1% Lifesteal

Past his prime.

And even then, with his stage 4 Boundless Vitality tempering technique, he was in as good a health as a person could be. The thin, almost unnoticeable stream of supreme-quality healing that his cells generated acted slowly, but for him, who had lived for nearly 250 years, it had had plenty of time to purge him of all ailments, undoing the damage the world and time alike had done to his body.

He pulled on the cigar, filling not only his mouth but even his lungs, having developed practically absolute resistance to the thick cigar smoke over the years. Then he blew out a massive cloud. The misty mass roiled before him, taking on the shape of two dogs humping in the air.

He chuckled. How silly. How peaceful.

This was it—the thing he wanted to see. These goofy little creations, small acts of joyful vanity, were so much more pleasant than the horrors man was ready to commit when things got bad.

As the animated cloud dissipated into blurry shapes, his vision's focus gradually swapped again to the city below. It was so different nowadays. So unfamiliar.

He still remembered the day the world went wrong. The sensation of something profound subtly shifting, and a moment later, the image of his car engine exploding, sending the hood flying into the air as the car swerved into a family of four, killing all of them in an instant.

Naturally, that hadn't been his fault. But he, the proud, haughty businessman who loved his car more than he did his wife of then, now no longer even remembered what brand the car had been. All he remembered was the image of the woman who had tried to save her child, now broken and bloody, as the vehicle pressed her limp body up against the wall.

It was hard to place what he felt as he remembered that image. It wasn't guilt, not quite. The memory often flashed through his mind, not because it had traumatized him, but perhaps because he'd at one point envied that tragic family who were spared the brutality of the early post-Rift era.

Yet again, his gaze scouted the buildings below. This was no longer New York. It hadn't been for a long time. The architecture was different, with few buildings that had lived through the hellish war that took place on those streets. How cheerfully the new residents walked upon what had once been rivers of blood, with stray monsters walking around, either having come from portals to another world or having been born in the hearts of those who were driven to madness.

As he stared across the world, with the horizon extending far further now than it had two hundred years ago, he felt in no rush to do anything. With immortality and his fourth star progress stuck at 99%, he was free to peruse through life leisurely, taking all the time he needed to enjoy the little things, like cigars whose smoke morphed into the image of animals having sex.

But he knew better than to grow complacent. Many times, he had decided to relax as the world finally seemed to settle in one place. Every single time, he realized that those early days of struggle had never ended. They sometimes just decided to take a break.

Suddenly, the doors on the other side of his office burst open. His face darkened, and his stomach sank. Only 6 minutes and 51 seconds of his 10-minute break had passed. The only reason the break was ever interrupted was for a dire emergency.

He slowly turned around, facing his assistant, a young, nerdy woman who looked frazzled as she rushed to explain what was happening.

He kept his calm as he heard her out. "A terrorist attack, you say?" he asked in his deep, raspy voice, sighing in disappointment. For a moment, Leonard turned around to look across the city, his jolly mood collapsing.

Indeed.

Those dark days had never truly ended.

And they likely never would.

***

The strategy Sophia had come up with worked well enough. Freddy hadn't gathered enough ether to realize the progress that had been made easier for him, but he could tell that the tight bottleneck that had slowed his growth to a crawl was loosening with every remnant they defeated, and… every time he nearly died.

"Fuck!" he shouted as the demonic sunflower remnant grasped his projection's leg with its root and pulled it back, opening its orange flower bud face, which was just a circular maw of serrated teeth.

Sophia's tentacle soul construct rushed in, pulling him back while they both screamed for Bloodshed's help. The bloody skeleton rushed in immediately, clawing the roots apart and tearing the remnant's head off with the other clawed hand.

"Shit! Fuck!" Freddy screamed again as he felt his projection unraveling. The pain being inflicted upon his soul felt piercingly cold, echoing through his senses with the promise of eternal darkness.

Sophia used her tentacles to gather the small pile of water wisps they had collected to the side, and then she pushed the ball at him. He absorbed it, mending himself back together, but this being the third time he needed such treatment, his projection didn't heal fully, leaving a deep crack across his robes, starting from his chest and going down his leg.

"Okay, get out!" Sophia shouted.

"I'm fine!" said Freddy. "We can keep—"

"No the hell we can't! Out, out, out! Right now!"

"Master," Bloodshed said. "Perhaps you should heed her advice and leave the Netherecho for the time being."

Hearing the bloody remnant taking Sophia's side was sobering, and Freddy nodded absent-mindedly, heading to his body and sinking back inside.

His eyes opened, greeting the beige, stony cavern wall in the small nook they had hidden in so they could safely leave their bodies unattended.

