Tired. Tired tired tired tired tired. Tired.

Thoughts. Thoughts. Thoughts. Thoughts. They come. And go. Like rain in the desert.

Blood, unending amounts of blood. Blood on the ground dries, my blood. It coats my body, coats the floor, the ground, the branches above, the walls. It grows dark as it dries, layers and layers of it begin to form. Blood, so much blood. But my focus is never on them.

I can feel it, always. The unrelenting power bearing down on me. The sharpness of splitting air, the whistling sounds of something sharp cutting through air, the feeling of my skin parting, my muscles parting, my bones parting. Even my wings being torn apart to shreds. I grow weaker and weaker and weaker. Dying.

Dying.

I’m dying. I’m dying. And I die. And then I’m awake, again. Sometimes on my feet, sometimes on the ground, sometimes with more wounds, sometimes with less. Sometimes my tail is healed, sometimes it is not. My exhaustion grows and the absolute sense of weakness permeates throughout every inch of me. It only gets worse over time. The exhaustion feels like it has become a physical entity, cramming itself through my brain. Sleep only comes through passing out and any attempt to ‘let go’, to fall asleep, is impossible. I can feel the threat of death cutting through me. It’d be easier to sleep inside a raging inferno while you burned alive.

The worst part… is the growing sensation and knowledge that I am going to die. Even more than the exhaustion, the weakness, the bloodloss, the amputation, the constant fighting… it’s as if death is getting closer and closer and closer, but just never reaching it. Like I’m growing closer to an infinite chasm, crossing a distance that’s so small that breathing too hard would shatter it. And then it would finally be over, for good. This… sensation of death… it overtakes me. It causes me to go crazy. Insane. An animal, a creature, was never meant to die for this long. To get so close to death for so long. To feel adrenaline and threat to their very survival for so long.

All of my instincts have been burnt out, over and over again, constantly in such a high pressure situation. Combined with the exhaustion… I begin to hallucinate. I see squirrels with two tails and four eyes haunting my vision, Riary laughing like a maniac while she grills me alive, Xilvia crushing my dick under her foot- wait, that last one might be real. Even my Power Gauge begins to malfunction. Break. Since even before Xilvia had attacked… she’d hid so much. I could sense it, see it, feel it, but not know it. Not like with the rest of her. Whatever her depths were… they were complicated. Not like Happy, but complicated.

So her every move, her every attack, her every ounce of power, felt like it was veiled in thick shadows. With my Power Gauge beginning to falter… it got even harder to dodge, attack, block, fight. It felt like death was approaching, for real. Every time I passed out now, every time my eyes closed, my blood would explode in fury, my heart rate would skyrocket, my fear would sunder and even my exhaustion would be pushed back for a moment.

‘I don’t want to die!’ My survival instincts screamed.

Again. And again. And again.

‘I don’t want to die!’

‘I don’t want to die!’

‘I don’t want to die!’

“I DON’T WANT TO DIE!” A roar escapes through me.

Something connects, something changes.

Then… darkness.

*****

Xilvia was shaking. With what, she didn’t quite know. It had been a week now. She had been training Derek relentlessly. Pushing him to his limits and past. His performance at the start wasn’t bad per se. It was just new to the point of painful. No technique, no finesse, no training. Moved like a human. Weak resilience, good instincts, good perception. Has an Ability that let him actively fight better and react better than he should.

There was a lot to learn and a lot to teach. She started with refinement. One of the most important lessons one could learn, was how to push through. How to keep going, even after you’d lost all four limbs, your tail, your teeth, your wings, and more. No matter the race or species, knowing how to keep going even at the brink of death is invaluable. Many of her students hate and fear her… but many of them remained alive. She was beyond happy working with Derek. Sure, he was green as grass despite him having impressive raw physique. But the pain immunity massively increased her training efficiency. He seemed to be focused on speed and sharpness in particular. The way he moved, he never quite went for big heavy hitting, single target attacks. It was all slashes and stabs. That only showed more as he grew too weak and tired to think and moved almost entirely on ingrained instincts. That let you see the real character of someone’s fighting style.

The plan had been simple, push him to the absolute brink and keep him on it for a month. Maybe three months. It was hard to gauge how much she could push before someone’s mind and spirit would shatter, but she had experience. She had more than enough healing powder saved up, meant to heal her own injuries. It was expensive but as you got stronger, money began to lose meaning. Spending a decade’s worth of resources to train such an interesting student meant nothing to her.

But after two days… she had begun to grow absolutely shocked. She had been in tens of thousands of battles. She was eighty three and her life had been full of strife and fighting since day one. She had fought the full ten years during The Great Demon War and had only retired to become a trainer afterward. It was only recently she had finally settled down and moved to Prinsk, less than a decade ago, to relax for once in her life. The first demon to join a Heroes party had sounded more than interesting enough, especially when Kasandra, well known and respected training manager had approached her for it. After all, her ‘title’ of ‘Training Instructor from Hell itself’ wasn’t for nothing. It was said even demons ran away in fear when hearing her name.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

She smirked at that last bit.

