Before I start this chapter, I want to say that I have a guest narrator for this chapter! Say hello to the readers, guest!

  …

  It doesn’t seem to recognize your voice. Hold on- lemme tinker for a minute.

  …

  120/022/021/120/011/100/202/022/210/200/202/201/201/120/111/210/010/022/111/001/102/012/100/202/201/202/120/121/121/110/012/001/201/012/111/001/220/100/202/022/210/200/202/201/

  Whelp. That’s a whole lotta ternary that I am not parsing right now. Go ahead and greet the readers!

  Sanon

  Uh… hello?

  Max

  Good enough! You can go ahead and sit wherever you want until I need you, I’ll get you something to drink in a bit. Let’s roll.

  By the time I’m done with this, I’ll be as tough as dry instant ramen! I thought to myself, because it would appear that saying witty one-liners while doing a multi-mile run is not the best idea. What, you thought that this would be some kind of epic training montage?

  Nope! Hollo put me right into endurance training. And that meant running. A lot of it. And lifting. Actually, you know what? I should probably start from the beginning. It all started on a cool. August morning in 2002, and I’m going nowhere with this joke so let’s start at the real beginning.

  In the beginning, there was nothing, and then there was an explosion. And by an explosion, I mean an explosion of physical activity because holy shit did Hollo not have any sense of restraint.

  I mean, I say that now, but the reality is that I was just a wet noodle at the time. Sure, I’m a dry noodle now, so I have some structure and maybe a bit of tensile strength, but your average Helsan animal, and probably Terran animal too, will still snap me in half like the single piece of dry spaghetti that I am.

  Okay that’s a lie, I’m more like two or even three pieces of dry spaghetti. Have I milked this joke enough?

  …

  Whatever. Training arc.

  Long story short? It was hell. Long story long? Uhh. Keep reading.

  Right after Sanon and I finished our little conversation with Hollo, we made preparations to stay on the estate for like two weeks give or take. I don’t really remember if it was actually two weeks owing to a little something called structured and intense physical training. I vowed to never join a military, and this experience reinforced it.

  The preparations rgely consisted of room arrangements, getting our equipment and clothes repaired and maintained, and having a decent nights rest for the first time in what felt like ages. I also finally got to take a nice hot bath. Cathartic would be the objectively correct word to describe it, if you asked me.

  The estate’s bath house was certainly an interesting look into Poporean bathing culture. It was almost Roman style without any real sense of privacy, which definitely took some adjusting to. It was pretty fancy too, but I wasn’t terribly certain that it was an accurate representation of the average experience since Hollo seemed to be on the wealthier side. Not to mention at the time I’d only had a sample size of one.

  The water in the baths had a rather herbal smell to it, not to mention a slight green tint. I did in fact taste it. I do in fact regret this. It did taste like herbs, but not the kind you eat for fun.

  The baths were also mixed, but this is not that type of book, so each and every one of you readers had best get your minds out of the gutter, or I will personally come to your house and personally bonk you with a comically rge hammer. Some other outworlder can describe the various peoples of Helsa with explicit intent, because I sure as hell will not.

  Normal and conventional bathing escapades aside, the first day on the estate was well-spent. I should probably also talk about the two humans on the staff. In hindsight, this is somewhat recursive and probably bad writing since this happened before the baths, but I do not care.

  I learned two things after I approached them. Their names were Paulo and Pau, and neither of them spoke English. Or Common, for that matter. No, they spoke Lontish. This made things difficult, since I did not know any Lontish at the time. Even now as I write, my Lontish is still pretty rough. Chrakma Lontwarkt ysz, and all that.

  Fortunately, Sanon saved the day with some transtion. She didn’t seem too bothered by it, but she did have some difficulty.

  “Just so you know Max, these two don’t speak the same kind of Lontish as me. Some of their words are weird, so my transtion might not be very accurate.”

  Indeed, her transtion was not as accurate as she might have preferred. The twins, as we had come to learn, were amiable enough about talking with Sanon. Dwarves are rare here, and it would seem that not everyone is racist. Admittedly, Oresco is still the worst example of racism I’d encountered until that point, so I was pretty happy to see it didn’t appear to be nearly as common as it was and probably still is on Earth.

  I should really stop going on off-topic tangents like that. How about an on-topic tangent? The twins were wearing interesting clothes. Why? Well, it would seem that they were a part of Hollo’s ecological research team. Apparently they’d been commissioned by the IPG — some kind of bor authority — to perform analysis on local wildlife interactions with settlements… or something like that. Later questioning of staff that actually spoke Common would reveal that the intention was to reduce the amount of damage done to the ecosystem, prevent overhunting, and so on. Shockingly progressive, but I was beginning to learn that Helsan civilization did not have the same feelings toward their environment that many of us on Earth do.

