3/21/54

ALEXANDER GALDUR

My exercise finished, and even while sweating like a pig, I wished I could’ve just done it for the rest of the training. However, that wasn’t a choice as I had to get a grip of control over my magic. With an exasperated sigh, I let my weak knees go loose, collapsing to the ground into a sitting position. I took in a deep breath of air and closed my eyes, entering that world of magic in my mind. I saw the magic. Tense.

The dark magic was tense and despite the calls of its sibling, it looked on guard. It—somehow—faced me, watching warily as I mentally was taken aback.

Why was it already on guard; I haven’t even done anything yet.

The answer occurred to me almost as quickly as the question: it was me. We were one in the same. What I knew, it knew, and therefore, it knew my plan. It knew I wanted control. To control it. While my thoughts flew by me, the darkness only proceeded to get more on guard. A deep yet high-pitched hiss came from it. The shadowy form reared back, ready to rebel against my attempts at control.

I hesitantly reached a mental hand towards it. The magic readied back as I touched it and tried to ease it into calming down. It cautiously let me stroke it. As it slowly untensed, barely going from ready to attack to suspiciously allowing whatever was going on to go on, I started to use my magic. Panicking only slightly, the darkness calmed down as it drained away.

A dark tentacle formed underneath my shirt. Then, a thought occurred to me.

This wasn't an animal. I decided to treat it like a feral beast, coaxing it into letting me gain control over it. Trying to domesticate it. It knew, however, and for a moment, our consciences overlapped. It already knew what I was trying to do, and I just realized what its plan was. Retaliation.

The darkness, knowing it had been discovered, shot across my body, reaching through my sleeve, only stopping where the t-shirt ended. It wrapped around the concealed part of my body, coiling around my arm and pecs. It stopped, reaching the end of the sleeve, and as soon as it did, it ripped away. The skin tore, friction playing its role in the shadow’s plan. Red, raw skin revealed itself to the world, the protective layer of throw-away skin on the outside being torn away. Searing pain shot through me as I gasped in pain.

The breath had been stolen from my lungs with the pain being registered. My eyes shot open, tears welling up in them, leaking from my re-shut eyelids. My unharmed arm, the left, gripped my right side, but I pulled back in regret and pain. The hard grip I had placed on myself only went to aggravate the pain, touching my shirt to my wound.

The wound failed to spill blood, only barely revealing the tender and sensitive layer of raw flesh to the surface. The message made itself known to me, “Do not try to control me.” This was a warning, and if I continued on this route, I should expect more pain. I felt my legs weaken as the pain drew away my strength, forcing me into a crumpled pile of pained flesh.

After many shaky breaths, I got to the cross-legged sitting position I was in before — Something told me being a quivering pile of agony would draw attention, and like always, I did not want that attention. I unsteadily inhaled, trying to push away the pain I felt. Fine. If this was how the shadow wanted to play it, then I’d comply. I grabbed onto both of my magic, light and dark, and drew them out.

The light magic followed without a second thought, happy to help me with what I needed, but the darkness was surprised. Despite us sharing thoughts, it failed to realize that this would be how I responded to its rebellion.

The light magic was conjured in front of me, shining brightly enough that I could feel its heat. I had the darkness conjured in the middle of the floor right beneath the light. Normally, I’d be worried about it being seen, but with how much power I was putting into the light spell, something told me I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

The effort of trying to conjure the darkness immediately struck me. There weren’t any shadows there, so I was basically trying to create darkness. From what I’ve seen, in a complete opposite from my light magic, my specialization for darkness was manipulation, not creation, so when the effort hit me, it was something similar to when I tried to create a laser with my own ability.

The difficulty hit me like a freight train, pushing against my consciousness, and I nearly passed out from the initial wave of exertion. I cracked my eyes open, facing down away from the light, so I wouldn’t go blind. Even then, the reflection of the magic from the metal made me have to squint. Right below the light, in the very middle, however, was darker than the surroundings.

A smile cracked across my lips as I shoved even more power into the creation of darkness. As a pinprick in the very center of the spot, a shadow appeared. A tentacle smaller than an ant formed, and I felt myself go lightheaded. Darkness crawled in on the edges of my vision, not from the magic, but instead from the threat of passing out. I decided to end it there, so I wouldn’t have a repeat of the first day.

