“I held my fucking tongue.” I bragged. “Because I trust that a respectable chickyboo- sorry, woman- like yourself would never drag a kind, engaged noble girl into any disreputable activities.”
“I’m very proud of you, Bradley.” Stella deadpanned. “And no, I’m not.”
I breathed out. I had no idea if it was true, but it was a relief to hear.
“You actually thought that I was?” she huffed indignantly.
“I didn’t know.”
“Well, you do now!”
Stella turned her attention back to her outstretched palms. She’d been standing there fruitlessly like a larping middle schooler for at least an hour now, trying to conjure ice without the knife. Her missiles had gradually been growing larger and larger, but I could tell she wouldn’t be satisfied until she could do it without any kind of crutch.
“Why was Allison crying in the cafeteria this morning?” I asked.
“Bradley!” she snapped.
I must have really set her off this time, because suddenly, out of absolutely nothing, a familiar pale blue light emanated from her palms, and a tiny teardrop-shaped icicle materialized! Stella yelled in triumph, smashing it to the ground. I couldn’t believe it - not only was she stronger than me, she was also improving at a faster rate.
I grunted and went back to my pull-ups: a spare wooden axle mounted between a couple of racks. It wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done. Sweating profusely, I eked out my fifth rep, dropping to the floor in exhaustion. Not only did I suck… my progress had already started to taper off. It was the same story with the knife - almost as if my muscles were reaching their genetic limit, less than half a year into training!
Shouldn’t this body still be going through puberty or something?
Maybe I need more motivation…
Back on Earth, my motivation came from a bottle. Nothing crazy, just a little powdered caffeine, but you wouldn’t have guessed it just looking that the label:
FORBIDDEN LABS PRESENTS....
METHAMPHETACRACK
SPED-UP STRENGTH
I CAN’T FEEL MY FACE
SCHEDULE 1 PUMPS
AND I LOVE IT
FORTIFIED WITH A PROPRIETARY BLEND OF TEMPORARILY-LEGAL STIMULANTS AND THIRTY TIMES THE DAILY RECOMMENDED DOSE OF VITAMIN B12
SOUR PATCH KIDZ FLAVORED
I swear, the whole preworkout industry was founded by drug dealers.
I looked over again at Stella. Her back was turned to me, but I could see that she’d managed to repeat her feat a couple more times.
Guess she won’t need to come here any more… will I see her again? I can’t let it end like this…
“Hey Stella, I’m sorry.” I said.
“For what?” she answered curtly.
“I didn’t mean for that to come across as an accusation, and I’m sorry that you took it as one. I was just concerned about a friend.”
Stella’s face softened a bit. “It’s okay. I wasn’t that upset, really.”
Could’ve fooled me.
“I heard you’ve been telling Arrabella about Earth. What kind of stuff did you talk about?”
“Oh, mostly just bragging about how great everything was! It’s fun making her jealous.”
“What was so great about it?” I asked, confused. Stella looked at me like I was an idiot.
“Everything!” she all but yelled. “You could get around without walking, talk to all your friends even if they weren’t in front of you, eat whatever food you wanted… what’s not to love?”
“Uhhh… a couple things.”
“Oh that’s right! You were a miserable gymcel. Well, if you’d showered every once in a while, maybe you would have had a better time.”
“That’s so reductive!”
“I’m just saying! Writhing around on the ground all day makes you smell bad!”
“I wasn’t writhing, I told you! They’re called Turkish Get-Ups, and they’re great if you’ve only got kettlebells. And I bathe every time I exercise!”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
“That’s great, Bradley! The next step after showering is to go outside - did you do that?”
“You don’t know how hard it is for guys! You’ve got no idea!” I said. We weren’t shouting, but we were definitely going at it. You could build a dam and generate power from the condescension that was flowing from this chick.
“It’s hard for guys to go outside?” she asked skeptically.
“No, I mean your freaking standards! What’s the point of going outside if girls only want a seven foot tall guy making seven figures and seven-pack abs!? If I had that many sevens I’d go to a casino and cash out!”
“What are you even talking about?” Stella asked, dumbfounded.
“You heard me.”
“Yeah, and it made no sense. My standards aren’t like that at all! I just want a nice guy who cares about me and treats me well! If you’d listened to any women ever, you’d hear something similar.”
“They’re all lying.”
Stella laughed. “Prove it.”
“Easy!” I pounced. “You only pay attention to Burt. Why not go for a guy who isn’t taken?”
“Like you, right?” Stella sneered. “I’ve met guys like you before. Selfish. only out for yourself. Not afraid to break up a relationship if it gives you an opening.”
How do I keep fucking this up!?!?!?
In a weird way though, it was refreshing how straightforward Stella was being. Normally, girls don’t speak their mind like this, because if the confrontation turned physical, they would just… lose. I wasn’t really angry with her though, I swear. I was just worked up.
“I told you already!” I not-shouted. “If I was interested in you, I wouldn’t be saying any of this shit! I’d just shut up with the bullshit and tell you that you’re pretty and smart, and that I just want to put you up on a pedestal and worship you and pay for your travel expenses for the rest of my life, till death or bankruptcy do we part!”
