[The skill Lesser Heat Tolerance has been gained.]
Despite his high level in pain resistance, the heat hurt like hell. After each grip, he waved his hands through the warm air, doing his best to cool them down, and then he’d grip the chair.
He constantly circulated electricity through the chair at the same time. The constant switches furthered the mental exhaustion he gained from the lighting manipulation. If he took too long, the chair would cool down.
He thought that it needed to reach a high enough temperature, before it would begin emitting light. Fortunately, his supply of lightning regenerated at the speed he was losing it. He wasn’t sure where it was going, but had an inclination that it might be getting transformed into heat.
If he was going to walk around with a metal like this, he would have to be completely immune to the heat of it, and that only meant that he needed to continue training with it.
***
[The skill Lesser Heat Tolerance has reached level 5]
He looked at his hands. The outline of the hair had been burnt into his palm. Two red lines deep into his skin. He felt that he was oddly calm about the damage done to his body. Although, he wasn’t going to complain at the lack of stress and anxiety. They would hinder his goal.
He dropped down through the hole, legs first. They cushioned his fall. No bones breaking really, just the flesh acting as a soft surface.
It was going to be easy to bring a rat over. Some of the blood escaped him with the fall. That and the noise, the squish of his flesh, would surely be enough to bring over a rat.
The darkness cloaked him. He felt that it was colder down here than up there, even though they shared the same air. That was good, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was gaining strength and escaping the torture. That was all.
He heard the pitter-patter breaking the steady noise coming from the river. Soon he’d have dead rat beside him. Just had to play the role of a corpse. Probably the easiest thing he’d done since now.
The rat approached him. The sound of its feet hitting against the red stone growing louder. He could almost feel its rough fur against his hands, its warm blood spilling out to his bashes. He smiled at the thought.
It was right beside him now, just a couple of feet away from his head.
“Hello,” a dark voice said and giggled.
But I heard a rat? Confusion, shock, and horror filled him all at once. Suddenly, he felt the strong and overwhelming urge to lunge at the creature. Twisting his body upwards with his stomach, a task that went much faster than he thought, he shot his electricity filled hand towards the voice.
It was smacked away. The blow came quickly and swiftly, knocking his hand of course. Their hands only touched for a brief moment. And, he felt none of his electricity streaming in, as if there was some sort of barrier, keeping it away.
He’s like the chair. Does that mean he’s also a lightning mage?
“Pesky lightning mage, you’re remind me of him,” the voice said.
“It’s you, not you’re.”
“What?” The voice said.
“You said it wrong.”
“Now you’re die. Bye bye.”
William’s head caved in.
***
“You said there were monsters in the darkness,” William said. “I just went down there and I was killed by an intelligent being. Probably not human, too short, but strong and intelligent enough to talk, not well though.”
“What part of monster means they can’t possess intelligence?”
“It’s the image. When you say monster I’m immediately thinking of a large, hideous and stupid thing. That’s a monster.”
Demarcus chuckled. “That’s a pest at worst. No. A monster carries certain thoughts. Thoughts most of us can’t even perceive. The worst evil would be if they could share those thoughts with others, but they can’t. So they try to show their thoughts through their actions, but that limits them to your interpretation. And since you’re stupid, there’s not a lot of interpretation going on.”
“That’s just bullshit,” William said. “Monsters are born with urges to kill and wreak havoc. That’s what makes them monsters.”
“My dear little William, where do you think those urges come from?”
“My urges don’t come from intellect. I don’t eat after thinking about it. It’s instinctual.”
“How come you don’t eat stone, but you eat bread?”
“Because I can’t eat stone.”
“And isn’t that knowledge?”
“It’s not a thought.”
“It’s a hidden thought, deep inside of your mind, one that you were probably born with. Monsters are simply born with other hidden thoughts.”
“Alright,” William said. “I guess your idea is more reasonable then I originally gave it credit for.”
“Great,” Demarcus said. “Let’s move on to torture.”
“About that, could we do fire torture?”
“You’re asking for fire torture? You do know that’s one of the worst, most excruciating methods of torture, and with me doing it, it’ll be that much worse. Are you sure you want to do it?”
William swallowed the saliva in his throat. I have to become stronger. “Yes.”
“Alright,” Demarcus said. “We’ll do it next session. We’ll be working on your fingers today, lucky you.”
“Yay…”
***
[The skill Greater Pain Resistance has reached level 7]
[The skill Lesser Mental Resistance has reached level 7]
[The skill Leather Skin has reached level 3]
It didn’t hurt as much as he remembered. It wasn’t tolerable by any means, but sometimes he’d remember the acts from before, cringe at the incoming pain, and face a milder version of it. It was all very strange as if Demarcus was doing something different, even though William knew he wasn’t.
