I came back to myself slowly, the dark fog of unconsciousness burning off reluctantly this time around. I blinked my eyes, dragging the weight of my head up to look about.

“It looks like our guest is awake! We thought you’d sleep for a week. Which, honestly would really have messed with our timeline.”

I seemed to be tied to a chair, the thick rope all but cutting off the blood flow to my extremities. I swallowed vomit as the world spun around me, only settling back into what approximated normal after a few long, hard seconds. I waited another moment for my eyes to focus – I was in some sort of round stone room, and unless my equilibrium was still off, the floor was sloped towards me. The man talking to me – or at me – was also sat in aother chair, though his lacked the inconveniently tight ropes. He wore black – like the asshole I had gone Home Alone on back at the alchemist’s place.

“I’m going to be very upfront about why you’re here – after we disabled you, and your apprentice friend, we searched the whole building and we were unable to find the pill. We know it was on the counter, but the only thing you had on you when we brought you in was some sand and some sort of dehydrated water.” He gestured to one side, where my over-sized robe sat on top of a table, covered in sand. I could just make out the bag Tang had given me sat next to it. Which logically meant I was naked again.

“You either have reached a point in your cultivation at which you can store objects within your soul, or hid it. Now – you appear to sitting just below the Focus stage, but above that of a Nadir. So, either you’re a profound fool, or you’re able to hide your cultivation. Not to worry though, there enough Spiritual Weights in this cell to hold down anyone below the Foundation stage – which we know you are, as the poison we used simply wouldn’t have worked otherwise. In this room, you’re every bit as weak as the cripple you pretend to be. If you are pretending. Fool?”

“You really like to hear yourself talk, huh?” My voice was slurred and my body appeared to be getting the better of me again, because this did not seem like a situation that warranted bravado.

“Oh, you can talk! That’s excellent. You see, regardless of where the pill is, you’re going to tell us where it is – because you can and will talk - and if you have it, produce it.” The man in black gestured to another table and I had to hold back another surge of vomit – the table was covered in tools, some I recognised, and some I did not. But there was certainly a theme – they looked like they would hurt.

“Torture doesn’t work, dickbag. You should really update your methodology.” I really wanted me to shut-up, but it was looking more and more like I only had a single hand on the wheel at that moment.

“That’s actually a fairly common misconception. Torture always works – provided you have the ability or the resources to discern truth from fiction. I have the former – a gift from my bloodline. I can hear lies. It really makes me an excellent torturer, but terrible at relationships. So, you and I are unlikely to be friends after this. You can’t have everything, right?” His voice had that tone you get from retail clerks who really loved their jobs or long-term frontline IT – like they were dead inside, but glad about it.

“Okay, fine, maybe it does work. But we don’t need to do anything rash, I’ll just tell you-”

“Shhhh, shhh, no.” The stranger reached out and placed his hand over my lips. “Sorry, I forgot to mention – it takes pain for me to be sure. I don’t know what my ancestors got up to, but it had to be pretty fun, right? But yes, pain. I would not be happy if I took your word for it and ended up wasting my time...”

“Mhu harr mahfuffing fyyfohaff.”

“Right you are, we should get started.” Taking his fingers from my lips, he stood up and moved over to the torture table he had pointed out to me earlier, returning with a large hammer and a hand full of huge nails.

“So, I’m going to drive these nails through your arms and legs – it’s going to do a couple of things. It’s going to hurt a lot, and it will make the rest of the torture even better, because every movement will aggravate the wounds.”

“Why are you explaining? I don’t need to know the mechanics of it, just bring the pain so I can get out of here already!” I was starting to sweat, my skin cold and clammy in the cool of the stone room.

“Oh, it makes it worse.”

“You are such a fucki-”

I was half way through my sentence when the asshole drove in the first nail – it went in through my wrist, the pain white hot. I screamed – a lot. It did not end quickly – slowly and with great patience, the psycho hammered the other nails into place, not bothered in the least by my repeated screams and the occasional descriptions of both his character and lineage.

The agony was intense – if you have never been stabbed, or just had something sticking through you, you’re going to need to take my word for it. It sucks. There’s a constant sharp ache from the wound, but worse is the sun-bright flash of pain that comes with even the slightest movement.

“So, the pill-” My voice was tight and shaking as I desperately tried not to move, knowing doing so would only bring more torment.

“No, no, NO!” My tormentor reached out and slapped me silent, even that slight motion making me gasp as my abused flesh pressed against the metal of the nails.

