{子鬼殺し物語 - Kenichiro Suehiro}

Mother and father, please forgive my cowardness. I swear I never would've thought I was that unready for the outside world. I'm sorry. If I could go back in time and redo my mistakes, I would not press Father to take me out hunting. Perhaps I've been selfishly thinking you're all dead when maybe you're not.

The light of life in my eyes grows weaker with each passing day of the same torturous routine, and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm growing thinner and weaker over time as I'm malnourished by the troops. Yet I cannot accept my fate to die in this hole. I cannot take it. Who will tell my tale if I die? Nobody will.

I have to make it out of this hole. I've got to survive until this "master" arrives. I've got to prove my worth in order not to die. [Louder than usual whiplash] "UUUUHHGHH!!!" A painful whiplash soon wakes me up to my reality as if I wasn't aware of it already.

"You seem to be naive as to why you're treated so poorly by everyone here, so allow me to explain a little, you freak." The guard holding the whiplash condescendingly says while getting their face awfully close to my bloodied one.

"I assume you were taken from your home at an early age, so you probably don't know, but your race commits crimes against humanity all the time." The man says as his right hand grabs my head up by my hair, hurting me again since he isn't precisely 'gentle.'

"Why must I pay the price for them?" I try to estate my claim with him, but this only pisses the guard off for some reason causing him to restart his whiplashing with even more anger than before.

"Why?! You dare ask why?! Compared to the things your race does to ours, this is but a tame revenge! You deserve all of this! PAY! PAY FOR YOUR CRIMES YOU AWFUL CREATURE! You were a mistake created by the devil!" The lashing continues over and over again until the man finally tires himself out, leaving me to bleed out alone once more.

A few hours go by, and another guard comes in, but this one does not pick the whiplash but a saw and a pair of pliers, which he then uses on my feet and hands. The guards are not stupid, and some of them possess healing magic powerful enough to let them do what comes next.

"Please don't do it! I beg you! Please wait! AHHHHHH!!!!!" The guard pays me little to no attention as he viciously saws off my fingers one by one. All I can do is sit there and take it. All I can do is cry and beg for mercy, which doesn't seem to do anything else than arouse them even more.

The man starts by the fingers in my feet, cutting off every single one with eager determination. Blood gushes out of my freshly cut fingers while the pain almost knocks me out in a second, and then a single voice appears in the back of my mind.

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[Proficiency has reached the required level. Unlocked skill {Pain mitigation level 1}]

The voice from before speaks as I realize something with it. I guess one good thing about this experience is this little bit of information. I can obtain skills without spending skill points. So, if I keep enduring this pain, will I be able to grow this Skill? I don't know.

"Heal." That's the only word that leaves the man's mouth, and just like that, my fingers are all back to normal in the blink of an eye, but my relief doesn't last very long as he now comes for my hands not just my fingers but both of my hands. He grabs my right hand tightly and begins to cut it off as I scream in pain the whole time.

"Crying and screaming! I do not like it! Stop crying!" Suddenly, the man reaches out for my mouth with his left hand and shuts me up in a second, pressing his hand hard against my face. It feels almost like he could crush my head with his hand, to be honest. "Much better! Please, no tears. They're a waste of good suffering."

Those words and the tone of his voice are different from everyone else's. He is a complete psychopath! He doesn't give a damn about anyone else but himself. He is not even enjoying toying with me! He's just doing it because he was bored?!

"Heal," He says once more after cutting both of my hands, which, of course, heals my hands to 100%. I breathe a sigh of relief as I look up and think that the man is about to leave the room, but I'm even more horrified about what he will come up with next. The man looks around the instrument table until he grabs a sharp, pointy knife like a precision cutter.

"Time for research. Please don't cry or move harshly." Says the guy as he slowly walks back toward me, looking awfully a whole lot toward my stomach. Wait a minute! Research!? Don't move or scream!? Wait! Don't tell me he is! UUUGGHHHHH!!!

A sudden cut in my belly soon sends me into shock as I look down there just to see a big deep cut with the guy not giving a damn about it. Instead, the guard simply looks concerned as his knife cuts more and more until my stomach and intestines are all exposed.

I can't even process the pain anymore as the mere shock blocks it from my mind. The feeling of pain soon returns, however, when the guard puts his hand inside my abdomen, causing me to have physical spasms as he tries to hold me in place with his hand moving all over the place.

"So goblins also have kidneys, livers, and all these blood vessels. Interesting data I must collect." Those are the last words I heard as the insufferable pain knocked me out cold, finally ending my suffering forever, I hoped.

Even my dreams have become nothing but a void of darkness, an emptiness of nothing that consumes my soul. Soon, my consciousness falls inside my dream into an even deeper hole where I can hear that all too familiar voice speaking repeatedly.

"Proficiency has reached the required level; Proficiency has reached the required level, Proficiency has, please stop it. It-it hurts." A woman with a feathery godly body talks as she looks straight toward me with her death eyes devoid of any signs of life left in her, but then she stops and goes back to her routine.

"Proficiency has reached the required level, and proficiency has reached the required level."

[Proficiency has reached the required level, Skill {Pain mitigation level 1 has become level 2}]