Luke has now, in total, absorbed two white specks of light, or, better put, two tiny wind elementals.

‘I think that I’ve started to understand what the benefits of absorbing the wind elementals are.’

Luke’s body was getting slightly faster, whether he ran, walked, or simply swung his limbs around.

His field of view has noticeably widened as well, allowing Luke to be more aware of his surroundings than he ever was in the past.

Luke stretched his left arm out and started swinging it around.

“Go, furious wind! Gather around and vanquish my foes!”

As for controlling actual wind, Luke was still working on that, albeit with no success. He lowered his arm.

“…Crap, it’s still useless. Maybe it’s because of the dumbass, cringey chants that I keep spouting out…?”

He glanced at the Gleem corpse.

‘I wonder how long the stick strategy is gonna work for?’

‘But there’s no way that I can harvest the corpse today… Not only would I need to bang damn rocks together again, but it's that I already know that I won't have the time to get everything done before nightfall anyway. If I could actually control wind, I think that I’d be able to make a small wind blade or something similar to it by concentrating some wind in a small area. Something similar to the industrial air cutters that were rarely used on Earth.'

So unlike the previous version of this day, Luke wouldn't bother moving the Gleem's corpse to his house but would instead focus on hunting as many Gleems as he could, trying to strengthen his wind elemental as soon as possible.

Luke was also luckier this time around, as one of the sticks somehow stayed almost intact even after the dead Gleem rolled around at such a speed.

He pulled that stick out of the corpse and soon found another stick that suited his requirements, so he could sharpen it and prepare for the next fight.

'I hate to say it, but after two fights, I already feel a little less fearful of Gleems. While that's good, I also think that I should never let myself drop my guard too much in a fight out of a false pretense of strength.'

And so Luke continued repeating the process of sharpening new sticks as needed and baiting out one Gleem at a time so he could kill it and absorb its wind elemental.

Luckily, there weren't any groups of Gleems moving around near Luke's location, so he didn't struggle for his life at any point in time.

The Gleems all acted alike, getting provoked by the same old trick and charging into their deaths again and again.

After killing three more Gleems after the initial one, Luke was done for the day, as the surroundings kept getting darker and darker.

‘That should be five in total… I never thought that I would be able to kill a creature bigger and stronger than me with just a stick, but I guess they’re not that smart.'

The pure white tattoo was emitting a pulsating glow under his shirt, which was now buttoned up. Luke had no way of noticing this at the moment.

As dry branches cracked under Luke's feet, he arrived at the house relatively fast, thanks to his strengthened wind elemental.

Luke opened the door to the house and was about to enter, but instead of sighing a breath of relief, he inhaled a breath of death and almost vomited.

Luke stumbled but held onto the door and pinched his nose, almost falling to his knees.

‘Oh God, not again.'

The old man’s corpse. He forgot to take care of it in this loop.

The stench was too much to bear for him, so he just closed the door. It was even worse than the day before.

‘Maybe if I speed myself up to my current limit and then quickly get rid of the corpse…’

Luke nodded to himself and opened the door.

He stopped breathing in through his nose and made his way to the old man’s corpse in three steps.

Luke still wasn’t used to moving this fast, so he had trouble stopping in place and almost ended up crashing into the wall.

The pure white tattoo was now pulsating at an even faster rhythm.

Luke picked up the old man’s corpse and turned around to leave. He ran out of the house and started running into the forest, all while carrying the old man’s corpse over his shoulder.

As Luke was in a hurry, he didn’t even notice that he was moving almost twice as fast compared to a few minutes ago.

Small gusts of wind appeared under his feet with every step he took. Luke started realizing that something was weird.

He was far enough from the house, so he dropped the old man’s corpse.

‘Why did it feel like I was running on something soft just now?'

He looked at the ground below him. The dirt was very dry and brown in color, with a reddish tint to it. It developed cracks in a lot of places due to the lack of moisture. It was the polar opposite of anything that could be called soft.

‘There’s no way that running on this terrain could ever feel soft, right?'

Interrupting his thoughts, he felt a sharp pain in his chest.

Luke was familiar with this stinging sensation, so he immediately unbuttoned his shirt.

His eyes widened after looking at his chest.

The pure white tattoo depicting a gust of wind was gone. Instead, there was now a pure white tattoo of a whirlwind enveloping the silver hourglass.

Luke smiled and then started laughing out loud.

“Ha…haha… There’s no way, right? Could it have evolved or something like that? I did gather five of those tiny wind elementals, so maybe that was enough for it to somehow get  stronger.

Luke gently touched his new tattoo and then buttoned his shirt back up.

He then stretched out his arm and thought about gathering wind in his hand.

Just as he was about to utter one of his ridiculous chants, he felt something well up inside of his chest.

No, not his chest. It was much deeper than that.

'It's like something is forming around my heart...'

