“You missed our session last week.” Mrs Wu casually stated, as I was taking a moment to get my laboured breathing under control. My whole body was aching from the contortions required to perform the forms Mrs Wu had taught me. But, even as my body was in pain, my mind was elated, endorphins flooding my system. Finally, I had progressed to the point that Mrs Wu, my rather elderly teacher, was unable to just show me what I was learning, instead having to resort to explanations and simplified forms. While there was no doubt in my mind that I had only surpassed her in that regard due to her advanced age, it was progress, a clear indication that I was making progress, especially after I had started to question what I was learning, after she had goaded me into attacking with lethal force the session before the one I had skipped.

“I apologize.” I replied, once I had enough breath within me to speak. “There was contemplation to be done, I had to find an answer within myself, whether I wanted to continue learning what you are teaching me.” I explained, after gathering my breath for a few moments.

“Is that so.” she looked me over, her face a perfectly placid mask. “Did you come to a conclusion?”

“I did.” I replied, finally breathing normally again. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.” I admitted, looking back at her, a little embarrassed.

“Would you explain your reasoning? I’m curious.” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Mainly, because it is interesting. I don’t think I’ll ever need to know what you are teaching me, I hope that I don’t need to, but nonetheless, it is interesting to learn.” I admitted, keeping half of the reason to myself. There was a situation where I could see me adapting some of her teachings, especially those I had read about in the book she had given me, for use in Road to Purgatory. Sure, the methods described in her book were meant to be used in a modern society, or to circumvent modern, technological systems but I was reasonably certain that they could be adapted to work against magical systems on Mundus, at least to a degree. But there was no way I would admit that I wanted to learn spycraft for a computer-game, at least not to Mrs. Wu.

I could feel her gaze, measuring me while I fought to keep the omission from showing on my face and after a few moments of me sweating, she simply nodded, accepting my explanation.

“Curiosity is a good motivation. I’ll admit, it was that inquisitive and curious nature of yours, alongside a few other qualities, that made me decide on teaching you.” she added, a few moments after her nod.

“Anyway, I agree that most people have no use for these teachings. Despite that, I want to continue teaching you, especially now that you have truly seen what it is that I teach and had time to think about it. I hope you don’t take the knowledge I impart lightly, as it is dangerous.” she explained, and now it was my turn to raise an eyebrow in question.

“Yes, dangerous. What I taught you, and will continue to teach you, will allow you to end another human’s life. The human body is incredibly fragile, if you know what you are doing. Killing, maiming or disabling, the difference can be one of centimeters or a few newtons of force. Never take that knowledge, the ability to do harm, lightly.” she softly added, after looking around to make sure nobody was nearby.

“But even just knowing those things can be dangerous, even if you never use them. While I will not, can not, explain where and how I learned, I expect my teachers would be appalled that I taught someone else. Yet, I don’t care what those old men would think about my actions, not after…” she continued, a grim, sardonic smile on her face. Just the tone of her voice was enough to make the hairs in the back of my neck stand up and for a moment, I questioned if I was doing the smart thing or if I was increidbly stupid, not turning around and running as fast as I could. But if I were to do that, I would never be able to learn the things she could teach me. There were quite a few things I was curious about, after reading the book she had given me, things I wanted to ask her about. Less about the actual, physical spy-craft described but the social manipulation sounded interesting and much more useful. How to talk with people in a way that made them trust you, how to influence people and how to present yourself, how to act and blend in. Those were things that sounded incredibly useful to learn, even outside of applied spycraft.

Closing my eyes for a moment, I thought about the risks, trying to put them into anything I could relate to. Which was impossible, there was just not enough information to gauge the risk, too many variables. The main unknown was the acquisition of information for unknown parties. Or, in other words, would those teachers Mrs. Wu had mentioned be able to find out what I had been taught? Just from the fact that Mrs. Wu seemed to be confident to teach me and I doubted she would do so if discovery was probable, I thought the overall risk was low, unless I was foolish enough to talk about things.

That meant the only weak-point was when using what I learned here, in Road to Purgatory. Given that the capsule was obviously able to access my memory and was operated by some sort of mental interface, the possible invasion into the user’s privacy was unprecedented, on a level that was hard to describe or compare. At the same time, the simple fact that the technology was used in a videogame made me strangely confident that the risk of misuse was negligible, otherwise the capsules would never be allowed to get distributed.

Similarly, if the capsule was misused, I doubted the misuse would be aimed at me, with that capability, the users would have much bigger fish to fry than a single person. For a moment, I remembered an old movie, about people being stuck in a computer-simulation and felt that was a more likely scenario, if only to keep people content and happy without using up too many resources.

Pushing those strange considerations away, I decided that the risk was negligible as long as I didn’t disclose what I was learning to anyone, which was simple as my social network was essentially non-existent.

“I still want to learn.” I assured Mrs Wu, who simply nodded again.

“That’s good.” She looked over to her husband, giving him a nod, before focusing back on me. “I think we will have a slightly different lesson today.” she turned, gesturing for me to follow her. Together, we walked into the back, to one of the storage-areas. There, she opened a closet and pulled out a very detailed mannequin, setting it up within the storage-room.

“While the forms I have taught you form the basis, you need to learn how to truly apply them. The forms are a bit of deception, they are often more elaborate than needed, to conceal what they truly are teaching you. Now, we’ll get rid of the camouflage and you will learn their essence.” she explained, her tone taking on a lecturing quality.

“This dummy is reasonably life-like and will serve as a target. We will start with the things that you should never use on a living human unless you need them to die. Because that’s what these techniques are for, to kill people.” she finished her explanation, before carefully showing me one of the forms she had taught me before, only to stop half-way, turning the normally graceful and complex movement into a vicious jab, striking the throat of the dummy.

“Crushing the trachea of a human is surprisingly easy. While it, by itself, will not guarantee a kill, it is a relatively simple way to make calling for help more difficult.” she explained, before making me perform, correcting my posture and precision, before slowly teaching me the exact spots to strike, in order to kill or disable someone.

In a way, it was similar to the lessons regarding human anatomy I had learned at school, only with a very different spin. Instead of simply learning where the various organs, bones and muscles were, she was teaching me how to systematically break those parts. Sure, jabbing them with a knife worked most of the time but some could be crippled with a lot less effort and in a cleaner fashion. Once more, I was fascinated by the simple, yet efficient way the human body could apparently be broken. It was horrifying but at the same time, I was absorbing every word, learning not only how to break but why the things could be broken in a specific way and what that meant for the body.