The cycle repeated itself for a few months. The torture hadn’t really changed. It seemed that the demon, though it loved what it did, wasn’t all that creative in its methods of torture. Leveling was going slower than Pavel had expected after the first level came so quickly. However, that wasn’t to say he hadn’t made progress. Pavel pulled up his notification history and studied it.
Skill advanced!
Pain Resistance - Level 4—>16
Tier I Unlocked - If outside of combat and in pain, your perception of time is sped up.
Experience gained!
Achievement unlocked!
Resilient I - You have survived torture for over 3 months straight. You either have extreme willpower or you enjoy the pain.
Tier I - Your skin has hardened, allowing for greater resistance to damage.
Experience gained!
Level advanced!
Level 2—>3
5 Free Points gained!
With the level up he had allocated 3 points to perception, bringing his total to 16, and two points to willpower, bringing that up to 22, now firmly past the realm of any normal human. However, he was starting to see a problem with his current plan. As leveling was taking a long time, due to his inability to earn experience, it seemed that he would be stuck for a much greater period of time than he had previously thought.
This was something that Pavel had foreseen happening and at the time he had felt as if he would be able to deal with it. However, after experiencing the effects of torture for over 3 months at this point, he realized that he might break. He might be somewhat improved by the System, but in the end, he was still human and humans aren’t built to deal with torture for that long of a time frame. He was already seeing changes in himself; the isolation and the pain were compounding and he felt he was starting to lose touch with himself and reality. His mood would change quickly, from anger to sadness, to feeling nothing at all.
He, as he had many times by now, heard the door unlocking and the demon entering. In his time as a prisoner there, he had finally learned the name of his torturer. In the demon language, it was so long and unpronounceable, that even Pavel, who was declared by the System to be a fluent speaker, was unable to say it correctly, much less think about and remember it, so the demon had gained the nickname, Volk.
“Since you’ve been such a good torture pet,” the demon said, shaking Pavel from his thoughts, “I’ve decided that you can handle a bit more.”
Whatever the demon had in store for Pavel this time couldn’t be good. He braced himself as the demon rummaged around his cart, looking for something new he could inflict. However, the demon stopped and just flashed Pavel a grin. He raised his hand and a flame sprung from nothingness. “Shit,” Pavel thought, “This could be bad.”
The demon reached over and placed his burning hand over Pavel’s heart. He stared into Pavel’s eyes, laughing as Pavel screamed and tensed against the straps. This carried on for a while until the demon felt that Pavel was going to pass out. Then he suddenly stopped. Pavel, taking this time to recover, managed to squeak out one word through his gasps for air, “Why?”
The demon laughed, “I’ve been taking it easy on you for the last few months. Priming you for the real work that I have to come. I won’t let you pass out anymore. That lets you off too easily. You’re going to remember and watch as I do this to you. And the best part is there is nothing you can do about it.”
With those words, the demon, believing that he had given enough time for Pavel to recover, resumed his fiery torture. For Pavel, it continued for what seemed like weeks. He was unable to sleep, to recover for more than a few minutes at a time. The demon was relentless. There were no breaks. If he ran out of mana, he chugged some liquid that restored it. He seemed to tire. Through the pain, Pavel noticed that he was receiving notifications, but he was never in any state to check them, just focusing on not succumbing to the pain. Eventually, the demon stopped his work and left. Pavel, still reeling from the weeks of torture and sleep deprivation immediately passed out into a dream-filled sleep.
His dreams were anything but peaceful. They alternated from the pain and suffering that had been inflicted on him during the last round of torture, to the first round, to his fight and failure against Lenus. He woke many times in a cold sweat, fearing every noise that he could hear. Fearing that his tormentor would return to continue the work.
At this point, the only thing that kept him going was the idea that maybe, just maybe when he escaped he would be able to see his wife again. He resolved to keep her in his mind, as a way to fight against the pain during torture. If he had her, he could always keep going. She was his rock, his everything now. If he lost her, he didn’t know if he could keep going.
Now that his senses were not being bombarded by pain, he could focus enough to pull up and read the notifications that he had noticed popping up during the past weeks.
Skill advanced!
Pain Resistance - Level 16—>24
Experience gained!
Skill unlocked!
Fire Resistance - Level 1
Fire deals less damage to you. At max level, fire cannot touch you.
Experience gained!
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Skill advanced!
Fire Resistance - Level 1—>11
Tier I Unlocked - Fire dies quicker as long as it is in contact with your body.
Experience gained!
Level advanced!
Level 3—>5
10 Free Points!
Warning, you have 24 hours to allocate your free points or they will be allocated for you!
Warning, you have 12 hours to allocate your free points or they will be allocated for you!
Warning, you have 1 hour to allocate your free points or they will be allocated for you!
Warning, you have 10 minutes to allocate your free points or they will be allocated for you!
Warning you have 1 minute to allocate your free points or they will be allocated for you!
Pavel saw the timer, it was counting down from forty seconds now. It seemed that when he had briefly opened his notifications earlier, before falling asleep, it had triggered the timer to allocate. He only panicked for a second, deciding to stay the course. He only had minor reservations, though he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep his mind under the torture. He allocated five points to each, perception and willpower, bringing willpower to 27 and perception to 21. He counted himself lucky that he had chosen to look at his notifications at that time. If not, he might have ended up wasting two levels, which was something that he could not afford to do given his current situation.
