1% Lifesteal

Freddy watched Mark enter the changing room. The young man was clearly surprised that he had found him already there.

"Bit early today, huh?" the trainer asked him teasingly.

"I was late for one day, and the man already has an opinion of my character, tsk, tsk," he said, clicking his tongue. "I'll have you know I've been an early riser for many years."

The man chuckled as he shook his head. "Well, that suits me—" he started, but as he approached him, he raised an eyebrow. He stepped a bit closer, shifting his body around to get a look at his client from a few different angles. "There is something different about you," he noted, scratching his chin.

"You noticed?" he grinned. "My doctor handed me a special cream for acne scars, and it seems to be doing wonders."

"Wow, this much better after one day of use? Damn," Mark said, clearly impressed.

"Yup," Freddy lied. "It's some good stuff."

"Yeah, that's pretty insane," the man said, a clear note of disbelief still clinging to his voice. Then he shrugged. "Put the swimsuit on, by the way." He changed the topic. "We're going to be swimming today."

He did so, and the two of them went to the pool. Rather than do anything particularly demanding, they spent their time swimming around, with Mark instructing Freddy to keep his muscles moving. Learning how to swim was surprisingly hard.

And that was all they did for that day.

Mark presumed his body must be sore, and this day was dedicated to smoothening his physical recovery. The trainer didn't believe in "rest" from working out, as light activity was always better than lazing around.

They kept this session short, and Freddy walked away quite "grateful" to his trainer. In reality, this was little more than a waste of time for him since he was already fully recovered from all the training they'd done.

He soon returned home and picked up a book off a shelf.

Healing Arts: A Comprehensive Guide.

After brushing his teeth yesterday, he rushed to the bookstore, where he promptly spent nearly three thousand dollars on a guide to water spells. Then, half an hour later, he returned to the store, unfortunately "just discovering" that they didn't do refunds, despite the massive sign stating that, and could only swap the book for another one, or several of the same or lower value.

Then, he swapped the water guide for a book on healing arts and a cheap martial arts training guide, adding to precisely the price of the water spell manual.

The reason he went through this convoluted process was quite simple—he didn't want any strange items on his card record.

He doubted that this much would cause someone to investigate what he was doing, but if he consistently kept buying weird things, it could result in someone checking up on him, leading to the doctor finding out about what he was doing.

He made his way back home and cracked open his new textbook.

Healing ranged from minimal to supreme quality. Minimal quality only stopped the target from bleeding out, doing the bare minimum to keep them alive. In contrast, supreme quality could reconstruct the body on the cellular level, regrow limbs, and even recover from extremely complex ailments, including chronic disorders, otherwise incurable illnesses, and cancer.

Oh, and it was the only quality that could remove permanent scar tissue—including acne scars.

He had known that it was weird. From the moment he saw his face, he was aware that his talent wasn't ordinary.

But as the textbook confirmed it… The feeling was indescribable. All the shame and regret of losing the super farming prime evaporated as pure, unadulterated joy filled his body. He cackled, dancing around the apartment like he'd just won the lottery.

Supreme-quality healing was really, really expensive. Having a practically unlimited source of it? It was hard to put a monetary value on such a resource if it was even possible.

However, reading more about supreme-quality healing, he learned that this power came with a not-so-insignificant trade-off.

First, it was more or less utterly useless in combat. Even knowing that it was only 1% Lifesteal, he had initially made the assumption that it took him so long to recover from his state because he was damaging plants. This wasn't the case. The answer was much simpler.

Whatever energy or concept his talent extracted after he damaged living creatures needed to be piled sky-high for the healing to do anything significant. One could barely even call his state yesterday "injured." Yet, the few light scratches and a bit of muscular soreness required a lot of dedicated eco-terrorism.

This would be an absolute deal-breaker if the effect was only functional in combat. But given that it could be used on plant life…

It didn't need to be helpful in fights. It would contribute plenty enough outside it.

Countless people were forced into early retirement because they lost a limb or suffered a debilitating injury. For them, the solution was a wildly expensive treatment that could potentially not even make for a full recovery.