“You can tell me soon, but I’m not stopping until I’ve at least used the grater.” He moved back across the room and picked something up from the table, before turning back to me, full-on hand modelling what looked like a cheese grater with wooden handles at either end, offset back from the body.

I tried to talk, but my throat was locked up, my eyes staring at the simple yet terrifying tool my captor held. I began to feel the now familiar darkness creep into my vision, as my breath came in increasingly more ragged gasps, the blood loss from the nail pictures catching up to me.

“That’s better – oh, you’re going to pass out again. Can’t have that!” Turning back to the table, he put down the grater and game back over to me holding a nuber of cylinders in one hand. As he drew close again, I could just make out what they were – syringes.

One after another he stabbed them into me and pushed the plunger down. The first was like a thousand shots of espresso – it woke me back up and brought the pain back into sharp focus, and then even beyond that as I involuntarily started to cultivate the Experience of it.

“This one will keep you from passing out from the pain – it was originally created to help with cultivation – it makes you feel everything at a much more profound level. Also works for torture.”

The second made me feel warm and I could feel my once thready pulse strengthen.

“This one helps you regenerate blood – it won’t heal you of course – that would be counterproductive - but you won’t die from blood loss! It was created by a vampiric alchemist in order to make their food last longer. Also, good for torture.”

The third and final injection had no obvious effects, but luckily, I knew a man who could tell me what it did.

“Now this – this is special. This was invented by our sect – requires us to boil a living phoenix egg. It’s frankly a good job they can’t die, because those are hard to come by. With that running through you, if I accidentally take it ‘too far’ before I’m done, you won’t die. If the ingredients weren’t so rare, it would be worth a fortune. Still, fantastic for torture.”

I began to feel a burning around my energy centre as my fresh nemesis sauntered back to pick up the tool he had so recently set down.

“Back to work!”

He crouched down next to me and pressed the grater firmly against my shin, but my mind was focused on the pain from my centre, which was rapidly growing to eclipse my nail-related injuries.

“Hey, I think I’m having an allergic reaction to one of those injections...” My voice was hoarse and strained from the screaming.

“I don’t know what that means! But I’ve given those injections to hundreds of people without any issue. I’m sure you’ll be fine – well, other than the torture.” As he finished speaking, he leaned in and started to drag the metal grate down my leg as it slowly began to bite into my flesh and bone, peeling them away like the skin of an orange.

I could not scream – the pain of having my bone shaved added to the roiling plasma growing inside me and simply locked my throat closed – and was in fact locking me in place muscle by muscle, the pain of the nails barely a whisper in a storm.

“Hmm, there’s usually more shouting at this point. Why are all your muscles rigid?”

Ignoring him as my vision turned white, I fell inside myself to hover beside my Focus. From my Focus and reaching out like roots, long blue-white tendrils clawed at the edges of my energy centre and I realised what was happening – either my energy circulatory system was growing in early or I had been unconscious for way longer than I thought.

Panic almost took me then, riding the pain in waves, as I wondered what to do – neither Walker or Aella had told me how to do this, only that it must be guided, and I had counted on their presence to when it happened.

Firming my resolve, I bent my will to the task of guiding those tendrils and my awareness shot along them, occupying them all at once – it was confusing, but I thought it was probably going to get worse before it got better.

The golden ocean of my soul convulsed, and the tendrils of refined energy convulsed around me, lashing out at the walls of my centre.

Slowly at first, I began to bore into the wall, pain becoming my world as I tried to desperately figure out where I was supposed to be steering the things. All at once, I burst through the boundaries of my soul sea on all sides, a fresh wave of incandescent agony almost ripping consciousness from my grasp – but whatever elixir my torturer had injected me with refused to allow it, and I could feel the energy from the Experience washing back in to me.

Mentally groping around, I searched for a clue – any clue – as to how I should develop this system. I found paths – thousands of them, ranging from fine to thick and scattering in every direction. Not knowing which, if any were right, I opted to follow them all. I stretched my will out, my mind fracturing into a thousand shards, each driving the tendrils of refined Experience ever deeper into my flesh, following all of those lines to their completion.

I think I died – more than once in that effort. Clearly, I had not done what I was supposed to, and the fear of leaving myself a cripple in truth only added fuel to the inferno of pain eating through every inch of me, the alchemical drugs pumping through me holding me firm against oblivion. For a time, all I knew was pain and effort, but eventually, the white gave way to black, and I faded.

