CHAPTER TWO [PART TWO]

Lhu's Liveship

103 Years Since the Citadel's Founding

Year of the Void-Scarring Talon, Month of the Egg.

“Wake up, Avatar! We have a busy day today.”

“Yesterday was busy. Maybe I can get a day to relax, and we can start training tomorrow.”

“Absolutely not. This is a new life for you. New opportunities! I refuse to let you slack. To let you succumb to your own laziness.”

“Laziness? I liked to blame a certain set of mental hurdles for my lack of productivity.”

“The only blame that will occur in this existence will be on me if I allow you to loiter around. You’re an avatar! That means Weaver believes that there’s some sort of great calamity at hand.”

“That great calamity being fear of annihilation. Its annihilation. And what do I care about that?”

“You’re indifferent to their plight. I won’t blame you. But I won’t accept that as reason enough to let you relax. I’ve come up with the perfect step-by-step plan to get you to peak capacity by the time you must return to the academy. We only have, including today, precisely…”, it’s tentacles raised up one after another as it counted, “seventeen days to get you ready. No time to waste. No days off. You must follow my plan to the letter. Any deviation will cause us to be off-track. Even now, we are losing the thread of my plot.”

I took a deep breath.

“So be it. What’s first?”

“First? What’s first? First, you will clean this entire liveship.”

“Sorry?”

“Is there something you don’t understand?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Do I look unserious to you?”

“I’m not good at reading your expression.”

“Oh. Well, this is my serious expression.”

“What would be your unserious expression?”

“I’m incapable of it. I always have a serious expression. Now, what made you think I was being unserious?”

“How is cleaning going to make me stronger?”

“You’re questioning me? Your mentor?”

“I think you’re making a fool out of me.”

“Absurd. That may be what you think is happening but you need to have faith that I’ve thoroughly thought through this entire training regiment. Everything I will be instructing you to do is absolutely necessary for you to become independent and save the world.”

“Hardly saving the world.”

“Weaver has clearly done nothing to motivate you to get stronger.”

“I would argue Weaver demotivated me.”

“Unsurprising. Weaver and their patterns. Probably believes you’ll simply fall into power. But that’s not how the real world works.”

“We’re not in the real world, are we?”

“It’s the real world for us now, Avatar. This is everything there is. Now, you may think my training methods eccentric, but that’s what it takes to be a mentor. Eccentricity. Odd training regimes. You’re an avatar, and that means you have to stand out from your peers. You need to excel as a freelancer, which means a training regime unlike any others.”

“Fine, Lhu. I’ll clean your liveship, on one condition: you promise there’s actually a point to this?”

“I promise.”

“And that point isn’t taking advantage of me to get your liveship cleaned?”

“I would never.”

“And-”

“Enough questions! Has any mentor ever had to deal with such impudence from their student before? I think not.”

“Alright, alright. Where are the clean-”

“Figure it out,” Lhu shouted.

“So rude.”

“So aggravating!” Lhu walked away.

No, I won’t bore you with the details of my cleaning escapades. They were rather mundane though they did offer me a chance to explore the liveship itself, which was quite robust. The rooms seemed countless, and four hours later, I felt I had barely made a dent in the task.

“Avatar, come sit. Eat!”

I arrived in the drab living room which was only a step or two away from the modest dining room. The food was unrecognizable, and writhing in a grotesque fashion. Though, if there was a means of writhing without being grotesque, I wouldn’t know of it.

“I’m vegan,” I said.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“In this world? Nonsense. What will you do with the monsters you kill? Leave them to rot? Ethics demand you use every part of its body, no?”

“I haven’t signed up to kill monsters. But if I had to, I guess I’d try to use every part of its body.”

“Think of this as a monster we had no choice but to kill, and thus, we need to make sure we don’t leave any of its remnants to waste. I assure you it tastes great. You don’t want to offend Chuchotte by rejecting what he’s prepared for you?”

I glanced at Chuchotte, but his face was hidden beneath a black mask. The black mask did not hide the eerie - no, threatening - feeling I got from him. I sat down and decided to eat.

“I’m glad you could be flexible, Avatar. Now, I have to be honest with you. I did not actually have a training regime planned. I recognize the frustration on your visage. Fear not, in the time you were pathetically attempting to clean this liveship, I instructed my friend Chuchotte here to come up with a proper regime. Chuchotte has taken inspiration from the training regimes of many other prominent freelancers, and we’ve come up with a suitable plan of action. Let me enumerate the vital points of this plan. Firstly, we will be giving you excessive weights. A classic tactic. You’ll naturally grow stronger by having to lug those weights around. Belt, ankle weights, wrist weights. Even your symbiote.”

“Does that actually work?”

“Why else would so many people do it? Because it’s cool? Okay, sure, that’s a part of it. But I’m certain it works. Besides, you’ll get a brilliant opportunity, when a fight gets tough, to throw away the weights. And as those weights kick up clouds of dust, or sand, or bricks, or whichever ground you happen to be standing on, all will be witness to the strength you had yet been hiding away. The pay off will be tremendous, I assure you. Awe and shock. Fear in your opponent’s eyes. And a sense of excitement for onlookers, at this sudden power-up of yours. Now, let’s move on to point number two. A lot of basic, repetitive exercises, but done to an extreme amount. Thousands of sit ups. Push ups! Running marathons daily! Climbing mountains. Thirty thousand feet tall mountains for that matter. No, sixty.”

“If it were that simple-”

“It is that simple! These are proven tactics, Avatar, stop being so skeptical. If you knew what worked, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we? You could simply train yourself. So you’ll listen, and you’ll listen well.”