He got down on fours and began doing pushups. He had to be more careful with where he placed his hands if he was going to do it properly.
Down on fours, he strained through pushups. Without his fingers, he placed his hands in a more balanced position, right beneath his shoulders. He realized one benefit to gaining a fully healed body each time he died, was that he never got sore from training. Essentially it meant he could get in a lot more training then he otherwise would be able to.
When his body grew exhausted, William swapped to heat resistance training. He placed his fingerless hands down on the seat of the chair and circled electricity through them. His body took over after a while, switching between giving and taking electricity. It increased his speed by quite a lot.
The chair’s temperature grew, but the pain seemed to increase faster, much faster. His hands begged for release after only a few seconds. It wasn’t hard to guess why. They’d entered the torture sensitive from the nasty wounds Demarcus had inflicted. He would have caved in to the pain, but because the process was largely muscle memory, or perhaps mana memory, he could dedicate all of his focus and will into pushing the pain away.
As the metal turned bright red, he could feel his hands burning into it. The blood that rushed there quickly evaporated, creating a sticky substance. After only a short moment, William couldn’t handle it anymore and took his hand away. The pain expanded by tenfold after the initial layer of skin had been burnt off.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
He returned to working out as he waited for the chair to cool down to a more reasonable temperature. He placed his hands beneath his shoulders and kept his body straight as he did another pushup.
Training went smoothly. Nothing interesting happened. All in all, he could consistently get the chair to become red before the pain became too much. His body ached like hell, the physical exercise taking its toll.
[Strength has gone up by 0.4]
[Stamina has gone up by 0.2]
[Endurance has gone up by 0.2]
[The skill Lesser Lightning Manipulation has reached level 9]
That didn’t matter though. In combat against the rats, he wasn’t using his body. It was the electricity that did the job there. And against the figure he met yesterday, he’d die with his body ready or not. He simply hoped that the figure wouldn’t be there when he jumped down.
He was excited though. One more level until lesser lightning manipulation reached lightning manipulation. It seemed that these jumps were substantive, like when it had gone from tough skin to leather skin. He wondered if the jump to lightning manipulation would buff everything, or if there would be new abilities he could unlock. He hoped for both.
When he heard Demarcus walking towards the door, he quickly made for the hole. He grit his teeth and leapt downwards. His legs twisted like always, although, not as much as the last times. Progress was being made.
Bringing electricity forth to his hands made the surroundings light up. He really wanted to explore more of the area. Maybe he could find something beneficial. Most likely, he’d end up finding another meaner enemy. That always seemed to be the case in this area.
Luck wasn’t on his side. A sentiment he really thought he should have grasped by now. A rat found him, and whilst his electricity did short work of the rat, it didn’t matter. The disease had gotten into him. That meant he was dead in a couple of seconds.
[The skill Lesser Disease Resistance has reached level 5.]
[You have gained 30xp]
***
“What the hell do you do when you’ve got no options,” William said.
“You’ve always got options,” Demarcus said.
“No, good, options.”
“Define good.”
“Something that will not lead to death.”
“Everything will lead to death.”
“Bah, alright, something that will push away death as long as possible.”
“It seems you do have options then.”
“No,” William said. “No that’s not what I meant. What if you want to do something, but you don’t have any way of achieving that thing.”
“That right there is the eternal struggle of all living things. The fight between the inner world and the outer world, between want and ability.”
“Pretty words, but that doesn’t help me:”
“Increase your ability. That’s the answer I guess. Identity the problem, and increase your ability to deal with it. Do that, and you’ve got the answer. “
“That’s so boring.”
“Maybe. Sure some will see that as boring. Others will find that growth the most mesmerizing thing in the world.”
“Nope, it’s boring:”
Demarcus chuckled. “Alright, then, you said you wanted heat torture, didn’t you? Well, you’ve probably already realized that I’m holding a torch. The cool thing about this torch is that it doesn’t produce smoke. This type of fire is special in that way. Do you know what’s also special about this fire?”
“What?”
“It’s very. Very. Hot.”
***
[The skill Greater Pain Resistance has reached level 9]
[The skill Demarcus’s Torture Technique has reached level 6]
[The skill Lesser Heat Tolerance has reached level 10.]
[The skill Heat Tolerance has evolved into Heat Resistance.]
[The skill Heat Tolerance has reached level 5]
That’s one way to increase my heat tolerance. One really awful way. But hey if it works.
Apparently, the trick to increase heat tolerance was to keep going through the pain, especially when it became unbearable. Now, that’s not something he could have done alone. Part of it being unbearable was that he couldn’t handle it, but when Demarcus so kindly froze him and put the torch beneath his back, that problem was solved.
