Chapter 21: Chapter 21 – I Am Not Sticking My Hand in There!

“I want to be stronger.”

“Aren’t you already strong enough?”

That was the final exchange I had with my master back on Earth.

I first met him at the gym. It was a run-down, shoddy little place, but it had everything I needed. A pull-up bar, barbells, a bench, a set of dumbbells, and a punching bag.

The punching bag was the most important of them all. That’s the number one thing that kept me going for as long as I did.

Number two was him.

He was an old man in his eighties who always did nothing but sit in a chair at the gym. Sometimes, he’d be talking to the owner. Mostly, he just watched people work out.

When I first asked him why he was being such a creepazoid, he told me that watching “the young'uns” exercise allowed him to reminisce about his youth.

Three months later, I found out that was total bullshit.

When he offered to train me, I thought it was like something out of a martial arts anime. I mean, an old man taking on a kid as a protege is a pretty popular trope.

You couldn’t blame me for making the connection. Plus, I was thirteen and dying to break out of my horrible living conditions.

Now that I think back on it, he was pretty much my dad.

He made me do my homework, taught me how to fight, and gave me his guidance whenever I needed it. I guess the only thing that didn’t stick was when he tried to teach me how to be a good person.

I guess that’s why he was reluctant to teach me this technique.

The Chinese called it “fa jin.” The Japanese called it “hakkei.” Me?

I called it “get fucked.”

Alright. Let’s fuckin’ do this.

My breathing slowed.

My vision sharpened.

I could see every minute detail of my opponent before me. The miniscule air bubbles in the swecke’s translucent green body. The twenty-so tentacles all shooting toward my position.

The crimson sphere that was its core.

I could see it all.

My heart beat once.

And then I stepped forward, moving neither fast nor slow, but at the speed which the situation required.

Each of the tentacles missed me by only a hair’s breadth.

It didn’t matter.

My fist struck the swecke, and its entire body wobbled.

Had I done it...?

Both I and the swecke had completely stopped moving, as if time had stopped for only the two of us in some twisted (and disgusting) romantic tragedy.

Wait. Scratch that. I don’t want to associate anything romantic with this literal shit eater.

A second later, the swecke’s core vibrated violently from within it and promptly exploded, causing the slimy mass that surrounded it to immediately collapse into a puddle in front of me.

[Non-System Skill Unlocked: Fa Jin.]

Hell yeah! Worry not, your technique lives on in another world, old man!

The fact that a notice had popped up with the words “Non-System Skill” had both intrigued and worried me, but it wasn’t something that I had the time to figure out at the moment.

That, and I didn’t want to be reading a section of the rulebook while inside a goddamn shitstained canal.

Instead, I thrust a fist into the air in a gesture of victory. It would’ve been all the more powerful if I wasn’t covered in feces goop.

Thankfully, Lucrezia and the others were completely safe from the terrors of the sewer monster thanks to her dome of wind, so she only had to clean me with her magic and we were on our way out of the sewer.

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We encountered a few more sweckes along the path that Cliona and Luran led us through, but none of them were as big as the first and were easily taken care of or avoided.

Eventually, we reached our first opportunity to get the hell out of here, which we gladly took. There were probably a few exits in the sluice channel that were more convenient for our purposes, but they still led to the slave chambers which was our ultimate goal.

“Everyone ready?” Cliona asked.

We all nodded in assent, prompting her to pop open a metal grate above us.

After squeezing through one by one, we found ourselves in a small room filled with a few wooden buckets and towels. From a glance, it appeared to be a storage room for cleaning supplies.

“Right, this is where the slaves do their business,” Luran said. “The cells where they’re holding ‘em shouldn’t be too far.”

After Cliona finished checking if the hallway outside was clear, we quickly made our way to the holding cells at Luran and Narik’s direction.

The cells were pretty much empty, which was surprising given that I doubted Count Oswald had any actual paid servants.

However, we managed to find one cell that was still occupied by a man who looked as though he were about to die.

Honestly, he didn’t look like a slave at all. He looked like one of the townspeople, and odds are, he probably was.

“K-Kill... me...” The man croaked with his parched throat. “Please...”

We stopped upon hearing the man cry out, none of us really sure how to react to such a plea.

Antenora recovered first.

“Your request has been noted. However, we first require your assistance. Have you seen a woman who looks similar to her?” Antenora gestured to Lucrezia as she spoke.

The man strained his jaundice-tinted eyes for a moment and nodded weakly. “They... took her to... the great... hall...”

Antenora nodded once and then produced a dagger from her sleeve, sending it flying into the man’s head in one smooth motion. She then used teleportation magic to retrieve the weapon from outside of the cell.

“Damn, woman. You didn’t even blink.”

“Human or not, I put him out of his misery. That ought to be a deed deserving of thanks, no?”

I shrugged, but I couldn’t help noticing the hint of distaste in her voice. “S’pose so.”

Her lack of concern for humans was really impressive, but it also made me feel a little more touched that she trusted me enough to journey with me and even sleep in the same campsite as me.

Honestly, I was pretty sure that Antenora’s reduced hostility toward me was in part due to Lucrezia’s fondness of me and the effort I’d shown to regain Lucrezia’s trust.

As we made our way to the great hall, we encountered no resistance. It was surprising, to say the least.

Krys and Narik remarked how lucky we were to not have run into any guards so far, but I thought otherwise.

Such a severe lack of security could only mean one of two things: either the count didn’t even consider the possibility of intruders, or he was already expecting us.

Based on the discipline I saw from the two guards at the front gate, I was willing to bet it was the latter.

Then, a thought suddenly struck me.

“Hey, Antenora. If you can teleport stuff, why can’t you just teleport Aurelia out?”

“I cannot teleport people, you idiot. If I could, then we would never have been captured. The most I can teleport is small objects.”

Whoops. My bad. That should’ve been obvious.

We stopped at the massive double doors which barred the way to the great hall. Even here, there wasn’t a single guard in sight.

In fact, there wasn’t a single person in sight. It was clear that we were expected.

Odds are, we blew our cover during that fight against the massive swecke in the sluice canals.

That didn’t matter though.

I mean, what were they going to do? Kill me?

I laughed.

Showtime, motherfuckers.

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