Ayan pushed off the ground, springing upward in a leap. Leg muscles tensed, sending his massive body airborne. The spear soared overhead, described an arc and plunged downward, point aimed at an imaginary opponent. The landing came hard—feet struck stone floor, the impact rolling through bones to his very spine.

  He rolled across his shoulder. Jerked upright. Back on his feet.

  Air seared his lungs in short gasps. Sweat ran down his cheeks, drops falling from his chin, leaving wet traces on the floor. Muscles hummed from strain, but he continued.

  Strike. Recoil. Pivot. Block an imaginary attack.

  The spear whistled through air, describing a horizontal line at chest level. The shaft sagged in his hands—wood sliding across damp palms. He gripped tighter, clenched his fingers till knuckles whitened.

  Step forward. Thrust. Retreat again.

  Orgatai stood aside, leaning against the cavern hall's wall. Arms crossed on chest, gaze appraising. He'd been silent since morning, only occasionally tossing out brief remarks.

  "Faster." The voice came dry, emotionless. "You're not on a stroll."

  Ayan snarled through his teeth, accelerating. The spear flickered faster, strikes coming more densely. His chest heaved rapidly, air in the cave clearly insufficient. The vigour bar crept downward—less than half remained.

  "Stop." The old orc pushed away from the wall with difficulty, approached closer. "Enough with the spear for today."

  The lad froze, lowering his weapon. Sweat flooded his eyes, forcing frequent blinking. His hands trembled—fine tremors creeping from wrists to elbows.

  "Take the axe." Orgatai nodded at the weapon leaning against an improvised rack. "Two-handed."

  The wooden blade, broad and heavy, rested on the ground beside a haft a good metre and a half long. Ayan set aside the spear, approached the axe and gripped the shaft with both hands. The weight differed noticeably from the spear—centre of gravity shifted forward, towards the blade. He had to apply more effort simply to hold the weapon horizontal.

  "Chopping strikes." Orgatai made a short gesture with his hand. "Top to bottom. Diagonal. Horizontal. Repeat each twenty times."

  Nodding, Ayan spread his legs wider. The axe soared overhead, the shaft sliding between his palms. Strike. Air whistled, the blade cleaving emptiness before him. His arms absorbed the recoil—vibration rolling through his forearms.

  Second strike. Third.

  By the fifth, muscles began to ache. By the tenth—to burn. The axe grew heavier with each swing, as though someone invisibly added weight to it. His breathing faltered, turned to ragged gasps.

  "Don't stop." The orc's voice sounded from somewhere to the side. He'd returned to his favourite stool and observed the training from it. "Ten more."

  The lad clenched his teeth, continuing to chop air. Eleventh. Twelfth. Sweat flooded his face in a solid stream, drops falling from nose tip and chin. His forearms burnt with fire, fingers barely gripping the shaft.

  The fifteenth strike came crooked—the axe veered sideways, nearly slipping from his hands. Ayan re-gripped more firmly, cursed through his teeth and continued.

  Nineteenth. Twentieth.

  The shaft fell from weakened fingers, thudding dully against earth. The lad had no strength left to stand straight and he bent double, palms braced on knees. Air rushed into his lungs in greedy gulps, his chest heaving like a forge's bellows.

  "Now diagonal. Right to left. Twenty times. Each direction. And don't let the blade touch ground."

  Ayan straightened, lifted the weapon. His hands shook so violently the shaft quivered.

  "I said—begin."

  The axe soared upward again.

  "As if one old sadist wasn't enough!" Ayan mentally grumbled, sprawled directly on cold, unhewn stones after yet another exhausting training session. Each breath resonated with dull pain in his ribs, muscles aching as though dragged through millstones.

  Three days after Zhalgaztur had ceremoniously brought him an entire arsenal of training weapons, the lad had finally entered some semblance of rhythm. First torture with the baksy, where the old orc tormented him with the same cold-bloodedness as always.

  Then—meditation, when he had to sit motionless until his body began to go numb. After this came training with all weapons in turn: chopping, hacking, strikes, blocks, again and again, until his arms turned to trembling stumps. Then meditation again. And so in a circle, day after day, without respite.

  On the seventh day, sessions with the baksy suddenly stopped producing that terrible effect Ayan had experienced before. However much Zhalgaztur tried, Nullus no longer received any negative effects.

  "Choke on that, old stump!" With deep inner satisfaction the lad rejoiced to himself, gazing at the orc's slightly perplexed face, who for the first time in these days looked confused.

  Then he began speaking in an incomprehensible language—guttural sounds like mountain avalanche rumble mixed with wind's whisper. Ayan saw how the baksy's face first smoothed, wrinkles vanishing as though they'd never been, then lit with anticipation, some almost predatory gleam in blue eyes. At least, so it seemed to the lad, who involuntarily tensed, feeling hair rise on his nape.