  There are certainly bad apples on the international stage of Helsa, but that’s not really my forte. Especially not now in the present. I already have a part in it, and I am not happy about it.

  The only other notable information I got from the twins was actually a pretty delectable nugget. Paulo and Pau are fifth-generation outworlders, so that told me that humans had been here for at least five generations. What did that mean to me in the long run? Not much, admittedly, but it did give me a good sense of scale. It also made me wonder just how isoted Dinja was if they had been that uninformed about humans…

  Uhh… Right. We also had dinner. There was a lot of food. Too much food. In fact, there was so much food that it prompted me to inquire with Hollo why they had prepared so much food.

  Hollo put a hand to his heart in a gesture that seemed passionate, though the precise meaning was lost on me. “Our excess is to be fed to the wildlife that call this humble estate home! The excess is also given to any less fortunate souls that might be in need of food!”

  …

  “In that order?”

  “No! I cannot fathom why I would have said that in such a manner as to confuse you, but it does indeed seem that I did precisely that! Yes, we do prioritize people that need food over the estate wildlife, which tend to have enough to eat on their own anyway.”

  Man really wears his heart on his sleeve. Respectable. I thought, chewing on a rather dense piece of meat.

  Did you notice how I said that my experience on the estate was hell, and then proceeded to describe how my first night was actually quite comfortable and rexing? Yeah, well, now for the hell part.

  My awakening the next morning was something to remember. It could also be considered something to desperately want to forget, depending on who you ask. Sanon thought it was hirious. Me? Not so much.

  If memory serves — and it does, I checked — then I did go to sleep in a bed that night. However, I did not wake up in one. Ever drowned before? I have. Almost.

  Hollo dumped me in a ke. Or more accurately, he dumped me in a ke and somehow managed to not wake me up until he’d gotten me like 20 feet deep. I woke up to a very soggy and submerged elf waving at me in a ‘see ya!’ gesture.

  I’m not really sure how far down you have to be to get the bends, but I sure am gd I didn’t with how quickly I scrambled up to the surface.

  Gasping for air, I called out from the middle of the ke, “What the fuck man?!”

  I could see Sanon and Hollo watching from the shore, one of them keeled over ughing, and the other standing there, menacingly. The menacing one also had their arms crossed with a very analytical gaze piercing me, but that kinda ruins the joke.

  I started swimming toward the shore, but it would appear this was the wrong decision, because I hit a wall, and not the physical kind. The magical kind.

  Hard shield spells consume a shit ton of mana. This was a hard shield spell. Hollo had tricks up his sleeve, and one of them appeared to be keeping me in the water. I rapped my fist against the wall a few times, and learned about as much as I did from my coding css back in highschool, which is to say- nothing. The wall was solid, and I was not passing through it. I wouldn’t be able to fry my arms on a mana circuit this time either, since it was probably deeper than I was willing to swim. Speaking of, I still can’t feel pain in my right arm.

  Sanon was yelling something from the shore, but I couldn’t hear her since, well, y’know, distance. Fortunately, we have Sanon here to narrate for me! I’m gonna go work on my caffeine synthesis project!

  Sanon

  Uhm. I’ve never written a book before. I guess I just talk into this?

  Okay… it’s writing what I say… that’s pretty cool! Hm? Oh- is it… transting my Common into… English, was it? Huh. I guess I’ll start then.

  Ahem. I was yelling, “SWIM MAX! THERE’S SOMETHING IN THERE WITH YOU!!”

  Max didn’t hear me. The… creature that Holloveo had let into the ke was trained, apparently, but I’m still gd I didn’t decide to train with him. It was definitely entertaining to watch, but when Max was suddenly dragged back underwater, I got a little concerned.

  I turned my head to Holloveo, who was watching intently, almost like he knew exactly what was happening under the rippling surface of the ke. “Are- are you sure this is safe?”

  Holloveo’s eyes flitted over to me, and then back to the ke before he spoke. “This is safe, without the slightest shadow of doubt. Our intention here is to scare him with something very nearly traumatic so that the coming trials will have a lesser impact on his mind. A palette cleanser.”

  “Something about that seems… fwed.”

  Max

  I just wanna pop in for a sec and say that while they were having their little discussion on the morality of throwing someone into a ke with a thalsophobe’s nightmare, I was freaking the fuck out on account of being suddenly dragged underwater by the aforementioned thalsophobe’s nightmare. Back to you, Sanon.

  Sanon

  There’d better be something in this for me or I’m gonna clobber him. It feels really weird being able to remember this stuff like it just happened.

  …

  Holloveo gave a light chuckle. “Fwed? I suppose some fellows could certainly choose to see it that way. This is merely the same means by which my ptoon’s mentor trained us. I was part of the Poporean military for a time, you see. It was effective with us, and I hope to see simir results in our friend Max.”

