Law of Freedom- Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Chapter 1- Why Is It Always the Quiet Ones?

“Don’t stop! You can do it. Just three more reps. Push it! What is it that you’re always saying? No pain, no gain.”

I struggled to lift my head to see the beautiful green face. Or it would have been beautiful if Mursha wasn’t screaming at me. She had her tusks right in my face and was barking orders at me like I didn’t have a miniature mountain on my back as I tried to do push-ups.

At the moment, it didn’t matter how beautiful she was. She just looked sadistic yelling at me. I wanted to ask what happened to the demure orc woman who’d barely look up from my feet while trying to speak with me. I wanted to curse whoever had transformed her into this cruel task mistress. Except that would have been a waste of time, since in this case I was the guilty party.

Better to focus on the work I was doing, the work I had been doing for hours every day. The early part of my day was given over to resistance training with Mursha. Of course, resistance training took on an entirely new meaning when your personal trainer could control gravity.

The past ten days of working with me had paid huge dividends for me of course, but just as much for Mursha. She clearly felt at home when we were working out. Our personal relationship might still be on step one, and she might not like most of her duties as a clerk, but she took an almost perverse pleasure in seeing how hard she could push me. I only hoped I could get her to overcome her shyness and inferiority complex outside of the training field.

I think the others decided to make me train with her first each day because it would wear me out and make me more pliable for them. Josie would join me for a little bit of the gravity enhanced training on occasion but she mostly preferred to spar or do cardio training. I almost laughed out loud when she said she was worried about bulking up if she gained too much Strength. She might be happy for the ability to gain extra stat points thanks to the soul bond, but in my opinion she just applying herself to that. It was actually out of character for my Jo Jo, but she was resistant to talk about it.

“You do realize, I can tell when you are day dreaming. You get that glassy eyed look and then you stop working as hard. Are you trying to waste my time, Rob?” Mursha quietly asked. Her quiet voice during a work out was even more intimidating than her yelling. It didn’t help that the only time she would use my name was moments like this.

“If this is too easy, I can up the gravity again.”

I shook my head the best I could. We had set up a harness on my back. I was doing push ups with an extra two hundred pounds of rocks on my back. That alone would have been a challenge back on Earth, but Olimero had enhanced my Strength far beyond normal human standards. My muscle fibers just kept getting denser while still maintaining their flexibility and without losing my definition, despite Josie’s concerns.

Now with gravity at 10x normal thanks to Mursha’s power, I felt like I was being flattened. It wasn’t just that the two hundred pounds of rock became a full ton. That I could handle. I’d been squatting nearly six thousand pounds before Mursha came to live with us. The gravity didn’t just affect the rocks though. My two-hundred and forty pound frame became more than a ton.

Just as significantly was Mursha’s demands that we not just train for single max lifts but for what she called battle strength. Orc warriors didn’t ever pump iron, but they often moved tree logs, carried rocks, and performed other tasks which were supposedly more similar to real life activities in the field. The beautiful orc insisted that if I wanted her help then I had to train as an orc, at least with her. She’d still let me do a little iron pumping but even then I was more interested in compound exercises. She was right, I needed practical strength.

I pushed up again. My arms were trembling. Even the 22 points of Strength I had added didn’t make this easy. Sure, doing it one time was fine, doing it twenty times even. But we were going for one hundred push-ups.

As I extended arms again, despite their silent protests, Mursha counted out, “Ninety-seven. Just three more to go, but if you keep going this slow, I may fall asleep and lose count. You know what that means.”

It was one of her favorite games. I’d get close to the target and then she’d completely move the goal lines by starting to count over. When I complained it wasn’t fair, she would simply remind me that life wasn’t fair. Now, my arms felt like rubber bands. I didn’t know if I could complete one more push up, let alone three more.

Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. I sent a pulse of ki into my arms and suddenly the weight wasn’t so bad at all. I popped off three more push ups in two seconds before collapsing to the ground. I’d come to think of this as my kaioken technique based on that cartoon I used to love. Something made me think that when it came to training, even Goku might have met his match in Mursha.

Then she was barking in my face. “That’s cheating. You owe me three more push-ups.”

I started to struggle up. She was right. I had cheated, but damn if it hadn’t felt good. The initial shock on her face was even worth her yelling at me. My arm, legs, back, were all screaming at the tension of pushing myself up.

“Oh no. No. No. No. You don’t get to act like that didn’t happen.”

“Mursha, you’re making the instructors at the academy look like wet nurses. There are limits to what I can do. There’s no way I can manage another hundred push-ups now.” I barely managed to wheeze the words out. I would have probably been embarrassed at how pathetic I sounded, if I wasn’t so exhausted it didn’t matter.

