Chương 61: 1 Month of Hellish Training

It had been one month since that madman began forcibly training us with his monstrous methods. The night stood at 22: 30. High atop the singular mountain, his domicile, which was his dojo rose like a silent guardian carved from the very bones of the peak. The silence there felt heavier than any wave or insect swarm we had faced during the day. It wrapped around my bones and pressed down on my chest, reminding me that even this so-called rest formed part of his twisted lesson in hardening the body.

Its exterior walls of pure, pristine white stone gleamed under the moonlight, crossed by elegant flowing lines of vibrant green emerald that pulsed faintly with inner light, like veins of living energy running through the structure. The roof curved in traditional Gongreyo style, covered in dark navy-blue tiles that seemed to drink in the night sky. Inside, the same colors continued: deep navy-blue wooden panels and floors polished to a mirror shine, creating a calm yet intimidating atmosphere of disciplined power.

Galer and I each had our own room, though they remained very tiny and did not offer much space to begin with. Thats why Inside waited only a small table with no chair, a stone-cold hardened rock made into a bed, and a large window that looked outside into the wide sky. I sat there wearing only a loincloth, perched on the table, writing on parchment paper what I called my Last Will Diary.

Even though I could not truly write in perfect grammar, I imagined the words as I needed to pour out the frustrations of this horrible lifestyle I've been placed in. Every awkward stroke of the quill felt like a small act of defiance a way to remind myself that I was still Erumes Flamma, not just a broken toy for that madman to abuse on daily training. Let me start with the beginning… the first week when we arrived here on the Island.

It had been what I imagined the worst nightmare any human could suffer as a punishment: being forced to make the impossible possible. Naked, we crawled up the Reef of 129 meters. The sharp rocks cut into our hands and knees on the first tries. The salt-water-wet stone burned every wound deeper. The noon high waves crashed against us, trying to drag us back into the ocean to punish the effort as being to slow. On the very first day it took twenty-six hours to overcome this challenge. Our bodies screamed in agony.

Muscles tore. Skin ripped. Blood mixed with seawater burning sensation formed in the skin. I remembered thinking with every painful millimeter that death would have been kinder than receiving that pain. Yet the stubborn flame deep in my heart refused to go out and show the kidnapping Master what i can do to one day be the one to punish him on the extent of my own amusement, like he currently had done with us. It kept pushing me forward when my body wanted to give up.

After we reached the top, exhausted, our M-A-S-T-E-R kindly kicked our broken bodies back down. And so we had to sleep on the beach, constantly battered by the ocean's waves. Luckily, plenty of crabs and coral flowers on the reef filled our stomachs and the liquid to soothe our stomachs was given to us by him to help us recover.

It was like a soothing tea which he gave us every two hours in a small cup to drink quickly; although we both hated its medicinal taste, it truly restored us during the night while we slept, keeping its overnight recovery effect, even though we still didn't like the forced 'tea'." Day by day the climbing time reduced. From twenty-six hours on the first day it fell to twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes by the seventh day. Unfortunately, even then and still to this day our Master, he continued kicking us down.

He pissed me off so much that I could not wait to take his dried herb flower jar for tea on which he daily drank from and shoved it right up into his face. I made that my life's goal. Every night I pictured his shocked expression. That single thought kept the fire inside me alive when everything else in my mind wanted to quit. The pain had been beyond description that i can not even put it into writing, but i need to vent my frustrations out somehow. Every day felt like dying and being reborn just to die again.

The madman Hwan Songge watched us with that calm, terrifying smile of his. He never raised his voice in the beginning. He did not need to. His presence alone proved enough to break our spirits and make him follow his very desires. When we reached the top on the eight day, barely able to stand with new improved time, he simply looked at us, shook his head in disappointment, and with one casual kick sent both of us tumbling back down the entire reef. The fall felt eternal. The rocks tore fresh wounds.

The sea welcomed us with cold indifference to our misfortune. That night we lay on the beach like broken dolls, breathing heavily, staring at the stars, and wondering if this life of ours would ever end. On that night I made a silent vow. No matter how many times he broke me, I would rise hotter and angrier than before. The Flamma blood in my veins did not know how to stay down also thanks to his tea we did recovery for the next day without fully knowing it as did not inform us.

