Chapter 46: Chapter 40: The Mission
A/N:
Warning: This Chapter contains graphic content that involves coercion and child abuse.
I do not endorse or promote abuse of any kind, be it mental, physical or sexual on anybody regardless of age, gender, or affiliation.
Do not forget that this is just a dark fantasy novel and even here, abuse is not cool.
You have been warned.
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He resumed his push ups because he didn’t want to be whipped. He stared at the System Window that appeared in his mind. The System didn’t work inside World Gates, so it attached these useless System Windows to the souls of the Trial takers.
They literally had no use except for showing the mission. He looked at the Window and started doubting life.
’Mission: Become the Heavenly Demon’
’Duration: 35 Years’
’Time left: 34 Years’
Zeke muttered, "I’m fucked, aren’t I?"
He then continued to push himself until he was barely able to complete the 150 push ups. He then collapsed on the ground. But before he could rest, he was drenched with water.
An instructor was standing over him with a bucket in his hand. He said, "Rank 86, join lines 1 to 4 and duck walk 50 laps outside the boundary."
Zeke didn’t say anything and just stared at the instructor. The instructor smiled evilly and said, "What, you got a problem?"
Zeke replied, "No Sir."
The instructor looked a little disappointed and said, "Then stop wasting time and do as you’re told."
Zeke replied, "Yes Sir."
He walked outside the boundary and joined the children. His core was burning with pain and with each step he took, it seemed to increase. He still somehow persevered. Many children had fainted along the way, only to be whipped awake by the instructors.
While he was duck walking, he could feel that his body had already started recovering, although it was extremely slow. He would need to eat if wanted to recover completely. He finally completed 50 laps.
Almost all the children had fainted at this moment. He looked at the few that had completed their goals and started the other goal. There weren’t many, only six. But each of them had something distinctive about them. Whether it be a rare hair color, a specific feature, etc.
The instructors woke them with whips every time they fainted until they had completed the goal. Some of the children didn’t wake up no matter how many times they were whipped.
The instructors left them there and waited until all the children had completed both goals. They then poured buckets of freezing water on the unconscious ones to wake them.
The head instructor said, "You all are utter trash. You can’t even finish such a simple exercise."
He saw that some of the children had a proud smile on their faces. He sneered and said, "The ones who did finish the exercise shouldn’t feel proud either. You all are trash as well. Although you did complete it, how long did it take you? Huh? Now, form lines once again and perform the horse stance for three hours as punishment."
The children felt like the head instructor had gone completely mad. But when they saw that he was taking a whip from another instructor, they all yelled, "YES SIR." and got into lines. The next three hours were complete torture.
Instructors were walking around with thick sticks in their hands, observing them. Whenever someone moved, a stick would hit them, correcting their posture. While the rest of the instructors were doing this, the head instructor was speaking, "The horse stance is an excellent way to build leg muscles and increase core strength..."
He kept speaking about the benefits of the exercises that they were doing. After three hours had passed, the children, who were barely hanging on, collapsed. The head instructor said, "You will now get your food."
Hearing of food, everybody’s eyes brightened. They all lined up, while the instructors handed them a bowl of thick beef congee and two leg pieces. Zeke walked away with the food, found a relatively secluded place and sat down.
He used his fingers as a spoon and began eating. As soon as he took one bite, he wanted to spit it out. It had a familiar bitter taste. The difference was that it was much stronger. He thought inwardly, ’They must’ve mixed the pills in the food.’
After realizing this, he ate his food with great gusto as if it was the most expensive meal from a five michelin star restaurant. He needed that energy to completely recover.
[ It is what it is. I ain’t ashamed at all.]
Nobody complained about the food for two reasons. One, they didn’t dare to. Second, they were all beggars and orphans who had spent days without food, so the taste didn’t really matter to them.
After they were done eating, the instructors taught them how to read and write. After the class, they had another meal and then they went to sleep. Nobody had any energy left to socialize. This became a routine for them.
