"It's always do this Jacob, do that Jacob, clean my shoes, gather firewood, stay on guard, the first turn is mine, check out what's making the fucking mountain shake and don't bother showing your face until you're done"
A rugged man with murky brown eyes and a clean shaved head was walking one a steep mountain path, mumbling to himself.
"All because I fucked up that one time. How could I fucking know that the elf knew magic? You let the captain whore die once and suddenly you become the company lackey. "
The man kicked a rock, and fell down, as the mountain shook while he was on one leg. Sprawled on the ground, the man looked at the sky and took a deep sigh.
"Come on man, that's not like you. You bled, you fought your way up to the top and you are still one of the most valuable combatants around. I will rise once again, and that weak son of a bitch Gregory will learn what means to fuck with Jacob Mores"
Jacob's eyes steeled as he tough about the new toy of Priscilla, one of his company lieutenant and technically one of his colleagues, since they had the same rank before the accident. Since that day everyone started avoiding him, treating him differently. But no one gave him the same amount of disrespect as the little shit.
The fucking scout, with his blonde hair, green eyes and weak, feminine body. He would have died the first night out, if not for Priss, and now, the little bastard took the chance to feel superior to someone, confident nothing would happen to him.
He couldn't retaliate, as he was a strike away from a visit to the Room. No one wanted to go to the Room. The man shivered and started to get up.
Jacob's head struck the ground, as another booming noise, followed by a powerful vibration, shook the mountain.
"Fuck this one was powerful. What the hell is happening in this forsaken shithole? "
Getting up, he started to make his way up the path, sometimes wobbling on his feet as the pounding continued, rhythmical and methodic.
It was like someone took a giant hammer and swang it repeatedly on the rocky chain.
Adjusting the sword on his hips, the man kept going, sometimes grumbling, sometime cursing, his face twisted by rage, annoyance, and hopelessness.
He almost hoped he would find nothing. The captain was going to be pretty pissed at him, but anything that was happening here wasn't natural, and Jacob was pretty sure he wouldn't like to get an answer to the question: Who the fuck is jackhammering the entire Emerald Peak?.
Priss assured no creature of renown had come from the forest, and Trevor didn't detect anything coming from either side of the mountain chain. But the shaking had started, kept going and each day it grew stronger and stronger. Something wasn't right, and he was the man supposed to find out why.
He just couldn't. He fucking couldn't. It had been like a week since he started to circle the peak, and while on the west side the tremor was more pronounced, nothing pointed out to what the cause could be.
So each day, he just started to trek towards that particular side, sit down on a green rock with some strange symbols in a clearing that he found, halfway between the top and the base of the peak, and wait. By that point in time, he was sure that the answer would present itself, as the round clearing vibrated like a drum each time the booming noise presented itself.
The other sides were still affected, but the rocks around his small base had started to crumble to the rhythm.
Looking ahead, he sighed again. He reached his destination. With a final breath, he sat down, took a metallic black water bottle from his pack, and gulped down the heavenly fluid inside. Damn it was hot.
For all the tension, the fear, and the fatigue, he couldn't help but take in the sight in front of his eyes. That clearing in particular was one of the more visually striking viewpoints in the whole peak. Go too high, and clouds were all you could see, too low, and the Everwoods sequoias would block your sight.
Damn tall trees, some higher than four hundred meters. Home to some of the fiercest beast on the southern side of Gehenna , nothing would bother the few that dared to reach the mountain peaks. The perfect home for people who had strength, but had stronger enemies.
Daydreaming, the man looked at the crown of the trees below him. A dark green forest spread as far as the eye could see, the clear blue sky hosted MajorRed, the great sun screaming his hateful song on the skin of Jacob. Many times he had seen little Yig, the tallest and oldest tree in the forest, but the four miles high giant lifeform still managed to impress him.
It's name came from some of the miths found in the Source, and since only the giant darkwood oak from the elven shrine could have the name Yggradisl, they settled down on a nickname for their personal natural marvel.
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Sipping from his water bottle, the man had a rough awakening from his daydreaming when a rock the size of a watermelon struck him on the back of his head.
The force of the blow pushed the man towards the edge of the clearing, towards the ten miles and yet very short journey to the ground below him. Windmilling his arms, Jacob managed to regain his poise, altered his fall, and with a thump collapsed on his back. Still high on adrenaline, the pain took a few moments to reach him, but when it did a groan escaped his lips.
Emptying the cold water on his nape, the man turned around, to look at who dared to try and ambush him.
The scene he got startled him more than any aggressor could. The mountainside was erupting, rocks were being dislodged at the same rhythm as the thumping and the wall of his little clearing was expanding each time the peak shook.