Promptly, both forms of magic disappeared, leaving what felt dark but was the normal amount of light in its place. I felt myself lose control of my body as I collapsed on the metal floor, my head making a gonging noise as it crashed into the floor below. I winced at the pain, but then felt myself much too tired to do anything besides that.

… Ow. Ow! FUCKING, OW!

It hurts so damn bad. This is a new form of agony. Not only did I feel like I was about to vomit from the magical exertion, but my skinned flesh was also screeching in pain. I could feel the points of injury, radiating flashing white-hot waves of pained heat through the rest of me. It was a coil, starting at my right pecs, wrapping around my right side, stopping in the middle of my bicep. It radiated out like some demonic form of dropping a stone in a lake. Ripples of torture made themselves known with the twitching of my body.

I moved my right arm slightly. Only very slightly so as to not create any additional pain. I wanted to get comfortable—as comfortable as someone who’s been skinned can be. I started to lower my arced back to the ground, planning to lay down comfortably on the nice, cool, metallic floor. Then, I felt my mistake. The back touched the floor, and the pressure—the contact—it was a new form of awful.

A scream tried to claw its way from my tightly-shut lips, and tears threatened to start running down my face. I slowly, carefully, tried to lift myself back up, trying to ignore the screaming pain in my head.

It hurts. I want this to end. It hurts. I want this to end. It hurts I want this to end it hurts I want this to end it hurts I want this to end.

Pain

My magic stirred, brought up by my subconscious believing danger existed where it had already passed. If the magic wasn’t already so weak in addition to being the cause of this, then I might not have been able to force it to settle down. However, it was weak, so with some struggling, I calmed it down.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

That… Ow.

I wallowed on the floor for a while longer, thoughts interrupted by pain. I waited for the tears that crashed against the back of my eyes to settle. After another while of just laying there, waiting for the pain to dissipate and my magic to regenerate, I finally got up. My magic had replenished, topping itself off, and I finally no longer felt like the room was spinning. Carefully lifting myself back to sitting, wincing the entire way with ragged breaths, I had gotten back up.

That could have gone better. It really, really could have. Better for both me and my dark magic. If I look at it, I can see it coiled up tightly, pained and scared. Maybe that will teach it to go against me. Maybe this time it won’t.

I prepared again, getting ready to plunge into the darkness inside, but just as I was about to, Trainer Masako yelled out over the noise of the trainees, “Alright, that’s it! We ain’t got any new trainees, so we’re just going straight into the martial arts!”

As she said that, the earthen walls started forming around me, separating me from the world. The same, dull, dirt-formed room had appeared around me, the checklist, the instructions clear as day… Wait, how was I seeing before? I hadn’t thought of it the yesterday, but now that I noticed it, there weren’t any lights. I looked around, and I saw dirt crumbling away, leaving the dust hanging in the air. I focused on the rays where the floating dust was most clear, and I saw a total of twenty cones of the illuminated particles, all stemming from the ceiling above.

Huh, question answered, cool. Well, guess that’s enough dilly dallying; I should get to boxing while suffering through excruciating pain. Go me~ yay.

I went to the next objective tiredly, sluggishly dragging my body behind me. It was there I saw “Both uppercuts.” Alright, an uppercut! I know this! I mean, I haven’t done it before, nor have I received proper training for it, but everyone’s heard of this! I have some familiarity with it, at the very least. The instruction wall changed, pieces of soil and stone shifting to form the next tutorial.

Here, it had a picture of a person in stance. Then, they went from that to crouching a little lower. Next, with their palm facing them, they quickly struck out and pulled back, their fist curving into an uppercut and firing vertically upwards. I could tell it was supposed to be a quick move because of the verbal portion of the wall. Above it all, it said, “Dominant uppercut.” I guess that’s what it meant by, “Both uppercuts.”

Alright, let’s do this!

OW!

I tried to throw the punch, but I felt my form fall apart, the pain from my wounds reminding me of my current state. I was exhausted and tired before, so why now—when I was injured—would I be doing better? I obviously wouldn’t, and my crumpled floor on the ground agrees.

