2 - Habitual Escapism

On his way to the training grounds, Victor stopped by an apothecary to replenish one of the several creams he used for his face. He found himself delayed further by a Kargarian peddler’s stand - one of many traveling merchants who had broken off from the Great Caravan to independently travel Ikesia. Victor had learned to ignore these peddlers, but this one, he just couldn’t ignore, because he sold something the young man hadn’t been able to get his hands on since he’d arrived to this dump: Makeup.

Rather, not any old makeup, but makeup of good quality, makeup that wouldn’t make him look like some wannabe crossdresser, makeup of the sort used by men and women of all walks in the Kargarian steppe. Subtle colours that would hold once in place even through a scouring sandstorm, quality ingredients, usable application tools to go with it all. For all his anger toward that idiot who’d gotten everyone’s payout cut, Victor gladly parted with over half of all the money he had left for what he knew to be good quality, and the peddler clearly knew it too, considering the fact they didn’t make the slightest attempt to… Well, peddle. They saw him approach and knew that they had a good customer, and that was that.

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From an outside perspective, Victor’s time at the training grounds passed uneventfully. The Instructor - a tall, blonde Ikesian man with a moustache - went on and on about theory, the history of martial arts, and various semi-related tangents while occasionally asking questions and ordering the students to perform various exercises for wrong answers, or simply not raising their hand even if the answer was correct. He wasn’t malicious; rather, this was a way of placating both the occupationists and the duke’s watchmen that wrongly thought they blended in by sitting outside the cafe across the street every day, exactly at the same hours, wearing the same vaguely civilian outfits.

A great deal of this time, Victor spent with his nose buried in Sturmblitz Kunst, burning through page after page; from the short summary of the main character’s numerous journeys through many foreign lands, to her unfortunate arrival in the Exclusion Zone and initial encounter with the Three Soldiers, their protracted struggle in escaping and later hunting a terrifying, deathless creature called a Necrobeast. When called on for a question he intentionally didn’t think about his answer, the Instructor faking an exasperated sigh, putting his hands on his hips, before gesturing towards one of the log dummies.

“Alright, you know how it goes,” said the older man. As he alongside the rest of the class watched Victor get up and walk to the dummy without bothering to pry himself away from his book, the Instructor added: “One of these days that aloofness of yours will get you run over in the street.”

That remark clearly wasn’t part of the charade, even if Victor didn’t feel he was particularly aloof. He began delivering one kick after the other to the dummy, feeling the shock reverberate up his leg and stifling the nagging pain in his shin. It was tolerable, now - a few months ago he thought he’d broken his leg after just one full-strength kick into this damn thing, but now, his shins and the tops of his feet were covered in bone plates thick enough to actually make his kicks do real damage. The same could be said for his fists, elbows, and to a much lesser degree, forearms, but as far as manifestations of his genetic inheritance went, the plates were thickest on his chest, and certainly not because of some natural predisposition.

No, the fact he had a layer of armor that couldn’t be stripped from him was his work and his alone.

“Whole lotta good it did me when I’ve got jack shit on my back…” he thought to himself when, after a mere few dozen kicks, he felt blood oozing out of his wound, soaking through the back of his shirt. Despite the pain, Victor was able to distance himself from it through engrossing himself in the world of his book, in reading about Zelsys the Lightning Butcher fulfilling her namesake against hordes of locust-men, in so brazenly calling out the Imperials and spitting in the face of their Emperor - it was so far removed from his reality that, in diving into the book’s world, he was able to remove himself from the reality of his aching body, if only partially. Victor just continued kicking, but he knew the Instructor would force him to stop, and indeed, his prediction came true only three kicks later.

When the man half mindedly looked over to check Victor’s form, he double-took, raising his hand and snapping his fingers as he called out: “Ey, Khestun, that’s enough! Go clean yourself up, you should’ve told me you had a fresh wound, can’t have you causing yourself permanent damage ‘cause you think yourself a hardcore martial artist.”

“It’s just a ripped scab, I’m sure of it,” lied the young man, finally lowering the pulp from his face, but keeping his finger between its pages so as to not lose his spot. The Instructor clearly didn’t buy it, pointing at the modest building that the martial arts school called a home, reiterating his point: “Tell it to Old Man Duma.”

“Old Man, right…” a thought shot through Victor’s head as a chuckle escaped him. Resved Duma wouldn’t let anyone call him any variant of “Master” or “Elder” in an effort to soften the open secret of his past - a ruthless killer, a man born and made what he was now by the savage “World of Martial Arts”. Some thought it to be a literal place, an obscure region far away, while others considered it an reference to the lawless underworld that coexisted with law-abiding society, with public-facing martial arts schools and sects being bridges between the two. Victor leaned towards the latter, and though he thought himself above buying into mysticism, he couldn’t help staring at all the scrolls and weird-looking seals in Duma’s sanctum, not to mention what secrets doubtlessly hid behind those big brass doors.

The Old Man’s personal quarters, perhaps, but even then, what did he have in there?