I was beyond caring about looking cool in front of the hot girl now, even if she was a real gym rat herself. Her dad might not have let her be a full time blacksmith or a full time warrior but that didn’t mean she hadn’t put the work in. The fact that she could push herself so hard in the gym was part of what made taking this abuse at her hands manageable; that and I knew the results I was getting.

“Oh no. You are the one who raised the stakes. You wanted to show off that fancy cultivation that I’m always hearing so much about. Well, now is your chance to show it off.”

I gasped as the weight on my back wasn’t anything to sneeze at. Certainly not when I was as tired as I was at that moment. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know what she had in mind. Her face was a grim mask of focus, but I’d started to get an idea of how her expressions worked. The slight curl of her hips around her small tusks was her form of a smirk. She thought she was gonna get one over on me.

“If you give me just three more push-ups. Real push-ups to my specifications, then our gravity training can be over for the day,” Mursha said.

“Oh? So this is a challenge. Never let it be said that Robert Case backed down from a challenge. But we should have a bet to make it interesting. So if I win then not only do you have to stop the training session for today, but you have to give me a kiss. A real one. None of those kisses for your father sorta thing.”

The faintest hint of red showed up as I made the powerful orc blush. Then she rolled her eyes as she regained her composure. “You know you can insist on a kiss and much more. I am Mactosh’s daughter, never let it be said I have shirked my duty. As your clerk, my body is yours for the taking.”

“I already told you I would never force you, and to be blunt that feels way too much like forcing you. Also, no guy wants to hear a hot girl bring up their father when he is trying to sweet talk her.”

She guffawed at that and as rough as it seemed, there was a certain appeal to it. Mursha was real. She didn’t lie. She called things the way she saw them and she would keep me honest or at least help Josie do so.

Her eyebrow shot up then and she asked, “Isn’t that what you are trying to do?”

“Nope, this is completely different. This is the time honored tradition of a bet. You can’t tell me that orcs don’t bet.”

She slapped her thigh. It was a sign I’d come to associate with a playful challenge. “Hardly, the children of the tusk are the boldest of all Sativa’s children, so of course we are also the best gamblers.”

I just stared at her and arched my eyebrow. She clearly took that as a challenge because her next words were, “Fine, I accept your proposal but what do I get when you can’t do three push-ups to my specifications.”

I did my best to laugh with sweat dripping off my face and my arms shaking. I was beginning to think that she was stalling just to try and tire me out. Unfortunately, for her, since I could call upon my ki for the challenge, I would be able to perform three of whatever type of push-ups she demanded. I’d been around too many defense attorneys to not recognize the way she was wording the challenge. She had something up her sleeve, or at least she would if her cut off top even had sleeves.

“Name it. What do you want? I’m not gonna lose so why should it matter?”

She rocked back and laughed. “Love the confidence. Have to admit it brings out the competitive streak in me. You should know something about orcs though. We’re poor losers. Now, hmm… what do I want when I win the bet? Ah, I know. Josie and Lina are always going on and on about how good you are at giving shoulder and back rubs. So, when you lose you have to give me the best shoulder and back rub ever.”

Despite the crushing weight on me, I couldn’t help but snort. Staring at her muscled frame each day while we worked out didn’t make me feel like the prospect of rubbing down her back would be a bad thing. “Fine, deal. I’d shake on it but my hands are a little busy here.”

“Okay, so give me three more push-ups then. But, I don’t want to know that just your arms are strong. You need to show that all of you is strong. So I want you to give me three of those jack knife push ups you always do for warm ups before we start training.” Mursha could barely hold back the laughter as she made her pronouncement. Seriously, where had the quiet Mursha gone. I know I’d been trying to get her to come out of her shell, but this was just crazy.

I braced myself for this. She had come up with an idea that might actually be challenging, but with ki, I would be able to manage it. Everyone has their own names for various exercises. Much of what I’d seen people call jackknife push-ups were cheap imitations of what my old trainer had insisted on.

Some people thought it was all about putting their feet up on a bench with the hands and head down and pushing up like that. Others used straps or wheels to hold their feet up while pulling their knees inward at the same time they pushed up. But none of those would satisfy Mursha. She’d see me doing the real deal and I’m sure expected nothing less now.

The difference of course was that I had two hundred pounds of rocks on my back and gravity was 10x normal. The gist of it though was that I would go down into the push up as a plank with my body straight and my chest no more than three inches from the ground. Then I would explode up, but not with just my arms. No I would push with arms and legs so that my entire body lifted off the ground.

