“Are you sure you want to try that again?” I was once again training with Charlotte. It had been one day since Alex had vouched for my innocence, and as such, Charlotte apparently had the right to a training session with me thanks to how long I spent in prison.

“Yea. I’ll pay more attention to your attacks this time.” I said, ready to endure yet another hand to hand combat session. We always ended our training with it, right when I was most tired, so I was curious how I would do when not completely exhausted.

“Fine then. Let’s see how long you’ll last.” She dropped her sword after I dropped mine, cracked her neck, and opened her mouth again. “Ready?” All I had to give her was a small nod before she was right in my face. Her strategy was simple. Hook me with both hands. She was ambidextrous, and could throw heavy punches non-stop, leaving me on the floor in seconds most of the time. The obvious counter to that was blocking her attacks until she exhausted herself, but she was so much stronger than me that she would never get exhausted. Yet, the core idea of the plan wasn’t bad. I couldn’t defeat her, so the best I could do was buy time. The issue with that was…

“Fuck!” I blocked a right hook from her, which not only sent me flying, but also hurt like hell despite me blocking the attack. My arm wasn’t a magical shield. Her attacks still hurt just due to our sheer power difference. Blocking was a very bad way of buying time, so I’d have to try something less conventional. While I was flying, she ran right behind me, ready to punch me straight into the ground. I flipped myself so I’d face her and kicked her in the chest before slowly lowering my leg to avoid her next punch. When she rushed at me, I punched her bicep before her fist reached me, which moved me far enough backwards to dodge her punch due to the force of my punch reflecting back at me and pushing me backwards.

“Ha! You finally figured it out.” She already knew about this? Of course she knew about it. She was much better at combat than me. She had probably gone through this from my point of view in her mind thousands of times to figure out my best course of action. That’s just how masters of their craft did things.

“Thanks?” I said before she came back at me with the most obvious combo on earth. She would make me punch her bicep from the arm delivering a hook, before hitting me with a straight punch to the gut, which could reach far enough that my ‘dodge’ would not even matter. I kicked her in the stomach again, then used the fact that her body was as solid as a statue to me to push into her like a climbing rock, and swerve out of the way of her hook by going around it instead of backwards. She’d just hit me if I remained near her, so I kicked her in the face with my other foot, which sent me backwards far enough to create enough of a distance that she couldn’t close it in an insane amount of time unless she stopped holding back.

“Bravo! You’re using your flimsy body very well. Not perfectly, but well enough.” She teased me by wiggling her eyebrows. This meant the fight was over, as she wouldn’t be playing around as much. She sprinted straight at me, closing the distance between us in a couple seconds. If I kicked her, she’d grab my foot. If I tried bouncing back, she’d simply close in again with a straight punch. If I dodged that somehow, she’d close in again and again, repeating the cycle in such fast succession that I could do nothing but exhaust my arms before collapsing. Despite knowing that, I did exactly that, buying myself as much time as possible. I tried thinking of any way to get out of this situation, but it really did seem like brute strength was the only thing that mattered past a- She wanted me to think that! She was using mental games against me, and I could do the same.

“Boo.” She stopped for a split second, confused for just enough time for me to punch her square in the jaw before sliding around her and putting her in a choke hold.

“Clever. Really clever.” I couldn’t even stop her head from moving! She moved her head forward slightly, and tried to headbut me. Unfortunately for her, I knew that she was going to try the most obvious thing, and pushed myself backwards– Wait, that was a distraction! “Not clever enough.” She had hid her hand behind her head, and her arm stretched out to punch me as her headbut missed me, which broke my nose and made me fly away. I rolled on the ground, getting covered in the mud before eventually stopping.

“Congratulations on beating someone with a thousand times less experience than you.” She laughed, not at me being funny, but at me being bitter enough about that loss that I’d say something like this.

“You did way better than I expected you to.” She tossed a potion at me, which I drank. “What matters is that you’re pretty much done with your pain resistance training. You barely even flinch at this point.” That was true. After the pure torture she had put me through, I didn’t think anything could make me black out from pain alone.

