I found myself nearly crumbled on the floor, laying before a goliath composed of bone and rotting muscle. Its body fragmented the polished black rock in its failed charge, and left my arms still stinging following the first impact. Luckily, nothing had been broken; one of the few highlights.

Jack, for a literal monster, was an oddly fitting name. It was disgusting, in both sight and smell.

Composed of many bones which didn’t match the others from what I could tell from the arm. There couldn’t have been that many bones inside of the forearm. Chunks of flesh and muscle had been decaying—no, something was off about it, but I could tell that it wasn’t decaying anymore. It remained rotten, as if it were trapped.

It was all just a mismatch of parts, resulting in a brutish abomination capable of breaking down stone walls with the weight of its body. Now, knowing it was likely an amalgamation of different muscle and bone, it got worse to look at.

Its body turned, pieces of black debris falling around it as it lumbered around. Broken pieces of bone had fallen away from its torso, and its skull cracked down the forehead. I could feel its senses adjust, taking me in through its eyeless sockets; only faintly lighting with a blue tint in the black.

The distinct noise popping echoed through the halls, drawing my attention to its left shoulder. I watched as it moved its arm across, what muscle attached it together had made a violent sound, my eyes couldn’t help but watch. Stringy, but squelched like a wet sponge being pulled apart.

I ran forward, attempting to intercept, something was coming and I wanted to stop it.

The beast tore the limb off its sockets, before swinging it through the air. Its arm had now been repurposed as a club. It struck my running body mid-momentum, sending my body flying and cracking a small crater into the wall behind me.

It may have just been the adrenaline, but nothing felt broken.

Once again, I felt inspired; that was swiftly halted following the second swing in the midst of freeing myself.

It hit gold, striking my chest without any resistance. It nearly went all the way through my chest, if not for the wall behind me and my body’s resilience. My lungs and stomach nearly squashed against my skin.

I felt winded. I wanted to vomit, I couldn’t help it, but my body forcefully stopped itself.

It hurt. It hurt so bad.

I wanted to pray. Pray to just have the ability to close my eyes for an extra second. Pray to be returned to my cell and to not be beaten any longer.

I couldn’t do it. That’d meant trying to give in, give up, and my body—my Key—didn’t want that.

Instead, when my body sensed danger again, it triggered my body into action. My arms flung themselves forward, a loud smack echoed through the corridor, having to use all the strength I could draw forth just to stop the swing.

The impact nearly brought my elbows back into the wall as tremors went through my arms and my palms burned from the smack.

I gathered all of the strength I could within my arms, then mustered all the effort brimming into a hysterical amount of power through my legs just to push what little weight I had in comparison to the goliath.

I watched as it budged, sliding back inch-by-inch against the floor as I pushed. I repositioned my forearm, using the single limb to hold it back as it continued to push back. I reeled back a now free fist, and slammed it into the beast’s club with whatever was left in the tank to draw from.

I watched it stagger. It dug the claws of its feet in an attempt to hold it in place. The bones composing the arm had cracked, not brittle by any word, from the punch they had been purposely bundled together to make it that much harder to deal significant damage from a single strike alone.

That made the fist-sized impact I left even more of an achievement I could take just a few seconds of pride in; especially since I hadn’t broken any of mine, only stinging my muscles.

“Nice! Nice!” The Immortal Ring clapped, having leaned against the door to his office. Despite his words, there wasn’t anything entertaining about this to him. He clapped and laughed, but from the way those eyes of his looked upon this fight; he was taking it all in.

He was gauging me, words weren’t enough, he needed a showing. At least that made things somewhat easier to digest; I wasn’t getting acknowledged easily, fine, I just needed to adjust.

Yet, even then I let my actions get clouded by thought as the feeling of danger alarmed me once more.

In the minute I took to fix my stance, its bony appendage nearly dug into the wall. It was that enthusiastic in striking me down to where it almost tore through the wall to get me. It hit home again, only having enough time to block with a single forearm.

It smacked me like a pebble on a lake, sending me skipping against smooth stone before my body began to slide.

Its loud footsteps echoed through the halls as it came at me. It struck the ground as I rolled, evading another after another, and another. It had shifted from simple movements, to now mindless slamming in an attempt to break my body against the ground like a walnut.

Calling Jack strong anymore was getting repetitive. I needed something else, another way of fighting it.

I pressed my palms against the ground for the last roll, giving me enough bounce to at the very least have the tips of my feet now sliding on stone. In that second, I began trying to run while still on all-fours. It felt like I was kicking instead of trying to run from both my position and how wildly my legs began to race.

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That bit of momentum I began building, slipping but still moving, had been up quickly to where I bolted forward like a human missile. I bolted past Jack, he wasn’t my target. I caught a glance at the Immortal Ring’s grin, the man watching as I closed the distance between the Jade Ring and myself.

My fist rocketed forward, attempting to knock the Jade Ring off his feet with a single strike and hopefully break control of the beast. However, instead of finding my fist crashing into the padded vest of the Jade Ring, it broke through the throat of a corpse.

Its body rose from the ground, and my hand was now lodged deep inside the upper cavity of its chest. It stared at me with sunken blue eyes and its skin charred. Unlike normal bodies, when I hit it there was no staggering backwards nor did it fly back—no, it just took it. I could feel my hands wrapped around its spine.

