Sigmund Freud did said that every creature on Earth follows the Pleasure Principle: that is to pursue pleasure and to avoid pain. Humans aren't an exception...
But at the same time, they are.
Countless philosophers have addressed the subject of pain and suffering: Plato spoke of the suffering of the imprisoned soul; Aristotle, with his mesótes, wrote about the balance between virtue and suffering. We can go west to Sartre and Camus, who viewed pain and suffering through the lens of existentialism. Nietzsche, who said that pain should be embraced—because through it, we can temper our spirit. Even in the East, the Buddha spoke of it through Dukkha and his Noble Truths.
Schopenhauer with... let's better not talk about Schopenhauer.
What I want to say is that yes, humans tend to avoid pain. But at the same time, in the face of something greater, we are able to embrace pain—hell, we're even capable of pursuing it, if it opens the gates to something that transcends our mundane souls.
Humanity has something that differentiates us from other creatures. In the presence of what surpasses us, we shed our individuality and our urge to survive—not out of faith, but out of revolt. Our instincts grow quiet before the absurd vastness of ourselves.
The indomitable human spirit, as they call it.
'It is easier said than done'. Zachary thought, as he watched his once-mangled body revert to its original state.
He still felt disgust at the memory of his earlier thoughts, but he didn't dwell on them. This brief respite wouldn't last long, and the man's onslaught would continue.
'I don't remember how long I was being abused before the light came from the floor. It felt like hours, but I can say with confidence that no more than five minutes had passed', Zachary thought as he rose to his feet—but the man's words interrupted his thoughts.
"I have given you a short breath in respect of your changed eyes. Don't expect such generosity going forward," the man said as he shifted into a new stance. His left hand extended forward, while his right hovered close to his chest—neither clenched in a full fist nor relaxed, but something in between. His feet were set apart, knees slightly bent, his weight resting lightly on the balls of his feet—poised, with an overwhelming ferocity that was tightly contained in such a stance.
'Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, he's coming. One thing at a time—let's stay alive and keep count of how much time there is between the healing lights.'
His thoughts were interrupted as the man's right hand appeared in front of him. But with renewed spirit, Zachary dodged clumsily to the left—only for the man to plant himself firmly on the ground and deliver a high kick with his left foot to Zachary's side.
Zachary blocked it instinctively, bending his arm against his flank. But this time, he also leaned slightly into the direction of the strike, softening the impact. This time, he wasn't sent flying. Then the lightning hit him—his muscles spasmed, his breath caught in his lungs, and his eyes filled with tears. He could feel his humerus groaning inside his arm; thankfully, it didn't break.
That's when the man grabbed his shoulders and delivered a knee to his left side. Zachary just barely managed to wedge his arms between them. He could feel his left arm bending slightly under the force of the blow. And then Zachary rolled to the ground—and once again, electricity coursed through his body.
Zachary clenched his teeth so hard that blood flowed from his lips. He wasn't even given time to scream as the man appeared in front of him, right leg high in the air, aiming a falling kick at his head. Zachary didn't think—he rolled to his right with as much grace as a newborn could muster.
'Fuck! I can at least manage the strikes by moving my body accordingly, but it's that damn lightning that accompanies every punch and kick that's making me want to vomit!'
Zachary kept rolling across the chamber. Sometimes he managed to dodge the hits; other times, they found their mark. He was punished if he made a wide dodge without planning his next move, and he was punished even when he made a good one. Every time, his injuries increased... and every time, the lightning followed.
That's when it happened—the light escaped once again from the chamber's floor. Warm, embracing.
'Thank God! It's around a minute and a half. It certainly feels like I've been doing this for hours. Is this the relativity one feels when doing planks?'
Zachary couldn't help but lampoon at the thought, as his broken body returned to its once pristine state.
This time, the man didn't wait for the process to finish. He was already in front of Zachary, throwing a left punch at his face. Zachary dodged the blow—this time by subtly shifting his hips and lowering his shoulders—and, as if expecting the follow-up, stepped his right foot back and leaned slightly to the right in anticipation of the incoming kick. He relaxed his body and embraced the force of the kick, using it to put distance between himself and the man.
'Wait, right punch to the face followed by a left kick to the body? Then is it...'