He dodged a particularly large boulder that was coming straight for him by jumping to the side, punched another stone roughly as big as the one that hit him on the head, and finally took the memo and started to run towards the path he came from. Whatever it was coming from the mountain, he wouldn't stand right in front of it.
The wall started to play a strange melody, a mixture of gongs, the screams of an overloaded winch threatening to break down, and the rocks hitting each other with grovely notes. Then silence came, followed by three light knocks, compared to all that came before, like a man politely asking to be let in at a door.
And the mountain burst apart, a rectangular section of rock ejecting from the side like a giant door kicked away from his hinges at spectacular speed.
Once the following cloud of dust settled down, the higher eyes went wide.
Two crumpled sheets of dark blue metal stood at the sides of a humanoid figure, sheared apart by tremendous strength.
The hole in the mountainside was deep, and the man absentmindedly noticed that he couldn't see where the metallic gleam ended inside the dark fissure.
His focus was on the humanoid figure, still half-hidden by the rocky particles in the air.
His eyes, already wide as plates, became saucers as the culprit revealed himself.
A man of indiscernible age came out of the crevice, his youthful face marred by some wrinkles around the eyes, and on his forehead, a short crop top of silver hair on his head paired with a snow-white long beard. A blood-red jacket, sleeves rolled up was accompanied by a black waistcoat and his suit was complete with black pants, dark maroon leathery shoes, and blood-red socks.
Jacob looked at the gentleman that just pulled out of the mountain, his thoughts making way to his lips, faster than he could control them.
"What the flying bag of fucks?"
The man patted his waistcoat, dusting himself off, and smiled brightly, showing his shiny teeth at the stunned poor sod in front of him.
"Ah, finally out. Hello, young man, may I ask where I find myself in this splendid, sunny, refreshing day?"
Vincent Roy Salazar had passed his crucible.
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The mithril broke under the man's punches. Eight months later the black gold gave way. Six months for the adamantium, four for the azure chrome, then two months more before reaching bedrock steel, and one for dragonite. Elemental metalcore took two more months, the hard bastard, and gnomemarrow was another difficult adversary giving way only after four months.
He upped his conditioning, starting to break his hands on the orichalcum once a week, always making sure to be as durable as he was strong. The time in the gravity chamber passed quickly, and soon he was lifting heavy weights at fifty times the gravity.
Once his hands stopped breaking he found himself at seventy-five times the gravity, able to stomach the impact on the metal at full force. at eighty times he was strong enough to start damaging the sheet of orichalcum. At ninety he tried to punch the giant block that stood between himself and his freedom. It didn't hurt but the damage was negligible.
He understood at that point, that being able to superficially affect the metal would mean another test of patience. He didn't know how big the block was If it was as long as it was wide, or longer. He suspected it to be longer. He wouldn't be able to gauge his progress, and another test of patience wasn't what he had in mind.
Madness was starting to reach for him, the loneliness of the cavern couldn't be assuaged anymore by just cultivating his hobbies.
His diary was full, he learned a lot from the library, about the world he would find himself in and about himself.
About his path, about the people he would meet.
FIlm, television and books weren't his friends anymore.
They were just a painful reminder of what waited for him just outside.
The longing he felt was something visceral, so he made a drastic decision.
He would train more. More and more and more.
And so he did. He went back to the chamber, upped the gravity, punching the orichalcum "door" during his downtime, only to be more and more disappointed by his results.
So he stopped, he conjured a giant block of the same material, and used it as he used the others before.
After 4 months the block was in two parts. At one hundred times the gravity, he couldn't see any more progress. So he despaired. For a very short time.
He searched on Wikipedia, and soon after he built another training rig that went up to 500 hundred times the gravity.
Once he reached level one hundred and fifty of the chamber, a memory started to rung out in his head.
Abaddon telling him not to try to exit from the wall, for the magic deep inside them would make it impossible no matter how much he tried.
So he started punching them.
He broke his hands and wrists each day. And recovered faster each night.
At two hundred fifty times the gravity, another painful year lived in a haze of self-harm later, a chip fell down from one of the walls.
He grinned.
He went towards the crucible exit. Left leg on front, weight on his left foot, turn the shoulders to his right, cock the punch, push with the back leg, release the strike.
Hi hand sunk in the hard metal, stopping at the elbow. Roy grinned.
The tension in his shoulder disappeared. He pulled his arm out, scraping some orichalcum with it. He fell down on his back, laughing like a madman all the while.
He could do it. He really could do it now.
He then went back to his lake. He took a bath, the water seeping inside his pores, cleansing and nourishing him. He took everything of note inside his spatial cube, leaving out only his favorite set of clothes.
He adjusted his hair and beard, got the suit on, and went to work.
He took the final step.
Freedom was awaiting him.