Anyway, let me continue my dead reader who once will find my will. Where was I? Oh yes... the second week. as we improved our reef climb challenge and had some time for challenge number two.... we moved into the forest as Master instructed us to go through it. Inside it lived the terrifying Killer Beeol. Just thinking of them even now stirred trouble in my mind. They were the Infernus monstrous insects. Highly aggressive giant buzzing horrors that created Fire Honey. That honey made one go crazy with intoxication…

how did I know? I had taken some while being there. Their workers measured roughly 60–70 cm long with a wingspan of nearly 1. 5 meters. Their bodies were armored in glossy black and deep crimson chitin. They possessed glowing orange-red compound eyes and massive, serrated mandibles. Their wings burned fiery crimson with veins of molten light, constantly radiating intense heat. These horrors flew on blazing red wings that left trails of embers as they searched for food.

Instead of normal poison, their massive stingers injected super-heated energy from within. When they stung, they did not inject toxin, but they burned the victim from the inside out. The heat spread rapidly through the organs, causing internal boiling, severe burns, and agonizing death, if your animo was not high enough.

The only way to combat it was to meditate and force all of one's Animo to concentrate on the pain as M-A-S-T-E-R told us while we were unfortunate to experience the internal heat of theirs and not before. They also had a Queen. I only ever heard her powerful buzz sounds in the deep forest but never met her. The first time a Worker Beeol stung me, Master Hwan Songge saved me…

but only so he could torture me further with his mad training Galer was lucky and hid when i recklessly ran ahead to beat him and i got to experience first the pain he had later on the same day the pleasure of doing so. That week had been even more pure nightmarish torment as we traversed the forest naked. The forest lived with many dangers. But The Infernus bees swarmed in clouds of fire and fury making them the most dangerous ones. Their buzzing sounded like a thousand raging furnaces.

One sting and your blood felt like lava flowing through your veins. I still remembered the burning inside me, the way my vision went red, the way Galer had to hold me down while Master pressed his palm against my chest, forcing my Animo to fight the fire within on the very first sting. He laughed while doing it. He called it "necessary tempering." By the end of that week we had learned to move like ghosts through the trees with our newly found strength and speed.

Even so, we always watched the sky for that deadly red glow. The third week brought swimming in the Rift Lake near the village. The village members had the pleasure of watching us still naked as we trained. Before I knew it, July had already arrived, skipping right past my fourteenth birthday on the third of June. Yes, I was fourteen years old now. But back to the training, which continued. The Rift Lake differed from any water I had ever experienced, even the one before Jeruem of which I had a pleasant memory.

It tried to surge you downward if you swam too slowly, which was the least of your worries as in underwater lurked the Stereolepis Voracis. Known simply as the Voracis, it was a monstrous evolution of a jewfish that had grown to six times its natural size, reaching lengths of up to twelve to fifteen meters in the darkest abyssal zones of the rift lakes. This beast formed a terrifying fusion between the powerful striped jewfish body and the predatory face of a great white shark.

It featured a massive, elongated body with dark vertical stripes that glowed faintly in the deep water, a brutal shark-like head with a wide, powerful jaw filled with multiple rows of razor-sharp triangular teeth made for ripping meat, cold black predatory eyes, and gill slits that ran far back along its muscular neck. Enormous pectoral fins and a powerful tail gave it explosive bursts of speed in the confined, dangerous waters of the rift lakes on this Island.

It was an apex ambush predator also extremely aggressive, territorial, and capable of dragging large creatures (or even boats, if any had been used) into the black depths. Its sheer size and shark-fused jaws made it one of the most feared monsters in the freshwater rift systems. Just having seen one forced Galer and me to pour every scrap of power from our very souls, no matter how small in size, just to disengage from the beast. Swimming in that lake had been pure terror.

The surface fought you, as you slowed down. The depths hunted you. Every stroke felt like battling the Rift Lake itself and pushed you to go over your current limits. On the first swimming session, as we both slowed down thanks to our staminas reaching the end and pulled into the dark abyss many small Voracis lurked below like living nightmares, always ready to welcome us. One wrong move and you would be dragged into the deeper black and Master had to come save you if have been underwater for far to long.

