Aimless Ascension

?I was able to stand up after only a couple of hours, although my mind was still fussy about the incredulity of the situation.

All of this felt too surreal to me. This couldn't be right. I had considered multiple times that I was going nuts, but none of those could save me from those men. My captors.

I wasn't, of course, locked up just as honeybees weren't locked up in the apiary. Well, my situation was worse. At least, honeybees weren't beaten to a pulp every once in a while.

They hadn't locked me up, but they hadn't given me freedom either. Of course, after healing up, I would try to look for a way out, or at least move to understand the situation better.

So, after those men didn't come back even after a couple of hours of my healing up, I collected all my courage to creep out of the stone room. I was like a cat, barely making a sound, and even managed to move a couple of kilometres easily with no one's notice, but all I found were stones.

It was a magnificent structure in the sense of its sheer range. I was definitely one of those labyrinths with maze-like builds. It was too easy to get lost. I certainly had no clue where I was going.

I understood full well why they hadn't locked me up. Because they were fully aware, there was no way for me to escape.

But in no way, I would accept that without trying. I moved around for hours, barefooted, in my tattered clothes, with the new ornament on my neck. The chain was stuck to my neck like lice. I couldn't make it budge, no matter how much I struggled with it.

The boiling atmosphere wasn't making it any bit easier, either. I was like I was beside a freaking volcano.

My mind contemplated many times that all this was a dream, a fabrication of my imagination. Only a nightmare. Everything would be alright after I woke up. A little later, I would wake up, and I would find myself on my familiar bed.

But what I found were those terrible men. I ran at the very sight of them, but they came out of nowhere like an Olympian sprinter and captured me. 𝗳𝗿𝐞ℯ𝙬𝗲𝗯n𝗼νel.𝒄𝑜𝘮

They beat me black and blue for defying their unsaid order. It wasn't as bad as how my muscles were split and bones were mangled before, of course, but it was certainly a treatment I would never want to revisit.

They beat me to their heart's consent and left me in one of those identical rooms where I was left before. I groaned, trying to fall asleep on the floor with all my wounds, until another figure entered the room.

The newcomer made me drink something similar to the blue healing liquid. It wasn't as potent as the other one they fed me before, but it did patch me up well in two hours. All of this was a miracle because the beating I got was enough to keep me in bed for weeks, yet only after a couple of hours, I was ready to move again. And escape.

You would probably think a normal man would think better and refrain from trying to escape after such an experience. But you forgot, I was a fool and wasn't thinking straight. I couldn't wait to get out of this hellish place.

But that wasn't the real hell, definitely not, considering what I went through after that.

So I continued on my fool's errand to escape from the underground labyrinth. Every time, I managed to run a couple of kilometres, until those men found me. They would go on with their usual round of beating me up and leaving me in the cell, never locking up.

The usual stranger would come after that and heal me up with the healing potion or something.

I thought multiple times they had some purpose behind all this, though I was fully aware that the chances of them being sadistic assholes were way higher.

So my errand trying to escape the hellish labyrinth began. I would try a couple of times every day and those men would find me both of those times, beat me up and leave me to be healed up to try again.

They were completely confident I would crack at some point. No mortal could take his bones breaking, muscles spasming and skin tearing every day and continue. They were mostly right.

But they weren't aware. I was one hell of a bastard.

I wasn't just running around hoping to escape from the endless labyrinth. Every time I went out, I took special care to know where I was going, mark the path I was taking and where it would lead.

Slowly and agonisingly, a frame of a map pieced together in my brain. I didn't have the courage to put it into something else for fear of them finding out. They would definitely do something to make all my progress null.

It was on my thirteenth try, I managed to learn how to avoid those sadistic bastards. Most of the time, they would catch me at a certain juncture, or around somewhere near. Most of the time they would carry around managed men like how I was on the first day.

Most of the time, they were carrying mangled corpses. Not everyone was lucky enough to be alive after how they brought us here.

I tried my best to avoid those men, even though many of the paths lead in that direction.

After that, they certainly had to spend some energy to find me and that affected how they would treat me during the beating. Of course, I had grown some tolerance for their beating after getting torn up constantly for a week.

But these sadistic assholes always came up with something to make me feel new things. All was good, but I hated that bastard to the core that always hit me in the balls. I would tear his eyes out, cut his manhood and make him eat it if I had my chances.

Oops, getting excited, aren't we? Anyway, I'll refrain from using vulgar words in my narrative from now on.

Anyway, it wasn't only in my escape that I progressed; I managed to learn the names of my captors. There were a few of them, but I only managed to guess three of them through their talking.

Rips was the most terrible of them. He always tried to hit me in the balls, no matter how hard I try to protect my jewels. Kiln liked to hit me in the face. For the record, his own face was a mess, burned to the point of the ugliest thing in the world. There was a story for him to be this sadistic.

The last one of them was a kinder man. It was the stranger that would feed me those potions to heal me up. He was called Theodore, or Thedor. . . something similar.

Anyway, they had a name for me too. "Bardi Tuon fi". You know what that means, right?

"Failure 309," it was his disciple who answered.

___________

I'm fast-forwarding the torture arc here, and bringing more interesting parts soon.