I was yelling and screaming internally.
The one sign something truly hurts is when I stop making noise.
I grasped the spear with my left arm as I tried to squeeze the wood to relinquish my pain; the right arm limp at my side could not ease my discomfort.
The man attempted to pull his spear out and I used the remaining strength I had to pull the spear's shaft down as he pulled back, snapping the head off from the pole.
I was filthy angry now.
My eyes were clouded with anger as the pain radiated throughout my body and I rushed at the man in front of me, grabbing his knees and bringing him to the ground.
After that last [Lightning Bolt] my proficiency had increased enough to unlock [Arc Lightning], I didn't have the time to pay any attention to it in the middle of the fight but in the back of my mind I knew what it did.
As the two of us rolled on the ground I was quickly overpowered with my one gimp arm, but as he gained position on me and stood over me ready to deliver the killing blow I smiled.
The smirk on my face seemed to irk him as he grew angrier by the second.
He attempted to yell but I had my left hand extended out towards his chest and in a flash, lightning was arcing between my hand and his chest.
The electricity was concentrated into one large wire-like beam that pulsated and flickered in the air as it circulated through the man's body, rendering him immobile as he convulsed in place. I held the channeled [Arc Lightning] until he finally collapsed to the ground before me.
He was dead.
Selene rushed over to me and I couldn't help but let out a small laugh, to think beautiful women would be running up to me out of worry. I coughed out some blood from the laugh and checked my health bar; I had fallen to 36% remaining health from only two blows.
I had suffered two critical injuries that wouldn't heal with a simple meal… these types of injuries required a healer or extensive time and treatment. I couldn't do anything more than shake my head while lying there in pain.
I thought I was playing games to avoid the physical pain I suffered in real life hah… as Selene helped me to my feet I kicked open the first door on the left to find an empty room.
There was only one other door to the right now.
I made my way over and kicked that door open too.
The sight before me didn't elicit any real emotion from me at first.
It wasn't anything to me.
There he was cowering in the corner with his three deformed wives, all four dressed to the nines in cheap jewelry and lavish furs. I didn't really care anymore; I just wanted this to end already.
I started slowly walking towards the Earl with my hands convulsing with power, electrical energy sparking and arcing between my fingertips as I started chanting a three verse [Lightning Bolt]… a normal mage couldn't walk while chanting or casting… but I was no normal mage.
"Through power, darkness turns to light, render all to ash...."
The Earl threw his hands up in the air and offered me his wives if I spared him, the same wives that I had heard nasty rumors of from the villagers in the Northern Triangle. The same wives Kate had mentioned and were actually more repulsive in person than what she had described.
I only had one word for the Earl and his wives: "Die."
Chapter 21: Freedom or Something like It
(Monday, March 8th Game Day / Saturday, January 23rd Real Day)
I collapsed from complete exhaustion after taking care of the Earl and his wives, but it was finally over. Selene sat down and brought my head to her lap, it was a bit romantic but I was in no situation to make commentary.
I closed my eyes and let the pain flow through me, it hurt but I was used to pain.
Pain is an interesting thing really, it's something you can get used to but at the same time never really get used to. The more you experience it the better you get at coping with it; you become adept at ignoring it.
But you can't truly placate yourself through pain just from previous experience; the pain never really goes away.
It's still there, it still hurts.
It nags and nags, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, month after month, and year after year.
I had no problem enduring the constant daily pain for two years in a row from a sport related injury before it transitioned into something else. As that injury healed I tore the ligament in my elbow and then I dealt with six years of aching, throbbing, and burning in my elbow from the scar tissue and a pinched nerve.
That was my daily life, unable to pitch, unable to throw a ball anymore, unable to really use my arm in any satisfactory way.
I still didn't break from that though.
I was still functional overall.
But then a flurry of problems arose: fiscal, mental, emotional, and physical. I could deal with the physical and mental, even though I had been through so many injuries before, when I got severely sick and lost forty pounds in two-week's time it brought me into a whole new world of pain.
Even though I had lost the forty pounds in two weeks I still had to work, physical labor intensive work… and when my forearms gave out I carried on until my biceps gave out… then my triceps tried to compensate and they too soon gave out, and on and on up through my shoulders, my chest, my back.
And then I woke up one day unable to lift a fork, unable to move a muscle.
I had severely strained every upper body muscle I had.
I had torn muscles.
The pain wasn't even that bad compared to everything else I had endured. The doctor's questioned how I didn't notice, but to a degree I felt I had lost the ability to notice such small amounts of pain.
Pain was a daily occurrence; I paid it no heed for it was normal after all.
Three days a week I went into physical therapy where I would receive deep tissue massages to break up the scar tissue, the adhesions, throughout my entire body… that was a new kind of pain. The process of breaking up adhesions is by forcefully tearing the muscles apart so they can heal properly, albeit "gently" and slowly rather than violently or suddenly.
Needless to say the process is slow and the more muscle you had, or the more adhesions you had, the more painful it was. I was a grown man who had experienced extreme pain before, but I would lie on that bench for thirty to sixty minutes a day, three times a week for a year with tears silently rolling down my cheek as the therapists worked.
It took three months before I could finally lift a fork and feed myself again; it was utterly pathetic but humbling.
At least I had the opportunity to get better.
Some friends of mine had gone overseas and some didn't come back entirely whole, some didn't come back at all.
I had no room to complain.
And if I did, they simply looked at me with disdain.
During that time I was suffering in physical therapy, I was also in a long distance relationship with a girl who simply wasn't right for me.
She was struggling with the fear of failure at school and her parent's wrath if they ever found out. She told me one day that she tried to kill herself after an argument the day before with me.
Here I was, bankrupt and beaten down mentally and physically, only recently capable of feeding myself… and my girlfriend of nearly two years tells me she tried to kill herself but was stopped by a staff member at her school and was given anti-depressants.
This all happened after we argued the day before about her problems with school and admitting to her parents that she was failing, she feared them and wanted to just give up, wanted to break up and just leave the country.
I tried convincing her to stick with it and work with her parents to finish school, it wasn't even about the relationship at that point, maybe it was… but it wasn't the number one thought.
From that day forward the relationship degraded to a point where she was verbally abusive and temperamental nearly every other day. All smiles and happy on Monday only to be raging and pissed off Tuesday.