I liked to exercise whenever I had to think. Trevor once gave me an in-depth explanation as to why it worked the way that it did when we were still teens. If my memory worked correctly, it has something to do with blood flow. But, the underlying reason for it didn’t really matter to me. What did matter was that I thought best while I was active. Some of my best ideas came with weights in my hands and sweat on my brow.
Without any form of weights and with the loose rocks being surprisingly light and useless for my workout purposes, I resorted to the tried and true method of bodyweight exercises. I was no stranger to the push-up or sit-up; the only difference was that I had a tail to awkwardly drape between my legs. Whenever I behaved too poorly for the standards of the guards, I was banned from using the equipment in the yard. All I could do in those dreadful times was work out in my cell, lest I lost any of the mass so diligently worked on.
I was currently in the midst of a set of push-ups. The familiar burn in my muscles grounded me and gave me something familiar for the first time.
Meanwhile, Squealer paced around like a neurotic dog. He gave the impression of someone who couldn't sit still whenever they were nervous. He chewed on his short claws and muttered at a voice where it all sounded like nonsense to me.
The situation that we faced now made him all the more desperate to find a solution to oppose my own.
Ever since I reached Level 4, the rewards for killing the various beasts that I hunted no longer provided much in the way of XP. What was once 25 XP kills were now down to only a single point of progress. Even the small bonus to stats that their deaths provided disappeared entirely. Conversely, the requirement to level up had only risen exponentially higher. By my own estimation, I would now need to slay hundreds of these creatures to reach the goal of Level 5. And, at the rate at which we met them, it would take an incredible amount of time to accomplish.
Our only real idea, so far, was to settle ourselves in a large intersection of the tunnels. Six openings all connected at the same point, giving us a larger flow of traveling beasts to pick off. Though, Squealer did most of that work now. His large quill skill could kill off those creatures in a single hit.
But, now that Squealer matched my level, neither of us were gaining much. We still killed any beasts that crossed our paths, progress was progress after all and turning our nose up to meager gains wasn’t going to speed up the situation.
There was only one thing we could agree on, this excruciatingly slow growth was not cutting it for either of us.
We needed bigger targets and knew exactly where to find them. The handful of kills I obtained during my escape from Tainaronopolis catapulted me from low Level 3 to Level 4. If we wanted to progress to five quickly, we needed to kill more demons. The only issue was that we were not finding any. After our violent escape from Tainaronopolis, we had not seen a single demon. The sheer intricacy of the tunnel system nearly guaranteed that interactions outside of larger pockets were nearly impossible. We would need to ambush the scouting citizens of Tainaronopolis to make any progress.
Intuitively, it made sense. From the stat gains to the XP to the extra rewards, this system has constantly corralled the punished to inflict punishment on each other. To passively gain XP through unfeeling beasts was not interesting or punishing. Pain needed to be inflicted, death needed to occur. There was no harsher guard than another prisoner.
While I knew this, Squealer was less receptive.
“You already know what we need to do,” I said, my muscles burning with joy. “We need to stake out Tainaronopolis and slay anyone that ventures out of it. Pýlicles will not keep them cooped up forever.”
“Yes…but, it’s too risky,” Squealer argued, still hesitant. “They are all in the same party, Pýlicles will be able to see where it happened immediately. What if he sends reinforcements into the tunnel?”
“All the better for us,” I rebuked, doing another rep. “Everyone knows that tight places negate being outnumbered. Pýlicles doesn’t seem like the type that would remove his main advantage like that. He will hold, let us have our fill, and face us when we come to him.”
Squealer gritted his teeth and continued pacing. I smiled, knowing that he continually failed to find a suitable, logical reason to defy my suggestion.
I wasn’t in a particular rush to make a decision, but I knew that I needed to have Squealer back himself into a corner before I could get any real cooperation from the rat. If I forced him to follow along by way of tyranny, something that would not take more than a flex of muscle and a show of claw to resolve, I would only be allowing him a path to create further delusion. He would only blame me for any of the terrible acts that followed.
From how I saw it, he was still hiding in his refuge of excuses. For someone like Squealer, who killed no people in his previous life, did not wish to accept the fact he was a killer. The death of the cat demon was a one time lapse in judgment. If he were to kill another, then he would lose his only excuse, irrational and stupid as it was. I just needed to wait for him to exhaust his options.
However, I had a strong feeling that he would only hop to the excuse of ‘having no other option.’ I hated that excuse more than most. In the eyes of people like that, they really meant that the selfish option was the only one that remained as though that absolved them of something.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
image [https://i.imgur.com/ku66JDM.jpeg]
Notice!
Congratulations! You have trained your form: Strength and Body Increase by 0.05.
“Oh,” I said in surprise at the unexpected message that blinded me.
“What?” Squealer asked with great curiosity, not hearing my tone like that before. “Did you get something new?”
