Cleaver Of Sin

Chapter 1107: Twelve Hours [GT Ranking Bonus Chapter]

Asher’s Combat Refinement and Attunement training continued, the days passed as after the third puppet with the rapier, he faced the fourth puppet that used a hammer, which quite literally broke his left arm from the elbow.

Each battle injured him and pushed him again and again, and he always made sure never to heal his injuries until after his battle with the puppet that inflicted the injury was handled.

In a sense, he was trying to play it fair since the puppets couldn’t heal like him.

The fifth puppet used a whip, and Asher had to admit that he had never thought that a whip would be used with such fluid grace and refinement. The sixth puppet used a katana as a weapon, hence Asher suffered a couple of cuts and injuries, but injuries were simply part of the job.

Through his battles, he noticed something: the next puppet that seemed to step forward seemed to be stronger, or rather more experienced, than the last, as though from the first to the current one, it was gathering data on him mid-fight and feeding it to the next puppet.

The seventh puppet used a pole. He lost one leg and an arm to the puppet, as the puppet seemed unnecessarily wicked, breaking his bones without mercy or hesitation. And since he lost two limbs, he could only get beaten up.

After being beaten up, the puppet stopped, then turned around and sat down as though waiting for Asher to regain his stamina and heal himself. And after he healed himself and regained his stamina, he got beaten up again, as it took him three more days to defeat the seventh puppet. The difficulty was staggering, as even in life-or-death battles, he had hardly ever suffered this much.

The eighth puppet used a pair of chakrams. If Asher was to describe it, the only word he could find was literal hell. The puppet targeted muscles, nerves, flesh, fibers, and ligaments while ignoring bones. And not only that, the puppet was simply too fast, too swift, too graceful, and too unpredictable. He felt like cheating sometimes just to gain an upper hand, but he held himself back.

Frustration, in a sense, meant the willingness to improve; you just had to channel it, and so he gritted his teeth and suffered through the madness.

After another couple of days and an unknown amount of blood being shed, he finally won.

The ninth puppet felt as though a god of combat of some sort had descended. The puppet... no, the being used a tessen as its weapon. The puppet went as far as blinding him by destroying his eyes, slitting half of his throat open, and severing limbs without mercy.

Sometimes, Asher wondered how other Wargraves had survived this freaking room. But unknown to him, hardly any Wargrave trained in combat when they could just throw themselves into real fights and grow from them. And besides, this room was unique to him, as none of the others’ Soul-bound weapons possessed a healing ability, hence why he was suffering this much. If he couldn’t heal, the training room would have toned down the madness happening here.

But regardless of the madness, Asher simply healed through the injuries no matter how many came, his pain tolerance climbing ever so slowly, his fear of death vanishing ever so slowly, his senses sharpening to a terrifying degree, his instincts, his reflexes, everything reaching a new level.

But alas, it was futile in this room, as the moment he defeated the ninth puppet, the tenth puppet rose.

Asher felt only one thing while staring at an inanimate puppet that was being controlled by whatever that was controlling it... DEATH.

Since the beginning, he could always sense each puppet’s stares, each stare unique to their own inanimate personalities. And the tenth puppet stared at everything with a condescending gaze, as though everything was beneath it. If the ninth puppet felt like a god of combat, then the tenth puppet seemed to be the pioneer of combat.

It fought as though it was the first being to even grasp the thought of fighting, killing, and anything under the umbrella of combat.

It didn’t use any weapon in particular; it used every weapon in the room, as in the hands of the tenth puppet, everything became a weapon. Even Asher’s own severed hand was picked up by it and used as a weapon to beat him up.

Asher had already made up his mind; he was never visiting this particular Combat Refinement and Attunement room again in his life. He had been traumatized and scarred. He couldn’t help but wonder why Zarek hadn’t stopped him when he signed up for his life.

After one whole week, Asher finally defeated the tenth puppet. But as he looked forward to finally leaving and staggered towards the door to leave this hell of a room, the door refused to open. The next moment, all ten puppets stood up at the same time and attacked him together.

His final task was to defeat all ten puppets at the same time. Whenever he couldn’t continue, the puppets would surround him, stare down at him, and wait for three hours to regain stamina and heal. The moment three hours reached, they didn’t seek consent and instantly attacked.

Finally, Asher won. The moment he stepped out of the Combat Refinement and Attunement room, he felt as though he had left hell and reached heaven. He dropped to the ground as the door closed behind him.

He rolled onto his back as he stared at the ceiling, his mind replaying everything that had happened this past three weeks. For the first time in three months and three weeks, Asher felt like taking a day off. He felt like just taking a day to sit down and unwind from the fuckery he had been through for the past three weeks.

But as the thought came into his head, he shook his head. He couldn’t break his streak now. Although he had suffered, he was sure he had reaped an insane reward, or rather, rewards. But it was a shame he couldn’t find out what they were or actively look at them at the moment, as he had to be in a battlefield to understand just how much change he had been through.

Asher stayed within this hallway for a whopping twelve hours, doing nothing but just meditating, not cultivating, but literally cultivating. Yes, he was back to his peak nine hours ago, but this time, the mental stress he had been through was simply too immense; the toll was too much. One wouldn’t understand his situation until they had been through it themselves.

He took in a deep breath and exhaled every thirty minutes so he wouldn’t mistakenly fall asleep. After a while, he opened his eyes as his mind seemed to accept the horrors of the Combat Refinement and Attunement room as a usual norm.

’Only two training rooms remain,’ he thought to himself as he remained seated in his lotus position.

His head rose and shifted to the left side as he stared at the Elemental Control Training room and the All Technique Creation room.