I still remembered the shadow moving beneath me, the way the water suddenly grew colder, and the way Galer and I swam with everything we had just to stay alive once seeing the beast eyes. Master watched from the shore grinning. Sometimes he threw rocks into the water just to stir the beasts up.

"Build character," he would say with that maddening smile, but in reality he wanted us to increase our tempo. And so we reached the present day my dear reader of my Last Will Diary. We had made it to the huge mountain of 421 meters. Climbing it in a state of exhaustion I had once thought was my absolute limit… but no. The madman made certain to show us how to truly empty the energy tank of our own spirit levels down to zero.

At least from that day onward we received a reward for the fast progress we had shown in just one month. We were finally allowed to wear his loincloths, which protected our genitals from the active dangers on each challenge. Thank you, you stupid master i truly miss my braies boxers, the white with black outlines thick build protecting ones manhood well also its comfy length, those were my last scribbled words on the parchment until the words turned into incoherent gibberish. I was too exhausted. I fell asleep.

And so a new day began. The master woke us by throwing us like pebbles from the dojo into the ocean near the beach at five in the morning. We climbed the reef in six hours. We ran through the dangerous forest while stealing some of the delicious honey, finishing in three hours and twelve minutes. I swam the Rift Lake with everything I had in twenty-four minutes and Galer in twenty-two minutes.

By 14: 36 we had completed the entire course under the sun and still had time left to climb that enormous singular mountain. Roughly ten hours remained to show some spark of effort for master. At the first checkpoint of sixty meters, our master sat waiting with his stupid, perverted grin, calmly enjoying his tea while we arrived broken and past our limits, sighing and gasping for air. This mountain was nothing like the reef. There the ocean's pressure had fought us.

Here the ground was slippery and shaved smooth, making every grip a desperate struggle. Combined with the sheer exhaustion we carried on us and the hard, exploding breaths, the challenge became deadly. Make a single mistake on a Friday, when master was not present and you died. We had only recently learned that he left every Friday morning, air-walking back to wherever he had first found us, and returned only in the evening on those days we always went easy so we did not unnecessarily died on some accidents.

The next day I managed sixty-nine meters. Galer reached seventy-three. I ended the day pissed at myself. We had once been equals, but for the past week Galer had gradually pulled ahead more and more. I promised myself I would show him the tenacity of an Erumes Flamma like he had never seen before. For the next two weeks we traded first place back and forth. That rivalry became the only thing that still brought us true joy on this Island. Time moved forward.

Three months later, October greeted us with cold temperatures. The weather dropped to minus one degree in the mornings and rose only to six by evening. Our newest reward was a fine blanket that finally let us sleep somewhat smoothly at night. Our limits had been broken many times over and we truly became mightier than on arrival. Yesterday we covered 333 meters on the final stretch. For two days in a row I stayed ahead of Galer by two meters. We were close to the finish line.

We hoped our master would finally let us go once we achieved his task… yet the training never stopped. Two weeks later, on the seventeenth of mid-October, we reached the finish line. And finally I took first place over Galer making it 6: 1 for him. But it was not enough for Master since he only grew the challenge harder on us. Every single day pushed us beyond what we had once believed humanly possible.

Then the madman Hwan Songge, casually cleaning his ear with a finger, told us we could finally begin the true training of his. Everything until then had merely been to acquaint us with a certain Animo level of at least 8, 000, which he claimed he could now feel oozing from us, when he looked at us individually. The new phase was combat shadow training.

He watched over us each fighting style and told us what the shadow would attack with our own style breaking down our own moves against us as It tempered not only our bodies but also our minds, forcing us to measure our own shadows in battle more. He continued breaking and rebuilding our spirits with each set. And somehow, against all odds, we were still alive. Still climbing. Still fighting the added shadow combat routine. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Still refusing to break completely. I put the last parchment down. My hand hurt. My mind felt heavy on this very night. Yet for the first time since that month began... now already in November, I allowed myself a small, tired smile. We were still here. We were still fighting. We were growing more powerful. And one day… we would make this madman regret ever taking us as his students. I would make certain of it by smashing that damned tea jar right up into his FACE.

(in a delirious state of ecstasy) The Night ended with me dreaming of tormenting master.