The crack across his projection was a crack along his soul. His body was there, and he was attached to it, but there was a slight disconnect. It was as if the world around him was slightly less substantial, and everything from light to sound echoed in his senses, blurring his surroundings and muting the noises around him.

Sophia rose up a second later. Her hands ran across her face as she sucked air through her teeth, clearly frustrated. "Freddy," she called. "This can't continue."

"I'm fine," he said. "The crack is gonna heal by itself. I'm not gonna—"

"That's not what I meant," she said.

"Get off my spine, woman," he demanded. "Give me some time; I'm new to fighting remnants like this, and I can't do it perfectly within just a few attempts. Not all of us were raised to become killing machines, you know?"

"Okay, wow, rude!" she yelled back. "But that's not what I meant either!"

"Then what do you want?"

"You can't fight!" she asserted.

"I know that!" he said. "I told you, give me some time, and I'm gonna—"

"No!" she interrupted him.

"Give me some time," he repeated. "I'm listening to your advice, and I'm gonna get better."

She shook her head. "You will improve in the Netherecho, but we won't fight the cultists with our projections."

He knew she was right. That was only their fifth fight, and in three out of five, he had gotten himself lethally injured. Even if he got the hang of it in the Netherecho, his lack of skill with his projection wasn't the problem—it was the symptom. He simply didn't understand how combat worked. His general approach was reacting to things as they came and retaliating with overwhelming force, but that was primitive at best.

He heaved the most frustrated sigh of his life as he aggressively rubbed his face, pushed his palms' heel into his eyes, and then moved his hands to grip his hair. "I know, but what can I do about it?" he asked. "We have a week, Sophia. I don't have the time to learn anything. We should focus on increasing our power as much as possible."

"You're wrong," she said, "on both ends." Then she sighed and got up. "Follow me outside."

He did, and moments later, they pushed past the small blockade they had built to shelter themselves and stepped outside under the searing sun and fake blue sky.

He could swear that the sun sounded like a mosquito buzzing in his ear. His finger aggressively picked at his left ear, but the noise didn't go away.

It was a lonely corner they found themselves in, but as far as the standards of interspace were concerned, it was a pretty safe one. There was little vegetation, and due to the border of the small realm, there wasn't enough space underground for gorels to build hives nearby. Those who had tried had been stopped by active interference by the staff.

They stood on an empty clearing, nothing but dry, pale soil beneath their feet, with a wall of stone on either side of the outer perimeter, which took the form of a cleared ring of soil, creating some space between the rocky, forested wilderness and the sheer cliff of the border wall, behind which lay literally nothing.

They faced each other, Sophia's expression stern. "Take your clothes off," she said. "Leave nothing but your underwear on."

He blushed. "What!? Why would I—"

"It's nothing like that, you dunce," she said, shaking her head. "I can't see your muscles."

"I don't know, Sophia," he said, taking a mock step back. "Sounds pretty weird to me."

She rolled her eyes. "Just do it."

He gave a cheeky chuckle as he complied, removing his armor until nothing but his thick, gleaming muscles remained. His skin was perfect, and his physique was so chiseled he looked like an idealized version of what a muscular man should look like.

Frankly, he had half-expected her to blush at least a little upon seeing his impressive body, but her eyes were cold, and her expression was clinical and calculating. She tapped her chin. "Turn around," she demanded.

He complied.

"You have a pretty decent build," she said.

"Thanks," he replied arrogantly, knowing well enough just how much work he'd put into acquiring it as he turned back to face her.

"But you're not well-balanced," she stated.

His mood soured a bit as he raised an eyebrow. "How?"

"Well, first of all," she started as she bent over and slapped his leg, "your quads and hamstrings are pretty big, while your calves are a bit small in comparison. This isn't your fault; it's genetic, but it does make your lower body a bit imbalanced. Also, your chest"—she got up to slap his left pec—"is huge."

"Thanks, but can you stop slapping my body?"

"No," she denied, grinning wryly as she slapped his right pec, too. "Overall, you've trained your physique quite well. Your talent has saved you from developing imbalances; purely strength-wise, you have quite the hardware. But this isn't going to cut it for martial arts."

He frowned, honestly feeling slightly insulted. "Why?"

"For starters, you're super top-front-heavy," she said, pointing at his broad shoulders and thick pectoralis. Then, bringing her arms together, she lowered them to his skinny waist. "Let me ask you a question: Do you feel stable when you're fighting?"

He quirked an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"Like… How often do you feel like your enemies are knocking or pushing you around?"

He winced. "Pretty often, I'd say. But I thought that was my fault."

"It is," she said. "But your body isn't doing you any favors."

"So what am I supposed to do?" he asked. "Train my calves until I balance it out?" He sighed in frustration. "Eat until I get fatter?"