*

***

*

Exactly one eternity later, I woke up. The transition was instant this time and I looked about wildly. I was alone in the stone room, and laid out on my side, still attached to my chair in a number of ways. I was also covered in blood, and something else that smelled much worse. I could see the dark brown of dried blood all over the sloped stone of the floor, and it looked like a lot.

I did not know why I was suddenly alone, or why I was on my side, but I knew I needed to try to take advantage of the situation. Escape – now a vague possibility – would be impossible in the presence of my jailors, I knew.

For a moment, I considered whether my newly formed energy circulation system would add enough juice to my muscles to let me escape, but the facts were that I did not know if what I had done would provide any benefit, and even if it did not cripple me, I recalled what my tormentor had said about this room: In here, I was just as normal as I ever was.

“just as normal as I was... am.” It came to me all at once – I was used to being weak on this world, but that was because everyone else was made so strong by their own cultivation. But I had designed this body to be super-human by default – my normal was not normal.

I grinned, the dried blood on my face cracking and flaking off as I began to apply pressure with one arm.

The pain of moving against the nails was intense, but compared to what I had been through so recently, it was manageable. With a groan and the crackof splintering wood, the arm ripped away from the rest of the chair, still connected to my own arm. Seconds later, the other arm pulled free beneath me with a jerk, and with slow and painful movements, I undid the ropes about my wrists, before ripping the wood free from the metal spikes still driven through my tender flesh. Removing those took a little longer, building up to each, my mouth open wide as I screamed silently, bearing down with my all will to remain quiet.

Afterwards, I lay panting on my back, arms outspread and my legs still attached to the chair’s base, blood once more running freely from my arms. I did my best to ignore the thirst nagging at me, letting some of the blood from my arm run into my mouth in an attempt to relieve the sand-paper like feeling.

After a few minutes of recovery and swishing blood around my mouth, I dragged myself over to the table with all the tools, pulling myself up to sit once more on the broken chair still attached at my waist and legs. Most of the tools were covered in blood, whereas each had glinted in the dim light previously. It seemed like my dickhead torturer had really gone to town after I spaced out.

Selecting a knife – blade still coated in my own blood – I sawed at the rope about my waist, and then my legs, noticing that my shin had anoticeable lack of slivers missing. I paused, staring at my shin caught in the dissonance of conflicting memory.

My thoughts turned to all the blood and I looked down at my naked body noting the lack of puncture wounds and lacerations. This I knew had to be the result of Lesser Regeneration which meant...

“Xiournal.” I whispered the name of my dragon-like handler and the smoky glass tablet popped into existence in front of me.

Assignment Received... Difficulty E-… Time Limit: 8 days, 9 hours, 18 minutes.

Make your way into Everwood City, locate the creator of the Grand Harvest Body Refining Pill and ensure another cannot be created.

Good Luck, Alex. Make me look good.

Bonus Reward: Do Not Kill the creator, or allow his death within the Time Limit.

“Holy shit.” I had been there for days – it was no wonder I was thirsty.

Waving the display away, tenses my jaw and one by one, I pulled the nails out of my legs. Either by luck or design, none of them had pierced bone and I managed to work them all free without too much effort, beyond the pain.

Trying to stand was the next thing on my agenda, and it was a mistake- or at least it felt that way. Inured to pain I may have been, but the effort of straightening on my feet left my dizzy and staggering, my pulse thundering in my ears.

I turned to look about once more, my eye catching on my robe and I remembered the free samples Tang had given me. Before I realised what I was doing, I was staggering across the room, uncaring of the pain for the first time, the whole of my mind suddenly bent on quenching my thirst.

With trembling fingers, I pull the bag open and brought it to my mouth. Snagging one of the clear pearls between my teeth, I leaned my head back and tryed to swallow. As it turned out, my throat was too dry, and I almost choked there and then. Bringing an arm to my mouth, I once again sucked in the dripping blood and used that mouthful to swallow the pill. Relief filled me as the pill went to work rehydrating my ventilated body, and I almost cried as that driving need left me.

Now free of thirst but unwilling to remain naked any longer, I retied the small bag and placed it back on the table, before lifting the robe and shaking the sand free of it. Slipping it on gave me a sense of comfort that was undeserved, given the situation, but I would take what I could get. Hitching up the long length, I tied the robe closed and slipped my bag of water drops into one of the awkward pockets, half upside-down under the belt.