“Okay. I suppose I’ll stow my objections, criticisms, and complaints for when you’ve finished. How many points are there?”

“That would be a spoiler. Thirdly! The Exaggerated Space Room! A room which can simulate different environments. We will take advantage of this in three ways. I call it the Three-Pronged Strategy. Prong number one: we will increase the gravity to push you to your limits.”

“The extra weights aren’t enough?”

“They would be enough for the ordinary freelancer, but we are trying to make you special, Avatar. Combining both is the optimal strategy. Prong number two: we will simulate extreme temperatures and climates to toughen up your body.”

“I suppose that makes sense, though it’s hardly a pleasing notion.”

“Prong number three: the Exaggerated Space Room will condense time allowing you to get a greater deal of training done in a shorter out-of-room timespan.”

“You actually have this Exaggerated Space Room on this liveship? It’s awfully convenient.”

“I face my share of villainous foes, and an Exaggerated Space Room is essential to make sure I’m up to the task of an over-matched enemy. Best you not tell anyone about it. It’s not exactly… legal.”

“Is there a reason?”

“The reason being the Union likes to lord its power over us. But I’ve never allowed anyone to tell me what I can or cannot do. It’s why I’ve been outlawed from the Union. Because I’m one of the few people willing to stand up and say no, I will not write a report on why there were seven-hundred and eighty-two casualties in my completion of this contract.”

I was beginning to wonder if Lhu might not be somehow a worse person than Burst. But that would be acknowledging that I had the potential to be a worse person than Burst, and I couldn’t accept that possibility. “Was there any other element to this training regime?”

“Yes. Well, I had a few other ideas, I’m still figuring out the proper order. I think we could also toss you into some sort of bottomless pit. Chuchotte knows of a few, he says.”

“And I assume you want me to fly my way out of there.”

“Don’t believe that’s something qhimphals are capable of. But I’m certain you’ll find a way to prevent your death.”

“How?”

“Desperation will kick in. Undoubtedly. You never hear about mentors tossing their students into bottomless pits and the students dying, do you?”

“I don’t think it’s something a mentor would advertise.”

“Au contraire, it would help build the mentor some legitimacy. It would be wiser to tell your student that dozens of their predecessors have died, thus instilling a sense of urgency and importance. If you feel too confident you’ll survive, the necessary desperation won’t occur. And should you fail, at least I won’t have to lie to my future students about the lethality of such a training technique. I’ll have you to use as an example. I may even record it, should you die. That way my future students know I’m not merely bluffing.”

“I’d like to opt out.”

“Ah, no choice, I’m afraid. I’ll simply toss you in whether you’re willing or unwilling. We kidnapped you, recall? You’re as much a hostage as you are a student.”

“You’re horrible.”

“That’s kind of you to say.”

“You’re not really serious, are you?”

“Still unfamiliar with my serious expression?”

“If your expression is always serious, then it’s possible you sport one while being unserious.”

“That’s a fair point. In this particular moment, my expression and my state of being are in harmony. I am serious, Avatar.”

Chuchotte snorted.

“Now, I wasn’t finished just yet. Chuchotte here, has insisted on assisting your education personally beyond simply setting up the action. You see, Chuchotte is quite affectionate towards me, and that affection has transferred onto you, seeing as you are my baby-clone-brother. He could not find the appropriate word, alas, but I think baby-clone-brother is sufficient enough. Chuchotte will train you in the only way he knows. He will mercilessly beat you until you’re capable of putting up some sort of modest fight. Even with the Exaggerated Space Room, that could still take some time, so we may come up with a simpler objective. Maybe Chuchotte will hold a ball you must take from him, or some bells. I suggested that simply landing a strike on you should be sufficient, but Chuchotte felt that would deprive him of the opportunity to brutally pummel you into a pulp, and I wouldn’t deprive him of that. He’s a sadist you see, that’s what he derives his pleasure from.”

Chuchotte stared in my direction. He had goggles, black ones, over his eyes, but his face was pointed my way. I pointedly looked at Lhu instead.

“Don’t worry. You’ll probably come to enjoy the pain. It would be best you do, given you’ll be undergoing a hellacious amount of suffering. I had a few other ideas beyond the ones Chuchotte put down. Put a bounty on you, so you’re forced to figure out how to survive against an onslaught of assassins. Toss you into a monster-filled swamp. Trap you in a rift.”

“This training regime seems rather haphazard.”

“These are proven methods, Avatar.”

“I’d like to meet one person who has undergone this training and could validate it.”

“They’re proven independently of each other. But we’re not trying to make you any one person, we need to make you the person, you follow? Thus, we have to combine all the trainings. It makes perfect sense. By the end of it, should you still be alive, you’ll see it was worth it.”

“Should I still be alive…”

“Have faith in the pattern, Avatar! If you’re meant to die, you would have always died. If you’re meant to live, you’ll live.”

“Tthe world doesn’t work like that.”

“I agree but tell that to Weaver. In any case, it’s like I said before, you have little choice in the matter. You’re a hostage. You’ll do as your told. Any questions before we begin?”

“You seemed opposed to questions.”

“I am, I was just being considerate, since I’ll stop being such once we begin.”

“I’d really rather not die.”

“Oh, don’t worry. We’ll pump you full of potions to keep you going. And, if worse comes to worse, I’ll feed you one of my tentacles. Last resort only. I don’t like chopping them off. The only way you could possibly die is if I was careless or neglectful. And I am neither.”

Nothing Lhu had done or said so far convinced me of that.