DD 204 Chapter 33

"Oh, where did you two come from?" Des asked, spinning around in her chair as we walked into Crimson's class on Monday.

Penny and I had disappeared for the remainder of the weekend. It seemed Penny had a vivacious imagination, and once I had opened the tap, we had plunged into a rather pleasurable abyss of self-discovery.

"Hmm? I don't know what you're talking about," I played coy and sat down at my seat. 

"Uh uh. You don’t get to hide details from me," Des wasn't going to drop this topic, and her question had caused a ripple in the classroom, more than a few people looking our way. 

"Maybe later, Des." I gave her a look.

"Wait, I want to hear, too," Harley held her hand up, straining to shove it as high as she could in the air. Heads were all turning, curious to know more about what Penny and I had been up to all weekend. "I mean, Penny, you are glowing," Harley emphasized with a bob of her eyebrows. 

Lucikly Meredith, Penny's cousin, grabbed Harley's head and shoved it down into her desk. "She says she doesn't want to talk. Don't badger her."

"But Penny hasn't said anything!" Harley pouted. 

"I heard they went off and killed Nagas together," Selene offered the rest of the class. 

"Oh, that is not what I was expecting," Harley escaped from her lover. "If you have the details, Selene, share with the class. Please?" Harley did her best to look cute. 

Meanwhile, there was an odd transaction happening behind me. Penny, as subtly as she could, handed Felin a pair of clothes underneath her desk.

I turned and stared at the two of them. "Are you serious?" I asked.

"What? She has her vice. And she made me promise," Penny shrugged, clearly feeling more comfortable in the group after our weekend together.

Felin stuffed the worn clothes from Penny away. "My nest needs to stay refreshed." Felin said casually.

Technically, I understood that Felin liked to steal my clothes and sleep on them, but it was strange every time I saw it happen.. 

I shrugged, "Whatever. I accept you for who you are, Felin, even if it's a little weird."

"It's not weird," She scowled at me. "This is normal Nekorian behavior. It's not like I'd take your socks."

"Wait, my sweaty shirt's okay, but socks are not?" Now I was curious.

The Nekorian shook her head back and forth rapidly. "Socks are disgusting. Humans have far too sweaty feet."

I wanted to refute the statement, but she wasn't wrong. "Alright, well, if you guys are done making under-the-table deals with my clothing, perhaps we should get ready for class," I gestured just in time for Crimson to come skipping in with a giant grin on her face. 

"Alright, class," Chills were coming off of everyone in their seats. Crimson smiling was not good for any of us. "I have a surprise for you.”

The mood in the room dropped in free fall. Smiling Crimson plus ‘surprise’ terrified all of us.

Taylor held her hand up. "I don't want to die," she pleaded only to receive a scowl from Crimson. 

"You're not going to die. I just discovered a new training ground within Star City. And better yet," Crimson's smile didn't fade one bit, "we managed to get the UG to fund our ‘research’," she air-quoted, "of the new training ground. So I can stick you guys in there as long as we want."

Des turned to me as the resident Crimson expert. "Do you know what new hell we’re walking into?"

"Not a clue. Besides using Crimson to threaten some naga, I haven't seen her all weekend.” On second thought, she was left to her own devices all weekend while grumpy, which could be the cause of this.

“I heard she dove deep within the dungeon, killing things by the thousands to unleash her fury of being forced to grade papers," Kendra said from the row in front of us. 

"That seems a tad excessive," I offered, only for the rest of the class who had heard to nod along with her assessment. I was curious what they would think if they knew part of the time Crimson had been hiding out in her office.

"I'm sure you're all dying to know what this new training ground is," Crimson began. By the way, Crimson was smiling, I was fairly sure we would need to be revived at least a few times.

"Sure, Crimson. What is it?" I decided to take one for the team. 

"Knew you'd love it, Ken. The Orkai have a gravity training facility." She grinned like a maniac. 

"Gravity training?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. That didn't sound too bad. 

"Exactly as it sounds. Increase gravity at the cost of mana crystals." A handful of them flashed between her fingers. "It's actually decently expensive to train there, which is why you should all be very thankful that I managed to get the UG to foot the bill. Otherwise, I'm sure most of you would be broke. Especially you, Ken." 

"Aren't you the reason I'm broke in the first place?" I glared back at her. 

"Pretty sure you asked me to smash up a safe zone. You don't get to blame it on me," Crimson shot back without a shred of remorse. 

"I don't think I asked that specifically." I replied. 

She clicked her tongue. "By summoning me when you had a pair of broken legs and looked like someone had beaten you, the outcome was set in motion. You might as well have just directly asked me to kill everyone in the nearby vicinity." She gave me another smile. Crimson was far too smiley for this training. 

"How high does the gravity go?" Candice asked the real question. 

"Over a thousand times Earth's gravity." Crimson's grin couldn't have gotten larger at that moment. "If you don't have enough stamina, even decent leveled adventurers will get squished to a pancake if you dial it up to full blast." 

