Location: Starforge Nexus - Training Facility | Dimensional Fold Space
Time: Day 21 (External: ~3.5 Days)
Three weeks.
Jayde stood at the entrance to what White called the "environmental chambers"—doors that led off the main arena to specialized training rooms. Each one designed to torture in unique ways.
Today: the heat room.
"Temperature inside is forty-three degrees above comfortable baseline," White explained. "Roughly what you'd experience standing in direct volcanic heat. Your body will struggle—heart rate will spike, you'll dehydrate rapidly, and cognition will degrade. And in that state, we'll spar."
Of course, we will.
The door opened.
Heat rolled out like a physical wave. Not gentle warmth—aggressive, assaultive temperature that made breathing feel like inhaling smoke. The air itself felt thick, hostile, actively working against survival.
Jayde stepped through.
The room was maybe thirty feet square. Plain stone walls that radiated heat like they'd been baking in sunlight for hours. The floor beneath her feet was warm—uncomfortably so, noticeable even through her training shoes.
Bioluminescent strips provided dim red light—appropriate for hell, really. And in the center of the room, White waited, holding two practice swords.
"Normal rules," he said. "We spar. You defend or counter. We continue until your body literally stops functioning." He tossed her one of the swords. "But now you're fighting me and the environment. Let's see how you adapt."
He attacked.
The heat made everything worse.
Jayde's first block was sluggish—her muscles felt like they were moving through honey, reactions delayed by fractions of seconds. White's blade slipped past her guard and cracked against her ribs.
Focus. Compensate. Adjust.
She backpedaled, sword up, trying to create distance. But her feet felt heavy. Her head was already swimming from the temperature, thoughts getting fuzzy, tactical processing degrading.
White pressed the attack. Three rapid strikes—overhead, horizontal, rising thrust.
Jayde blocked two. The third caught her shoulder and nearly dropped the sword from nerveless fingers.
Can't breathe. Air too hot. Lungs burning with every gasp.
Sweat poured from her skin. Not normal exertion sweat—panicked, desperate attempt at cooling, body dumping fluid in a futile effort to regulate core temperature. Within two minutes, her training clothes were soaked.
"Your reaction time is degrading," White observed, continuing his assault. "Blood flow redirecting from muscles to skin for cooling. Dehydration affecting neural efficiency. This is what happens when you fight in adverse conditions. Your carefully trained reflexes become worthless if you can't adapt."
His blade caught her leg. She crashed down.
The floor was hot. Actually hot, burning against her palms where she caught herself.
Up. Get up. Can't stay down on this surface—
She scrambled upright. Raised her sword.
White attacked again.
Block, block, miss—crack against her arm. Down again.
Up.
Attack. Block, miss—crack against her hip. Down.
They repeated the pattern. Each exchange, Jayde lasted slightly longer before collapsing. Not because she was getting better at fighting—she was getting worse, actually, her form deteriorating as the heat sapped strength and coordination. But she was learning to function while debilitated. Learning to push past the body's screaming warnings that conditions were dangerous, lethal, and please retreat to safety.
No retreat. No safety. Just forward. Always forward.
Ten minutes in, she couldn't see straight. Vision blurred, doubled, focus impossible. Her sword felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. Each swing was agony, each block barely adequate, every movement a supreme effort of will over physical collapse.
Fifteen minutes.
Her legs stopped working. Not gradual failure—instant shutdown, just like the running assessments. One moment standing, next moment crashing to that burning floor, unable to rise.
"Fifteen minutes," White said. He wasn't even sweating. Just stood there, perfectly comfortable in hell, like the heat meant nothing to him. "Acceptable for first environmental session. Tomorrow you'll last eighteen minutes. By week's end, thirty minutes. Your body will adapt—improved heat tolerance, more efficient cooling, better electrolyte retention."
He picked her up. Carried her out of the heat room.
The regular arena air felt like paradise by comparison. Cool. Breathable. Not actively hostile to life.
"Hydration," White said, handing her a container of water. "Drink. All of it. Replace what you lost."
Jayde drank. The water tasted like salvation. Sweet and cold and perfect, flooding through her parched throat, into her desperately empty stomach.
"Environmental training continues daily now," White explained while she drank. "Today: heat. Tomorrow: cold room—temperature twenty degrees below freezing. Day after: reduced oxygen—simulates high altitude, roughly fifteen thousand feet equivalent. Then we combine them. Heat plus reduced oxygen. Cold plus combat in darkness. Every possible adverse condition you might face in real combat scenarios."