  I swallowed. “Huh. I guess I can see where you come from with that… but-! He didn’t even know what he was getting into!”

  “Neither did we, dwarven friend, neither did we.” Holloveo shook his head with a wistful look in his eyes.

  His ga-

  Max? Are you okay? Did you just break something?

  …

  You don’t look so good.

  Max

  Huh? Nope! All good here! Just uh… remembering things. Probably best that I didn’t do a detailed memory dive for this part… I’ll uh- I’ll take the reins from here, but let’s go grab something from town first. Wind down and stuff.

  Back from food acquisition and consumption activities? Yes. Ready to relive the second worst week of my life? No. Will I do it anyway? Yes!

  Alright so… underwater. That’s where the fucker dragged me before I had a chance to realize what was about to happen due to a certain someone not giving me any warning beforehand.

  The creature was what’s called a mj?gai, and I now understand why a name that means ‘brute of the waters’ is given to this thing. When it grabbed my ankle, I felt as if it might shatter at any moment with how tight of a grip it had, not to mention it was an intensely powerful swimmer, dragging me down at what felt like breakneck speeds.

  Suffice to say, I panicked. I had no idea it was trained. In that moment, for all I knew, it could have just been a random animal that was in the ke when Hollo dropped me off. This wasn’t the case, of course, but I’m fairly confident someone in my situational ck of shoes wouldn’t have really given that much thought. I sure as shit didn’t. Instead, I did what any other person would have done, and screamed on the way down. In an uncontrolled environment, opening my mouth at all would have been a death sentence. You’ll find out shortly why it wasn’t. And it has nothing to do with magic, before you have that thought, considering that casting a spell isn’t exactly easy with lungs full of that stuff you find in kes and oceans and somesuch.

  Why was opening my mouth not a death sentence? Quite simple, really. For some godforsaken reason, I could breathe underwater! Could I talk? No. Did it hurt like hell? Yes! The sensation of drowning was very much present, but for some reason, oxygen was still reaching my lungs, and I know I didn’t spontaneously grow a set of gills.

  The only reason I realized any of this during my panic, is that after a certain point, the mj?gai just started dragging me in circles, not really doing much else once it reached a particur depth. A moment to think was briefly afforded to me by adrenaline and settling panic, which prompted me to actually consider the situation at hand.

  Don’t get me wrong, I was still scared out of my mind, but in the back of my mind, thoughts were brewing. My eyes were closed, so my kicks weren’t really connecting with much aside from water, and the my?gai didn’t seem terribly interested in letting go of my leg. Or so I thought.

  I went limp in an admittedly futile attempt to rest for a moment. The mj?gai noticed this, and let go a short moment after before headbutting me right in the chest, knocking the water out of my lungs. I wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass me by though, so I made the underwater equivalent of a mad dash for the surface.

  My effort was cut short though, by a rge hand grabbing onto my face, pulling me back down into the depths. This prompted another struggle, this time with me desperately trying to pull the hand off of my face. It was during this struggle that I had an idea that was most certainly not ingenious.

  Whilst grasping the wrist of the hand that held my face in a vice grip, I channeled mana directly into the creature. This did nothing… at first. I continued channeling mana into the mj?gai’s wrist for what felt like a couple of minutes, while the bsted thing dragged me through the water. The effects of putting too much mana into a creature’s body too fast are simple: oversaturation.

  We’ve seen in earlier chapters that oversaturation can cause things like rocks to explode, but in living things, it does something simir to what happened during my prison escape. It uhhh. It does a wee bit of minor to severe nerve damage, among other things, like burns from first to third degree, depending on the severity of oversaturation. There’s more to this topic, but for now, that’s the general idea.

  To make a long story a little bit shorter, it did, in fact, let go of me. It also shed out, leaving a gash in my right shoulder, but I did not immediately realize this due to the unfortunate affliction pguing that particur part of my body. The affliction of fried pain receptors.

  This did mean that I was able to immediately swim back up after the mj?gai had let go of me, which was great! What was less great was the fact that I was bleeding, which I didn’t really notice until I saw crimson stain the water near my shoulder. What was once again great, was that the mj?gai seemed to have lost interest in me, likely because oversaturation hurts. Who would have thought.

  “Hollo! I am going to kick your ASS.” I shouted, stumbling, sopping wet, across the sand of the ke shore after having had a nice long, exhausting swim past the now disabled barrier spell. “RIGHT-” I huffed. “AFTER-” I puffed. “I TAKE… A LITTLE NAP.” I managed, before falling over face first.

  It would appear that Sanon is now ughing in the other room. I’m gonna put salt in her tea.