The Blood Skull Arena's New Recruit Training Camp was another kind of Casting Workshop.
Countless ratfolk had seen their homes destroyed, their bodies surging with the flames of hatred. After fighting to the death in lightless dungeons, they had vented upon one another the hatred that should have been directed at the Clan Warriors.
Those ratfolk who survived layer after layer of selection, crawled back to the surface, and joined the New Recruit Training Camp had all become the finest "steel billets."
Here, they could enjoy ten times more food than they had in the depths of the dungeons.
They could also smear themselves with secret medicine mixed with Totem Beast oil.
Not only did it speed up the healing of wounds, it also made their bones as hard as steel and iron, their flesh as tough as shields clad in leather.
After that, they threw themselves into brutal training day and night.
Again and again, they hoisted stone locks weighing hundreds of pounds; launched their fiercest charges against bronze walls and iron barriers stained with blotches of blood; crossed red-hot iron chains suspended above pits bristling with sharp blades; crawled through fishing nets covered in barbs, where the slightest carelessness meant barbs piercing flesh and the nets wrapping them tight as a cocoon...
Although these ratfolk were all the strongest survivors of repeated selection,
many of them were built no differently from Clan Warriors, and some were even stronger.
They simply lacked the right to tattoo themselves with magnificent patterns representing their Lineage, bloodline, and the glorious deeds of their ancestors.
Yet the strength hidden deep in the marrow—the strength that, beyond Mandala Fruits, required consuming vast quantities of Totem Beast Flesh from childhood to accumulate—was far inferior.
Many ratfolk who looked strong but were hollow within could not