Chapter 24
Warning! DANGER. SCHIZO CHAPTER. Read alongside Chapter 25, which explains everything happening to the protagonist throughout all the chapters.
"ONE—TWO—ONE—TWO! BREATHE, YOU LITTLE WORM! DON'T YOU PASS OUT ON ME!" broke through the ringing in my temples. "ONE AND A HALF! WHAT, YOU DEAF, YOU PATHETIC LITTLE RAG? I SAID ONE AND A HALF! YOU STINKING SACK OF GARBAGE!" bellowed a heavy, smoke-cured voice that drove me to the edge of madness.
In that moment I was asking myself mentally why I had ended up in this situation. If the Buddhists were right, I must have done a great many terrible things two lifetimes ago. Maybe I had even been Hitler. Because I simply couldn't understand what I had done to deserve punishment like this.
And yet it had all started so well.
The first hours of the training drifted before my mind's eye — those hours that now seemed almost like a holiday. I had been working through that familiar, pleasantly aching pain that usually arrives the day after physical exertion. It felt less like exhausting myself and more like active recovery — as though my body had already set about patching the microtears in the muscle, preparing to make it stronger. All of it was accompanied by the warm, almost soothing burn of departing fat.
During those first hours I had, without realizing it, fully mastered balance. I had first brought static balance to the level of pure reflex, and then achieved complete control of the dynamic. And to my good fortune, no revelations were required, no wise instruction. Understanding had arrived on its own — through the pleasant ache, through muscle memory, through my simple and unbreakable stubbornness.
It had all turned out to be laughably straightforward. I had only needed to… be myself. Not to pretend to be some dancer on a platform, waving my limbs about — but to literally bite down into the feeling of equilibrium itself.
And riding this positive wave, I had concluded that I was on the verge of mastering the Flow as well, taking it to be the next stage — since I had already developed something like it, more or less.
But then came disappointment. First the warming burn of departing fat disappeared, and then the pleasant ache transformed sharply into something that was nothing short of hellish. Fortunately the strength remained — it hadn't gone anywhere. But every movement became harder and harder, until it was simply unbearable.
And yet I continued. Moving mechanically, on momentum alone, through sheer force. What drove me wasn't any conscious decision — it was blind stubbornness.
"And at precisely that moment I achieved the state of Flow, discovered qi within myself, and became a god among lifters." Believe that?
What Flow, what anything remotely like it — even the pale approximation I already had — could anyone have been thinking about at that point? There was no room for it. My consciousness had narrowed to a single objective: the next repetition. And above all — don't think about the pain. Under no circumstances think about the pain.
But not thinking about it was impossible, no matter how hard I tried. I fought with everything I had to find some external point of focus, something to hold onto that would keep me from breaking. I couldn't stop — because I still believed I was capable of more.
I was even singing a motivational song through gritted teeth:
Only blood, only sweat,
Write off the rest, you're the top-shelf kind,
Pain eats sport for breakfast here,
Can't go back, only forward, don't fall behind.
Closed door standing in your way?
Ha, pull it off the frame today.
You're the wildest beast alive,
You're the beast — believe a little, you'll survive.
Massive creature, huge and raw,
Feel the power surging through your jaw!
That didn't work either. And at the exact moment when my mental reserves were nearly exhausted and my pace had noticeably dropped, I felt that something was wrong. No — this was not a second wind. Physically I could still move without any real difficulty, my first wind was still with me. But the inner voice of reason — that internal regulator which had been monitoring my self-torture this entire time and screaming "ENOUGH!" — suddenly went silent.
My common sense appeared to have simply surrendered, shouting as it left: "To hell with you! I'm going to find myself a sensible transmigrator! One with magic and a harem! And a system!" And its place was immediately taken by something new — something dirty, aggressive, something that kicked down the door and walked in.
Strangely enough, controlling my body became somewhat easier. The pain retreated to the background — didn't disappear, but no longer ate through my brain the way it had. It still nagged and interfered, but it no longer ran me. And part of my attention was now claimed by something else — something approaching me with a heavy, measured tread.
At first there were only sounds: heavy footfalls, the click of boots — definitely not a woman's. Then smells: a suffocating reek of alcohol and cheap cigarettes.
That was when it hit me that something was genuinely wrong. In this world that smell didn't exist — local tobacco smelled completely different. I looked around, but found nothing. The Furious Five were training in the distance, and I was entirely alone. And the sound of the steps was strange — as though someone walked on hard stone, while here there were only wooden platforms and gravel along the bank.