The feeling enveloped Luke, and he felt it spread around his body, flowing through all of his limbs.

Following his previous thoughts, he could feel this unknown power gathering back up in his heart and then redirecting itself along his arm and to the tips of his fingers.

It felt warm and very soothing, but also chilling and sharp at the same time.

Luke stared at his hand. He could see a tiny whirlwind, no bigger than his forearm, floating above it silently.

He started grinning widely, akin to a little kid receiving a present on Christmas eve.

What Luke didn’t know, though, was that this kind of elemental growth was indeed on the level of a child in this world.

The giant bird-like creature that he presumed to be the infamous monster overlord, N’Gool, amounted to a little more than fodder.

But for now, Luke reveled in his growth, feeling like he was at the top of the world. Such simple pleasures were a part of every man’s soul.

Luke then remembered why he was in the middle of the forest as night was about to fall.

He looked at the old man's corpse with a bitter expression and decided against calling out to Gleems this time around.

He should at least have this much courtesy towards this old man.

Luke turned around and ran back to the house.

 

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

 

Luke had left the door open once again to rid the house of the stench and air it out.

He walked into the house with a bigger stride than ever, as if he were returning from a date with a supermodel.

Luke was grinning from ear to ear, almost as if the bitter expression from earlier had never existed on his face in the first place.

He sat down at the table and stretched his right arm out.

Luke willed for a gust of wind to form on top of his hand. He felt the warm, enveloping sensation yet again, and a small, formless ball of wind appeared on top of his hand.

This wind was basically just concentrated air, so Luke shouldn't have been able to see the shape using his eyes, but as it was made using an elemental and mana and did not naturally exist in this state, he could simply see the shape of the ball.

Luke’s goal was to mold this ball of wind into a sharp blade that he could use as both a weapon and a tool.

He willed for it to compress into a thinner but longer shape, and the small ball, as if responding to Luke, slowly started changing shape and molded into a thick stick.

Luke then thought of flattening the stick. The wind took the shape of a thin strip.

‘How can I sharpen wind, though?’

Several ideas floated through Luke’s head.

‘Wait, maybe it doesn’t need to be sharp, just thin, but then it would rely too much on the speed of the strip itself, and I’m not nearly powerful enough to swing the strip around at a speed that would cause any damage at all.’

That’s one idea down.

‘If I reshape the tip of this strip, it could probably be used for stabbing, but I need this wind to be able to cut, not stab.’

But then something clicked in Luke's head.

‘Wait… I’m looking at this from the wrong perspective. Why would I need to be holding this strip in the first place? I can just release it from my hand, as if I were throwing a frisbee, just much faster and stronger than that, of course.’

Luke stood up. He decided to test his idea out.

He left the house. The night was rapidly approaching, so he didn’t have much time.

He walked a dozen meters away from the house and saw a small, thin tree.

Luke willed a very thin strip of wind to form in his right hand, and then he got into his throwing pose, causing him to remember many of Alex’s baseball games in college.

Luke smiled bitterly.

‘This one’s for you, Alex…’

He took half a step back, aimed at the tree, and threw the thin strip of wind as hard and as fast as he could muster. Luke closed his eyes, nervous about the prospect of his idea not working.

Luke peeked through his closed eyelids, but then opened his eyes completely right after.

He was bewildered. The tree was cleanly cut in half horizontally, leaving only an oddly tall tree stump.

Luke couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

“Hahahaha!! That’s what I’m talking about!”

Luke clenched his fists, raised his arms, and then started jumping in joy while grinning.

Luke was feeling very excited while thinking about how killing Gleems would pose no problems from now on, as long as he used this newly devised attack.

He could finally kiss the sticks goodbye, although he might keep some around him as a backup plan.

After calming down for a bit, Luke was starting to feel sleepy.

It was a pretty tiring day after all, but most importantly, his mind was tired of repeating the same day for the second time, although there were a lot of differences between the two loops.

Luke made his way back and entered the house.

He crashed into the bed, falling asleep almost instantly.

 

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

 

*Crunch, crack*

Two people were moving during the dead of the night, making their way through a bare forest. They moved so fast that not even their shadows could be spotted.

As they ran, they passed by dozens of Gleems, the latter being completely oblivious to the former’s existence.

A female voice sounded out.

“It should be close by.”

The voice was husky and reverberated with an air of hidden wisdom.

The other person looked towards the woman and nodded their head.

"Yes..."

It was a male voice.

The voice noticeably belonged to a younger man, possibly around Luke's age.

The young man narrowed his eyes.

“We will soon meet face-to-face with that old bastard.”

The pair were both wearing silver robes with detailed, golden embroidery, leaving big gusts of wind behind them as they ran.

Compared to Luke’s speed, the pair would be at least fifty times as fast.

Luke would soon realize that getting a quiet night in this forest was probably going to be impossible for him.