  Zhalgaztur's voice gained power—resonant, ancient, filled with the weight of centuries. The sounds of speech filled all space around, spreading along cave walls, reflecting from vaults and stones. From the echo arose an eerie sensation that not one but dozens of orcs spoke simultaneously, an invisible choir of voices surrounding Ayan from all sides.

  And then, as though in mockery of his incomprehension, before the lad's wide-flung eyes materialised a system window. Letters flickered with anxious reddish light, each word as though burnt into air before him.

  "Attention! Rejoice! You have attracted the attention of higher powers!"

  Ayan blinked, rereading the lines, not believing what he saw. His heart beat faster, foreboding of something inexorable squeezing his chest with invisible hand.

  "They have deemed you worthy of testing the true nature of existence!"

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The next lines made his blood freeze in his veins.

  "You have been permanently set to 100% pain sensations! This effect cannot be removed or reduced! Pain is the best teacher of all: coefficient of receiving any experience increased by 2.5 times!"

  "What?!" A single thought managed to race through his head before the system window vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Ayan remained standing, stunned, staring into emptiness before him where those damned letters had just glowed.

  And then new tortures began, modestly termed training. True, this time with far harsher, merciless repercussions from which it was impossible to hide or even rest. Each movement, each wave of arm, each wrong step resonated with such a flash of pain that the lad literally saw white spots before his eyes. The world narrowed to a single sensation—unbearable, all-consuming agony piercing every cell, every nerve, every fibre of his being.

  Ayan teetered on the edge—that very thin, almost invisible line between sound mind and complete, utter madness. Sometimes it seemed another debuff, another second of this torture—and something inside would finally break, crack, crumble to dust. Screams tore from his throat of their own accord, helpless and desperate, echoing off indifferent stone cave walls.

  However, Zhalgaztur read him perfectly—both physically, catching the slightest muscle tremors and quickening breath, and psychologically, as though seeing through all thoughts, all fears, all attempts to surrender. The old baksy held the lad on that precarious, dangerous line, balancing between destruction and tempering, along which he himself had walked more than once in his long life. He knew precisely where the limit lay beyond which the irreversible began—and each time stopped exactly a millimetre from that edge.

  The next ten infinitely long days turned into a personal, specially created just for him branch of hell. Ayan lost count of time—hours merged into solid stream of pain, meditations and pain again. Sleep wasn't required, but consciousness demanded respite that didn't exist. He existed in continuous cycle of torments, where the only milestones became brief breaks for food and water.

  But for all that, he still felt, sensed with his skin, how he progressed. What made the lad scream in pain now merely irritated his head; what had made him lose hearing for half an hour now deafened only for ten minutes. His own body stopped causing concern, as at the beginning when heartbeat deafened and his own hands' touch brought agony.

  And therefore, through pain—searing, piercing, never fully releasing—through bloody tears flowing of their own accord from inflamed eyes, through racking cries tearing from aching throat, through endless streams of sweat flooding face and back, he still saw the goal. Looming somewhere ahead, beyond the veil of suffering, but real. Attainable.

  This very goal kept him from finally breaking.

  No strength remained for other training—after sessions with Zhalgaztur, the lad could only collapse powerlessly on cold stone, feeling each muscle pulse with dull, exhausting pain. Nor did anger at his tormentor remain, which at first had warmed his soul and helped him hold on. It had burnt out completely, evaporated without trace, expended entirely in fruitless attempts to hate the baksy.

  True, love for the old orc was nowhere evident either—between them lay an abyss of endured suffering that couldn't simply be forgotten or forgiven. But common sense, that cold, rational part of his mind always the lad's strong point, suggested a simple truth.

  He understood—deeply, at the level of hard-won knowledge—that without Zhalgaztur, without his cruel but necessary methods, Ayan would never have been able even simply to exist in Seratis. Never mind fight or develop—he couldn't have elementally left this cursed cave without going mad from the overload of sensations crashing upon his unprepared consciousness.

  And considering that exit from the virtual world loomed not even on the distant horizon—all attempts to log out still met only the system's cold silence—remaining here, in this stone trap, meant slow, agonising degradation of mind. There was no choice. Only forward, through pain, through suffering, through himself.

  And he walked this path, teeth clenched, day after day.

  A week later, when Ayan began slowly, cautiously resuming interrupted weapons training—movements still resonating with dull ache in muscles, but no longer that all-consuming agony as before—the baksy unexpectedly brought Orgatai into the cave.

  The old orc entered slowly, leaning on his worn staff, but his gaze was sharp and appraising. Zhalgaztur briefly announced that henceforth the lad would train under this experienced warrior's guidance, and departed without awaiting answer.