As if answering his thoughts, the man appeared at his side with unnatural speed and tried to strike him with a knee. When Zachary backed away, the man extended his leg into a high kick aimed at Zachary's temple. Zachary dodged low beneath it—only to tremble.
'Knee to kick, then...!'
He barely managed to raise his arms above his head when the falling kick came down. His thoughts froze. His wrist shattered. He dropped to his knees. Thankfully, he didn't lose consciousness, but his mind remained foggy as a straight punch struck his sternum, sending him flying across the chamber.
Fighting through the stupor caused by the kick to his head and the now still-unfamiliar lightning coursing through his body, Zachary forced his mind back into focus.
'Punch, followed by kick, then knee, then high kick. He's repeating the same movements over and over again!'
Zachary saw everything with new clarity: how sometimes, when he dodged a punch, the next strike hit harder than usual—and how dodging the same strike a different way allowed him to respond better. But the man gave him no time to gather his thoughts. He was already there, launching a cutting motion with his left elbow toward Zachary's jaw.
Zachary tilted his head back slightly, anticipating the next move—and, just as he expected, the man extended his left arm fully and brought the edge of his hand down in a slicing motion. Zachary pivoted to the right—only to feel the man's right shoulder crash into his ribs.
'It's true! Every move is followed by another in a straight sequence. I can't help but marvel—the fluidity of these "katas" is out of this world... Or is it out of my world? Considering it should be normal to develop battle arts in a direction—'
His lampooning was cut short as the man launched a low kick toward Zachary's shin, followed immediately by another aimed at his shoulder.
'Fuck! Even now, knowing what's coming doesn't help much—his speed still far outmatches mine!' Zachary thought as he barely managed to block the kick with his already battered arm.
Zachary's abuse continued—the man spared nothing. Kicks, knees, heels, reverse kicks. He was creative with his hands: normal fists, the edge of his hands like blades, open palms striking with the ferocity of a spear. Sometimes, he used just his extended thumb, focusing all his strength into a single point. Other times, he clenched his fist but left the middle finger slightly out to concentrate force even further. He also used his elbows—short in range but powerful enough to break Zachary's arms most of the time. His shoulders and hips moved in ways Zachary couldn't begin to comprehend—often used to break his defenses, only to be followed by a grappling technique that slammed him to the floor.
Fuck, he was sure that if the man used a headbutt, it wouldn't feel out of place.
Every move… was accompanied by the same old lightning.
Every punch, every kick, every single strike was followed by blinding electricity. Zachary couldn't get used to it. Just when he felt he was beginning to adapt to the pain, another type of pain came. The involuntary spasms, the way his lungs refused to obey him, the sensation of insects crawling under his skin evolving into tiny needles growing through every fiber of his being.
The smell was worse. He was burning from the inside. If not for the healing floor, his eyes would have boiled long ago. The tears that should have flowed in response to his agony evaporated moments after they left his eyes.
He could smell the chlorine his evaporated tears produced. At first, the scent confused him. But as his mind drifted from the pain, he remembered an experiment he'd done in high school—electrolysis in saltwater, and how electricity separated the salt into its basic components: chlorine and sodium.
'Aghhhhh! Fuck!'
The pain snapped him back to the present. The floor was healing him again. His stamina, renewed by the chamber, was back to full—but his mind had long since grown weary. Still, he refused to yield.
He remembered the pompous promise he had made to the Original One. Now, he could begin to understand why the Spell had mocked him in the Memory Description. He especially remembered the loathing he felt for himself after that pathetic surrender.
So no, he wouldn't go down.
"Fuck it, we ball," Zachary whispered—his first words spoken out loud.
"Ha... It seems you refuse to go down," the man said, a humorless grin on his face. "It appears that change in your eyes wasn't an empty promise. By this point, you used to stay on the ground for a few more minutes—until I stomped on your back. Let's see if this time is different."
Zachary continued to dodge the strikes—a little more gracefully each time... but not enough. He sidestepped punches or slipped below them, pivoting inside the guard as in boxing. But just like boxing, sometimes when he got in too close, an uppercut met his chin.
The kicks were trickier. If he blocked them with his body, the result was usually a broken bone. And if he dodged one, it was often followed by another kick—one that came from God knows where.