But soon, at the blurred edge of my vision, I started catching a vague two-meter silhouette. It moved in circles at the very periphery, becoming more solid with each pass. I couldn't make it out fully — only general outlines: a very large, heavily built bald man in an unbuttoned khaki uniform.
Mentally I cursed myself in every possible term, recalling all the strangeness of recent days — the nightmarish dreams, and the sudden disturbing inclinations that had surfaced after the Wolverine fight. All of it assembled into a clear chain of warning signs that I had stubbornly ignored. I had naively assumed at the time that the hallucination would resolve itself. But my psyche betrayed me completely when a hoarse baritone carved itself out of somewhere within the bones of my own skull:
"I am Senior Warrant Officer Trenbolonovich. Your personal instructor, seconded directly from hell to work with a sniveling, womanish, spineless little puppy like you! Woof-woof! Want to go back to Mama's bed? Have a little cry? And who's going to protect the family when it all goes sideways? Me? Uncle Petya? Auntie Motya? Doesn't matter! The army has forged soldiers out of much worse material than you!"
WHAT IN THE— My own hallucinations are mocking me with some stereotyped military parody?! On what grounds?! I was never in the army! In my previous life they stamped me unfit at the very first medical review. I barely made it onto the registers at all. Everything I know about military service comes from old television series and comedies, and the occasional overheard conversation. And in this world I've never served either, thank God there's no conscription here — well, technically it exists on paper, for wartime emergencies—
Before I had even finished that thought, the voice erupted with renewed force, blasting the rest of my reasoning clean out of my head:
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" it roared, and the roar raised the hairs along my spine, "YOU THINK THIS IS A KINDERGARTEN? DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY, YOU LITTLE MAGGOT!" I even felt hot, damp breath on my skin — breath that could not possibly exist.
I had been certain there was no point in engaging with hallucinations produced by my own brain. But the shadow showed no signs of leaving. It walked circles around me on the platform, relentlessly bellowing about "rest position" and "one and a half," seasoning its tirade with profanity impressive enough to embarrass a seasoned dockworker.
This continued for some time, until the shadow finally lost its patience entirely. It moved up close, filling the entire space, and roared so hard that my temples felt it as physical pressure:
"YOU DEAF, ARE YOU?! NOW YOU'LL HAVE YOUR EARS CLEANED OUT! PRESENT FOR INSPECTION!"
The shadow didn't move. But in the next instant I felt a burn in my chest that had nothing to do with physical reality. It was a deep, tearing feeling I hadn't experienced in a long time — the kind that steals your breath and darkens your vision. It reminded me precisely of the first time in my life I had broken a rib.
The unexpectedness and shock made me lose my footing. My legs buckled, my fingers released, and I dropped my burden — the multi-ton column hit the platform with a dull thud, and I, feeling nothing now except the fire in my chest, fell backward off the edge and down into the cold water.
And lying on the bottom, blowing bubbles, a hysterical internal laugh tore through my paralyzed, panic-stricken consciousness: Ha-ha-ha… Did my own schizophrenia just beat me up? But the hysterical laughter immediately became a panicked scream of the mind: I am done for! The psychiatric ward isn't crying over me — it's wailing!
Calm down. Calm down. It'll pass. I kept trying to convince myself as I broke the surface and gasped for air.
But to my profound misfortune, the cold water of the pond did not dispel the hallucination — it only made it more vivid. Like a ghost that had gathered substance, this creature in the unbuttoned uniform was now standing on the edge of the platform, looking directly at me.
"Had a swim, you scraggly runt? Excellent! At least we washed the stench off you!" he laughed, hoarse and malicious. "Though what does it matter—" he continued in an aggressive tone — "wet garbage still reeks! Now get up here and do one-arm push-ups, with weight, until every bit of that nonsense sweats out of you! Move!"
In that moment everything inside me screamed to give up. Because if I was honest with myself, this was no longer training — this was a glaring, screaming sign that my mind had not merely slipped but had achieved orbital velocity and departed into the stratosphere, leaving me alone with this deranged product of my own imagination.
But then, cutting through the irritation, another thought pushed its way forward. And to my own surprise I acknowledged it as not just logical — but the only right one. What if… I listened? I was the one who wanted to keep going. I was the one who believed I could do more. What if this is the last attempt by my own consciousness to make me train for real — at the actual limit? Because I truly haven't been pushing all the way. I've been sparing myself, retreating before the wave of pain and exhaustion.
As Oogway said — you just have to believe in yourself and want it. Fine. To hell with it. I'll believe. After all, this hallucination was part of me. Not the friendliest part, perhaps. Not the most rational. But almost certainly the one that saw straight through me. That knew every weakness I had. And perhaps… every hidden capability.