Everything pointed to it being lifeless, but unlike the goliath… it was a man. An adult, white-man whose body was charred by flames. Burned alive. The man’s hair was patches, his figure round and large. I had struck him, and his body began breaking down as any fight deteriorated within him. Once it had finished rising from the ground, the body fell backwards and became limp, the sounds.

Did I kill him ?

I gagged. Any momentum I had to continue fighting had come undone.

THWACK!!!

Once again, I was struck by the club of bones. Pieces of the white cartilage had flown off from the strike, breaking apart again easily as before. It hadn’t hit the same nor as strong as before… but still paired with that monstrous strength… I felt something break, and this time, it was me.

Not a second to break.

The Immortal Ring stood there, still watching. His hand holding his chin, a look of disappointment with a bit of lingering interest while he stared down at me. He didn’t like my reaction; watching me trip up.

The Jade Ring, his Key seemingly lets him summon dead bodies. Whether or not they were real or fake they still had something of an oomph to them whenever I struck them.

Did he have more than one “Jack”? Could he summon multiple of these goliaths at once? At the very least, I knew he could manifest two at once.

Was there a limit? I needed to find out, especially with the Immortal Ring watching.

It clicked. I scrambled, moving towards the segments of fragmented rock from Jack’s repetitive strikes. I took what I could, having to grip tightly on it with enough strength to break it free and then tossed it. It nearly missed, but a chunk of black rock nearly the size of my head embedded itself into the side of Jack’s waist.

It staggered, looking at the rock in its waist. The impact of the crystal had sent cracks throughout its body, causing further fragmentation and notable weakness. I could possibly fight it fairly now, but that the goliath wasn’t the target. It was him, the Jade Ring.

I ran forward again. This time, I couldn’t lose the moment I had before.

He got in my head once, and I wouldn’t get tricked again.

I slipped. No, I sunk.

The solid ground below my feet had turned into a black and thick liquid, akin to black honey. Trying to move made things harder, finding myself deeper within the liquid.

Everyone had to have something sticky.

I fell to my arms, and when I tried to pull my ankles free the ground became solid. I had been binded, with my wrists and ankles bound within black rock. It didn’t hurt, it was really uncomfortable, but it hadn’t tightened.

Did this Jade guy have another power? No, I was too focused. It was another Key.

My head snapped around to spot an audience. A group of four with one of them knelt to the ground, and the other three just bystanders in wait. They began to approach, before all stopping in their tracks, all in response to the raised hand of the Immortal Ring’s silent authority.

The Immortal Ring turned his head over to face the Jade Ring, a casual smile as he clapped one hand. Something was off, especially as I watched that same man stifle his own chuckle with the sense of danger spiking.

The ground violently broke apart before me, the club being dragged through the stone before with the length of my stomach to my chin, and flung me upwards. The ground broke apart, my joints seemingly tougher than the ground; breaking free from the ground and fracturing it rather than tearing off my body. I crashed against the floor, left unassisted by the bystanders that bore witness to the one-sided beatdown—one that they also had a hand in.

Everything hurts again.

My chest contracted violently. Coughing out the air I desperately needed, clutching at the ground and air. It took both the adrenaline and the air from me. My body could feel the fight was over, and it broke down under that sudden lapse. Violently wheezing, the sensation of my lungs in a constant state of struggle, and my chest feeling as if it had just been caved in by a car in the shape of an arm.

In the times between fights, I never realized how lucky I was to let my body rest—the time to let myself adjust before my adrenaline stopped spiking.

I had lost the liberty of choosing my fights, I knew what I was getting into, but I never expected it to be this painful. Even Richter, with a Key that could literally kill me on contact, wasn’t as pressing as an opponent. God, what did I get myself into?

The Jade Ring walked past me and my crumbled body as Jack’s body descended into the ground behind him, disappearing nearly as instantly as it appeared. The group parted for him to walk past, allowing him to freely exit the corridor.

The Immortal Ring squatted beside me, a slight smile resting on his face and his hand under his chin. He was satisfied with the results, I could tell clear as day by his smugness despite how broken my body was and how much my senses had been shaken.

“Yep, definitely inexperienced.” He echoed his prior sentiment, a low whistle escaping his lips as his hand pressed against my broken chest, forcing a reactive wheeze from my lips. “Durable and strong at least. You were really selling yourself short with that car example you gave us.” He chuckled, letting out a relieved sigh. “Your senses do need a bit of work. Though, maybe it was your survivors instinct letting you know something crucial, try and run and we may have had to be a bit more strict and harsh on ya’. That’d be funny.” He chuckled once more, raising his head up to the white panels which lined the ceilings, knocking against the top of my forehead gently with his knuckle.

Odd.

He was calm, but no matter how I looked at him, I could feel that blatant danger. Not malice or animosity, he wasn’t intending on anything. It was that he could do it that sent every alarm off. It would’ve been easy.

My eyes directed toward those golden eyes. Was it wrong? Did those eyes set me off like with Seizon? No.

With everyone as reference, from Ponytail, to Seizon, and the Jade Ring. I could expect nothing different. Especially from him.

If they wanted to, they could kill me. That remained the same no matter what. I was never supposed to let my guard around those kinds of people.

“Anyways, take a bit of a rest. When you get back up, we’ll drill some things into you.”

In an attempt to get the words out, the tip of his finger tapped against my forehead. The world turned to a blur, and my mind slipped away.