Everything else was hell. The knees were followed by a straight kick to the body, and if he managed to dodge it, the man appeared beside him to gift him an elbow to the ribs. If Zachary tried to catch his breath and curled up to protect his body, the man would break his stance with a shoulder strike, following up with a grappling technique that threw him to the ground.
The worst one was the palm technique.
Zachary had underestimated it. He thought that, unlike a clenched fist, an open palm wouldn't carry much power—and in a way, he was right. The palm couldn't penetrate like a punch did, but the way it twisted his insides caught him completely off guard. The palms didn't target the outside of his body—they damaged him from within.
'Fuck! How is he doing it? The things he's doing should be impossible,' Zachary thought through clenched teeth as he continued to endure the man's relentless onslaught.
'I had a friend in college who was on the judo team. She used to invite me to watch their training sessions. They shared the gym with the boxing and karate teams, so I got to glimpse how they all worked. I might have quit boxing, but I've always considered myself a fan of these disciplines. Even in my free time, I watched YouTube videos about other foreign martial arts—Muay Thai, Taekwondo, even Capoeira,' Zachary reminisced as he rolled through the chamber.
'That's why I can say with confidence... What the fuck is this man doing?!'
'The way he switches between stances, his footwork that can shift from a striking position to a movement stance without needing to reset. His transitions look slow and relaxed—until the actual strike falls with direct, fast, and consequential force. I know I'm inside Shadow Slave. This man is probably an Ascendant—most likely a Transcendent. I hate to admit it, but if this man wanted me dead, I wouldn't even be able to protest. But he's holding back—he's using the bare minimum strength to stay at my level. The overwhelming pressure he exerts comes not from brute force, but from his lightning and this strange martial art that flows in complete synchronicity.'
Zachary kept dodging. His body was moving, but his mind was growing tired. This was the most arduous and stressful situation he had ever faced.
'A martial art, in its most basic terms, should be simple. You perform a set of movements, accumulating acceleration, and then release that acceleration in a chosen direction. Newton's Second Law—accelerated mass equals force. But what this man is doing breaks every notion I believed to be correct.'
The floor restored his stamina at the same time it healed his body, but his mind remained tormented by the constant stress of being mangled—and worse, by the phantom pain left behind by the electricity. It pulled him in and out of delusions.
'Yes... I can see it,' Zachary thought with clouded eyes as he ducked beneath a punch.
'The lightning is not just a complement. It's not just a way to deliver more pain. It's not some kind of damage buff. It's the sole participant in this "dance." Every movement, every punch, every hit... they are the complement.'
Despite his blurred vision, Zachary was now able to see what he had once deemed impossible: the way the man moved freely, transitioning between stances only to deliver deadly blows with absolute precision. He flowed...
"...Like clouds," Zachary whispered to himself.
The man paused mid-attack for just a moment, his eyes widening slightly. A determined expression replaced his once-bored face, and he resumed his assault with newfound purpose.
'The way he moves... He's emulating the movement of clouds—free, calm, without fixed direction, flowing with the wind... or more precisely, following the will of something greater. But when that cloud is ready, it...'
"...Strikes as thunder," Zachary declared.
"Yes!" the man exclaimed with a grin. "You saw it! I was growing tired of your inability to see it after all these years!"
The man returned to his initial stance, his left hand extended. "Now, you need to internalize your enlightenment. Get ready!"
Zachary could now follow the katas more clearly, aware of the deeper processes behind the movements. Before, he had been dodging simply to avoid damage. But now, he could see why certain evasions suited the "clouds" of motion. Even more importantly, knowing which movement would come next, he felt he might finally be able to—
Just as the man finished the chop with the edge of his hand, Zachary's right hand moved and lightly redirected it, leaving the man's right side exposed. With a new clarity in his eyes, Zachary zeroed in with his left fist!
Only for the man to block it with his free hand.
Zachary fell to his knees. His body was in perfect condition, but his mind had long since gone beyond its limits.
The man didn't follow up. He looked down at Zachary with an expression that was rare—pride was visible, but deeper than that... regret.
With a sad smile, he spoke to the boy who was beginning to lose consciousness. "A counterattack... That's a first."
He turned his back to Zachary.
"It seems that with your development, we might be able to hold the Ceremony tomorrow."
The man began to dissolve into mist.
"I'm... Proud of you," his final words echoed sadly through the chamber, just as Zachary slipped into unconsciousness.