She chuckled. "Obviously not. We have a much better option," she said, grinning at him. She raised her hand, and the skin on her palm bubbled slightly as pink mist seeped out. It was life essence.

He frowned, not following. "What are you gonna do with that?"

She looked at him side-long, almost as if she were disappointed that he couldn't tell. "I'm a life-affinity arch, duh!" she said. "I can manipulate living matter like clay."

"And?"

"And… I'm gonna reshape your body."

Freddy scowled. "Hell no!" he said, stepping back.

She was right about what she said, but her proposal was crazy. He had read about it in a book once. Clinics existed where people could have their bodies reshaped and their muscles, joints, and even bones readjusted. One small problem, however—this wasn't particularly helpful for someone who fought for a living.

These procedures were almost purely cosmetic. The readjusted parts had numerous nerve endings irreparably damaged, the reshaped joints grew stiffer, bones more brittle, and the bulk of any "extra" mass added would be incredibly weak, more akin to fake muscle than truly functional tissue.

But…

"I know what you're thinking," Sophia said. "But you do remember the main advantage the two of us share?" she asked him.

"I do," he said, knowing damn well that an infinite supply of supreme-quality healing could ameliorate many of those problems. "But that doesn't fix everything," he said. "My healing can't heal weakness." He adopted a grim expression. "If my muscle is reshaped, it will cost me much of my hard-earned power. Also, the nerve endings might grow back, but that doesn't mean they will work perfectly right from the get-go."

"You aren't wrong," she said. "But we might have a few options to address those issues. First, let me ask you something: Do you have any steroids in that storage ring of yours?"

He opened his mouth for a moment but then closed it. He did, but… "I do," he answered cautiously, "but I've never tried them. It's possible that they're gonna kill me if I take even a single dose."

"Damn," she said, her eyebrows raising slightly as he said that. "Aren't you forgetting about your undead body?"

He shook his head. "It could affect my brain."

"If it does," she started, "there's always the option of me burning a spark to heal you before it does any permanent damage."

That did eliminate the most significant risk, but he was still apprehensive.

"Look," she said, sighing deeply. "I've seen you fight, and it's honestly a pretty critical situation. You said it yourself—we only have a week. I can't teach you how to become a master in the time we have, but if we're willing to take a few chances, we can get you in better shape." She crossed her arms and got closer, looking up at him.

"I don't get it," he started. "What exactly does reshaping my body have to do with my combat knowledge?"

"A lot more than you'd think," she said. "A poorly balanced form makes everything more complicated. Archery is easier with a straight arrow. Swordsmanship is easier with a balanced blade. The same thing applies to martial arts."

He looked down at himself with a slight hint of shame. "Is my body really that suboptimal?"

"Oh yeah, definitely," she confirmed without hesitation.

He winced.

"Look, I know how they fight," Sophia said, lowering her head slightly. "Even if we bring you to 99% capacity, it will be no use if you suck using the power you have. Honestly, the way you are right now, the only way you can even dream of taking one of them down is by using Leviathan's Fury."

He took a deep breath. "Are you sure you won't cripple me?" he asked. "I'm trusting you with a lot if I agree to this."

"I'm sure that, at the very least, I won't make things any worse than they already are."

"And what about my equipment?" he asked, eyeing the pile of gear on the floor nearby. "If you reshape my body, it's not gonna fit anymore."

"Oh, please," she said, rolling her eyes. "That shitty gear barely provides any protection to begin with," she claimed. "You have Hundred Wet Hells, right?"

He nodded. Technically, it was Thousand Wet Hells, but yes, he had the tempering technique.

"Compared to that," she continued, "this armor is nothing."

He shook his head. "You're wrong." He walked over, bent down, and picked up a bracer. "This stuff isn't top of the line, but put together, it provides defense against things I'm not naturally resistant to," he claimed. "Hundred Wet Hells is mostly internal. It's only effective against blunt force and partially effective against cutting and piercing."

"No, Freddy, you're wrong," she said. "I know where you're coming from, but if the cultists come at you with poison, acid, or fire, they'll use the type of stuff this cheap gear won't be able to stand up to."

That was something he couldn't argue against.

"Okay, I get it," he said, getting back up and dropping the bracer. "I'll leave it behind." He met her stare for a long moment and then sighed. "Fine," he surrendered. "Let's get started, then. Need me to lay down?"

"Just one thing," she said. "This is going to be incredibly painful." She paused for a few moments to let the severity of the situation sink in. "I'm going to be reshaping your body, and my essence control isn't nearly delicate enough to stop me from tearing your nerves apart. Are you sure you can handle that?"

"I endured torture for months on end, Sophia," he said, reminding her of his story. "If there is any one thing I can tolerate, it's pain."