It took Freddy a few moments to catch up with where he was and to realize what was about to happen, but when he did, he felt strangely at peace with it.

He could have traded far worse things for an opportunity like this.

The clinic had a typical sterile vibe, with nurses wearing white coats and carrying stacks of papers around. He had no fond memories of hospitals, as the last time he was forced to go to one was when he had a near-lethal fever. The treatment and subsequent medicine halved his savings, and he didn’t even get paid time off from work.

This place gave off a distinctly different atmosphere, however. While that hospital had been falling apart at the seams, with tired employees patrolling the hallways and sick patients waiting in long lines, this place looked more like an idealized version of a clinic, one primed for a movie set or something.

To be fair, he wouldn’t expect much else from a wealthy gated community.

Matt took him to a door near the entrance, and he was told to enter. The assistant would be waiting for him outside, it seemed.

He took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

An aged-looking man wearing glasses sat at a desk, his ear-length black-accented-by-gray hair tucked behind his spectacles. His posture was great, and although he appeared somewhat meek, he was balanced and composed, with a healthy complexion and bright eyes.

He smiled the instant he spotted Freddy enter and got up to shake his hand. “Greetings, Mr. Stern. I’m Dr. Leonard Garfield. Pleased to meet you,” he said in a hearty, surprisingly loud voice, giving Freddy an almost painfully firm handshake.

“I’m uh… pleased to meet you too, Doctor.”

“Come on, sit,” the doctor urged him, rushing to his desk. “Don’t worry, today will be a simple health examination.”

That made him release the breath he didn’t even know he had been holding.

The man chuckled a bit at that.

He looked down a bit, gathering up the courage to ask the man a question, but before he could open his mouth, the doctor spoke. “As I said, there is no need for worry. You’re in good hands.”

“Will I… Will there be side effects?”

“Yes,” the doctor confirmed bluntly, nodding. “That’s just how the human body works. However,” he said while tearing a piece of paper out of the notebook he was writing in, “it is my job to make sure you never notice them. And I don’t mean to brag, but I’m pretty damn good at what I do,” he bragged with a smile and a cheeky wink. “Just relax.”

The man asked him numerous questions regarding his health and lifestyle habits. The doctor frowned enough times to make him realize that he had been living quite an unhealthy life up to that point.

After that, the man extracted a few vials of his blood. It hurt a bit, but he was a big boy, so he endured it. The man left the room for a few minutes, taking the samples with him, and returned shortly with a chair, which he sat in next to Freddy. “Now, Mr. Stern, please take your shirt off.”

He complied.

The man placed a finger on his sternum.

He felt a sensation that reminded him of what Madame had done to him when they first met. A squirming warmth oozed its way into his chest cavity, and he felt like his lungs and heart were being held up by gentle, firm hands.

“All right, now take a few deep breaths.”

He complied again, breathing deeply until the man told him to stop. The doctor then got up, stood to his right, and placed his right palm on his chest while putting his left palm on his back.

“You have a water affinity, right?”

Freddy nodded.

“Good. Please use your primary tempering technique.”

“Uh…” He hesitated. “I used up all my essence, so I’m pretty drained.”

“It’s all right. Even a second is fine if you can manage.”

He could, so he did, and the man nodded after feeling him use it. “Ah, generic water body, good, good.” He nodded, taking his hands off. “That will be useful.” He returned to his desk, but he suddenly paused and turned around. “Just to make sure, do you have any other affinities?”

“No, why?” Freddy asked.

“Some people tend to hide them for personal reasons,” the doctor said, shrugging. “I’m a medical professional, so I wouldn’t be telling anything to anyone, and knowing would make my job a lot easier,” he said, and then, with a strange tone, he added, “especially if you have the blood affinity.”

That made him pause for a moment. “No… I don’t. I assure you.”

“Oh, all right.” The man nodded, taking his word for it. “Also, I advise you to refrain from attaining new affinities during the next six months.”

That claim made Freddy perk up. “Is that even possible?”

The doctor nodded. “There are treasures and other rare, special methods that can achieve that, but using any of them could result in serious problems for you, especially in the case of the blood affinity.”

“I will keep that in mind, but…” he said, chuckling, “I highly doubt I’ll have access to something like that.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have my reputation if I weren’t thorough with my work,” he said, heartily patting Freddy on the thigh with a chuckle of his own.

An adult man who appeared to be a nurse walked in, handed a paper to the doctor, and left.

The man looked at the paper, sighing and frowning as he read its contents. After reading through it, he got up, walked over to a nearby cabinet, and pulled out a small collection of what appeared to be medicine containers. Then, he wrote a few things on paper and handed everything to Freddy, who forced a smile on his face.

