You fucking bastards… Assholes… I hate you so goddamn much…
A single, pathetic tear rolled down my filthy cheek, splashing into a tiny puddle of equally pathetic tears at my feet. I couldn't calm down. Isn't this enough? Isn't this fucking enough!? Not only are they doing this shit to me, but these pricks decided to humiliate me mentally too? Endurer… You're the fucking Endurers! Sitting there, probably watching… Just wait. I'll get out of this shithole, hunt down every last one of you who built this masochist's paradise, skin you alive, and make you dance cabaret on burning coals. Mark my words, I'll fucking do it. Whoever you are, you're all screwed.
Alright, that's for later. Revenge is a dish best served cold. Right now, I've got bigger fish to fry. 10,000 damage points. How the hell does that work? How's it calculated? Are they counting destroyed cells? If so, the system's got data on every single one. That means this can't be real—my body's not even real. But this fake-ass reality feels real as fuck! How powerful does a system have to be to track every cell of every living thing? And not just that—if it handles magic, it knows every atom, electron, and fucking photon! This isn't a system; it's a goddamn Laplace's demon.
So, maybe it's God? I don't have much experience hopping between worlds, so why not? I never called myself an atheist. Remember how many times I prayed before exams? If God in my old world just sat back and watched, what if the God here's a batshit crazy psychopath? Or maybe this is a parallel world where Hinduism won. That'd explain it. Hindus are… weird dudes. Take their yogis, spending their whole lives with one arm raised like they've got some high school trauma. I saw a YouTube video once about an Indian warrior caste with their life codes. Absolute insanity… Once, when an Indian city was under siege, thirteen thousand women and kids set themselves on fire. The men went to battle, but only if they died, win or lose. That's some fucked-up shit, kids. Makes celibacy look like a cakewalk. There, cutting your nails means using an axe.
There was something about experience in that first window. If there's experience, there's gotta be levels, right? So what's my level? Yo, status! Status! Fuck-status, damn it… This shit doesn't work. And with my measly one percent bonus, what level could I even be? How do you even earn it? Life experience? Like, 1000 points for losing your virginity? By that logic, I've racked up so much "experience" here I should be the strongest fucker on Earth. But if it's like a game, I'm screwed. Where a normal player kills one mob, I'd need a hundred. Fun times—makes me wanna shit myself. Whatever, I'll deal with it later.
Now, regeneration. Judging by my wounds, I'm no Wolverine. Good or bad? Probably good. If I healed too fast, Grok couldn't practice his healing shit, and I'd probably end up in his stomach. Before, I'd have called that a win. But now that I've flipped on bloody vengeance mode, I'm more about surviving. From what I can tell, the 100% regen bonus doubles my natural healing. So, a broken bone that took a month to heal now takes half. Fucking amazing bonus. What a title, what a reward. Yo, devs! Give me something like "Master of the Cosmic Dick" and your parents' address while you're at it. I'd be much obliged. Ugh… fine, later. Right now, Vyer and his skinning knife. These two are way more interesting.
While the demon flayed my legs, I just hung there, quiet as a mouse. My face was calm, like a still sea. For the first time in forever, I let myself smile. This is it! My salvation! Joy flooded my soul. All thanks to you, Nikola! I always believed in you. If I escape this hell and start a normal life, I'll name all my kids and grandkids after you. Let them suffer for it, I don't give a shit. I'll conquer the world, build power plants everywhere (no clue how, but I'll try—hope effort's enough, or I'll borrow the effort of a few hundred thousand people), and rename every city in my empire Teslia… Teslandia… Teslopolis? Your last name sucks for city names, man.
This was all possible because redirecting two signal streams from my legs to the chains was a piece of cake. Thanks to the needle training, my focus level's through the roof. Now I don't sweat pain—unless it's multiple wounds at once.
But this system's far from perfect. Mental work's still work. The brain needs rest, mostly through sleep. So far, I've spent a lot of time unconscious, so I haven't needed sleep much. But now that my pain-blocker's up and running, I've gotta think about future problems. Humans sleep eight hours a day on average. You can't go more than ten days without sleep (maybe, not sure). Snoring only happens in deep sleep. Dolphins sleep one hemisphere at a time. Can't… nope… that's it. My useless sleep fact database is tapped out. Point is, I need a plan so my wake-up call isn't my own hysterical screams. I can only block pain if I'm ready for it.
Back in college, during exam season, I tried that short-interval sleep system. Don't remember the details—something like thirty minutes every three hours? Didn't work, so I resorted to cash. But here, I've gotta build a working system from that. It'd also be nice to have some kind of alarm. Demons don't have clocks, and getting woken up by a cleaver isn't exactly festive. For the next unknown chunk of time, I'll probably jump at the slightest rustle.
While Vyer studied my skin scraps, pondering how to turn them into fashion, a new thought hit me: if I keep relying on this system, I'll stop growing. To level up, I need radical methods. Really fucking radical methods. I hate myself…
At the end of each pain-therapy session, I turned off the pain-blocker to dive headfirst into this wonderful, fucked-up world. Every time, I swore I'd never do that stupid shit again, but I kept at it. My brain said it was necessary to fully control my nervous system. My brain's a fucking moron. But… screw it. I've gotta become the Lord of Pain! Hm… sounds kinda cool. Let's keep that.
After a while, my control got so good I didn't need to focus as hard. Managing impulses became like driving a car. I could even let my thoughts wander. But I can't get cocky. I still can't overpower magic during intense pain. I need another training method. My mana pool's grown so much it recharges faster than I spend it. I've got reserves. And as economics says, money's gotta work. So, another idea hit me. Right now, I'm just blocking signals from reaching my brain. But the nervous system's a two-way street. What if I control my body from the outside, like a puppet? Sure, it's not practical—who walks around moving their legs with their hands? But for training, it'll do. Sounds intriguing. What if I could trigger an erection with this? That's not even masturbation!
I'm a fucking genius!