he rubbed them hard, thinking he was hallucinating. He then nudged the man beside him.

“Is this an illusion crafted by a high ranking magician?”

“Cough… Our Lord is just going through the hardship suffered by the common man, Baron Fenwick,” Randall replied as he remembered the scene. Ethan had decided to try out common work and complete all the routines required to enter the Order of Eternal Blade.

Baron Fenwick swallowed and slowly nodded as he observed the scene in front of him.

’Damn… if he dared to do this to my grandchildren, even if I can’t kill him, I will haunt him to death.’

He took a step forward to call out to Ethan but Randall quickly grabbed his arm.

“Stop!”

“Why?”

“Look.”

Ethan, the gruff worker who had saved the man earlier, went right back to work without missing a beat. Despite the near death incident, he moved like nothing had happened. It was a harsh reminder of what these laborers went through every day.

Accidents like this were common. There was no union and no concern for workers’ rights. Nobody cared if someone got hurt. If anything, some people seemed glad about the fallen rocks meant faster progress on the job.

This also made Ethan aware of the blind spots that needed to be fixed later.

“Don’t worry, I’ll talk to the boss and make sure you get a bonus. The guy who messed up won’t be getting paid, so I’ll pass his wages onto you.”

“Now that sounds like proper gratitude.”

Thud. Crack.

“Wow, you’re pretty skilled. Have you worked elsewhere before?” the foreman asked with surprise in his voice. He watched Ethan’s movements with admiration because the precision was far beyond what a beginner could do.

“I’ve just picked up some experience here and there.”

“Haha, well you’re definitely an experienced pro.”

In the quarry, shaping the rocks so they could be loaded onto wagons was the real work. The tools given were few and each worker only had a pickaxe. Handling stones required strength and skill and experienced workers like Rohan were extremely rare.

’He’s not your average guy. Just look at that precision. But for some reason… that body stature looks familiar.’

’He also has this aura of nobility.’

’I might be wrong.Only a noble with a few screws loose would willingly work here.’

Crack. Crack.

Every time Ethan swung his pickaxe, the stone split perfectly. It was not brute force. It was technique. It was control.

He had blocked his mana so he was only using his physical strength.

“Huff… Huff…”

Breathing was difficult. The mask was alchemically designed to block almost all dust and fine particles but that also made it extremely hard to breathe. The alchemist who made it had warned him about this, and now Ethan understood why. The harder he worked, the faster his stamina drained.

But there was a strange satisfaction in facing something this challenging.

Bang….Bang.

’This rock is ridiculously hard.’

This stone was tougher than the others. Every strike made his hands throb. To anyone watching, it might have looked like he was making it easy, but the truth was the opposite.

Breaking rocks was brutal work. Breaking this one was torture. Each swing drained him more.

Without mana, his healing ability dulled. Ethan’s body approached its limit faster than usual. Even with his enhanced recovery, he was reaching the edge.

’Training twenty hours a day is really a torture.’

For the past ten days, Ethan had been pushing himself to the absolute brink, following a relentless training routine.

Every morning he ran for two hours. Then he climbed cliffs with logs tied to his back for three more hours. After that came five hours of weapons training. Between meals he only took short naps and all remaining time was spent working in the quarry.

It was grueling. His body was exhausted and his mind was only barely holding on. Even his extraordinary regenerative abilities struggled to keep up.

And through all this he had discovered a major problem.

It was his lack of finesse and control.

With every child he fathered, his strength increased past normal limits. Since he had never trained properly for that growth, his power became wild and unrefined.

And now, after days of pushing himself, he realized something important.

He should not focus on getting stronger because he could do that without effort. Instead he should focus on refining and controlling his strength.

Under this relentless training, he felt his aura shifting. If before it was chaotic, now it flowed like still water, calm on the surface yet deadly deep inside.

Crack.

But Ethan did not stop. He pushed harder. Each swing demanded all his strength and attention. His body and mind focused on a single rhythm. Slowly everything around him faded.

At that moment, Ethan reached a state of complete immersion.

’Here it comes.’

Every warrior was lucky to experience such a moment even once in their lifetime.

He had entered enlightenment.

He lost all sense of himself. His thoughts quieted. Only the movement remained. His body followed an instinctive rhythm.

Thud.

Crack.

Boom.

His movements became fluid. Something small but important changed inside him.

Vrum…

A faint shift in the flow of his body.

And with that—

Slice.

The best possible outcome.

“…Huh?”

Ethan blinked rapidly and almost lost his balance.

“Hey Ehan… take it easy,” the foreman said as he stepped forward. But before he could say anything more, two figures rushed past him.

“My lord! You’re going to kill yourself at this rate.”

“How long have I been like this?” Ethan asked, still dazed.

“Huh? Not even a minute.”

“A minute…”

“My lord, are you alright?” Randall hurried over and grabbed Ethan’s arm because his steps were unsteady.

“Yeah… I am good.”

’It was worth the challenge after all.’

The stone that had been too hard to break now lay perfectly split, as if someone had sliced it cleanly.

Just then…

“What the hell? How did you do this?”

“Huh? Baron Fenwick? What are you doing here?” Ethan asked in shock, but Baron Fenwick was even more shocked.

Before him lay a massive hard rock that had a minimum diameter of 50 meters cleaved into two.

And it was done without aura, without technique, and without a sword.

Just a pickaxe.

A damn pickaxe.

What was absolutely horrifying about this thing was…

The pickaxe had not cracked the stone. It had cut it cleanly apart, like firewood chopped by an axe.

Ethan shrugged and pointed at it calmly.”It’s nothing special.”

Randall looked at Ethan face and for some reason he wanted to punch this Lord of his however he controlled the blasphemous thought.