“I thought today was just an examination…” he said, eyeing the almost a dozen medicines on the table.

“Well,” the doctor said with a chuckle. “I don’t see a reason to be so afraid of vitamin and mineral supplements.”

He winced as he read the label on one of the bottles and flushed red in embarrassment. “Oh…”

There was also a paper detailing the schedule for taking them… as well as an exhaustive list of things he should and shouldn’t consume.

Seeing coffee and red meat on the list of things he wasn’t allowed to intake, he nearly cried.

“A bit of advice,” the doctor added. “For now, use all your essence on the tempering technique, and tell me as soon as it is ready to evolve.”

“You mean… I can’t train anything else?”

“You can if you want to. But the better you get at using it, the fewer long-term consequences you’ll see, not to mention just how much faster you’ll be able to grow muscle with the aid to recovery.”

That was a tempting prospect, but he wasn’t willing to completely give up his right to work on other techniques. “I’ll think about it,” he said noncommittally.

“One final question,” the doctor said, grabbing a paper to write something down. “What is your prime talent?”

That question made him pause. This was the first time anyone had ever asked him what his talent was after becoming an arch. Madame knew, technically, but she inquired about the prime vestige he manifested. This begged the question—wouldn’t she have informed the doctor? Or maybe she was too busy for that—

“Is something wrong?” the doctor asked him, and he jolted a bit.

Freddy felt a weird repulsion toward the idea of answering the question. Reason won out in the end, and he concluded that it was best this man knew. “It’s 1% Lifesteal.”

The doctor’s pen paused, hovering over the paper as he slowly looked up, adjusting his glasses. “Do you know the specifics of how it works?”

He shook his head. “Not many.”

“Do you have any intent of using it?”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to be putting myself in danger, that’s for sure.”

“Good,” the doctor nodded. “You shouldn’t.”

After some extra advice and arranging the scheduled check-ups, he shook the man’s hand and left, with Matt promptly escorting him to the gym. Apparently, the preparations for the interview wouldn’t begin for at least another three months, so until then, there was only one thing left to do.

***

Dr. Garfield stared at the paper, noting the results of the health examination. His hunch had been correct—there was muscle protein in Mr. Stern’s blood. This wasn’t quite enough to diagnose the exact type of muscular dystrophy he had, but judging from what he felt in the man’s heart, it was terminal.

He leaned back in his chair and sighed. This made things complicated. The man’s body was in a decent state for the time being, but his illness would show itself soon enough. Trying to train a body like that wasn’t going to be easy.

For a moment, he briefly pondered whether Madame was aware of the young man’s plight. It was unlikely. If she was, putting him on a schedule like this was the equivalent of trying to kill him.

Yet, his mind wandered back to the heart defect he had spotted.

Despite the complications, a smile crept up on his face.

Looks like his job would be much easier than he had anticipated.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

***

The third day was spent working Freddy’s core and doing light cardio. He felt that, even with his inflammation, this was a bit too easy.

Mark’s explanation cleared things up a bit. “All that forcing you too much now would achieve is to increase the likelihood of you injuring yourself,” he said, but not without adding, “although you are right. If you were training to become a martial artist, you’d be going much harder than this.

“Training to become a warrior means pushing yourself physically, mentally, and, ultimately, spiritually. You seek toughness, grit, power, and knowledge of what your body can do.” Then he shrugged. “Training to achieve a look, on the other hand… Don’t get me wrong, it can and will get pretty tough, but there is no need to torment yourself. In fact, too much work can often be counterproductive.” He tapped him on the shoulder. “You aim to become a fighter, right?”

Freddy nodded.

“Then focus on your abilities and gathering. Training your body, even just to grow muscle, won’t be a waste of time. I promise.”

***

It was 3 p.m. Freddy had eaten, showered, and taken some supplements, and now he lay in bed, feeling the deep aches all over his body. As far as his responsibilities for the day went, he was done.

So he promptly delved into the Netherecho.

After roughly thirty minutes of gathering, he finally felt hints of essence accompanying the wisps he consumed. All wisps had a specific essence capacity, but appropriating this essence while consuming the ether wasn’t easy. However, the more powerful one became, the more pronounced this effect was.

And now, gathering was starting to become a valid method of speeding up his essence recovery. Although, frankly, the effect was weak. Even after nearly an hour of gathering, having cleaned his entire apartment again, he gained only around a second or two of using his tempering technique’s worth of essence.

He sighed, got off the bed, dressed, and left the apartment. He wanted to go practice meditative gathering again but wouldn’t just do it anywhere. His training would be much more worthwhile in an area rich in water wisps.

While there was a pool at his gym, there wasn’t much ether to gather there, as he was far from the only water-affinity arch going to that gym.

