Chapter 63: Catharsis (Patreon)

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After coming to a decision – or rather, deciding not make a decision – Tiana and Cayden spent the rest of their time catching up and enjoying each other’s company in lieu of plotting any escapes.

In many ways, it was like they’d never been apart. Cayden felt none of the awkwardness that he often felt around anyone but Elise, and Tiana teased him mercilessly as he updated her on everything in his life from the last year. Yet in other ways, Cayden couldn’t help but notice how different his sister was from what he remembered.

She was taller and obviously more mature, with many of her child-like expressions that Cayden remembered completely absent. In the last year before she left, Tiana had grown more and more resentful of Cayden, fully embracing her ‘rebellious teenage’ phase before ever hitting her teens. Yet Cayden saw none of that now, as she showed nothing but gratitude and happiness to see her big brother. Every few minutes she hugged him again as if to reassure herself that he was really there.

Other changes, however, were less welcome.

While she was listening to Cayden’s stories, her eyes never rested fully on his face, constantly darting and reacting to unseen stimuli, never appearing to fully relax. Her smiles looked less natural and more strained than he was used to, as if her facial muscles were out of practice with the expression of happiness. And it was impossible to miss the callouses on her hands, a match to the ones he saw on many weapons-wielding adventurers.

Cayden fully supported his sister training herself for combat, as long as that was something she wanted to do. But if she was forced into combat training against her will…

Once again and probably not for the last time, Cayden took a deep breath, attempting to calm his anger.

He was intensely curious to know more about Tiana’s class that could give her a skill like [Dual-Speak], as well as the rest of her general and class skills, along with a better explanation of her racial skills now that she’d had a chance to train them up. But Tiana never offered the information, and Cayden wasn’t willing to ask and potentially force her to reveal any secrets to hidden listeners. After all, he couldn’t imagine that the compound would approve of a class that contained a skill that allowed her to bypass their surveillance, though he had no idea how she might be able to keep it a secret.

Eventually, though, their time came to an end, and as the third bell rang out over the city, the princess stood from her perch at the edge of the fountain and approached the siblings, flanked by her hulking earth elemental bodyguard.

“I’m sorry, but I have other things I need to do today, and I must first return your sister to the compound,” she said in a flat voice.

Cayden felt an instinctive urge to argue and hold his sister close, but Tiana nodded and, after a final hug goodbye to Cayden, moved to stand submissively behind the princess.

Seeing his sister in the role of a servant only made Cayden angrier, but he bit down on his rising fury – a process he was becoming more and more familiar with – and nodded to the princess. “Thank you for giving us this time,” he said with a clipped voice, but with the way the princess always spoke, he hoped she wouldn’t begrudge him the somewhat disrespectful tone. “I hope we’ll be able to do this again, sometime?” his voice raised up at the end in an obvious question.

“I cannot promise anything or commit to a schedule, as my time is not always my own, but I believe that should be feasible,” Valeria replied, and Cayden exhaled in relief as he nodded his thanks.

On principle, Cayden was against the idea of transactional loyalty. He knew he had issues with pretty much all authority, as the idea that he owed certain people his respect and obedience simply because of their position rubbed him the wrong way. Loyalty and respect, he believed, should first of all be between equals, and secondly be freely given. Loyalty that could be bought was no loyalty at all.

Yet the princess’ actions were making a strong case against his beliefs.

On a personal level, he still didn’t like the princess. He doubted he could ever truly be friends with someone who he was expected to obey simply because of her birth. Yet as long as Valeria continued to allow Cayden to spend time with his sister, he was willing to fully commit as someone on her side – someone who would defend and advocate for her and her position without fail.

Though, if he ever found out that the princess was one of those separating him and Tiana, that she was more than just an unwilling accessory to a system that was keeping them apart…that loyalty would flip faster than she could blink.

But for now, he resolved to stay in the princess’ good graces in any way he could. He nodded to the princess again, low enough that it could almost be considered a bow.

“Thank you,” he said again, this time with a much more genuine voice. And then, after a last smile and wave goodbye to Tiana, he left the square.

Cayden slashed out at the training dummy, his claws digging scores into the runecarved wood, and ducked as the dummy’s torso rotated, its wooden arm flying over his head.

He slashed again, and again, and then three more times. Each time he dug another series of gashes into the dummy, prompting a retaliatory strike from the training aid as the momentum of his strike was transferred to a counter swing. Some of the swings he dodged, but as his pace increased, clawing at his opponent with greater and greater ferocity, he dodged less and less, instead choosing to take the blows to his shoulders and sides.

Even with their momentum boosted by the dummy’s runes, the strikes barely stung, and he accepted the blows in trade for his chance to unleash even stronger chained attacks against the dummy. But despite his fury, he could never inflict more than the small gashes of damage to the runed wood.