That was the most masochistic decision of my life.
Clenching my teeth, I dragged myself back onto the platform. My hands found the fallen column and raised it. The deep ache of overtraining flooded back through my body.
Fine, I hissed — not internally this time, but aloud, staring into the emptiness where the ghost hovered. All right, you thing. Make a soldier out of me.
And under the unceasing torrent of insults, I began blindly following the hallucination's commands. The first exercise was one-arm push-ups. My palm drove into the wet, slippery planks, fighting through torment and spreading numbness. My other arm, seized with cramps, kept the column braced against my shoulder, lying on me like a dead weight. Every movement was accompanied by a crackling in the joints and the sensation of tearing muscle. It wasn't just painful — it was unbearable. But I kept going, switching arms when one finally refused to respond.
But the one-arm push-ups were only the beginning. With each successive exercise I understood more clearly that I had descended into the deepest circle of hell. They replaced each other without pause, each more sadistically refined than the last. One stood out in particular — and by "stood out," I mean it embedded itself in memory and every muscle simultaneously — the vertical stance with the column balanced on one leg. Holding the wretched boulder at arm's length above my head, still and unbreathing, "like the banner of a combat unit." As my hallucination put it. May it never know peace.
The voice in my head did not fall silent for a single moment. It demanded I hold for "at least ten minutes" and threatened another "inspection." Spoiler: I didn't hold it. And it "prescribed" the consequence as promised.
The torment was relentless. The moment I tried to cheat — ease the work even slightly, or attempt to get a word in with the hallucination — my own mind would "reward" me with a deafening roar and another phantom blow, sending me off the platform and into the water.
And so I continued this self-torture until my throat had gone raw from desperate thirst and my body had begun to cramp from dehydration. And then, to my surprise, the voice went suddenly silent. No obscenities, no threats. The quiet was almost frightening. I stumbled to the bank.
Servants brought water. I threw myself at the bucket and drained it in one long pull. For a moment my body went soft, and I allowed myself to simply stand and breathe.
It was then that I saw it. In the reflection on the water's surface. Not a trace of fat remained — only clean, sharply defined muscle, rendered to the last vein.
The surprise was beyond words. My body appeared to have burned through all its strategic reserves — everything stored up for a rainy day. But then where had the strength been coming from? Because by all sensation, the fat had been gone for a long time before the end.
And in that moment a thought began to form: what if the fat hadn't been fueling the body at all — but something else? Near-instant, almost immediate regeneration?
Because I had clearly felt microtears and strains closing during the sets themselves — and exclusively in those moments when the burning sensation of departing fat spread through my body. And I desperately wanted to believe this theory, because who hasn't dreamed of instant recovery and muscle growth?
Further confirmation came from the fact that once the fat was exhausted, genuine hell had begun for me. Injuries and damage started accumulating faster than they could heal.
In the end I reluctantly set the idea aside — from a physiological standpoint it was impossible. Regeneration required proteins, and fat contains none. I didn't get the chance to form a new theory: the hallucination started roaring, delivering phantom cuffs about the head, and dragged me back onto the platform.
And here I was now, holding the one-and-a-half position with the column across my shoulders, returning to this thought again. Could I honestly reason about normal physiology in a world where sentient creatures existed that, by any biological standard, simply shouldn't? Take Mantis — there's no anatomical way for his brain to be large enough for sapience, and yet he thinks perfectly well, and in this world there are creatures smaller still, and all of them think.
Two facts supported the case that the fat had been going toward healing: the lightning recovery after the wounds in the Wolverine fight, and the fact that I hadn't lost consciousness from blood loss, even though I had been bleeding as though someone was butchering a pig with a screwdriver.
And after the battle I had found myself noticeably leaner. I had put it down to the "berserker mode" — but it turned out that had nothing to do with regeneration or the energy surge. That had simply been me, going berserk.
Which left only one question: what was my body running on right now? And there were only two possibilities — either it was belief in myself, or it was qi.
But my thoughts were interrupted — not by the usual bellow from my schizophrenia. On the contrary, she was standing beside me now, unnaturally quiet, barely registering.
What interrupted them was something else entirely: a sudden wave of weakness washing over me. All the energy that had been surging through me from what seemed like nowhere simply evaporated. My entire consciousness was swamped by unbearable pain — so monstrous that it felt as though a little more and I would lose consciousness. The world in my eyes began to swim in shades of crimson.
"Hey, soldier — anchor in the bay," my schizophrenia rasped. "Answer me one question."
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