"And we're going to take it easy. Real easy and slow, right?" Taylor said, looking around the classroom for others to back her.

"Sure," Crimson waved away the concern unconvincingly. "However, we will need to do some research for the UG and see the full range of the power. I'm sure the nerds there will absolutely love it."

There were beads of nervous sweat dripping down the faces of multiple students present.

"Anyway," Crimson said after the class paused, waiting for her to continue. “Now we can dive into whatever gobbledygook is in this book, knowing that afterwards we'll get to do some actual training." 

A note passed its way across the room, subtly from person to person, as Crimson flipped through her book.

So when it finally crossed Des' desk to mine, I did my best to suppress a groan as I opened it up. 

Dear Ken, we may need to sacrifice you to escape training with Crimson. Apologies, Harley.

The pink-haired bard gave me a thumbs-up from across the room and I shook my head in response. Little did they know there was no escaping Crimson's training. Rather than trying to fight it, I had already decided I was just going to lean in and see how much we could actually improve. 

If it was the Orkai's training ground and cost mana crystals, then it could very well be more effective than anything else we could do out in the dungeon or back on Earth. 

Besides, at our current levels, training with weights or even the elven straps that they used was getting difficult. We were at a point where many of us could not load the weight bars any further without straining them to collapse. So, a place with increased gravity might just be what we needed to train and grow stronger.

"Alright," Crimson slammed the book close. "That's all boring things. What you need to know is that you need strength to survive. And if you don't know what you're up against, the best thing you can do is proceed cautiously. That means protecting your healer at all costs. And also, a bunch of random facts will be quizzed on tomorrow, like how to detect what elements a monster is likely using." 

Candice's hand shot up in the air. "You skipped two whole chapters on the etymology of monstrous races within the dungeon." 

Crimson paused at her teacher's lectern, her eyes slowly fixing on Candice. "Wonderful. I'd like a 15-page report from you on all of the items that I missed. And then I can hand your report to everyone in class and they can take an extra quiz on it." She clapped with false cheer. "Yay! More work for you guys, but that’s later. Now we get to go play in the gravity chamber."

***

Crimson led us to the Gravity Chamber, which had to be one of the busiest buildings I had seen so far in Star City.

However, not many people were visible from the outside. Once we walked into its cavernous halls, there were Orkai gathering and entering various sealed doors. 

The receptionist was a bored-looking angel who perked up at our group. "Oh, I haven't seen you here before. First time?" she asked. 

"Yes, it is," Crimson replied, walking up to the desk and leaning on it. "My understanding is the rooms come in various sizes?"

"That would be correct." The angel gestured, and a display popped up between her and Crimson. "Ms. Crimson, as you can see here, there are various…”

“We'll take the 50 yard by 30 yard room," Crimson interrupted the sales pitch.

The angel poked at the display. "It will be all of you?" she asked, looking at our group calmly. It seemed a group this size wasn't abnormal. 

"Correct." Before the angel could continue, Crimson waved her CID over the desk for payment.

The angel kept a cool smile on her face as she accepted the payment. "Alright then, I can see you are in a hurry, so I will step out of your way." 

Crimson cackled after she paid for the room.

I could only assume that one day soon, someone in the accounting department of the UG was going to have a heart attack.

Suddenly the fact that the Orkai didn’t spend on the elevators made more sense. It was clear where they were putting their resources.

"Room 4 on the right." The angel gestured down the hall and Crimson led the group of students, including me, to the room. A pair of doors slid open on their own as Crimson approached, and we all stepped inside. 

Crimson moved over to a tablet at the other side of the room, quickly tapping away. I braced. Crimson was far too giddy as she poked and prodded at the screen. 

"We'll start nice and easy." I called over, trying to get her to look over at me.

"Oh, of course, of course." Crimson poked a button with a little extra flourish, and suddenly it felt like someone had dropped a sledgehammer on my shoulders.

Both of my knees buckled underneath the sudden weight. I at least managed to maintain my feet, however, the other students in the class hadn't been so lucky. 

My brain went into survival mode, trying to figure out what I could do to ease the pressure. It occurred to me that I had hitten level 45 and not used my points, and my body ached to use those points to boost my strength. I had just started working to flip over my CID as a hand covered it.

Crimson smiled to the side of me, as if she was taking a stroll in the park. "Everyone, back to your feet. It's only five times gravity," she said. "Give it a minute and you'll get used to it."

Five times gravity. My eye twitched, that meant I weighed almost nine hundred pounds. It was a miracle that I still stood.

Some of the healers were flat on the ground, struggling to even kneel. "I don't think I'm getting used to this," Harley groaned, her face shoved into the ground. 

"Well, if you can't stand up, then you're going to be doing push-ups until the end of training today," Crimson's grin was like a shark who had found its food.

Immediately, Harley started putting in every ounce of effort she could summon to try and push herself to her knees. 

"The really cool thing about this place," Crimson said, gesturing around, "is that not only does it make you heavier, but apparently it makes mana heavier as well." 