He also felt that, if not lucky, then it was a relative benefit that the demon had switched up its tactics. It had seemed like his progress in skills was stalling, or at least not advancing at a rate that was ideal, but the change in torture method had allowed him to both unlock and advance a new skill. This was likely what had propelled him over the level barriers. However, there was a downside to this change. Though now he felt almost ok, during the process he had been at his closest to giving up or breaking. He did not know if he would be able to continue for long enough for his escape to be possible.
At that moment, the demon returned. “Are you ready for another round?” It asked, “If not, it doesn’t matter, because I’m going to continue.”
This time it hadn't brought its cart in. It obviously had seen how effective the magical torture was and wished to continue along that route. “Though this time,” it said, “I’m not going to let you get comfortable with one kind of torture. Variety is the spice of life, you know.”
It made a similar motion to the last time when it had summoned fire. Pavel was not able to see anything physically manifest, but the temperature of the room seemed to drop. Pavel’s stomach dropped along with it. Ice, or some other form of cold energy. This was one of the most dangerous elements. His home was a cold place and he had seen many a warrior brought low by exposure to the cold and its subsequent effects. Frostbite is not a killer, but anyone who has seen the effects firsthand would be terrified of suffering from it.
The demon placed his hand on Pavel’s left ankle. Though it didn’t start out that cold, the temperature quickly fell, the cool sensation slowly being replaced with pain. Though the most terrifying part to Pavel, was when he could no longer feel anything from the affected area. Sure, he could feel the frost spreading up the rest of his leg, but the ankle where the demon’s hand was being held was numb to him. He strained to look down at it, however he immediately regretted doing so. The whole foot and ankle were a sickly shade of blackish blue and it was spreading at a visible rate up his leg.
The demon looked Pavel in the eyes, noticing that he was looking at his legs. Maintaining that eye contact, he reached with his other hand to Pavel’s foot and snapped off one of the toes. There hadn’t been a more disconcerting moment in Pavel’s life up to that point. There is nothing that can describe the feeling of watching a part of yourself break off like it was a twig from a dead tree. Pavel tried to look away but found that he couldn’t. Holding eye contact, the demon continued to break off parts of Pavel’s foot and leg. Pavel had been screaming the entire time, not from the pain, but from the psychological effects of watching as you are pulled apart.
The demon, finally satisfied with his work on the left, moved over to the right. The cycle repeated itself once again. As he was losing parts of his right leg, parts of his left would regenerate at a rate visible to Pavel. It wasn’t as if the regeneration process was painless either. As new nerve endings grew, they began to send signals to his brain, telling him that something was wrong. The demon just grinned looking at this. Pavel knew that the demon knew that this session would last an extremely long time due to the endurance of the demon and Pavel’s regenerative capabilities.
This session continued for the next few weeks in the same manner as the fire torture before it. Eventually, it ended, with Pavel having been conscious for the whole time. This time, however, he made it a point to not look at his notifications before he passed out, not wanting to even risk the possibility of a misallocation of points. Then he passed out, exhausted from his weeks-long ordeal.
Again, his sleep was anything but peaceful. His dreams haunted by the demon and his father. A failure, they called him. Unable to protect what he should have. He woke for a final time, though he did not feel rested. That was becoming more and more common these days. Haunted dreams, inability to sleep. He could feel his mind straining to keep everything straight. Though he had to hold on; if not him, then who? He opened his notifications.
Skill advanced!
Pain Resistance - Level 24—>31
Experience gained!
Pain resistance was always a welcome upgrade for Pavel. Though the manner in which he was gaining it was not fun at all, he could take solace in the idea that as the torture continued, he would feel less and less of the effects. He continued to the next notification.
Skill unlocked!
Cold Resistance - Level 1
You are increasingly less affected by the cold. At the highest levels, it is a non-factor.
Experience gained!
Skill advanced!
Cold Resistance - Level 1—>17
Tier I Unlocked - Frostbite heals faster.
Experience gained!
Level advanced!
Level 5—>7
10 Free Points gained!
All of those, except for the level-ups were expected. Though cold resistance went up much higher than fire. Pavel wondered why but eventually concluded that his frostbite had been a more serious injury, at least in the eyes of the System, than the burns he had sustained. Now the question was what to do with the stat points. He decided to keep it consistent and invest four points into each of willpower and perception, but also added two to strength, as he felt the time was nearing to attempt an escape.
Current Character Sheet:
Status
Name: Pavel
Age: 23
Race: Human
Class: LOCKED (LVL 7)
Profession: LOCKED (LVL 0)
Health: 120/120
Mana: 90/90
Stamina: 160/160
Stats
Strength: 18
Agility: 14
Endurance: 16
Vitality: 12
Intelligence: 9
Wisdom: 11
Perception: 25
Willpower: 31
Charisma: 13
Free Points: 0
Skills
Sword Mastery (Lvl 13)
Language: Common (Lvl Max)
Language: Low Abyssal (Lvl 5)
Pain Resistance (Lvl 31)
Identify (Lvl Max)
Fire Resistance (Lvl 11)
Cold Resistance (Lvl 17)
Spells
N/A
Achievements
Godfighter II
Immortality (Cursed)
Resilient I