I was starting to feel better – I was still full of holes but at least they had stopped bleeding by the time I managed to dress myself, and being dressed somehow made me feel safer.

Thinking about how I was going to get out of this place, I looked around the room to take stock: I of course, had all the torture devices, and I thought it would be poetic to grate that asshole to death, provided I could find him and survive the meeting. But in the end, I decided they were just too creepy to use if I could avoid it.

A glowing bulb of glass hung from the ceiling, lighting the room and too high for me to reach, and 4 fist sized black crystals sat in metal sconces regularly around the room. I recalled what my captor had said about Spiritual Weights, and a desperate plan started to form in my mind. I was not complicated and mostly revolved around stealing the crystals.

I hobbled across the room and pulled one of the crystals free. It was noticeably colder than the rest of the room, and could feel it starting to sting my hand as it leached the heat from my body. Nodding to myself, I slipped it into my pocket and moved around, collecting the others.

The door to the room was up a short series of steps and was made entirely of metal. I braced myself against the stone of the wall and tried to yank it open with brute strength, but even as strong as I was, I got nothing more than a faint groan.

Cursing softly, I relented and retreated down the steps, determined to ambush the next person to come through that door. I hoped it would not take days

*

***

*

Nobody came for another day – I used my quest prompt to keep track of time – and when they did come, it was not the dickhead I was looking for. Luckily for me, it turned out a day was long enough for the many holes in me to mostly close over.

I heard the jangle of keys and a soft thunk as the door was unlocked. The metal hinges moaned as it opened, and a man in black walked in, a dagger strapped to his waist and a clipboard in one hand.

His gaze went to the centre of the room, noted my absence and then flicked about before finding me rapidly coming up the stairs immediately to his left.

Hoping one last time that the crystals in my pocket were going to work the way I wanted them to, I launched a punch at the jailer’s face. Obviously unused to fighting at a mere human level, they were slow to react and my fist crashed into their face with no resistance and there were a series of rapid snaps as my poor opponent’s jaw shattered and his head whipped around fast enough to apparently break his neck.

Pumping my fist in triumph, I watched as the fresh body dropped to the floor. The Spiritual Weights those fucks had used to torture people normally too strong to succumb brought everyone down to my level – including them – and now I was going to use that effect to beat them with experience. And my fists.

I dragged the corpse over to the broken shards of the torture chair and frisked it, finding a small purse full of glowing coins, a ring, pendant and the dagger – and the keys. I took it all, unwilling to come out of this situation with nothing but the memories. I checked the clipboard and saw a series of checkboxes – it looked like they were listed by cell and prisoner condition. It seemed that only 3 of them were occupied, including mine. I would not be leaving anybody else to these psychos.

Outside of my cell was a long corridor running right and left, lined in both directions with metal doors.

“Do I try and clear the place out first, or free them first...?” Hoping they were in a shape to help, I decided to try to gain the assistance of my fellow prisoners. I knew one of them had to be Tang, and I doubted the situation was going to stay as easy as killing that one guy had been so rationalised that I needed all the help I could get.

Moving down the corridor, I opened each door one at a time. At the end of the row to my left, I found Tang. Still tied to a chair and as naked as I had been, he had clearly been tortured, though it would seem not by somebody quite as gleeful as my own nemesis.

“Tang...” I moved close and whispered in his ear, shaking him as gently as I could.

“Tang...!” I whispered louder, but the apprentice did not move. I felt for a pulse and found one, so I knew he was alive. I re-thought my plan, now knowing he was in no shape to help clear the area, but in the end, I could not leave him there.

Grabbing his robe from a side table, I cut him free using the guard’s dagger and wrapped him up in his deep blue robe, before pulling him over my shoulder and moving on, the weight barely registering.

In the cell opposite Tang’s, I found the last prisoner. At the centre of the stone room, above the grate sat a huge woman with ears like my mentor, only in red rather than black. Eyes of emerald green glared at me from amidst the bruised flesh of her face and a growl filled the small room.

“Shhh, I’m here to help...!” The growling stopped, but the glare continued to burn into me.

Hurrying over, bent over reflexively like I was trying to avoid attention, I pulled my dagger, watching the naked woman tense at the sight. It was the work of seconds to free her and finally she stood, just as tall as Walker - at least 7 feet tall, though her shoulders were a touch slenderer.

“Who are you?” Her voice sounded liked brushed velvet, still carrying the edge of a growl.

