Enhancement: Nonhuman Toughness

After obtaining the Snail Statue, Xia Lun went straight home.

[Maximum time remaining to live: 3560:12:31]

"Time really waits for no one."

He glanced at the Information Panel and sighed inwardly, then hurried down the corridor and into the dark, sealed basement.

As he opened the door, the adjusted automatic announcer spoke again.

"You have, at most, 3,560 hours until death."

Without a word, Xia Lun hurried down the stairs and switched it off.

Click.

He sighed and sat in the chair beside the Game Pod.

According to White Line, the normal way to play as an Investigator was to avoid combat whenever possible. But with the Withering Curse hanging over me, I don't have time to develop slowly.

He had to take risks and fight more often. Only then could he find a cure for the curse and gain the strength to face the Foresight Club.

That meant he had to keep improving his combat ability.

"Six days until the dungeon cooldown ends." He spoke aloud to organize his thoughts.

"In those six days, I need to enter the dream and get Nonhuman Toughness. I'll also try to get a new skill from the Special Memory, Courtly Tournament. And I need to decide what to bring into the next game."

With that settled, he climbed straight into the Game Pod.

For the next five days, aside from meals and his daily firearms and swordsmanship practice, he would spend every moment in memory dreams.

Through firsthand experience, he had learned that a full twenty-four hours allowed three dream entries. In just five days, he completed all fifteen entries required for the Nonhuman Toughness Perk Memory.

Through those long, unbroken dreams, Xia Lun seemed to become the pirate captain Geliide in her youth. Unlike his Swordsmanship dream, this one gave him no freedom. He could only watch, as if through a film, while experiencing every humiliating, agonizing year of her early life.

Like Xia Lun, the young Geliide was a merchant. Unlike him, she had not built her business from nothing; she had risen with the help of her prominent father.

On the eve of the Black Rose War, Geliide used common sense to predict that grain prices in the Borland Kingdom would soar. She planned to stockpile grain and make a fortune.

To her surprise, her father forbade it in the sternest terms and stripped her of most of her control over the merchant guild.

Geliide was young and deeply unhappy about it. Through the introduction of a broker friend, she began working with the Brigadier General, a high-ranking noble then in charge of naval provisions.

The Brigadier General proposed that they resell grain nearing or past its expiration date. Young Geliide suspected nothing and trusted him far too easily.

Having lost control of the merchant guild, she gave the Brigadier General a family token as security for the deal.

When war broke out, grain prices across the Borland Kingdom soared just as she had predicted. Geliide was overjoyed, but the Brigadier General kept delaying delivery.

She assumed he was greedy and wanted a higher price. A few days later, food shortages sparked riots in the capital. As the unrest escalated, something far worse happened—the warehouses storing naval grain burned to the ground in an unprecedented fire!

Geliide barely understood what was happening. At first, she only thought the deal might fall through. Then, a few days later, the palace guard arrested her for setting the grain ablaze.

Her father was soon arrested because of his ties to her. On the Brigadier General's advice, he was beheaded to appease the public's anger.

Only when the executioner's blade sliced through her father's neck and severed his spine did a moment of clarity cut through Geliide's despair. At last, she understood how it had all happened.

The Brigadier General had never intended to trade. From the start, his plan had been to burn the warehouses and cover up the accounts. Thanks to her foolishness and misplaced trust, he had also found a convenient chance to frame and destroy a political enemy...

She had gotten her father killed.

Xia Lun experienced all of that in his first dream entry. The main part of the memory, however, was the torment Geliide suffered after her arrest.

There was no need to recount it all. It was a dark journey through pain, scars, and mental strain as deep as an abyss.

Water torture, flaying, and the iron maiden were merely routine. The real horrors were the premodern medical experiments, so grotesque they might as well have been Witchcraft.

Most people would have recoiled from suffering on that scale, perhaps even given up. The psychological wounds it left were as real as the pain.

But Xia Lun was not most people...

Driven by his fierce desire for the power to protect himself, he entered the dream again and again without rest.

He disregarded the horrific damage to his body and the torments devised by the darkest imaginations, as though they were no more than a faint breeze.

Late in the dream, like Sisyphus pushing his stone, he even began to find a strange pleasure in the endless torture...

In theory, the Nonhuman Toughness memory offered no freedom. The dreamer could only endure the punishment passively.

But perhaps his enjoyment of the torture was simply too outrageous. The executioners, once as cold as fixed routines, gradually began to fear Xia Lun.

By the end, the roles of prisoner and executioner had almost taken on a bizarre reversal. Most executioners could not meet Xia Lun's eyes and refused to face him. A few with troubled minds even developed a measure of reverence for him.

If this memory had allowed him to speak, Xia Lun thought he might have played the prophet and tried to form a small cult for staging a riot...

Regardless, he endured fourteen more dream entries and obtained Nonhuman Toughness as planned.

He opened his eyes.

When Xia Lun returned to reality, he could almost still feel the searing pain beneath his skin: rusty forceps cutting and pulling at his muscle fibers, snagging blood vessels and exposing them to the air.

Phantom pain still gripped his body. It felt as if his bones had been ground to fragments, mixed into his blood like sand laced with iron filings, and pumped through him to scrape against his organs.

Xia Lun took a long while to recover. When the phantom pain subsided, he looked at the Information Panel.