The trick was to gain enough air to perform the jack knife portion of the exercise. That was where I rapidly shot my knees forward till they came up flat against my chest while wrapping my arms around my legs. Then I would blast them back quickly enough so that I could land on my open hands and the balls of my feet. It was an exercise that worked strength, coordination, and speed.

Most guys I knew on Earth couldn’t even manage one on Earth. Now I had to pull off three of them in a row with all this extra weight. All I could do was grin at Mursha. I honestly didn’t mind the prospect of getting my hands on her, but when I did, it was gonna be because she begged for it, not because I lost a bet. I determined then and there that I would not fail.

I spun my core as fast as I could must and spent ki streaming into my weary muscles. The extra energy was like water to a man in the desert. My body was conditioned to accept it. The more I practiced the more natural it became and I was getting a better feel for this cultivation thing, even if I hadn’t made any more breakthroughs.

I lowered myself down and pushed. As I did, I felt something odd about how I pushed. The ki within me seemed to extend out. Not like some force way but just a tiny extension of my body. There was no time to think about it as I pulled my legs in and shot them back out landing just in time with my legs extended and palms down.

The impact with the ground was jarring. I swear I felt the stone of the courtyard crack beneath my body. Pain shot up my palms all the way to my shoulders and I thought I was going to break a toe. Worse, that had drained more of my ki than I had expected but I’d done it. One down and two to go. I would not be defeated.

Then I saw the scowl on Mursha’s face. She was baring her small tusks and looked positively fearsome. This was neither quiet, stare at the ground Mursha nor the new task mistress Mursha. This was an infuriated orc warrior. She wasn’t kidding when she said that orcs don’t like losing. She barked out, “Fine you can do one, but can you do it again? I can see your arms shaking there.”

She wanted to play the taunting game, apparently. Well two could play at that game. “Is your lip quivering because you’re upset or is it that you just can’t wait for my kiss?” It took everything I had to pop off that taunt without gasping for breath, but it was so worth it. Her green skin took on a reddish hue, not the faint rose of embarrassment. No, this was full blow fury.

I wasn’t sure what more I could do to make her feel welcome. Whether this out burst of temper was a racial trait or a more personal character flaw, I didn’t know. I was definitely happy to know about it before we took things too far. Right now it didn’t matter though as I had to 2 more push-ups to do and a bet to win.

I gathered my ki again and spun it out from my core to empower my body. Then I pushed off with explosive force. I’d show her. I used more force than was strictly necessary. The result being that I made it about six feet off the ground. I even impressed myself.

As I whipped legs in I spared the briefest of glances for Mursha and the look on her face was positively wicked, not like I drown kittens evil, but more like a ‘ha, I got you look.’

Then without warning I felt her gravity mana swirl around me and the pull of the ground on me doubled from 10x normal to 20x. It was positively crushing. I had just finished exploding out into position for the landing when I was sucked down to the ground by the irresistible pull of a fundamental force of nature gone haywire.

If I had thought the stone cracked before I was absolutely certain this time. Or maybe that was my bones cracking. The pain felt like my bones were being driven up into my shoulders and my toes ripped off. I lost my balance and collapsed allowing my chest to hit the ground. It was only for a second as I struggled to get back into proper position but her laughter told me that she knew it disqualified this push-up just as much as I did.

“Oops, so close. I really thought you had it to. Wanna give up?” Mursha asked me. She schooled her face to be perfectly flat in its expression, even while the glee danced in her eyes.

I felt the gravity drain away. She must have been content that she’d beat me badly enough that time. She wasn’t far from the truth. My head had smashed into the ground as I fell and I was sure a brushed was forming on my forehead. But I wasn’t defeated yet. I’d catch her off guard.

Without any warming I pushed up. It drained much of my remaining ki to do so. This time I only propelled myself a mere two feet off the ground. That way there would be less of a fall and less time for her to crank up the gravity mid fall. I channeled the excess ki into toughening the impact points and my joints so they could survive contact with the ground.

Once again though, I was impressed by Mursha’s dedication. I hadn’t been the only one diligently practicing. Freed from the restraints her father, Mactosh had placed on her, she had practiced her mana control almost every waking moment when she wasn’t performing duties as a clerk. Since Lina still insisted on doing most things herself, that meant hours upon hours of practice.

She showed it off as she increased the gravity to 20x in a fraction of the time she had before. But unfortunately for her, I had spent the extra ki on toughening myself so I managed to maintain proper form as I landed. It was still jarring. There was no way such an impact wouldn’t be and I definitely saw spidery cracks in the stone, but I managed to perform the second push up.