Stella laughed even harder at that one. “See? If you’d just opened with that, I might have fallen for you.”
“You want all ten digits of my social security number, or just the last four?”
“Four first… I can get the other six after I meet your family.”
“You are everything that was wrong with Earth.”
Stella full-on cackled like a witch, as if to say yeah - and what are you going to do about it?
I’ll admit it. Something about that laugh really pissed me off. So I decided to take a page from Stella’s book. I raised my palms and pushed outward. First, there was nothing. But then… a familiar weight began to push back, more powerful than I’d ever remembered. Try as I might, I wasn’t going to defeat it today.
But some day…
----------------------------------------
On a less inspiring note, it’s time to admit what had been happening in the Coliseum this whole time. We’d been cycling through the four combat disciplines. As a refresher, let’s review all of them:
1. Short Arms - the one where Burt whacks me with a sword.
2. Long Arms - the one where Burt pokes me with a spear.
3. Archery - my glorious time of zen and peace where I shoot at targets and try to forget about…
4. Unarmed - the one where Burt beats the shit out of me.
I guess I should mention that we wore armor against the weapons, and that they were all blunted, so Sylvana only had to clean up a bunch of bruises at the end of training. Usually.
Oh, and every training session ended with running laps around the Coliseum. I tried to tell Ms. Brooks that cardio kills gainz, but she’d responded that lack of cardio kills adventurers.
So, I reluctantly followed her advice, because I respected her. After all, her class was turning out to be extremely useful. We covered all kinds of survival skills, geography, flora, fauna… Remember how I said I didn’t know how to start a fire earlier? Ms. Brooks changed that.
We even spent some time learning knots - which sounded boring as hell… until I realized that I could use some of the knots to fashion a rope belt for weighted chin-ups and pull-ups! Thanks for the gainz, Ms. B!
All caught up? Great…
On this particular day, Burt was-
*WHAM!*
The shield bashed into my helmet like a… really fast-moving shield. Sorry, it’s tough to come up with flavorful similes when your head is ringing like a fucking alarm clock…
I stand corrected… maybe the damage isn’t permanent 😀
Lmao you can type emojis? Lolololol
🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆
My not-unpleasant stupor was abruptly shattered by a familiar, lovely sensation. For a moment, I was floating on fluffy cotton candy clouds, skipping across rainbows without a care in the world, when suddenly, the clouds broke and I started to fall - shooting down through the sky as pink bands encircled me. Then, just as the ground rushed forward to deliver the ultimate K.O. - I woke up.
Sylvana was kneeling down over me, as per usual. The rest of the class was still practicing away… which meant that I’d be expected to rejoin them. I groaned involuntarily.
“Can you just… hit me with the juice one more time?” I feened.
“Sure! I’m in Unarmed training today.” Sylvana smiled. Then she smacked me in the face.
“AAAAH!” I howled as the insane bitch laughed.
“Alright, alright, one more time.” she said, putting her hands on my cheeks. The amazing feeling returned, just…
“Too damn strong! I almost stopped breathing again!” I gasped. “Why do you keep doing this to me!? It can’t be easy for you to blast away like that, aren’t you supposed to conserve energy or some shit!?”
“I am! I always do!” Sylvana retorted haughtily. “It’s not like I’m going out of my way to heal you super powerfully or anything!”
“Yeah! I believe you! You don’t need to convince me that you despise me! So why then?”
“Look - whenever I heal a patient, I always use a ‘test pulse’ of healing power to get an idea of how much energy I’ll need to use to heal them. It’s important to save energy, because if I don’t, it could cost somebody’s life!”
“Great, so just use this ‘test pulse’! Problem solved!”
“I have been!” Sylvana almost wept, exasperated. “That’s all I’ve been giving you - the least amount of power that I can possibly produce! I don’t know how you keep healing this well! It’s unreal! I’ve never seen anything like it! Bradley… are you sure you’re human?”
I thought for a moment.
“I mean… I look human. I quack like a human.” I deftly surmised.
“Bradley, Sylvana!” called an instructor. Reluctantly, we parted ways.
“Hey Bradley.” Sylvana said, just within earshot.
“Yeah?” I answered, turning my head.
“By the way… I don’t really despise you.”
I was shocked. It was the nicest thing a girl had said to me in a long time. I was gonna stay up all night thinking about this beautiful elven girl with the lovely pink hair.
“I think… ‘dislike’ is a better word.” the bitch formerly referred to as ‘Sylvana’ prattled unnecessarily.
“Y-you too…” I muttered, turning back to my group, where fate awaited me with outstretched, T-posing arms. And a stupid fucking grin to go with his stupid fucking face.
It’s fine. I can do this.
I stepped forward and gripped my shortsword, ready to take my licks.
I would have stopped these bullshit training sessions long ago… if my skills hadn’t been seriously improving.
But they had been. Good. I was gonna need them soon.
Weeks came and went. Winter evaporated, and spring fell from the skies, in the form of heavy rains that promised a rich harvest. For the adventuring students, though, there was only one crop that we were interested in.
And finally, the time had come to reap it.
The killing field was officially opened for business.