It still hurts so much! Though, I think the pain’s gone down. Yeah… Yeah, it definitely has. I don’t think I would’ve healed that quickly, so my only guess is that the adrenaline rushing through me is helping. I think adrenaline does dampen pain felt, so that must be what’s keeping me going. Sadly, it isn’t enough because I am in excruciating pain.

This. Is. Hell.

I pushed myself up from the floor, pained the entire time as I got up into a sitting position. Again.

Let’s… try that again. I’m gonna regret it, but I want to be doing something while I’m here. I tried the attack one more time, falling to the ground once more and getting back up. This process repeated itself until the pain dulled. My nerves have basically said that it wasn’t worth conveying how much of a dumbass I was, so they—somehow—stopped. I was eventually able to do it after a few tries.

The pain was really fucking with my form. Though, besides that, I think I picked up on enough info to work through the process relatively easily. It would have been easy, but the trying, collapsing, and repeating process took up most of my time.

Broken from my thoughts, the wall shifted to reveal the next set of instructions. This one was called “Non-dominant uppercut.” I guess that means with my left arm then as it’s my non-dominant arm.

Here, the process was a little different. The beginning was the same: you go from your stance to crouching, but then, instead of throwing your dominant arm up, you’d twist your body heavily to your non-dominant side. Then, from there, you’d send out your arm in an uppercut. Maybe this was to help build up more force to compensate for using your weaker arm; pivoting from a spot—your body—to then send out your arm. By twisting your body, wouldn’t it speed up your arm which was further out. That might be why, but I don’t know physics. In the end, I can’t really say.

Either way, I failed quite a few times, a whole new pain shooting through me from different nerves because of the different muscles being used. I needed quite a bit of time to get use to it, but I eventually did. After a few more tries, I was able to send out a non-dominant uppercut that whatever was watching me had approved of. Now, I just had to repeat each. Fifty times. Plus, I felt dehydration already clawing at my brain.

After a few successful punches—and many more failures—I stopped, sat in a corner, and preserved my energy. This was hell. I needed a break. In addition, whatever is watching me is responding somehow, so maybe it would sense my desperate need for water. Seriously, my brain was fogged up and the edges of my vision started to go black.

Luckily, I didn’t have to stay in that situation for too long; the wall broke away, dropping four bottles this time. Whoopdee-fucking-doo. I get to do more damn exercise.

I laboriously pushed off the wall while using the it for support. I lethargically strode to the middle of the room, but thankfully, as a sign it was over, the walls began crumbling away—dirt and soil slipping through the cracks in the floor. It was over. Thank god. I had to do sparring. Fuck.

Coincidentally, just like last time, myself, Deimos, the muscular woman, and the blonde-haired girl were grouped together. In addition, Max was here this time as well; we shared a friendly wave to each other before it started. Again, just like last time, the blonde-haired bitch came right for me, beating me to the ground. It fucking hurts. Ow. Again.

At the very least, I won’t be doing too much moving with her coming after me.

MIYASATO MASAKO

That Lucas kid has been… interesting. First off, he’s an ignorant fool. Everyone knows to not fuck with magic too much. He did exactly that. Just thinking about it makes me want to assign quadruple exercises to him.

Second, though, he's just odd. He does magic for a short amount of time, and then, he exercises? Wasn’t he getting enough already? Even for a kid, that amount of magic is absolutely pitiful. Although you're not supposed to, most people use magic in everyday life, and therefore, increase their magic pools. The thing is, it doesn’t seem like the kid is just stopping; it seems like he’s actually running out of magic. That makes me really want to check out this kid’s past.

Third, fusion magic. Have I not lectured him enough? That can be real dangerous stuff if shit hits the fan. Thank fuck that Max kid’s magic is good for this, otherwise, I might’ve went down there and had to have both Max and Lucas start running laps. Hell, I’d even drag Deimos into it because of how much extra anger there was to go around. Though, while an awful idea, it’s one of the main things that makes him intriguing.

From now on, I think I’ll be setting them up as a little group: Sarah Knight, Lucas Greymore, Deimos Dust, Maximillian Wells, and Elizabeth Grant. Elizabeth is quite harsh towards Lucas, but I’m sure the kid can find a way out of it. In the case that he can’t, it’s his problem.