"Wait, like weightlifting for casting?" Penny asked. She was standing rather casually, as were the other tanks and even Taylor. Between their stamina and strength, they were able to resist the increased gravity easier than the rest of us. 

"Those of you who already adapted quite well," she gestured to those standing, "get to play a fun game of dodge. Everyone else's goal is going to be to beat you up. Class, I will consider this round of training finished when you knock down all four tanks." 

Crimson pointed at Helen, Penny, Myrtle, and Hester. There was a sadistic glee in several of the classmates' eyes at the challenge that Crimson issued.

"Helen, don't take this the wrong way, but I'm going to have to knock you out," Candace said, struggling to a kneeling position and beginning to draw runes in the air. 

"Actually, we're going to split into three groups," Crimson announced, suddenly changing her mind. "The healers, the tanks, and the damage dealers. As you all know, there is a fierce history of competition amongst the three as to who are the most important members of the party. Today, we're going to crown a winner. The DPS are going to try and defeat the tanks. Meanwhile, the healers must try and keep the tanks alive, all while the tanks are going to do their best job to receive as little healing as possible. If the tanks go down, the healers lose, and the DPS win. If the healers run out of mana, they lose. And finally, if the DPS become too exhausted to continue, they lose. The losing team must run 100 laps around this room, as well as do 100 push-ups and 100 squats. I'll make you work so hard that your hair falls out. That should be incentive enough." 

Considering most of the class put a high priority on their hair, her statement was terrifying. More than a few ladies clutched their precious locks.

Everybody was still for a moment, but the fight started when Des managed to throw a pitifully small shadow bolt directly in Helen's face.

The red-headed paladin had failed to get her shield up as quickly as she expected only for the ball of darkness to explode in her face and mess her hair. Helen scowled at her shield as if it had betrayed her. 

"Don't think you're going to get another cheap shot, Renard," Helen warned, holding her shield out in front of her, not letting it droop again. Yet I could see the way her arm strained against the strap and her biceps bulged against her jacket. Even if all the tanks had to do was take a beating, this exercise was simply brutal.

Their shields and weapons would be like holding onto weights.

"Make sure you keep your shield up," Charlotte advised, waving her staff while keeping the butt braced against the ground, and cast Healing on Helen.

"Or on second thought, you can let your shield droop." I snickered back, taking heavy steps towards the tanks. I had discarded my two swords for a pair of daggers. The lighter weapons would be significantly easier in the current environment. 

"Because if we can take you down, Helen, then the healers will lose. Isn't that right, Harley?" I taunted both of them. This was training and I needed them to grit their teeth and put up a fight. 

The bard was laying on her back, flute to her lips. "Don't think that because I can't stand, I can’t heal. My harem does not give up! Isn't that right?" Harley shouted at her healers, most of whom were in various states of being sprawled on the floor. Charlotte was the only one who had managed to stand, and even then, she was braced hard against her staff, using it for support. 

I stepped in, swinging my pair of daggers at Helen. Of the tanks present, she was the easiest for me to take on. It really didn't have it in me to try and cut up Penny. And somehow attacking Myrtle often felt like kicking a puppy. She was just too sweet and innocent, even if she was taller than me. As for Hester, she was the tank from Felicity’s group and I didn’t really know her skill set.

Yet, my attack didn't go quite as planned. I activated [Shadow Claw], expecting the ability to swipe like normal, only for it to flow sluggishly as a pitiful ghost of a [Shadow Claw] appeared over my blade. I slashed like an old man who should be using a walker instead of a dagger.

Helen laughed as it bounced off her shield. "Going to have to try harder than that, Ken. Has Crimson's Wonder Boy finally met his match?" She mocked me.

I gritted my teeth and leaned in. A flurry of blows ensued, only without the excitement. Instead, it was a steady, monotonous ding as my daggers rang fruitlessly against her shield. A few sparks of [Liminal Speed] trickled down my fingertips.

Yet increasing my speed was a double edged sword here, it would only exhaust me quicker.

I wasn't the only one having trouble. Even the casters in the class were throwing what looked like miniaturized versions of their own spells. They flung spells out, some of them even dropping to the ground before hitting the target in a pitiful little puff of magic. Honestly, we probably looked like a group of children fighting. Most of us didn't even have the strength to lift our weapons. 

Taylor's big, heavy maces were essentially glued to the floor as she struggled to lift them by throwing her entire body weight behind them every time she swung. Not that any of us complained or even stopped to try and negotiate with Crimson.

We'd all been in her class long enough to know such negotiations were entirely fruitless. We were going to have to push through this exercise.

And I liked to think that many of us, if given the chance, would put ourselves under this sort of training of our own volition. For as much as I wanted to complain, and as much as some of them were complaining about their struggle to move, cast, or otherwise meaningfully participate in this mock battle, most of the students were doing so while straining to their utmost to fight. We’d made it this far, and we were not going down without a fight.

AN - Does 5x seem right for this reaction? I did waffle a bit on it. With gear most of them are between 800-1000 lbs. It's super human for them to even be on their feet, much less fighting. Unsure how it feels with the total power scale.