For him, the solution was just to piss off some environmentalists. He had no doubt that something like losing a limb could take weeks to recover from, but he had that option. He would never be out of the fight as long as he was alive. It was akin to having the ultimate insurance plan.

After eating his lunch, packing some food into the bag, taking his supplements, and donning the set of clothing he dedicated to forest-delving, he grabbed the martial arts training guide and ran into the woods.

He quickly located the machete and did a bit of forest desecration just to make sure he was in top shape. Then, before starting his training, he pulled the martial arts guide out of his bag and cracked it open.

It was nothing special. Granted, it did still cost several hundred dollars, but he was already getting used to obscene pricing.

For the most part, it was the absolute, most fundamental basics. A lot of it was off the table, given that he didn't have a sparring partner or specialized equipment, but the book was good enough at covering everything he could do without those two things.

The first was stances. A lot of 'em. Any pose a human could maintain could be used for one reason or another. Core strength and stability were essential to practicing martial arts.

Next up was flexibility. He winced at the mass of painful-looking stretches. What stretching he'd done with Mark so far revealed that he was incredibly stiff and had a limited range of motion, to say the least.

He couldn't even fathom how he'd do half of these poses without breaking a bone or something.

After that, it covered balance. Anything from basic footing to standing atop a staff, which he wanted to call bullshit on, was covered in this section.

Most of the book covered endurance, toughness, strength, agility exercises, and many examples of martial arts moves ranging from simple to more complex. At the very end, however…

This was the section where it covered ether techniques, starting with body tempering.

The Water Body tempering technique was a decent generic technique. However, its purpose was to balance the body by aiding the flow of water throughout it. Simply put, it was too gentle.

This book didn't provide any ether imprints or even essence flow rune scripts, but it did name and describe many techniques from all common elements.

And… oh boy, were they brutal.

Tempering techniques didn't do damage the same way other sources of harm did. Abilities could hurt the user, naturally, but it was different from external sources of damage. Most of the harm one could cause directly to oneself through one's abilities could also be recovered from, aided by a supernatural concept that acted as a crutch for ability usage—this concept was called Ethereal Mercy.

This meant that tempering techniques could do quite a bit and still permit full recovery.

Unless pushed too far. Then, one would either become a cripple or just straight-up die. Even before reaching that point, some were seemingly designed to test the limits of one's patience, pain tolerance, and willpower.

There was one that forced water into muscles to harden them, another that compressed vast quantities of liquid into the body, and even a technique that circulated the water within the body so fast that it made one feel as if they were about to explode.

All of these had limited use before they were upgraded to tier one when their effects would grow more directed and substantial, but even then, he couldn't fathom what kind of freak would subject themselves to something like this.

Other than that, it also covered some of the standard martial arts techniques. Flowing Rain Martial Arts with the Flowing Strike was, unsurprisingly, the first among the water types. It was as basic as basic could get, and apparently, the book praised it quite highly.

It was flexible yet elegant, focused on large, decisive strikes with a ton of momentum behind them, interspersed with faints and parries that flowed right through an opponent's defense like water through cracked stone.

It was a difficult style to master, but it seemed worth the trouble.

It didn't take long for him to learn why the book sang it such high praise. Compared to some of the other bat-shit insane techniques, it was much more acceptable.

There was a cerebrospinal fluid–manipulating technique focused on maximizing one's reaction time and boosting mental processing speed. It took ages to master, and until then, most users looked like tweaking crackheads while using it.

Many were the water-affinity equivalent of blood-rush-style abilities, best for mindless berserker types. It tended to leave men… excited, let's say.

So, yeah, elegant and flexible was good in comparison.

He hesitated to settle on Flowing Fist, however. At least, he wasn't sure whether he wanted to grow the ability he already had. Ether shells made by oneself developed significantly faster than those imbued through an ether imprint. Not only that, but ether imprints were unlikely to create a particularly compatible ability to begin with.

It was a matter of testing it out and seeing how it was. If it was good enough, it wouldn't be worth it to waste time recreating it.

That was for later, though. Now, he had to focus on the task ahead—starting his martial arts training.

***

The book was very loose on what kind of order things should be trained in, leaving him with many decisions. Apparently, this was by design, as the book preached independence and "seeking one's path."