“Hi, I’m Hunter – I like not being tortured and escaping. Maybe we can do introductions later?” I was trying to maintain eye contact, but it is difficult when facing a naked woman who stood almost a foot taller than me. It did not help that she was just as gorgeous as everyone else I had seen since my arrival.

“Good. I am Sidona. We will escape – but if this is a trick, I will destroy you.”

“Great, now get dressed - I don’t know how long we have before more of those bastards show up.” Sidona turned without another word and moved over to her own cloths and I allowed my eyes to travel down the well-defined musculature of her back as she hurriedly dressed.

Now clad in light green pants and a shirt, she strode past me and out of the door, without another word, hands curled into fists and slightly crouched, ready it seemed to me to rip into whoever she met.

I joined her just as another black clad butthole came around a corner at the end of the corridor and froze at seeing us out of our cells. Sidona on the other hand was ready, and sprang forward a step before looking down in confusion.

“What...?” Something was obviously meant to happen, and I suspected the crystals in my pocket were causing her issues, but I did not think it the time for explanation. I ran past her, Tang jostling on my shoulder as I pounded down the short distance to the man who was even now pulling a long slender sword free of its scabbard at his waist.

Unwilling to get stabbed to soon after my torture, I pulled out my dagger mid step and tossed it as hard as I could at the now armed asshole. Never having thrown a weapon before, the dagger spun end over and, flipping around chaotically as my opponent made a flicking motion with his offhand.

The motion did nothing – once again I thought because of my trusty Spiritual Weights, but the dagger hit him in the mouth – despite my inexperience - pommel first and sent blood and teeth flying. He staggered back a step, stunned at the impact and I moved in to take advantage before he could recover. I sent out an imbalanced kick, my foot sinking in to the flesh of his stomach despite the handicap, and he folded in half as the breath blasted out of his mouth. I took a single step back and kicked again, this time up and into his face – another crack echoed through the corridor as his head flipped up to look at me, his neck folded oddly.

“Something strange is happening, we left the Spiritual Weights in the cell, and yet my cultivation is restrained, as it seems was his.” The tall warrior gestured at the dead man now lying crumpled on the floor.

“I have some in my pockets – I'm pretty weak in terms of cultivation, but my body is pretty strong. I figured I had more experience being like me than they had being like me.”

“You should have told me.” The growl was back amidst the velvet as she stalked past me to pull the sword from the corpse's grasp. “My body too is strong, compared to humans. If I had known I would be without my cultivation, I would have killed him before you moved.”

“I’m 100% sure that’s the case, Sidona. It’s not a competition though, it’s an escape.” I knelt to loot the corpse, netting some more coins and some more jewellery.

“You are very strange, Hunter.”

Shrugging, I moved around the corner my late opponent had appeared from, glad to find stairs leading up.

The two of us – and Tang – made our way up the stairs slowly, standing on the sides to try to eliminate creaks. It turns out, however, that two men and a very large woman are heavy enough to cause creaks regardless of where you stand. We froze at the noise and waited, but nobody came.

At the top of the steps, stood another door – this one made from wood. I opened it slowly after testing the lock, staring through the crack and squinting at the rush of natural light. Seeing the coast clear, I opened the door fully and stepped out onto a rich rug.

The room I found myself in seemed to be some sort of gallery or long lounge, and I could see what I thought was the street through a window at the far end. I started to move in that direction after checking that Sidona was with me, only to be brought up short by the sound of clapping behind us.

Turning, I saw my torturer, clad now in a burgundy robe and a wide smile.

“Well, well, well. It looks like my client woke up! You know, you wasted a lot of my time and threw all our plans out of order by going catatonic like you did... But at least you’re awake now. And you brought friends! I haven’t worked on either, but far be it for me to waste such a thoughtful gift...”

Unexpected rage rocked me at the sight of him and I suddenly wanted nothing more than to beat him to death with his own arms.

“Oh yeah? Well, let’s see which of us is more used to being normal, asshole. I’m going tear out your skull and beat you to death with it.”

“That... doesn’t seem physically possible. And normal? Oh, I see. You brought the Spiritual Weights with you. How unusual!” The smile on the man’s face never faded, but I was confident that I would be able to overpower him in the absence of magic.

It was at the moment – right when I was at my most confident - that the man I faced casually lifted a slender hand and snapped his fingers. 4 sharp cracks echoed through the room, only faintly muffled by fabric and I felt the crystals in my robe shift. With a sinking feeling, I realised that the Weights I had brought with me – my only hope in this strange world - had broken.

“... Fuck.”