Chapter 51: Training 1

We both stood up in a standing position. The man could be seen looking at me intensively, like he was searching for something. The way the man kept looking at me, I am starting to think the man is interested in my body. I don’t know what is going on in the man’s mind, but I felt I should tell him I don’t swing for males, that I am all team large cup female.

"If you are checking if I am gay, I am not," I said.

The man just continued to look at me without saying anything.

Master Shoki, as he said I should be calling him, moved closer to me. He was now in a new attire. He wore a black, tight-fitted round neck long sleeve and long tactical trousers. I could see the compressed muscle underneath the shirt. I could now see why they said don’t judge an object by the cover. Nobody will expect a middle-aged man to have that muscle underneath, unless the man told them so. And they will still find it hard.

"Okay, I have seen what I want to see. If you can withstand the Kinetic Resonance emitter in this room, you would pass the test. If you are wondering what it does, let me just tell you now. I am not fond of springing surprises on people, no matter how interesting it’s going to be. The function of the emitter is very simple. It just projects a field of focused pressure. Ain’t that a very simple function? If your constitution is strong enough, nothing will happen, and if it’s not even up to par, well, you will find out the answer."

"I don’t know why, but I don’t trust your word. I feel there is something you are not telling me. Like, for example, how long will I stand for?" I said.

"Why would I? What would I gain from not telling you?" Shoki said with a smile on his face.

That smile on the librarian’s face made me feel very unsafe.

"Don’t worry, it’s nothing. You just have to stand at the center of the room for some period of time. All will be alright," he said.

Master Shoki then moved a couple of steps backwards and pressed a button.

Immediately, I felt that something was extremely wrong. My body didn’t feel alright.

My body pressed down. It started from my feet. It then spread to the rest of my body. My ankle, my chin, my calf, and even my factory. It felt like something was holding me down like a vice. The pressure was extremely sharp. It was like the air itself had become thick and heavy, pressing down on him from every direction.

My breath was caught in my throat. It was very hard to inhale. It was like something was pressing down on my chest. It felt very constricted, like a belt was being tightened around my ribcage. He managed a shallow, ragged gasp.

Fuck, you stupid, annoying old man. I threw all the curses my mind could think of at the man. But that was all in my thoughts. I don’t fully have the energy to curse out loud at him. Okay. I can do this. It’s just pressure. I’ve taken hits before. I’ve sparred with bigger opponents. This is nothing. I tried to increase my confidence.

Then the pressure increased.

It wasn’t gradual. It was a sudden, brutal escalation, as if someone had turned a dial from three to seven. My knees buckled. I caught myself, forcing my legs straight, but the effort sent a spike of fire through my thighs. My quadriceps were already trembling. I could feel micro-tears forming in my muscle fibers as they fought against the invisible force.

My heart was hammering now. I could feel it in my throat, in my temples, an annoying, frantic, panicked rhythm of my heart. My body was flooding with adrenaline. My nervous system screaming at me that something was terribly, terribly wrong. This wasn’t training. This was torture. He felt that the librarian was laughing at him somehow.

Breathe, he told himself. Just breathe. The motivation are not really walking much, but that’s what is grounding him to reality. If not, he would have fainted a very long time ago.

But breathing was hard. The pressure on his chest made every inhale a struggle, like trying to suck air through a collapsed straw. His lungs burned. His vision was starting to blur at the edges, dark spots dancing in his peripheral vision.

He looked at that annoying man. He was desperate for some sign that this would end, that he’d proven himself. But the face was a mask of joy. Even if his face looked uncaring and cold, I could still see the joy on the man’s face. The sadist son of a bitch was receiving joy from my misery.

I have added him to my list of enemies. He has already joined the list in my personal black book.

The annoying man was not planning to stop him, I have realized that. He’s going to let me break, and watch me break in perfect relishing.

The thought sent a fresh wave of panic through him. His body wanted to flee. Every instinct screamed at him to move, to run, to get away from the invisible crushing force in the room. His muscles twitched, desperate to obey. But he couldn’t move his feet. If he moved, his journey coming here in the first place would just be pointless, a perfect waste of time. If he moved and left, he failed. Both himself and the man’s test.

Although his legs were shaking violently now, the muscles firing erratically as they felt fatigued. He could feel something wet on his upper lip. Blood. His nose was bleeding. The pressure was affecting his blood vessels, his internal systems. This wasn’t just a test of willpower. This was physically damaging him.

He felt like he was literally going to die, a voice whispered in his mind. The annoying man was going to kill him. This is insane, he thought. He should have asked more questions. Questions that would have prepared him for this. This does not look like something someone can survive.

His knees kept buckling in again and again, deeper each time. He always caught himself, but barely. His thighs were on fire, the muscles screaming in protest. His lower back was seizing up, spasming under the relentless pressure. He could feel his organs being compressed, his stomach twisting, his intestines cramping.

He was going to vomit. He was going to pass out. He hundred percent was going to fail.

No.

The thought was small, almost drowned out by the chaos in his body, like the thought of his body screaming at him to give up. But it was there. A tiny, stubborn spark.

A stubborn spark that adamantly says, I’m not going to fail.

He didn’t know where it came from. Maybe it was pride. My pride of a transmigrated author. Maybe it was stubbornness. The stubbornness streaming in my blood veins. Maybe it was just sheer will. The will to never ever accept defeat, like a honey badger that finds himself faced with lions, yet refuses to give up or accept defeat. That something in him refused to break.

He stopped fighting the pressure. He couldn’t win. He couldn’t push back against it. So he stopped trying. Instead, he focused on the one thing he could control: his breath.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Slow. Steady.

His breath was ragged, shallow, but he forced it into a rhythm. In. Out. In. Out. He counted. One. Two. Three. Four. He focused on the counting, on the rhythm, on anything other than the extreme crushing weight pouring on his body.

His legs were still shaking. His muscles were still screaming. But the panic was receding, replaced by a cold, grim determination. A determination for vengeance against the man in the far future. A revenge he would pay back with double interest. He wasn’t going to win this fight for now. But he knows that he was just going to survive it.

Seconds passed. Minutes. Time lost all meaning. His world had shrunk to the rhythm of his breath, the count in his head, the unyielding pressure on his body. He could feel sweat dripping down his face, mixing with the blood from his nose. His shirt was soaked through, clinging to his skin. His legs were numb below the knees, the muscles exhausted, running on nothing but adrenaline, stubbornness, and the dream of vengeance.

His vision was fading in and out. He could hear his own heartbeat, loud, wrong, and erratic in his ears. His body was screaming at him to stop, to give up, to collapse. But he kept counting.

Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

He was counting like the MC of Doctor Bones from one anime. He always wondered if someone could literally have that kind of concentrative force. The guy has been counting since the time they were frozen till the time they were released. That’s very godly in itself.

He didn’t know how long he’d been standing there. It felt like hours. It felt like seconds. He was trembling so violently now that he could barely keep his balance. His feet were planted, but only ju

st. He was one breath away from collapsing.

And then.

The pressure vanished.

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