Freddy's foot was seeking the ass of whoever wrote this unhelpful piece of shit, as he had no damn clue where to begin.

So he picked the first thing in order and began with stances.

After fiddling with a rather basic martial arts stance, a low one with a foot forward, the other to the side, and both knees bent at roughly a forty-five-degree angle, he quickly realized something problematic—he wasn't nearly flexible enough for this shit.

Hell, he wasn't even balanced enough to get into the damn stance without falling on his ass. And he was supposed to be able to hold this stance while hopping around!?

"All right, not a big deal," he declared. "I'll just start with flexibility then." A decision that somehow went even worse than the previous one.

He already knew that his flexibility was crap, but so did his trainer, and Mark didn't force him to do anything without gently easing him into it.

It didn't take long to learn why.

On his first-ever attempt at doing a split, he realized that the best he could do was roughly thirty degrees. His legs were barely even spread apart, and his crotch already felt like it was about to burst open like a bloody pinata.

Taking deep breaths, he tried pushing it ever-so-slightly. After all, it was the only way to improve. He just had to tolerate the pain a bit as he—

Freddy adjusted his foot slightly, and it landed on a leaf that treacherously failed to grip the grass beneath, causing him to spread into a much broader split than expected, instantly sending a sharp pang of tearing pain through his groin and causing him to buckle to the floor.

"Oh, fuck that hurts!" he scream-whispered as he tried his best to ensure that nobody would hear his voice and come to investigate.

It hurt like bloody hell, but only when he tried getting up did he realize why Mark was going so easy on him. This was an injury. And it wasn't a light one, either. Agonizingly crawling to the place he left his machete, he began a limp conquest to regain the structural integrity of his crotch area as he did his best to cleave as much grass as was necessary to help him recover.

This seemed to be a lot of grass. He had no way to track the time, and the agony made every second feel like an eternity, so he didn't have a reasonable frame of reference for how long it took him to heal from the injury. But it sure felt like it took forever, and he felt exhausted afterward.

"Hoooo, all right," he said as he lightly spread his legs, checking for the twentieth time whether it still hurt. "Don't force the splits. Lesson learned."

The rest of his workout session was considerably more cautious. When anything felt like it hurt more than it should, he instantly grew hesitant and reflexively stopped doing it. Even beyond that, many of the exercises were terminated halfway through because they were too uncomfortable or inconvenient.

Frankly, he was truly starting to feel like nothing but a bitch-made city boy.

Bugs crawling on him made him jump as if any damn beetle was a deadly, venomous abomination that could kill him with the tiniest scrapes of its jaw. Random rocks, branches, or even "sharp grass" inhibited any pose that required him to lay on the ground.

When he had to just hold onto a branch for a while, his poor, delicate hands hurt too much to maintain a grip on the rough wood.

By the time his "workout," if one could even call it that, was over, he sat on the ground and cried. He felt so ashamed of himself, and his crying only made him feel more pathetic.

What the hell kind of martial artist's story began like this? He was losing faith in himself by the second. Maybe he really just wasn't cut out for this…

He got up and grabbed the machete. It flew and cut through bush after bush, quickly removing what barely even qualified as damage.

Was he cut out for anything? When was the last time he truly felt good at something? His feelings of self-worth rapidly deteriorated under his doubt, and it wasn't long until he was packing his things and heading home.

It was already quite late, and he spent the remainder of his day locked away in his apartment, using the fact that he needed to bulk up to overeat.

With his exhaustion and more or less perfect physical health, it didn't take him long to drift into sleep.

***

Freddy yet again appeared in the gym on time, but a bit more mechanically than yesterday.

Mark once again noticed a considerable improvement in his skin complexion, and so did he himself. He didn't care enough to bullshit something, so he just shrugged and said the cream must be doing wonders.

Today, they did leg exercises.

They started with the regular warm-up and dynamic stretches and immediately jumped into doing squats.

The man didn't even give him the barbell. Figures. He obviously wasn't qualified to do that yet. Even while doing squats without weight, he shook too much and reflexively resorted to swinging his hands to make it easier.