So he was on a mission.

It was time to find a proper place to meditate.

***

Asking around the streets was almost entirely useless. The only places people pointed to were either paid-entry gathering grounds outside the community or private areas. Some paths were carved through the woods, but none of them led to a water source.

It was only when a small child overheard him ask an elderly woman that he got some answers.

The boy told him that there was a medium-sized pond in the small forest around the neighborhood. Small problem, though—while most of the woods were tamed, the body of water was in a wild section.

This wasn’t some rainforest or jungle; hell, he could see buildings on the other side, even from the streets. That didn’t change the fact that he had never been in a forest. He didn’t even remember the last time he had made contact with grass. It was probably back when he went to the park with his adoptive parents.

So he was a little scared. Very, actually. Obviously, he wouldn’t come across monsters or even wild animals. Or, well, at least he hoped he wouldn’t. There was always the threat of an unregistered passage being in there somewhere. Not a big one, but enough to trigger his phobia.

Yet, he found it surprisingly easy to grit his teeth and take a step forward.

It all left him feeling deeply unsatisfied.

At the end of his six months here, all he would gain was an impressive physique, some more power as an arch, and a tier-one body tempering technique—as well as possible consequences of steroid use.

Raw gathering could only take one so far. Without expensive treasures or killing monsters, his progress would slow until it hit a brick wall. An impressive-looking body was a reasonable basis for beginning training in martial arts, but it wasn’t good enough on its own.

And the generic technique was just a damn luxury.

That was more than he had any right to ask for, but he wouldn’t settle for anything less than the most he could get out of this situation. He was getting a lot out of this deal, but not nearly enough to be ready to set out and become a passage delver after it was all done. And he needed to be. While Madame made it seem almost inevitable, he didn’t buy that someone would invest in him just because they thought “he was lucky.”

He had no delusions about his actual status. He was a nobody. And all he received here was only granted to him because he was useful to Madame. He would be thrown out like a sack of spoiled potatoes when he expired.

There was only one thing he could do. No, there was something he had to do—work as hard as he could and look for a way to take things into his own hands.

It didn’t take long to reach the edge of the forest. His palms began sweating, he felt his lunch rushing to his throat, and his knees nearly buckled. A faint shiver moved through his body as he lifted his leg to step onto grass for the first time in almost ten years.

It was a mere step. Nothing more, nothing less. Yet, it felt as if it had taken the tiniest of fractions of his troubles away, and he took another to confirm it.

Every time he put his foot forward, a piece of nature seeped into his body, rejuvenating some part of him that he had lost through all his time in the concrete jungle.

Was this what people meant when they said one should go “touch some grass”? Because although he kind of hated to admit it, since that was something his manager used to say all the time, that was some damn good advice. The forest grew sparse, likely being artificially planted trees and only some short bushes.

Despite his fears reducing drastically, he still glared at every brush as if it owed him money and ensured he could spot nothing hiding within.

The further he went into the wilderness, the wilder it became. His delicate, city-raised skin scratched at contact with some sharp branches, and he started to worry that he’d damage the clothing.

However, his worries were for naught since his clothes were made of some damn durable material. While the pond wasn’t far from the streets, it took him an embarrassingly long time to push through the growth and reach it.

And once he did…

He was a little disappointed. Nobody was here, and it wasn’t hard to puzzle out why. Rather than call this a pond, it was more apt to call it a tiny patch of marsh. It was overgrown with tall grass, with even a few trees growing within the pond itself, and there was an unpleasant smell in the air.

A not-so-small part of him was hoping that he would come across some serene, picturesque part of the forest, maybe discover a lonely girl twirling a stick in the water and—

He cut the train of thought off before it went too far in that direction and focused on the present. Luckily, there was a tiny patch of sandy clearing he could sit on…

But it was on the other side of the pond. And there was no clear path to it. He sighed and began the annoying process of getting there. He slipped on the muddy bank with his first step forth and dipped his entire right foot into the filthy water.

“Oh, fuck off.”

The wet sock sloshed in his dirty sneaker, and a few minutes later, he made it to the patch of sand.

Once he did, he sat down, took his shoe and sock off to let them dry, and got into a semi-comfortable stance. He did a few rounds of meditation, stopping only after his soul started hurting. There was, indeed, a plethora of water wisps around him, and he was pleased by his progress in collecting them.

Planning to continue his gathering in the Netherecho, especially after he dragged so many water wisps to his immediate vicinity, he left his body—

And instantly returned. Vestiges surrounded him. Froggy, dirty, grimy masses of filth and swamp-related concepts were everywhere, and he wasn’t planning on repeating the mistake he made back in his old apartment.

