Pain Built

Markus finished off his cigar with one long pull, the ashes on the end racing down until they went past his fingers in a way personal experience and common sense told me was decidedly unpleasant, though he didn’t seem to mind. He tossed what was left of the ashes in the vague direction of the ash tray (though most of it simply dispersed in the air and landed on the table) before leaning back in his chair; I got the distinct impression he was eying me up behind those goggles.

The fact I could see his eyes looking me over with my Extreme Paranoia certainly didn't hurt that impression.

I could see in his eyes the moment he was struck by an amusing thought, a half-irritated half-amused light rising in those steely orbs. "Ah, I just realized I never asked your name! I assume you don't have one yet, but there's no harm in asking anyway."

I barely kept a frown from my face; there may be no harm in asking but I was far too wary of fae bullshit and the potential power of names to think there could be no harm in answering. There was no way in any flavour of hell I was going to tell this shady bastard my real name, so I made something up.

Or I would have, if the smug son of a bitch hadn't taken my silence as a negative answer. He smiled in a way that wasn't quite a smirk but definitely felt like one, "Ah, in that case I think I'll call you Bruce."

I barely kept from gritting my teeth at the gall of this fucker to presume he could name me, but I twisted it into a vicious smile; at least this way I don't need to come up with something myself and pretend I was familiar with it. I shrugged my shoulders, barely attempting to look casual and knowing I probably failed, "As good a name as any, I suppose."

He laughed, though only Rokharth snickered along with him while the others remained silent. "Ah, indeed it’s an even better name than most! That name used to belong to a good friend of mine, one I've not seen in a very long time…" He drifted off for a moment, a nostalgic but somehow haunted expression on his face before he snapped back to the present (not that I was even slightly inclined to believe that "moment of weakness" was in any way legitimate, though on the off chance it was I wouldn't forget it). "Never mind that now, you'd best scurry off to sleep if you want to survive your training tomorrow."

The dark grin on Rokharth's face clashed with the sardonic smirk on Markus' own, almost making me gulp in trepidation. I could only hope Rokharth would follow his boss's advice and not kill me in basic training.

Two weeks. Two weeks of back breaking, muscle liquefying, blood boiling, bone powderizing torture masquerading as "training". My everything hurt, every single part of me was stained in shades of pain and misery and my mind was a black canvas of hate and rage covering up a wellspring of exhaustion and depression.

But, much to my further indignant rage, it had made me stronger and more competent. I had gained twenty three points in Strength, seven in Endurance, thirty two in Agility, ten in Intelligence, six in Perception, and three in Wisdom. Miniscule compared to what spending that time killing for levels would have gained me, but for as barely significant as my stat gains were the Skills Rokharth had drilled into me were far more important.

He had trained me with knives of all sorts, ranging from wickedly curved things all the way up to edgeless thrusting weapons and everything in between which had netted me a skill called Dagger Mastery.

Dagger Master: Lvl 6: You have some basic knowledge of how to wield daggers of all sorts, enabling you to be somewhat effective with them.

He hadn’t stopped drilling me on that one until it reached what he deemed an acceptable level, which had ended up being level six. While the skill itself didn’t seem to have any active components as of yet, the moment I had gotten it the blades he had been drilling me with felt better in my hand, the movements just seemed to flow better, and I could hit where I wanted on the crude training dummy he had set up more reliably; each level had only increased this until I felt decently confident I wouldn’t fuck up and kill myself in a fight.

Rokharth was a brutal teacher, who seemed to find “sparring” the most effective -or at least, personally entertaining- method of imparting anything beyond the most basics. Of course, when I say “sparring”, what I mean is beating me bloody with his bare hands while I desperately try to fend him off with whatever implement of sharp and pointy death he had equipped me with at the time. While he would hold the same kind of blade during our little spars, he mostly just punched me anyway and would only occasionally make my life flash before my eyes by demonstrating a manuevor on me and just barely pulling back before outright executing me.

While every blow had only made me hate the bastard more, becoming a walking bruise had earned me a set of skills I had begun to doubt even existed until just before I got them.

Blunt Force Resistance: Lvl: 4: You have a four percent resistance to blunt force trauma.

Sharp Force Resistance: Lvl: 6: You have a six percent resistance to sharp force trauma.

While it was somewhat odd to see what would normally just be deemed something like “Physical Resistance” split up like that, it did make some sense that system that was as obtuse as this one would separate the types of physical damage into different skills. Of course, considering it took Rokharth “accidentally going a bit too far” and reducing me to a puddle of bruises and open wounds kept barely alive by drugs and a very irate healer (who’s name I hadn’t managed to acquire in my delirious state) to even unlock the skills in the first place, and leveling them hadn’t been much easier.

Other that beating me until my wounds were leaking pulped maggots and I was vomiting blood, training mostly consisted of Rokharth showing me how best to kill an unaware target by using cadavers (never the same cadaver, I had noted on the second day) to demonstrate where organs, arteries, and veins were on the various humanoid species commonly found throughout the city. He had told me there were a lot more humanoids and animals out there, but the ones he showed me were the most easily acquired.

He had me all but literally dissecting everything from strange frog-men called Maraws (sewer dwelling cannibals with a penchant for paranoid fits that made me look downright relaxed), to hulking green skinned brutes covered in a layer of dead flesh apparently used as a form of organic ablative armour that were apparently the adult form of a vicious species called Qraain (which Rokharth had informed encompassed goblins, hobgoblins, orqs (with a q for reasons I could not determine but guessed was from their overall race name), and trolls), though most of the bodies were just humain substrains.

All of them were entirely drained of blood and had their necks snapped, but considering what exactly my instructor was, I decided not to question that.

The most bizarre creature he showed me was a pale, gangly humanoid with a jaw full of yellow teeth that wrapped halfway around their head and absolutely reeked of rotting garbage and fermenting bodily fluids called vulgots. Rokharth went to great lengths to denigrate the hideous thing and make me swear to kill them on sight. He described them as maneating balls of hate and hunger that will do anything in their power to rip your guts out and rape you with them, all while the voices of imaginary gods cheer them on from a nameless realm filled with something that really, really want’s to go back to being nothing and take everything with it.

I could feel his disdain as he dissected the damn thing, and the visible relish with which he ripped out its malformed, cancer ridden organs and tossed them into a fire after explaining why none of them were technically vital to these near mindless wretches; they had no brain but rather a system of ganglia spread throughout their bodies and all of their organs (excluding the stomach) had multiple redundancies. Apparently this wasn’t even just a personal vendetta, as he explained that basically any nation you care to mention (of which, he named none) had a standing bounty on their heads and it was illegal not to kill one on sight in Malkaeth.

Of course, all of this was just his lead up to today, the last day of basic training.