“Where did that werewolf Valkaan go?” Burbelga muttered, looking around fretfully. “Werewolves are scary... They’re even stronger than human Valkaan. Heeeey! Where are you?!” His shouts were met with silence.
He kept his guard up for a while, but after seeing no attack was coming, he started slowly backing away. Where did he go? Is he waiting to ambush me? Wait, isn’t this where the castle of that one Valkaan is?
Burbelga gingerly rubbed at the scar on his arm. “This place is filled with unpleasant memories...”
When he had been a normal human, Burbelga had been a gladiator slave. While popular gladiators fought with swords and spears, he was just a lowly fistfighter. Those who failed to keep up with swordsmanship training were relegated to fistfighting if they had a good enough physique. Those who lacked skill with the blade or were too afraid of being cut by a lethal weapon ended up in the same position. But Burbelga had been considered weak even among the fistfighters.
“Man, you’re hopeless...” The boxing instructor sighed.
The instructor had been a famous fighter in his prime, but now in the later years of his life, he’d retired and started teaching a new batch of fistfighters.
“You’re a well-built man with a solid physique. But it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a pretty face or fancy techniques. The audience wants big, tough men who can take a hit. And yet...”
He raised a hand, and Burbelga, who was covered in bruises, shrank back.
“I-I’m sorry... I’m just not very good at fighting.”
“Kid, I’m not great at it either. Your problem isn’t that you’re bad, it’s that you’re a coward.” The instructor jabbed at Burbelga’s solar plexus.
“Aaagh?!”
“Stop running away. Tense your muscles and take it. I know you’ve trained enough to be able to. Your muscles aren’t just for decoration, you know?”
“B-But...”
The instructor let out another sigh. “Oh, whatever. Cowards like you aren’t fit to be fighters in the first place. The problem is...the sponsors and the crowd won’t like it if you act like this in a real match. Your master won’t be happy either. At this rate, you’ll be sold off.” The instructor ran a hand through his graying hair. “You’ve got three matches left. I begged the fixers to let you fight in three more matches. If you can win even one of them, or at the very least put up a good enough fight to make the crowd happy, they’ll let you stay as a fighter.”
“G-Got it.” Burbelga nodded meekly.
He failed to perform in any of his next three matches.
Burbelga was booted out of the coliseum and sold to another master. The first thing his new master did was dump him into a tank of water infused with a high concentration of mana.
“Wha?! Pwah! Blegh!”
“Survive. If you can adapt to this environment, your body will withstand even greater concentrations of mana.”
“P-Please, let me out! I’ll die!” Burbelga pounded against the tank’s walls, but his trained fists made no dent. Though the tank looked like it was made of glass, it was evident the actual material was much sturdier.
The mage who’d dumped him in the tank ignored his pleas and began talking to a colleague. “Specimen five is surprisingly durable. I don’t know what kind of life he lived before this, but he has a higher mana tolerance than most. Let’s try raising the density by forty percent.”
“Won’t that kill him?”
“If it does, then he has no hope of becoming a Valkaan. This is the fastest way to get results.”
“Fair. You heard the man. Raise tank number five’s density by forty percent.”
A second later, Burbelga started heaving as an invisible pressure bore down on him from all sides.
“Bluuurgh! S-Stop ple— Gaaah!”
“So noisy. But he seems capable of withstanding the increased density.”
“He might be the one. Raise the density by another fifteen...no, another seventeen percent. If he survives that too, we’ll go in one percent increments. Once he hits thirty percent, send him to the next step.”
“As you wish, sir.”
Burbelga quickly realized they didn’t care about him at all. He also started to notice that his body was getting hotter. More specifically, it felt as if heated rods had been jammed into his bones and muscles. At the same time, he started hearing incoherent screaming in his head. It was a cacophony of many voices, and he couldn’t make out what any individual was saying.
