Location: Starforge Nexus - Training Facility | Dimensional Fold Space
Time: Day 14 (External: ~2.3 Days)
Two weeks.
Twenty-eight training sessions.
Jayde stood in the arena's center, holding a practice sword—wooden, weighted to simulate real steel, perfectly balanced despite its age. The weapon felt simultaneously familiar and foreign. Federation muscle memory recognized the basic principles: leverage, balance, and edge alignment. But wielding a blade was different from firing energy weapons or fighting hand-to-hand.
This required finesse. Precision. Art.
"Basic stance," White commanded. He held his own practice sword—larger, heavier, intimidating. "Feet shoulder-width. Dominant foot forward. Blade at mid-guard. Show me."
Jayde shifted into position.
White circled, making minute adjustments: shifting her rear foot slightly, adjusting her grip, correcting the angle of her blade. "Better. You have a natural aptitude—probably residual from young Jade's body. Doha children are exposed to weapons young. Some muscle memory remains despite years of disuse."
He stepped back, raising his own blade.
"We begin with fundamentals. Eight basic cuts: overhead, rising, left-to-right horizontal, right-to-left horizontal, left diagonal down, right diagonal down, left diagonal up, right diagonal up. These form the foundation of all bladework. Master them, and complex techniques become possible."
White demonstrated each cut slowly. Perfect form. No wasted motion. The blade flowed through space like it was part of his body, extensions of will made manifest in wood and force.
"Your turn. Overhead cut. Ten repetitions. Go."
Jayde raised the sword. Brought it down.
The motion felt clumsy. Wrong. Her wrists twisted awkwardly, the blade wobbled mid-swing, and the impact with the training dummy jarred her shoulders painfully.
"Terrible," White said cheerfully. "Again."
She repeated the cut.
"Worse. Again."
Ten repetitions. Each one critiqued ruthlessly. By the tenth, her arms burned, and her form had deteriorated into something barely recognizable as swordwork.
"Rising cut. Ten repetitions."
They drilled all eight cuts. Ten times each. Eighty total strikes, each one imperfect, each one earning White's critical assessment.
Her arms were dead weight by the end. The sword—which had felt manageable at the start—now weighed roughly ten thousand pounds. Her grip was so weak she could barely hold the handle.
"Good foundation," White said. "Now we drill combinations. Overhead into right horizontal. Twenty times."
You've got to be—
"Now."
She drilled combinations.
Two-cut sequences. Then three-cut. Then four-cut. Complex flowing patterns that required her to transition smoothly between different angles, different levels, and different targets.
Her body fought her constantly. Wrists too weak. Shoulders not strong enough. Core lacking the stability to generate power through rotation. Every combination fell apart halfway through, devolved into awkward flailing that made her want to throw the sword across the arena in frustration.
I know how this should work. My mind understands the principles. But my body—
"Your body is learning," White said, reading her expression. "Slower than you want. Slower than your Federation consciousness expects. But learning." He demonstrated a particularly complex five-cut combination—smooth, efficient, lethal. "This takes years to master normally. We have weeks. So we compress the timeline through volume. You'll drill these combinations until your hands bleed. Until the movements become reflex. Until thinking is unnecessary because your body just knows."
He handed her a different practice sword. Heavier. Longer.
"Fifty overhead cuts. This blade. Go."
Jayde's arms screamed in protest, but she raised the heavier sword and started cutting.
Four hours later, she couldn't lift her arms above waist-height.
White had drilled her relentlessly: basic cuts, combinations, footwork patterns, body positioning, timing drills, distance management. Everything that went into competent bladework, compressed into a single brutal session.
Her hands were blistered. Blood seeped through the practice wrappings White had applied after the first hour. Her shoulders felt like someone had poured molten lead into the joints. Every breath made her intercostal muscles spasm.
"Sparring," White announced. "Swords. Stay in the circle. Same rules as hand-to-hand: I attack, you defend or counter. We go until you can't."
Please no. Please, gods, anything but—
White's practice blade swung toward her head.
Block!
She raised her sword. The impact nearly tore the weapon from her grip. Her arms—already exhausted past functional capacity—barely held on.
White flowed into a second strike. Third. Fourth.
Jayde blocked desperately. Or tried to block. Most attacks slipped past her guard, the wooden blade cracking against her ribs, arms, legs, and shoulders. Each impact sent fresh pain lancing through already traumatized tissue.
Can't keep up. Too fast. Too strong. Too skilled.
White's blade caught her across the thigh—hard enough to buckle her leg. She crashed down, sword clattering from nerveless fingers.
"Up."
She retrieved the sword. Got up.
White attacked again.
This time, she lasted maybe three exchanges before a thrust—pulled at the last second but still carrying force—drove into her solar plexus and dropped her gasping.
"Up."
Up. Attack. Down. Up. Attack. Down.
The pattern repeated endlessly. Each time, she learned something: how to angle her blade to deflect rather than absorb force, how to shift her feet for better balance, how to read White's shoulder movement to anticipate strikes.
But learning didn't mean succeeding. White's skill was centuries beyond hers. He could've killed her fifty times over if he'd wanted. Instead, he systematically dismantled her defenses, identified every flaw in her technique, and exploited every weakness in her form.