I’m going to torture that man one day.
As he moved his skin broke like biscuits, flakes falling off. It was a horrible experience, drenching him with pain, but it did make him realize that he could survive without his skin. Gritting his teeth, he got down on four and began his training once more.
With his body exhausted he turned to the chair. He had all of the pieces. His body was capable of resisting heat. He also wielded a good enough grasp of lightning manipulation to do what he wanted to. This meant he should be able to make the chair bright enough to use it as a light.
Putting his hands on the legs, he took a deep breath and began to heat the chair. After a short moment, it turned red, but the pain was on a much lower scale than what he’d experienced before. He smiled widely. It stretched from ear to ear.
The light emanating from the chair increased and increased until it reached a point where the pain became too much. It was bright enough to make the whole room just a little bit lighter, which meant it was doing its job.
He removed his hands which required him to pull his hands away with a lot of force.
It was time to move on to stage two of his plan. He needed to separate a small part of the chair to bring it down. The hole wasn’t large enough to bring the entire chair down. The problem was that it was entirely made out of metal, which would make it really tricky to separate into pieces.
He gritted his teeth as he analyzed the situation for a solution. Damn, I’m gritting my teeth a lot, come on mind not the time to notice that, back to figuring out a solution. His mind fired up until it found a way that might work.
He grabbed the chair and put it down sideways so that the legs pointed horizontally. Then he grabbed the chair Demarcus usually sat on, making a note to start heating this chair up in the future, and banged the legs of the heated chair with the head of the other chair.
The chair bent slightly where it was being struck. As William continued hammering off, the bending grew, eating into the metal. He knew it could only bend so much before detaching. After a couple of hundred strikes, the leg finally fell off.
No going back now. Demarcus is going to be pissed.
He grabbed it and waved it around. It didn’t weigh too much. Enough for it to not feel fickle, but not enough that he had to strain to move it. He circulated electricity through it and realized that he’d created a weapon. Progress.
I’m probably going to be able to beat the rats with this .
He heated it until it illuminated a strong red. It hurt and burnt the blood in his left hand sticking to it. It made it so that he had one functioning hand and one-rod hand.
He still had some time before Demarcus showed up, but he didn’t feel like training. He was itching to get down there. Now he had a weapon and a source of light, which meant he should be capable of getting much longer than he would have in the past.
As long as I don’t meet that freakishly strong figure.
He sat down, letting his legs reach into the darkness. He sucked in a breath of air, and then before he had the chance to dread the pain, he jumped down. His legs shattered.
When the surge of pain calmed down, he looked around his surroundings. The rod of heated metal produced enough light for him to look three meters in each direction. It could produce more light if he shot even more electricity through it.
Instead of eagerly starting to move, he waited for the rat. If he couldn’t kill it without incurring that horrible disease, nothing mattered. A few moments passed before he saw the red eyes in the distance and the pitter-patter.
Like always, he waited until it got into striking range, and then he lashed his rod towards it. He could feel his electricity streaming into it as it spasmed and squealed. It only took a couple of seconds before it was dead.
[You have gained 30xp]
[You have reached level 2]
[Please select one of these three random stats to increase by 3.
Agility
Intelligence
Endurance
]
Three!
That was a huge gain. A lot of his training only netted him small fractions of that. Furthermore, there were stats here he’d never seen before. He almost couldn’t believe that he could increase his intellect just by pressing a button. Levelling up seemed to be a much better way of gaining strength than what he’d gone through.
Whilst intellect and agility were appealing, at the moment increasing his endurance would help him the most. Before he became strong enough to handle the fall without breaking his legs, little mattered. He chose endurance.
With that done he crawled away from the river, avoiding the corpse of the rat. The last thing he wanted was to acquire the disease now. For the first time in a long time, he felt that he was getting somewhere. It was a nice feeling, and one he wanted to get much more of. Anything signalling his escape from this hell was a benefit.
For the first time, he saw something down here other than the floor and the hideous rat. It was a bookshelf with lots of mould growing everywhere on it. He spotted red branches and vines growing through it. The thing supported a whole eco-system. Almost all of the books were gone, but he spotted one book on the highest shelf.
Is this supposed to be a library?
The book’s cover was darker than the darkness around it. It almost sucked in the light around it, and William almost felt as if it pulled him towards it, although he thought he was simply making that up.
He climbed up to the book, breaking some of the weak shelves at times. He found that he needed to use the vines as support. His body was much lighter than he’d realized it was in the past. He wasn’t sure if that was because he hadn’t eaten anything in days, or because he’d grown in strength.
Finally he grabbed the book, and immediately realized that it was in a language he couldn’t comprehend.
Of course it is.