So she had been more than happy to focus her temporary retirement on teaching someone that would otherwise probably die. It’s not like she had a lot of better things to do and she did love ‘teaching’. The looks on Derek’s face… they would satisfy her for probably centuries to come. She would remember that look of shock, fear, and worry for centuries most likely, along with the rest of of her students. The lack of pain was a bit sour but it was also novel to be able to get to work so fast and so easily, so it more than made up for it.

And then two days had passed and Derek had improved. In every single metric, Derek improved. Faster, harder, better. He dodged more easily, he blocked more easily, his speed increased, it was a baffling level of increase, as if she had somehow already trained him for a month. Still, she kept it up. Sleep had become… more optional, at B-rank for her. Even before, she was a lifetime soldier and fighter, she had had to learn to forgo sleep for weeks at C-rank. So she trained and healed and observed.

On the third day, she couldn’t ignore it any longer. Derek… was talented. No, not just talented. Talented. He had, potential. She would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to see it. No, she’d also need to be dead. Derek was improving dozens of times faster than anyone she had ever trained. Even the best student she had ever taught, he was clearly learning triple his speed. And the most shocking thing of all… this wasn’t that type of training. This wasn’t the type of training someone was meant to ‘learn’ from, beyond how to survive, get used to exhaustion, bloodloss, and dying, and how to push on despite it all. Derek simply remaining standing after a month, unbroken, would have put him in the top hundred people she had ever taught. Him actually learning though?

She felt cold sweat begin to pour down her body as she made a connection.

‘S-Rank potential!’

‘Wait, three?! This Hero party has three members with S-rank potential?! And one of them is demon?!’

She began to immediately increase her training. She ramped the difficulty up. It was the same as if the last two days of improvement had never happened, the same level of injuries occurring. Pushing too hard was bad but… if people learned that three S-Rank potential were in C-rank, in one kingdom, and one of them was a demon?

‘I was exaggerating when I said an A-Rank might really go out of his way to kill you but…’

Four days, five days. Shock had given way to acceptance and excitement. After only five days… Derek could probably crush at least three of his past self. Whatever his Ability was, it seemed to act as 360 degree vision and let him react to her movement almost before she made them. She suspected if she was slower, he would react before she made them. It finally clicked after five days.

‘Danger sense. But not a simple version of it. Is he… seeing all danger around him? Before someone even ‘causes’ it?’

That at least partially encroached on the area of future telling but some quick experiments put her thoughts to rest.

‘So, he can sense danger the moment it appears, even if that’s just the thoughts of someone. Thoughts travel faster than the body, so it gives the illusion of it. The moment someone ‘thinks’ to attack him with their arm, he knows the arm will attack before it moves. Same with the pebbles I threw and even my fans. A 360 degree field of danger sense then?’

That would explain part of the improvement. He was constantly viewing her entire form, body, and movements because she was constantly a danger to him. Already, hints of her own form could be seen in his, as he copied her.

Xilvia’s thoughts ran at a kilometer a minute. With Derek’s potential and this Power boosting it, she nearly stumbled in shock as she compared him to everyone else she had fought and trained. Her combat experience even put most B-ranks to shame. She had seen countless dead and countless rise, only to then die. Something cold slivered into her braing and mind, something she had wanted to ignore but knew probably from day one. Her eyes turned sharp and cold, assessing her new student.

‘With his potential and his power… his speed might actually reach those of the legendary True Heroes.’

This was serious. That… it wasn’t as if it was impossible. The world was large, larger than anyone knew, and it had been thousands and thousands of years. Stars among stars, miracles among miracles, had arisen before. Every S-Rank human was either a monster to out speed their aging, or had found a way to extend their lifespan. Usually by reaching B and A rank quick enough, but even then. So yes… some people with True Hero potential had shown up before.

They almost always died.

S-Rank potential was one thing, they were maybes. Less than a percent of them made it there. Far less than a percent. Some even just lingered at A rank till aging caught up to them, regardless of anything else. But True Hero potential was something else. They were basically guaranteed to become S rank. Seeing even one every thousand years was considered rare.

‘...And one just stumbled into my courtyard.’

Xilvia felt a headache brewing. Her decision right now would impact everyone’s lives. If Derek grew to his full power and joined the demons… or the humans… everything would change. War could restart again. A single S rank meant that much, especially when it was a demon. She knew that very, very well. Demons were stronger at the same rank, in nearly every way. Especially in the ones they focused on.

She could kill him, right here and now. But she’d never do that. He was her student. She’d, literally, destroy an entire territory before taking the life of one of her pupils. Millions, even billions, of lives meant nothing to even a single one her of students.

Finally, a week passed, and something new had occurred. Xilvia had reacted immediately, knocking Derek out right after. She looked down at her hand, shaking, as she saw a small cut. Her natural regeneration was already sealing it back up and in moments, it was gone like it had never been but…

A week. A week from no training to brutality and he had already reached the point where he could catch her unaware if she went too casually. How many C-ranks could boast that? Only those days away from B-rank. She looked down at Derek and frowned.

But soon… it faded away. Xilvia’s true feelings and desires came out. Worry, discipline, focus, they were core parts of her… but not thee core part of her. Her face morphed into a demonic grin and her eyes lit up and her tongue licked her lips. If Derek saw her right now, he’d imagine she wanted to fuck him and them eat him.

“Oh I’m gonna love this so much. I’m gonna make you a Monster.”