  Ayan expected anything—new torments, contempt, another cruel trial. But to his surprise, they quickly found common ground. This rough, much-experienced veteran, with his restrained but fair remarks, with his manner of teaching through deed rather than endless lectures, somehow imperceptibly reminded him of Rotis, who'd become almost a father to him.

  And Orgatai, in turn, saw in the lean, sinewy lad with stubborn gleam in his eyes a reflection of himself in distant youth—that unruly young warrior who'd also once learnt to hold a spear and not surrender under pain's onslaught.

  However, the warm feelings that began timidly sprouting between student and teacher made their joint training sessions not a whit less harsh or exhausting. The old man made no concessions—his principles didn't permit sparing one he'd undertaken to teach. On the contrary, as though testing the strength of the bond found between them, he only methodically increased loads, repeatedly raising the bar of demands.

  Thus Ayan found none of that longed-for relief he'd secretly hoped for. Fate's cruel irony merely changed the form of his suffering but didn't diminish it. Sessions with Zhalgaztur seemed gradually to cause less pain—body adapted, consciousness learnt to cope with the flow of sensations—when immediately, as though by some evil design, new pains appeared from Orgatai's merciless training.

  Respite existed not at all. Though it should be noted he never once asked for it. His inner struggles he was accustomed to keeping deep within.

  The axe fell from his hands again, thudding dully against stone. Ayan bent double, palms braced on knees. Air rushed into his chest in short, ragged gasps. Sweat dripped onto floor, leaving wet traces between stones.

  "Enough with the axe for today." Orgatai rose from the stool, approached closer. "Take the sword."

  The lad straightened, wiped his face with the back of his palm. Muscles hummed, hands trembled with fine tremors.

  "One-handed or two-handed?" He rasped.

  "Both." The old orc nodded at the weapon rack. "One-handed first. A hundred strikes top to bottom. Then a hundred diagonal each direction. Then horizontal—also a hundred. After that, switch hands. When you finish, take the two-handed, same programme twenty times."

  Ayan approached the rack, took the wooden blade. The hilt settled into his palm familiarly—over recent days his hands had memorised the form of each training weapon. The one-handed sword's weight seemed laughable after the axe.

  "Begin."

  The blade soared overhead. Strike. Air whistled, cleft by wood. Second. Third. The movements came sharp, precise. By the twentieth strike his shoulder began to ache—dull pain spreading from joint down his arm.

  Orgatai walked around, observing. Sometimes he stopped, corrected stance, touching leg or back with his staff.

  "Spread your legs wider. Centre of gravity's shifted forward—you'll fall at the first push."

  Ayan corrected position, continuing to chop air. Forty. Fifty. Sixty. His arm went numb, fingers gripping the hilt ever weaker. He had to consciously tense his wrist after each strike so the sword wouldn't slip.

  Eighty. Ninety.

  The last ten strikes came through force. The blade moved slower, trajectory growing crooked. At the hundredth strike Ayan froze, catching his breath.

  "Diagonal. Right to left. A hundred times. Don't stop."

  The sword rose again. Diagonal movement required torso rotation, engaged different muscles. His obliques began aching by the fifteenth strike. By the thirtieth—burnt with fire.

  "Pivot from hips, not shoulders. Otherwise strength won't suffice."

  The lad corrected technique. It became easier—not much, but noticeably. Strikes went cleaner, sharper. Sixty. Seventy. Eighty.

  The ninety-ninth strike came smeared—his arm shook so violently the sword described a wavy trajectory. The hundredth barely reached.

  "Now left to right. A hundred times."

  Ayan switched grip, his wrist burning unbearably. Began chopping in reverse. His arm obeyed worse and worse, strikes coming clumsy. By the twentieth he was already angry at his own awkwardness.

  "Slower, but correct. Speed will come later."

  He slowed pace, focused on technique. Thirty. Forty. Muscle memory formed with each movement. By the sixtieth strike trajectory evened out.

  Hundredth strike. Pause.

  "Horizontal. A hundred times at neck level."

  The sword described a horizontal arc. This movement engaged shoulders, back, abs simultaneously. His entire body participated in the strike. After thirty times his back began to burn. After fifty—each breath resonated with pain between shoulder blades.

  Seventy. Eighty. The sword grew heavier with each swing.

  "Twenty more. Don't slow."

  His jaw cramped from how tightly he clenched his teeth. Ninety. Ninety-five.

  A hundred.

  The sword fell to earth. Ayan remained standing, swaying in place.

  "Switch hands. Same thing. Begin."

  The lad raised his gaze to the old orc. He looked calmly, without shadow of sympathy.

  "I said—begin. You'll rest after the two-handed. Perhaps..."