I laughed a bit to myself. There was some fairness in this world after all. Working on oneself ended in dividends. An entire new avenue of progress opened in front of my eyes. Squealer’s decision could be postponed until I explored this further.
“It seems that I have been rewarded for my efforts,” I said with a smile. “I just increased my stats by doing some simple exercise.”
“By how much?” Squealer asked with an animated voice.
“Five hundredths,” I commented before returning to my workout. Since my muscles never grew tired, I could do this endlessly without any issue. “I’m going to see just how much I can get out of it.”
I continued to go through my rotation of bodyweight exercises, stretching, and calisthenics; some renewed motivation coming in the form of my marginal body improvements. All the while, I felt Squealer staring at me. He had yet to do anything of his own. There was some hesitation that locked his muscles in place.
“Are you not interested?” I asked Squealer as I stretched out my calves. My new body was far more limber than my old one and I could easily grab my toes. “It’s not much of a gain and it doesn’t provide any XP, but I thought you were looking for an easy way to gain stats.”
“I-I am,” Squealer stammered self-consciously. “I just didn’t do much exercise in my past life. I was just watching your form.”
“I could gather as much,” I replied with mild derision.
“While you were breaking rocks apart in the prison yard, I was busy in college and then working my professional life,” Squealer said defensively. “You were working out instead of learning.”
I clicked my tongue and Squealer took a reflexive step back. While annoying, like a social worker that greets you with a fake smile and a voice like she’s talking to a puppy, it was not a new misunderstanding. People often had a strange dichotomy in their minds between strength and intelligence, as though one like myself could not possess both. Just because I rent flesh with my hands, I was mindless. Edmund Kemper was smart and so am I, despite my inability to keep baser instincts in check.
“Plato once said that it is a disgrace to grow old without seeing what manner of man you might become by developing your bodily strength,” I countered as I flexed my bicep, more than eager to show off the unexpected competence behind my eyes. “Just because I chose a path that did not end in a degree does not mean you are smarter than I am. I was in the running for valedictorian well into senior year. Between the two of us, you are the disgrace.”
Squealer’s ears flattened against his head. Quoting philosophers was something that always surprised superficial people like that. I always got surprised looks by parroting men they found intelligent like I was a talking dog.
Squealer, dropped on all fours and splayed out his body to form a horrendous starting push-up position. He took a deep breath and lowered himself to the ground before pushing himself back up. His terribly thin arms quivered pathetically as he rose back to his starting position.
“Like this?” He asked with distraught eyes.
I sighed in disappointment, knowing that this would be an effort. “Just mimic me.”
So, Squealer acted as my weak mirror. Whatever I did, he did shittier. But, the powers at be rewarded him with humble stat increases as well. In addition to the strength and body exercises, we learned that sprinting or lateral jumps would increase agility.
The only thing that I did not know how to do was increase magic. But, there was no reason for me to give a shit about that. Squealer should figure something out on his own.
Of course, like all other things, there was a limit to the amount that could be extracted through this method. After receiving an entire point of progress across my stats, the updates stopped coming. No matter how long I futilely pumped my muscles, nothing more would come from this method.
I opened my window to see my current status.
image [https://i.imgur.com/9QUoMOs.jpeg]
Name: Ishmael
Title: The One Who Impresses the Aspect of Wrath
Notoriety: Provincial Horror
Passive Abilities: Taken in One’s Prime. They Don’t Make Them like They Used To (E). A True Beast Has No Need for Magic (E). The Body is the Best Weapon (E).
Active Abilities: Flaying Tail. Sanguine Bite.
Transformation: Reptilian (Stage 2)
Level 4 EXP: 35/1600
HP: 127/127 MP: 0/0
Stats:
Strength: 29.08 (+1.37)
Agility: 18.87 (+1.37)
Magic: 0
Body: 28.54 (+1.37)
Armor: 10 (Natural)
Notoriety: Provincial Horror: You were a well-known killer within your region and small communities will remember you for a long time. But your actions did little to impress lasting damage in the wider world. +1 Transformation.
This was as strong as I could get without taking the life of another. Instinct told me that this was not enough to match an old killer like Pýlicles. It had been some time since I had been a clear underdog. Maybe not since my days as a high school freshman. Even if a spider’s body had different weaknesses to a man’s, Pýlicles had a man’s mind and a man’s morality. He already showed me one of his weaknesses.
To fight on equal footing was the luxury of the strong.
“This is our limit,” I said to Squealer. “I’m going to find someone to kill. If you’re not in, I’ll drop you from the party.”
Squealer had yet to transform in a satisfying way. He still believed that he wasn’t worthy of being sentenced to this place. Baseless fear kept him in place and I was not a paragon of patience. My grace dwindled to its limit like an hourglass depleted of sand and he knew that I would not wait longer.
“Fine,” Squealer said, hustling to catch up to me. “But, I’m only going to kill the ones that are hostile to me first. It’s self-defense.”
“Whatever helps you stay sane,” I replied with a shrug as I followed the map back towards Tainaronopolis.