Chapter 113 - 112: One Scar at a Time

Chapter 113: Chapter 112: One Scar at a Time In the three months that followed, aside from cultivation, spear drills, and the occasional quiet evening spent with Sylra and Jen, Lumberling’s nights were filled with hunts alongside Grokk, seeking monsters not just for the challenge or essence, but to fuel something deeper. Lumberling had begun training the Ironblood Tempering Scripture, a body refinement method far more brutal than the Imperial Mindseal Meditation. If the mindseal tested the boundaries of thought and control, then the Ironblood Scripture tested flesh, marrow, and resolve. But unlike before, he had no memories to rely on, no teacher, and no clear path. He had only the fragmented scroll and his own grim resolve. ..... The moon was high, cold silver casting eerie shadows across the village’s training ground. Lumberling stood bare-chested beneath the pale light, arms loose at his sides. Before him loomed Shade, hulking and still, each of its eight abyssal limbs twitching with silent tension. "Again," Lumberling said. Shade tilted its head, confused. It had struck him twenty-four times already, each blow calculated, restrained, but strong. Strong enough to bruise a normal Knight black and blue. Lumberling’s chest was already mottled with red marks and shallow cuts. His breath came in slow, meditative pulls. One limb raised. It paused. "I said again." This time, the blow came without hesitation. Whack! The impact slammed against his ribs, making him stagger. Blood rushed to his ears. His vision narrowed, but he didn’t fall. He braced himself, drew a breath, and rotated his shoulder. "Better," he muttered, spitting blood onto the dirt. "You’re starting to understand pacing." Shade’s body shivered slightly. It still didn’t speak, never had, but its quiet compliance was beginning to feel like loyalty. Inside, Lumberling pushed Qi toward the bruised flesh. Not to numb the pain. Not to heal. But to strengthen. Controlled destruction. Recovery. Adaptation. The cycle. He felt it working. Slowly. He gritted his teeth. "Again." ..... Midday. No clouds. Just heat. Lumberling lay beneath a boulder nearly twice his size, one that he and Grokk had rolled down from a ridge just for this training. His arms trembled beneath the slab, legs twitching as his bones groaned under the weight. ’Focus on the breath. Let it sink to the bones.’ Every time he exhaled, he pushed Qi into his spine and hips. The weight tried to flatten him. Sweat poured off his back and hissed on the sun-warmed rock. His muscles burned. His joints screamed. "I could help," Grokk offered, crouching nearby with a meat skewer in one hand. "This looks like torture, not training." Lumberling didn’t speak. He couldn’t. Instead, he raised one trembling finger. Not yet. The slab shifted as his chest rose. His Qi surged. Just a little more... Then, with a grunt, he let the rock roll off him and collapsed to the ground, panting. Grokk approached and offered a canteen. "You’re insane," the gnoll muttered. "Maybe," Lumberling rasped. "But I’ll be unbreakable." ..... Jen had noticed first. "Brother, you haven’t touched your food again." Celine added softly, "This is the third day. Are you sick?" Lumberling shook his head, eyes calm. "Not sick. Just... adjusting." "Adjusting to what?" Jen narrowed her eyes, unconvinced. "Starvation?" "Shock the system. Reset the balance. Then rebuild stronger." He stood, skin slightly pale, but posture firm. "The Ironblood Scripture demands it." They didn’t understand. They didn’t need to. Later that night, after the dizziness set in and his hands shook too much to write, he finally sat by the fire and roasted a slab of monster meat. It was tough, stringy, and stank of sulfur. He devoured it. Qi bloomed through his stomach like fire meeting dry grass. Every cell lit up. The pain vanished. His clarity returned. He sat back, satisfied. Controlled starvation. Delayed nourishment. It works. ..... Beneath the freezing roar of the waterfall, Lumberling sat cross-legged, breath steady, Qi flowing. Each drop was like a needle. A hammer. A relentless barrage. He didn’t move. Endure. Adapt. Accept. The cold seeped into his bones. Muscles tightened, then relaxed. Breathwork, slow, rhythmic, guided his internal flow. When the water tried to crush him, he focused on pushing Qi outward, forming a thin veil against the external force. Ironblood is not about avoiding pain. It’s about mastering it. He stayed there until his lips turned blue. When he finally emerged, Grokk stood nearby, holding a fur cloak. "You’re going to die training," he said flatly. "Maybe," Lumberling replied, voice low. "But I’ll die unyielding." At night, when the forest quieted and the stars hung low, Lumberling would soak himself in a crude poison bath, his own creation, a mix of diluted venom and corrosive herbs. Without proper ingredients for the scripture’s recommended elixirs, he relied on pain and improvisation. Shallow cuts lined his arms and torso, allowing the poison to seep directly into his bloodstream. It wasn’t elegant, but it worked, his body screamed, his vision blurred, and bit by bit, his Poison Resistance skill crawled upward. ... By firelight, he opened the book again. There were no measurements, no step-by-step guidance. Just principles. Pain. Will. Reconstruction. He sighed. ’The Mindseal was easier. At least I had fragments of Nie Fenghun’s memories to guide me. But this... this is trial by fire.’ He looked at his bruised knuckles. Swollen, but stronger than last week. "Bit by bit," he murmured, touching the book’s edge. "One scar at a time." Grokk was already snoring nearby. Shade hung upside down from the rafters, unmoving. Lumberling closed his eyes. Tomorrow would bring more pain. He welcomed it. ... Four months later. The moon hung low over the treetops, its silver glow slicing through the mist that clung to the goblin village like breath on glass. Inside the cave hollowed near the village’s edge, the air reeked of sweat, blood, and scorched herbs. Lumberling knelt shirtless on the cold stone floor. Bruises bloomed across his ribs like violet flowers. Old scars overlapped with fresh welts, most still raw, some clotted with dirt. His breathing was ragged, his arms trembling, the skin of his palms peeling from too many nights of lifting boulders and bearing Shade’s unrelenting strikes. A familiar pulse stirred within him. (You have learned: Ironblood Tempering Scripture – Level 0 (1/1000)) The message appeared in silence, no fanfare, no thunderous chime, just a cold line of text etched into his awareness. And yet, it struck him harder than any of Shade’s blows. Lumberling exhaled. Slowly. Deeply. Then he collapsed backward, staring at the uneven ceiling of stone. "...It worked," he whispered. The pain, the countless nights of improvisation, of trial and error with nothing but old memories and vague instructions, finally paid off. He recalled the months of lying beneath stone slabs, his bones creaking like old wood. The starving days, the hallucinations, the poison baths that left his nerves frayed like cut rope. The pain of asking Shade to strike him, again and again, while the silent spider looked on in mute confusion. And still, he endured. But this wasn’t just about growing stronger. It was about proof. Could a method be forged, not from divine blessing, but from sheer will and grit? Could he take something like this and mold it into a path for others? That was the true question. His goal from the beginning. "I had to learn it first," he muttered to himself, voice hoarse. "No one can teach what they don’t understand." He thought of Grokk, Skitz, Krivex, and the others. None of them bore the Divine Blessing of Qi Adaptation as he did. If they were to grow, not just by hunting monsters or pushing past their limits, they would need a different path. One not inherited, but built from the ground up. It was a madman’s dream. But what else did he have now? With the looming threat of the Earl and the outside world closed off, his plans to study magic and mages had to wait. He couldn’t afford to waste this time. "Ironblood," he whispered, eyes closing for just a moment. "Let’s see if I can make it bleed into something usable." The fire crackled beside him. His wounds ached. His body throbbed with a dull, bruising heat. And yet for the first time in months... he smiled.