Educational brutality.
Finally—after maybe the thirtieth knockdown—she couldn't get up anymore.
Lay there in the circle, sword beside her, body refusing all commands. Not unconscious. Just done. Finished. Empty.
No more. Can't. Nothing left.
White stood over her, not even breathing hard. "Thirty exchanges. Down from yesterday's thirty-two. But—" His tone sharpened. "—you lasted longer individually. Average exchange length increased by forty percent. Your defense is improving. You're learning to manage distance, to conserve energy, to pick your blocking moments instead of trying to stop everything."
He picked up her sword. Examined the blade's edge—the wood was splintered in places from repeated impacts. "You're destroying practice blades. That's good. Means you're generating real force, putting power behind strikes. Week one, your swings were gentle taps. Now they're actually dangerous. To the equipment, if not to me."
Such high praise. I'm dangerous to wooden sticks.
White picked her up—routine now, like carrying a sack of grain—and walked toward the medicinal bath.
"Sword training continues daily," he said. "Morning session: blade drills. Evening session: hand-to-hand. Both sessions end with sparring. In two weeks, we add archery. In three, pole-arms. By week six, you'll have functional competency with five weapon types."
Or I'll be dead from accumulated damage.
He lowered her into the bath.
The fire consumed her. As always. As eternal as time itself, that liquid agony that healed while destroying, built while breaking down.
But this time—
This time, Jayde noticed something different.
The initial pain wasn't as bad. Still excruciating, yes, but... less? Or maybe she'd just adapted. Learned to accept it faster. Stopped fighting the healing process so violently.
We're getting used to this. The pain is becoming normal.
(Is that good or bad?) Jade asked.
Probably both.
Her character screen updated:
PHYSICAL STATUS:
- Strength: 6.2/100
- Agility: 6.8/100
- Endurance: 5.7/100
- Constitution: 6.0/100
Nexus Merits: 7.0
Two weeks of training. Stats had tripled. From catastrophically weak to merely very weak. Progress that would've taken months or years through normal training, compressed into fourteen days through White's systematic brutality and the medicinal baths' alchemy.
Twenty-eight to forty-two days remaining. If we maintain this rate of improvement—
She did the math. Rough calculation, assuming linear growth—which was probably optimistic.
By week six, strength might hit 15-18. Agility 16-19. Endurance 13-16. Constitution 14-17.
Still pathetically low by Doha cultivator standards. But functional. Capable. Strong enough to survive basic threats. Strong enough to begin actual cultivation without her body immediately destroying itself.
If we survive the training.
"You're thinking too much," White said. He sat nearby, watching her soak. "I can see it in your face. Running calculations. Planning ahead. Worrying about timelines."
"Trying to determine if the numbers work," Jayde admitted. "If I'll be strong enough by week six or eight."
"You will be." Absolute certainty in his voice. "Your improvement rate is higher than average. The dual consciousness provides advantages—adult discipline combined with young plasticity. And your body is desperate to improve. Fifteen years of malnutrition and abuse created massive growth potential. The medicinal baths are essentially making up for lost developmental time. You're not just getting stronger—you're finally growing into what this body should've been if it had proper nutrition and training from birth."
That made sense. Bodies developed best during youth. Jade's childhood had been stolen—slave labor, starvation rations, constant stress. Now, at fifteen, with proper resources, her body was scrambling to catch up.
Delayed development finally occurring. Like a plant kept in darkness, suddenly exposed to sunlight.
"Tomorrow," White said, "environmental training begins. You'll spar in the heat room—temperature forty degrees above comfortable. Your body will learn to function while overheating. Then the cold room. Then reduced oxygen. Then combinations. By week four, you'll fight effectively in any condition."
(That sounds horrible,) Jade whimpered.
It sounds necessary.
Jayde closed her eyes, letting the bath work its magic. The herbs burned pleasantly now—she'd learned to recognize the sensation of healing, to welcome it despite the pain. Her broken body knitting itself together one session at a time.
Outside, in Doha, maybe two and a half days had passed since she'd entered the Nexus.
Inside, she'd been training for two weeks. Fourteen days of systematic destruction and reconstruction. Twenty-eight sessions of pain. Twenty-eight medicinal baths of liquid fire that healed and strengthened.
And she was only one-third through.
Four more weeks minimum. More likely five or six.
(Can we really do this for that long?)
We don't have a choice. The clan is still hunting. Za'thul won't give up. We need the strength to survive.
(But what if we break? What if there's a limit and we hit it?)
Then we die. But at least we'll die trying.
Jade was quiet for a moment. Then: (I'm scared.)
I know. Me too. But fear is just information. It tells us we're in danger. We already knew that. So we use it. Let it motivate us. Let it push us past where comfort would stop.
(You sound like White.)
Good. White knows how to forge survivors.
The bath's warmth suffused her completely now. Healing finished. Just comfort remaining. The rare moments between sessions when her body didn't hurt, didn't ache, didn't scream protest at existence.
She'd learned to treasure these moments.
Because tomorrow, White would break her again.
And she'd let him.
Because that was the price of strength.