If only Bloodshed was here to act as my bodyguard…

Oh well.

He had no reason to stay here, but he still decided to loiter just a bit longer. The patch of sand was surrounded by thorny growth on all sides, and he wanted to push it away to make a path through it so that he wouldn’t have to walk along the pond’s edge again.

He needed something to push the brush aside, so he broke a branch off—

Hmm?

A distinct, calming feeling radiated through his body. He broke another branch and then kicked a patch of grass, and the same sensation accompanied both actions.

There were two possible explanations for this. Either mother nature was a masochist, and the “calming feeling” was his reward for being violent with her, or the infinitely more likely explanation—his talent was triggering when he damaged the plants.

“First oysters, and now this?” he mused.

At first, this didn’t stand out as anything too special. Just a wacky quirk of his talent, something that—

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a goddamn second…!”

His talent was triggering against plants!? That was… No, wait, yes? Wasn’t this a pretty big deal? When it activated on the oysters, he hadn’t thought much about it, but didn’t this completely shift the nature of his prime talent?

Healing being only usable in combat was a rather strict requirement. What if he were too injured to fight? Having the option of just kicking some bushes around was—

“Wait,” he said out loud, cupping his chin and pacing in circles.

His mind was rushing around a rather important question—what about the healing quality? Every time he used the talent, a minor pulse of soothing energy washed over him. Was this just what it felt like to use the ability…

Or was it actually healing something?

The mere thought of it made his heartbeat speed up. His sore muscles…

Immediately, he grabbed the stick and began smacking it around. He tore leaves off, broke more branches, and crushed grass, trying to do as much damage as possible.

The more he did so, however, the more concerned he grew—after all, not even the faint red scratches on his hands were going away.

Was he not doing enough damage? Or did the healing…?

Rather than jumping to conclusions, he decided to push it as far as it would go.

He put his wet shoe and sock on, pushed through the growth in a rush, and returned to the streets. He found a hardware store that sold machetes and bought one. It cost forty dollars, and he bought it with his own money. Someone could be observing his purchases with the card, and he wanted to avoid suspicious items on record.

As he returned to the forest, the instant he entered the wild area, he started cleaving grass, cutting branches, shredding bushes, and stomping mushrooms. Even some bugs were caught up in his wanton eco-terrorism.

The feeling of power that entered his body was addicting, and he spent far longer than he expected fighting the poor plants as if they were his mortal enemies.

The intensity of the sensation of his talent activating fluctuated wildly depending on what he did. He didn’t quite understand what worked best, but he allowed the feeling to guide his actions.

It took surprisingly, even concerningly, long for the faint scratches on his hands to vanish. After he warmed up a bit, the feeling of soreness in his body subsided. And when he finally cooled down…

He grinned.

It wasn’t that he felt better after doing this. He felt goddamn perfect. While his arms were tired from swinging the machete around, they didn’t hurt. Nothing did. There was no soreness or muscular pain to speak of. Because it fucking worked.

His talent had sped up his muscular recovery!

While a small part of him wanted to share this information with his trainer and doctor, he immediately gave up on that. Based on what his doctor said, this could mess something up. Not for a second did he believe it would endanger him, though.

In fact, he would bet everything he had that the doctor was worried about it hindering the effect of the steroids. If the man’s treatment failed to work, it could ruin his reputation.

Now… as long as he followed the schedule, he couldn’t be held accountable for any unexpected, weird effects that his talent had… right?

But they had no reason to worry. He would be giving them the action-hero physique they wanted. Because he was about to begin training in martial arts.

As long as he did enough eco-terrorism to recover from his daily workout and then again enough to recover from his personal training, he could dedicate the second part of his day to martial arts.

His trainer would undoubtedly notice something was off, but he could probably bullshit his way out of it. He’d just claim it was related to his NDA-locked secret.

Extremely pleased, he made a mental note to buy a book about martial arts and healing at the store, hid the machete under a patch of leaves in the forest, and returned to his apartment.

He ate a huge dinner, feeling ravenously famished after his machete workout, and then he showered. He grabbed the toothbrush and put it in his mouth while still drying his hair.

The mirror before him was clouded with the steam of his hot shower, so he grabbed the small fan and used it to lift the fog. It wasn’t like he needed or wanted to look at himself. It was just—

The condensation lifted, revealing his face, and he dropped the fan. It clanged against the sink and skittered across the ground, the sound of it still blowing hot air echoing through the large bathroom, creating a backdrop that harmonized with the sudden ringing in his ears.

His face, the same face he had looked at countless times, appeared before him. And the acne scars that plagued his skin, the old, nasty pockmarks of his adolescence…

Were almost entirely gone.