“So what? Are we moving on to proper training now?” Was she finally going to allow me to level up?

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“No, you’re training your technique now. Your power is the last thing we want to do.” Damn it.

“Hey.” Alex said after I teleported inside the pocket dimension.

“Give me a second.” I entered Liz’s office, grabbed the nearest bandages and tape before moving back to the living room and sitting next to Alex. “What’s up?” I started wrapping bandages around my wounds. I had built up my tolerance to healing potions again, and thus had to resort back to the normal ways of recovering.

“You know what’s up. You were right.” I was? How shocking. It’s almost like I’m always right. “She just blamed me and complained. She just shut me down every single time I tried to say anything. She didn’t give a single shit that I risked my life, she didn’t give a shit that I almost died, and she didn’t give a single shit about you trying to make me believe she didn’t care for me. The only thing she cared about is that her new pet got hurt… fuck man, I got tricked so badly.” I couldn’t help but feel bad for the guy. He was just dumb, but that wasn’t his fault. The education system was fucked before we got to it, and media ruined the mind of the youth.

“Well, now you know, and you can stop worshipping her.” He sighed, his head in his hands, shaking a little. This group really was just a cult worshipping Liz. He had believed with all his heart that she was just testing him, and now that he knew the truth, his body was physically rejecting it.

“I know, but it doesn’t stop hurting. She… all her fucking words… GODDAMN WORDS!” He slammed the table with his fist, which wouldn’t help. Taking out anger made people more angry in the long term, as it would associate anger with relief in their subconscious. But I wasn’t about to say that. The man had a right to be angry at her, even if it didn’t help.

“Calm down. You destroying the table isn’t going to help anyone. You simply need to move on and get a new, more stable group of people to support you. If you don’t, you’ll fall for some other conman, and you’ll do it again and again and again. The only way to break that cycle is by having people who can look at you from outside of that cycle, and pull you out before you do something stupid again.” He nodded even as I flinched from my bandages being too tight. He was nodding along to everything I was saying, but he in no way would actually take action to ensure my lessons stuck with him.

“I guess that makes sense… why are you so hurt anyway?” I guess he wouldn’t know.

“I’m training. I’m sure you know why.” His eyes widened a little bit, probably out of only slight surprise. He’d probably be wondering how I could so easily take him down even with all his abilities, and this would make sense as a reason why he lost. It wasn’t true of course, as he did a pitiful amount of damage, and couldn’t have killed me, which would’ve led to me outlasting him, but that didn’t matter.

“Do you actually think you can beat her?” I shrugged the best I could given the fact my bandages were keeping my arm stuck. “Who’re you training with?”

“Her rival from another world. She’s probably just as powerful as Elizabetha, and is only using me as an extra chip on the board to make Elizabetha feel worse. In the end, it doesn’t matter, because I’ll kill Elizabetha eventually, even without the help of her Rival.” Alex chuckled before helping me tape my bandages to my body. I wasn’t about to do some complicated knot just to make sure my bandage didn’t fall off, so tape was the only solution that worked for me.

“How do you know when you got enough power? Nobody knows how strong she is.” I finally finished putting my final bandage on, and leaned more into the couch.

“Her rival would know what her true power is. When she says I’m ready, I’m ready.” It was some very simple reasoning, so he instantly picked up what I was putting down.

“So this is a team thing…” He was silent for a long time, just taping my bandages. “I… Get me in it. If I can get my revenge, I’ll do it.” Wow, that’s a fast turn around. He quite literally went from worshipping her to being eager to kill her just because of that betrayal and a couple days of stewing in Liz’s true nature.

“I’ll have to ask Charlotte about it.” I was sure he could’ve guessed who Charlotte was. “Even if she doesn’t want to train you, I will. We have to–” Shit, someone just teleported in. When I turned my head around to see who exactly they were, I realised it was Dave.

“Jesus pal, what the fuck happened?” He saw all my bandages. I still wasn’t wearing a robe, as my old one was in such disrepair I had to throw it away before Liz would throw a fit over me not representing her well enough.

“Lots of stuff. Would you care enough to sit down?”