I-I don’t feel like myself anymore... As his consciousness faded, he noticed there were slaves in the tanks next to his—all dead—but with expressions of pure hatred on their faces. They hadn’t been able to withstand the poison in the tanks. Could these voices belong to them?
Just before he lost consciousness, the voices suddenly faded, leaving him in complete silence. At the same time, his pain subsided, and he felt surprisingly good.
“Huh...?”
Confused, he pressed his hand against the tank. The wall broke with surprising ease.
“Whoa?!”
The water rushed out, carrying him with it. Before he could get up, something clicked around his neck.
“Wha?!” He found himself unable to move from the neck down. “What the—?! Hngh!”
Burbelga struggled as hard as he could to no avail. He then heard the voice of the mage who’d been talking earlier.
“Hmm. It seems this was a success.”
“We might be able to mass-produce Valkaan with this method. The empire will finally regain its rightful place in the world.”
“First, we need to see if this process is replicable, then experiment with variations on the current process to collect data. Run the usual tests on this sample and make sure that the collar doesn’t come off.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. He’s one of the precious Valkaan who’ll protect our country, after all.”
And so began Burbelga’s worst nightmare.
The hellish life Burbelga had been forced to endure came to an abrupt end one day.
What’s...going on? he thought.
For what seemed like ages, Burbelga had been poked and prodded with needles, tortured with strange devices, and forced to ingest numerous substances. But suddenly, the room went dark, his pain disappeared, and the restraining collar came off. He carefully removed the needles stabbing into his skin and jumped off the operating table he’d been confined to. Looking around, he saw that all the mages who’d been experimenting on him were lying on the ground, dead. Their faces were horrifically disfigured; whatever had killed them had done so with extreme brutality.
Burbelga could hear screams in the distance, which meant whatever had murdered these mages was still nearby. Terrified, he ran. Outside, he found even more death and slaughter. It seemed they’d been invaded by an enemy empire. Soldiers in uniform were ripping people apart with their bare hands, and were strong enough to shatter stone walls with a single punch.
“Oh, look, a slave. Hah! May as well kill him too.”
Someone punched Burbelga from behind, but to his surprise, it didn’t hurt. He didn’t have time to think about why because fighter instincts kicked in, and he whirled around and punched back.
The soldier was sent flying through a stone building, but he quickly jumped back up and shouted, “That one hurt! Watch out, boys, this one’s a Valkaan!”
A group of four soldiers surrounded Burbelga.
“Get him!” They coordinated their charge, rushing him from all sides.
Seeing as he had no way out, Burbelga steeled himself for combat. “I-I’m a gladiator, dammit!”
Burbelga expected this to be his final stand, but he would rather go out swinging than cowering in fear. Though his enemies rained down blows, Burbelga swung his fists with single-minded determination.
“Bwagh?!”
“Gyaaa!”
“Wh-What the hell is with this guy?!”
“Arrrgh!”
Before he knew it, his four opponents were lying on the ground in a bloody heap. Somehow, he’d taken them out with one punch each.
“H-Hehe... I guess I’m still better than these amateurs at fistfighting.” Burbelga dropped to the ground, rubbing the side of his cheek. “Huh? How come it doesn’t hurt?”
One of the attackers had landed a solid blow on his face, but he felt no pain. There was no bruising or blood either.
Were these guys really that weak? No, that doesn’t make sense. Burbelga had witnessed them rip people apart with their bare hands. They’re not weak; I’m strong! But how did I get this strong? Burbelga cocked his head to one side, pondering this revelation. Moments later, another group of soldiers arrived.
“Squad three’s been slain!”
“It must’ve been that guy! He’s a Valkaan!”
Burbelga slowly got to his feet, not to run, but to see just how much stronger he had become.
Have I really gotten that much stronger? Can I beat these guys? Burbelga balled his hands into fists and dropped into the stance his instructor had taught him.
“Bring it on, you bastards!” he shouted with a grin.
This new group of four soldiers surrounded him in the same formation as the last group. Burbelga ran forward, punching one of them in the face.