Because just learning to fight wasn't hard enough. Now we learn to fight while dying from environmental exposure.
"Also," White added casually, "we're increasing training duration. Four hours per session instead of three. Morning and evening. Eight hours daily of active training. Four hours recovery, eating, and hygiene. Eight hours sleep. The time dilation gives us the extra hours—each day here takes less time in Doha, but you get a full day's worth of training and recovery."
(Eight hours of this,) Jade whimpered. (Every day. For three more weeks minimum.)
We've lasted three weeks already. We can last three more. One day at a time.
"Bath," White commanded. "Your heat-stressed tissue needs aggressive recovery."
The medicinal bath was especially intense after environmental training.
Heat damage was different from impact trauma. The herbs and blood essence had to repair different types of cellular stress: dehydration damage, electrolyte imbalances, and minor protein denaturation from extended heat exposure. The bath's alchemy adapted—Jayde could feel it targeting different systems, working different magic.
Her character screen updated:
PHYSICAL STATUS:
- Strength: 9.1/100
- Agility: 9.5/100
- Endurance: 8.8/100
- Constitution: 9.3/100
Nexus Merits: 10.5
Three weeks. Stats approaching double digits. Still pathetically weak by cultivator standards, but no longer child-level. Adult baseline, maybe. Weak adult, but adult nonetheless.
Progress. Real, measurable, undeniable.
"You're ahead of schedule," White said, studying her numbers. "Most contractors hit this level around day thirty, not day twenty-one. The accelerated improvement continues. Your body is starved for growth—fifteen years of developmental deprivation means massive growth potential. Every session, every bath, you're not just getting stronger. You're finally becoming what this body should've been from the start."
"How much further can I go?" Jayde asked. "In three to five more weeks?"
White considered. "Conservatively? Strength 18-22, Agility 19-24, Endurance 16-21, Constitution 18-23. Optimistically? Add three points to each. You'll plateau eventually—everyone does—but not yet. You have weeks of aggressive growth remaining."
Twenty to twenty-five in all stats.
Still pathetically weak by Doha standards—Inferno-tempered tier cultivators probably measured in the fifties or sixties. But functional. Capable of surviving basic threats. Strong enough to handle Inferno essence flowing through her meridians without immediate destruction.
Strong enough to unlock the first seal.
"What happens," Jayde asked, "when we unlock the Inferno layer? What does that feel like? What changes?"
"Everything," White said simply. "Access to Ember Qi transforms you fundamentally. Your body stops being purely physical and becomes partially energetic. You gain the ability to enhance strength, speed, and durability through essence channeling. To weave basic Inferno techniques—sparkcasting, minor forgeweaving. To begin true cultivation—drawing ambient Ember Qi from the environment, refining it in your Crucible Core, advancing through temper stages."
He smiled. "You'll go from zero essence access to one-eighth. From Voidforge to a cultivation path beginner. From hunted slave to actual threat."
"Will it hurt?" Jayde asked. "The unsealing?"
"Yes." No hesitation. "Opening the Divine Eightfold Lock's first layer requires breaking through divine-era binding magic. It'll hurt worse than anything you've experienced in training. Worse than the medicinal baths. Possibly worse than the library explosion that triggered your soul merger."
Wonderful.
"But," White continued, "the pain is temporary. Minutes, maybe an hour. And when it's done, you'll have power. Real power. The ability to fight back instead of just surviving. The ability to start your journey toward actually being strong instead of just less weak."
Jayde soaked in the bath, processing that.
One more month. Maybe five weeks. Forty-two sessions minimum, more likely sixty or seventy. Each one brutal. Each one pushing her past limits and breaking her down to rebuild stronger.
And at the end—
Power.
The ability to cultivate. To grow. To become something more than the broken slave child who'd fled the Freehold estate in terror.
Worth it. Has to be worth it.
(Do you think we can really do it?) Jade asked quietly. (Survive the full training? Not break before the end?)
We've survived three weeks. That's proof we can survive six. One day at a time. One session at a time. We don't think about the full timeline—just the next hour. The next challenge. The next bath. And slowly, those hours add up to days, days to weeks.
(And then we'll be strong?)
Then we'll be stronger. Still weak by Doha standards. But stronger than we are now. Strong enough to start the real journey.
Jade was quiet for a moment. Then: (Okay. We keep going.)
We keep going.