He continued striking at the dummy for another few minutes until he took a step back and grabbed a training spear from a nearby weapon rack. When attacking with the spear, he no longer had to worry about injuries from retalitory strikes, but he had to be aware of the swinging arms entangling his spear. It wouldn’t take more than a second to disentangle his weapon from the dummy’s arms, but if it were a real fight, that was more than long enough for his opponent to close the distance and swing the momentum of the match in their favor.

For thirty minutes he attacked the dummy with his spear as sweat dripped from his brow and down his cheeks. But in order to keep from being ‘disarmed’ by his opponent, his strikes were even weaker than his clawed attacks, the dull spearhead not even leaving a scratch whenever it impacted the dummy.

And this was just the first-level training dummy, with runes that barely improved its durability above normal wood. On the other side of the arena, Cayden could see some older students training against the fifth-level dummies. Those dummies were significantly stronger than his own, and Cayden could feel the shockwaves from the older students’ attacks clear on the other side of the arena.

Yet Cayden, even with all his training, could barely even mar the surface of his dummy. His attacks were powerful, sure, but they lacked the punch that so many others had. Cayden was working with a strength higher than anyone on Earth had ever achieved, but at the end of the day that was all he had. And in a world of fireballs and supersonic arrows, the normal physics of a weapon on top of barely-above-human-level strength wasn’t enough.

Cayden continued to strike out at the dummy, switching between his claws and his spear every thirty minutes. Around him, other students came, completed their own workouts, and left. From the corners of his eyes, he recognized a few of the students from his frontline combat class, but he didn’t react to their presence – all of his focus was directed towards the dummy in front of him.

The damage on the dummy accumulated, but it wasn’t enough. Over and over and over he struck out. He tried to envision the dummy as his true opponent, the one who had essentially kidnapped his sister from him, but he didn’t even know who to picture. The princess? The king? All of Valtane?

A notification popped up offering Cayden back his [Claw Mastery] skill, and Cayden accepted without hesitation, replacing the useless [Inspect] skill. His strength and agility increased, but it still wasn’t enough.

He began integrating [Inertia] into his attacks, lowering his [Inertia] before an attack and then increasing it just before his strike made contact. It further increased the damage he was dealing to the dummy, but it was still nothing compared to what he’d seen others do, and his mana was drained in just a few minutes.

He’d been so focused for so long on perfecting his build. Of finding the perfect combination of skills that synergized into something greater than the sum of its parts. Yet somewhere along the way, he’d lost sight of what made a build ‘good.’

Sure, his skills and vitality synergized to an amazing degree, making him all but indestructible to anything close to his skill level. But what did that truly matter if he couldn’t deal any damage? He’d put off on finding skills to further bolster his attacks, justifying the decision based on the fact that he was strong enough to clear the dungeons around his level near Avernon and that there would be plenty of time to gain those needed skills ‘later.’

Well, ‘later’ had arrived. And now, when he needed to be able to fight for his sister’s freedom, he was too weak to do so. He should have learned his lesson from the death and destruction of his parents and village – life didn’t wait for him to be ‘ready’ for the trials it would throw at him. It wouldn’t give him time to make the ‘perfect’ build.

He thought back to the lecture from his Class Progression class a few days earlier. While what the professor had taught was largely true, it wasn’t the whole story.

[Second Chance] might be terrible for future progression, but so was death. If just once, the skill saved someone’s life when they would otherwise die, they were already further along than they otherwise would be. A loss of efficiency or less-than-perfect skill combination later in life didn’t matter if he wasn’t strong enough now.

His muscles trembled, and he stumbled as his calf cramped. But he stayed on his feet, hopping around on his one good leg as he continued to attack the dummy.

What he needed to do was to talk to Elise. To brainstorm what to do about Tiana, to reevaluate his build, and to search for skills that could give him a better way to attack.

But he would do that later. Talking to Elise would involve a long conversation explaining Tiana’s situation, and that was the last thing Cayden wanted to think about right now. For the first time in ages, he really didn’t want to see his oldest friend.

What he wanted to do was to attack the compound. Attack the palace. Attack all of Valtane. Attack something, destroying everything in his way until his sister had her freedom. But he couldn’t. He didn’t have the power nor knowledge of who to even target.

So instead, he attacked the dummy. Relentlessly, without pause or break. He hadn’t had lunch, but he ignored the complaints of his stomach as the sun arced through the sky over his head.

In many ways, what he was doing was similar to what he had done the previous day with Jeremy. But in all the ways that mattered, it was oh so different.

Yesterday had been training – relaxed, casual, and fun with a friend. Today was catharsis, a release of the anger that he didn’t know where else to direct.

He would return to training tomorrow, with greater direction, intensity, and intentionality than ever before. Yet for now, he just attacked. Over and over and over, until he eventually collapsed to the sand in exhaustion, the training arena empty and dark around him.

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