Everyday they woke up, did three exercises; either pushups, duck walking, and horse stance, or pushups, duck walking, and mountain climbing. With each passing day, the intensity of the exercises increased at a fixed rate.
+5 push ups, +2 laps of duck walking, +10 mins in horse stance.
Once every week, the instructors would increase the number of times they had to climb the mountain by 1. After the exercises, they ate food, learned how to read and write, had another meal and then went to sleep.
Six months passed like this. Ten kids had already died. They were the last ranking kids every month and the other four’s bodies couldn’t handle the strenuous schedule and gave out. Zeke was the current Rank 1 for obvious reasons. He was able to build muscle much faster than the other due to his fast recovery.
He had been to Murim in his other life and was already familiar with the alphabet. In fact, Murim was one of the places that had given him the inspiration for the Supreme Conduit Codex. Finally, something changed.
More instructors arrived. An instructor was then assigned to every child. The instructors taught them three techniques. One was a fist technique, Monkey Fist. This technique required one to be as nimble as a monkey.
The second was a defense? technique named Mountain. It was a weird technique that required one to be as stable as a mountain. Finally, the third technique was a movement technique, Tiger Step. It required one to move with the ferocity and majesty of a tiger, the king who ruled the mountains.
Unlike their grand descriptions, Monkey Fist and Tiger Step were very common techniques of Murim. Although common, they were very basic and were excellent to build a foundation. Mountain, on the other hand, reminded Zeke of another technique but he couldn’t quite remember which one.
Each technique had different methods of training. First, they had to learn the specific moves of the techniques. For the Monkey Fist, they just sparred with the instructors. For the Tiger Step, they had to practice the movements while being surrounded by caged, starving tigers. It was difficult to say the least.
But this was all fine. Training in Mountain was perhaps the most difficult and the easiest at the same time. Easy because they had been passively doing it for the past six months. Difficult cause it was so painful.
They had to perform the horse stance while their respective instructors beat them with a thick staff. Zeke could feel that the instructors weren’t just beating them up mindlessly. Each hit was filled with internal energy that would break their bodies little by little.
Then they would be healed with the medicinal food that they ate. It was torturous for them both mentally and physically. Of course, as Rank 1, the head instructor himself trained Zeke. And the man did not know the meaning of holding back at all. Sometimes, even Zeke could see the shock in his eyes as he was training him.
[Hmph! What torture? It’s called character development.]
Another six months passed by and thirty children died this time as the training was even more brutal. Six of those thirty were killed by the instructors, nine because their bodies couldn’t take it anymore, and the remaining fifteen were killed by other children.
That happened because, three months ago, they were instructed to spar with each other. The low rankers could challenge people that ranked higher than them. If they won, then they would ascend to that rank.
These kids were desperate to survive and did everything that they could to ensure that. These fifteen kids died due to either assassinations, sparring, or they bit more than they could chew by trying to assassinate someone much stronger than them.
Like the previous Rank 9, who thought that Zeke wasn’t that stronger than her and tried to assassinate him. She tried to kill him with a bone knife when everyone had fallen asleep but was killed instead before she could even touch him.
The six children that he had noticed before were all ranked in the top 8. Their ranks shuffled around but they never went below Rank 8. Zeke also realized that he was also a part of their group, i.e he also had a specific feature.
It was his hair. He had never noticed because they were so short, but now that they had finally grown longer, he was shocked to see that they were not his original black hair. They were a dark, almost blackish purple.
He figured that it was a side effect of the Gu scorpion that he had consumed. This change would also explain the strange looks that the instructors were giving him in the beginning. Little did he know, it wasn’t his hair color that shocked them, but the mountain of bones that he had created in his cave.
Just like clockwork, another change occurred now that six months had passed.
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’Mission: Become the Heavenly Demon’
’Duration: 35 Years’
’Time left: 33 Years’
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