When Mursha didn’t say anything I managed to pant out, “That’s two.”

She growled and said, “Fine but the 3rdone is the only one which matters.”

This time the gravity didn’t lessen. I kept expecting her to drop it back to 10x. Our training had almost exclusively been in 10x gravity or less. But, it wasn’t budging now. This level of gravity made the rocks on my back weigh a full two tons and my body close to two and a half tons.

I was managing to hold myself up but that was very different from being able to push myself a couple feet off the ground. The longer I stayed in this gravity the more I felt the strain even on simple things. My breathing was becoming labored. My insides felt compressed. It was like there was a fist around my heart and another around my lungs. Suddenly, I could feel the bacon, eggs, and biscuits in my digestive tract as everything was squeezed to a halt. My bladder felt squished and for a moment I wondered if this is what pregnant women feel like.

Even my blood was pumping sluggishly through my body. I was positive that if I was not already enhanced both by the rules of Olimero and by my D grade body cultivation, that I would have long since passed out. The same was probably true at 10x gravity but I’d been slowly adjusting to that over the past week of training. Now 20x was just more than I could handle, at least for more than a few seconds at a time.

As my enhanced body began to get dizzy, I felt nausea swell up inside me. Part of it was a physiological response and part of it was me wanting to die before I lost. My core was almost empty but then I realized that the weapon she was using against me, could be turned back on her. I began to open myself up to the gravity mana surrounding me. I fixated on my gloves which I always wore. That one gift from Sativa was paying off and I still thought it would pay off more in the future.

This mana reacted a bit differently than what I was accustomed to. Life mana always leapt into me. It was like it wanted nothing more than to merge with me. It seemed to always want to fill me up to overflowing. Fire and air mana were different but they both flowed into me easily. The residue they left inside me was a bit more damaging but I never had any trouble absorbing them.

Earth mana had been more challenging at first, but once I had realized the minerals that made me up were very much a part of the ground which was the substance of earth mana it had been easy enough. Even mind mana had flowed into me fairly easily. It was intangible sorta like the ghost mana I had absorbed a small amount of. Even the residual effects were odder for those two. More experiments would have to be done before I could figure them out.

Gravity mana was in a league of its own. I couldn’t find an anchor for it in my body. Drawing it into my core was a struggle every moment and right now I was struggling just to stay conscious. Maybe it was just to much of a fundamental force of the universe to be cultivated. But since my increasingly foggy thoughts couldn’t come up with another option, I doubled down on it.

The flood gates opened and I sucked it in faster. The gravity field around me lessened and my core started to wobble as is spun. This stuff was so heavy inside me. I knew that wasn’t a very technical term but in some ways I could relate to Mactosh calling her mana, heavy mana. It spun out and produced more ki even as the pollutants filled my channels. That was a problem for after I had won this contest.

I continued to pull. The trick was going to be to lessen the effect as much as possible without causing her to do anything radical. Seeing her power on display, made me feel small again. Without a little bit of time to focus I was afraid she could crush me like a pancake. If 20x gravity was doing this to me, then what about 30x or 50x. I had no idea what her limits were.

Then I felt her start to pour more mana into it. The jig was up. She had recognized the drain on her field and was responding. I pulled harder, not worrying about the side effects. I just drained as much mana as I could and then channeled the refined ki into my limbs. I pushed it till my body was suffused with the stuff, making my breathing come easier and my heart stop skipping beats.

I launched myself up into the air. Pulled my legs in and fought to beat the power seeking to crush me. I felt gravity shooting up again. She had to know this could kill me. A moment of panic went through me. Did orcs really hate losing so much that she would risk me dying.

Gravity passed 30x and was still climbing as I fell back to the stone. The paver stones were being crushed into dust beneath the weight. The ground settled beneath me. As I impacted the ground it felt more like a meteorite slamming into the planet than a guy falling two feet.

The ground caved under me and I felt myself creating a crater. All I could do was maintain a single thought as my blood vessels clamped shut under the intense pressure. My body was on auto pilot. “Stay up. Stay up. Stay up.” Conscious thought fled me but my body still performed. A body cultivator was more than just their thoughts after all.

My eyes felt funny. I couldn’t see. There was pain all over, but I didn’t know if I should be worried about it. It was everywhere. Maybe this was just the way I was supposed to feel. It was like I had never known anything else. My telepathic sense told me that Mursha was panicked. It was like she was screaming but apparently, I couldn’t’ hear what she was saying with ruptured eardrums. Then that familiar blackness claimed me, but it felt so good, like a huge weight had just been pulled off me.