Mark didn't warn him about it at all. However, when they started the next set, he approached him. "Great job!" the man encouraged. "All right, now, to make it a bit more challenging, you will keep your arms in front of you like this." He demonstrated by holding his arms out.

Freddy raised an eyebrow at the man and then did as he was told.

With every subsequent exercise, a similar thing happened. Rather obviously, he messed something up, but as long as it wasn't dangerous or put him at risk of injury, Mark just waited it out, then suggested the fix as if it were an "additional challenge," never reprimanding him or making him feel like he was messing something up.

This son of a bitch, he thought to himself, unable to keep a small smile off his face. This bastard is actually making me feel better about myself…

As they finished today's session, to his surprise, Mark invited him to have lunch, or rather, brunch, given that it was still relatively early.

"What brought this on?" he asked his trainer. "Aren't you going to go do your training today?"

"No, I gotta go see my family," Mark clarified. "I promised to visit them at least once a week. I'll do some work on gathering, though."

"Oh, nice, nice… So, where do you want to go?"

"I was thinking of going to my place," Mark said. "I cook for myself."

"Really? Shit, dude, you really are Mr. Perfect."

Mark chuckled at that, and Freddy scowled at him in faux anger.

They made their way back to Mark's place, which was actually a bit smaller than his own. It was perhaps a bit shameful, but he counted that as at least half a win.

The young man wasn't joking, though. He could cook. After smashing a massive portion of something akin to a lasagna, he was just about ready to go back to sleep. Until he realized something. "Oh shit! This was red meat, right?"

Mark nodded. "Yeah… Something wrong with that?"

"Argh!" He facepalmed. "I'm not allowed to eat that!

"What?" Mark nearly got up, panicked. "Are you okay?"

"No, I mean…" he groaned. "My doctor gave me a list of things I should and shouldn't eat, and red meat is on there."

"Oh… that's what you mean," he said, settling back down as he chuckled. "You scared me for a moment."

"Dude, this is serious!"

"No." Mark shook his head a bit. "It kind of really isn't." Then he grinned a bit. "It's certainly better for you to avoid it, but come on, that's already in the realm of perfectionism."

Freddy shot him a strange look. "Weird… I thought you were more of a stickler for the rules."

"Did you?" Mark grinned at him. "Sorry to disappoint."

"Oh, wow," he said sarcastically. "Watch out, we got a bad boy over here."

Mark laughed at that. "No, I mean… Following every damn rule costs you more willpower and happiness than it's worth sacrificing. I'd be damn depressed if I couldn't eat steak. The vague health benefits of avoiding it aren't worth the sad."

"Wise words," he acknowledged with a nod. "Does that mean that I can drink coffee, too!?"

"Uh… maybe don't?" Mark suggested with a cheeky chuckle. "But what do I know? I never made a habit of drinking it. By the way, let's move to the Netherecho."

Freddy raised an eyebrow at that. "Why?"

Mark seemed confused by that question. "Why… wouldn't… we?"

"I don't know… Just seems like a weird thing to do."

"It's pretty normal."

"What?" he suddenly grimaced as he made an angry realization. "Am I experiencing culture shock right now?"

"I… Kind of, yeah. I guess." Mark scratched his cheek.

They both summarily dove into the Netherecho.

The first thing that he noticed was Mark's projection. It was at least 50 percent taller than his own, and it looked like a cartoony caricature of an absurdly muscular man.

And apparently, the first thing the man noticed was Freddy's projection. "Holy crap!" he said, rushing forward admiringly. "Your projection is so cool!"

"What do you mean?"

"You've never seen it?" Mark asked, promptly rushing to describe the projection, "You look like a blue grim reaper."

Freddy immediately lit up upon hearing that. "That's so fucking cool. Tell me the details!"

"So you have the hood, right, and where your face is supposed to be is just like… pure black. With two yellow specks for eyes."

He thought this was probably what normal children felt like for Christmas as he got all giddy.

"Freddy," Mark said with tension in his voice. There was a noticeable shift in his stance as he got into a battle-ready position and turned to the window.

"Run back to your body immediately."

Reflexively, he turned to face the window that Mark was turned to and spotted a large, bloody, skeletal arm pushing its way through the glass.