[After a long period of study and recollection, you have gained the perk "Nonhuman Toughness." Over time, your endurance, recovery, and ability to withstand blows will increase substantially.]

[Nonhuman Toughness: Certain extraordinary experiences have raised your toughness to an inhuman level. Even when gravely wounded and close to death, you can continue moving as though unhurt—until you die completely. Your threshold for pain-induced shock has also increased greatly. Over time, your endurance, recovery, and explosive muscular power will increase substantially.]

Xia Lun let out a long breath when he saw the message.

The suffering had been worth it! He had finally gotten the perk!

His eyes shifted to his attributes.

[Strength 11→13!]

[Strength: 13 (base 10; substantial training increase +3 from the perk "Nonhuman Toughness")—You are very strong. Objects that ordinary people consider heavy feel normal to you.]

[Constitution 10→11!]

[Constitution: 11 (base 6; substantial training increase +3 from the perk "Nonhuman Toughness"; moderate Secret Art increase +2 from the Secret Art perk "Transcendent Regeneration")—The curse has weakened your body, but after certain terrifying, inhuman experiences and the aid of supernatural power, you could even be considered healthy by ordinary standards.]

"Wait. What happened to the attribute increases from Reflexive Evasion and Familiarity with Pain?"

Xia Lun frowned, then realized the problem: increases of the same type apparently did not stack.

For example, both Reflexive Evasion and Nonhuman Toughness granted training increases to Strength. In that case, the three-point increase from Nonhuman Toughness replaced the one-point increase from Reflexive Evasion.

Increases of different types, such as Secret Art increases, could stack.

"That's a bit like the rules from the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop games I played in my previous life." Xia Lun shook his head and stood up from the Game Pod. "I need a short break and something to eat."

"The Scenario cooldown ends in a day and a half. I need tomorrow to prepare what goes into the Voidwood Box. That leaves me about fourteen hours to rest and deal with the Courtly Tournament Special Dream Entry!"

He gave the Information Panel one last glance.

[Maximum time remaining to live: 3416:30:49]

With his huge gains in Strength and Constitution came a hunger that seemed to strike straight through his skull and make his brain tremble. Fortunately, he had prepared for it, and he immediately ate a large meal.

Food kept pouring into his stomach, becoming nourishment for flesh and bone. Xia Lun ate slowly, chewing each bite with care. As he did, the immense mental strain left by fifteen tortured, painful dream entries over five days gradually faded, like darkness before a torch.

After eating, Xia Lun took a shower and let his mind go blank for a while. Then, while he still had time, he quickly handled some miscellaneous affairs and assigned work to the others.

Five hours later, at five in the afternoon, Xia Lun had finished resting. He returned to the basement at once, intending to strengthen himself further.

The dungeon refreshes in thirty-one hours. Seven hours is just enough to enter the Special Memory left by the last Scenario. I'm a little tired... but I can't ease up yet. I need to use every bit of time to grow stronger.

With that thought, he looked up at the Information Panel.

[Special Specialization Memory unlocked!]

[Special Memory: Courtly Tournament (1/1)]

[Note: When you fulfill the wish of a memory's original owner, you may obtain a "Special Memory." A Special Memory is a possible outcome derived from the memory itself. Completing one can grant additional Specializations, perks, or even skills.]

Xia Lun looked away from the Information Panel and took a deep breath, forcing back his mental exhaustion. Then he climbed straight into the Game Pod.

I hope I get a new skill this time. He closed his eyes.

Darkness surged over him like cold seawater, then spread like ink thrown through the air. It formed the narrow room where he always lingered before entering a dream.

Among the indistinct images of fruits nearby, one golden fruit stood out.

Without hesitating, Xia Lun reached for the only golden fruit.

It burst into a brilliant mass of lightning. His field of vision narrowed sharply, and golden glare stabbed into his eyes like knives. His eyes stung, and he closed them by reflex.

A familiar dizzying sensation followed. The gold filling Xia Lun's vision vanished, and lines of Cobalt Blue information appeared before him.

[Special Memory objective: Win at least one round in the Borland Kingdom's Courtly Tournament, held once every ten years.]

[Note: Dying during a Special Memory dream entry has no consequences, but you cannot enter that Special Memory again. Completing the objective can earn rewards including Specializations, perks, and skills. The rewards depend on your performance.]

[Note: During a Special Memory, you cannot use "skills," but you retain your "perks" and "Specializations."]

Xia Lun's eyes snapped open. Rows of fluttering silk banners and dazzling sunlight filled his view. Shouts clamored around him, while sticky sweat and cloying perfume assaulted his nose like some boiling pot of dreadful cooking...

His head ached. He braced a hand against the warm, smooth, pale wooden floor and slowly stood up.

After a moment, he realized this Special Memory was entirely different from the dreams he had entered before.

This dream was too real. It was almost indistinguishable from reality!

He looked around and found himself leaning against the wall of a spacious hall. Nearby was a space of roughly thirty square meters. Farther away stood a noisy, tightly packed crowd, with several magnificent viewing balconies projecting from the second floor above their heads.

Through the broad glass frontage, he could see a blue sky and, far in the distance, tall round stone towers standing like sentries. Countless heraldic banners fluttered between the battlements.

"Stop staring. The King has finished his speech. Once the referee explains the rules, you're up." A deep, clear male voice came from beside him. "Don't disappoint me."