Midday awoke to the now familiar taste of Devil Peppercorn. Opening his eyes, he saw Glauster standing above him with a spoon, having just shoveled some Devil Peppercorn-infested soup into his mouth. Immediately Midday tried to get up, but Romulo was there too, holding him down. Gork was also present, quietly treating Midday’s wounds as the other two did their thing.

This was hell, Midday decided, as Glauster forced his jaw open and stuffed another scoop down his throat. He was amazed at just how much worse his life had gotten ever since finding the ring. It seemed like the opposite should have been the case but, in reality, all he had gotten out of it so far was a torturous diet along with an arguably even more torturous ‘training regimen’. How long would this hell last? He pondered this question deeply as he struggled fruitlessly against Romulo to break free.

“Let—” before he could finish his sentence with ‘me go’, Glauster forced yet another mouthful of soup into his mouth. He did this a few more times, all the while Midday tried his best to squirm his way out of the situation until the last of the soup was finally gone.

“All done,” said Glauster. “Now go to bed!”

“Easier said than done…” replied Midday, who forced out a reply despite the horrid taste in his mouth as the taste of the soup began to overwhelm his senses.

Romulo kept holding Midday down for about another minute as Gork finished wrapping the bandages around his leg, which was still bleeding profusely due to the anticoagulant properties possessed by the leech. Once that was done, each of the cabinmates—barring Midday, who was in too much agony to care—let out a big sigh as they seated themselves around the table to talk:

“What the hell were you thinking, Romulo? Don’t you know what kind of state he’s in?! Midday was already just a few steps away from dying as it was! That was NOT training! All you did was torture him!” Gork was livid. “He’s a living, breathing person, you know! Not some sort of monster like you!”

Romulo gazed down at the edge of the table, speaking softly. “Monster?”

Gork felt his stomach drop. He had misspoken, he realized, and he already felt terrible about it. Many people across the Kingmaker Plains, especially in rural areas like the village Gork was from, had strongly negative feelings towards mod humans. It was to the point where most villages barred transhumans from entering their borders, seeing them as terrible abominations capable of causing untold amounts of destruction with ease. Even posthumans, the full-blooded and thus more tolerable counterparts to the mongrel transhumans, were generally feared—though most people knew better than to do anything that insulted them directly. Despite his otherwise compassionate nature, Gork had hated mod humans just as much as anyone else before meeting Romulo—who was the first transhuman Gork had ever actually seen in the flesh—and his old habits still slipped out from time to time. “I’m sorry… You know I don’t mean that, Romulo… But you’ve got to understand where I’m coming from here: Midday doesn’t have regenerative capabilities like you do. That finger he lost the other day, for instance, that’s never growing back… A little bit of training is fine, I think, but promise me that you won’t do anything with a risk of seriously injuring him.”

“I’m not some sort of freak, you know. I’m not…”

“And I didn’t say you were… All I’m saying is that Midday is in no state to do such high-intensity activities as things stand. Maybe in a month, after the Devil Peppercorn has had time to work its magic, sure, but as of right now? Absolutely not. He’s not some sort of pet like your beetle, you know. Midday is a human being whose life is just as precious as anyone else, and he ought to be treated as such.” Gork paused. “Besides, there are other ways to train besides life-or-death situations, aren’t there? How about pushups and sit-ups? That kind of thing would probably be okay.”

“Strength training would be worthless… Based on how much he has to strain himself to finish his quotas, he’s definitely overtraining at the moment. He makes his body work too much and lets it recover too little—and the result is the steady decline we’ve seen over the past two months… making him do physical conditioning would only worsen that issue…”

“Okay… You know more about how all that works than me, but you get the idea, don’t you? Midday wakes up every day not knowing if it will be his last. He can’t afford to do anything dangerous like the XP grinding I assume you were trying to prepare him for tonight.”

“But he’ll stay weak forever if he doesn’t level up. Devil Peppercorn will make his body stronger, sure, but at the end of the day he’d still be level 5.” Romulo kept his eyes down at his lap, still hung up on the fact that Gork, someone he considered a friend, had just called him a monster. He couldn’t help but wonder if that was how Gork really felt about him, and if all the kindness his cabinmate had shown him over the past two months had merely been an act. Romulo suddenly had an urge to run off into the forest and train—at least that way his mind would be occupied with something else for a while.

“Yes, and I understand that and agree with you, but all I’m saying is to hold off on doing anything crazy until he achieves the outstanding physique necessary to make routine XP grinding a more realistic endeavor for him.”

“But that could take months…”

“I’m aware.”

“But I don’t want to wait that long…”

“That’s your problem. Don’t bring Midday into it.”

“Do you think…” Romulo mumbled. “Do you think it would happen faster if he increased his Devil Peppercorn intake to something crazy like 5 beads per meal?”

“There’s no way he would agree to that. And 1 bead is plenty either way.”

“Can you at the very least look into better workarounds then? I bet Netari would know something. She’s the best doctor in Neighborhood 8, right?”

Gork’s eyes narrowed as his lips curled into a deep frown. “Why don’t you ask her yourself if it matters so much to you?” Gork hated Netari. She was more skilled than him, sure, but that didn’t change the fact that she was everything Gork believed a doctor should strive not to be: predatory, profit-hungry, and prideful. Even still, he was almost certain given her skill that she would be able to help. “I refuse to ask her for any favors… and I would advise you do to the same.”

“I’ll pay her a visit tomorrow.” Romulo sighed. “I can just walk away if her terms are too much.”

“Do what you will,” said Gork, still frowning. “Just be careful.” He left the table and walked over to the wooden board that passed for a bed. After shaking his sheets clean of bugs, he set them down and rolled into bed.

Romulo sighed once again, taking a note from Midday’s playbook in his excessive use of the gesture, and left the cabin for some late-night training after saying goodbye to Glauster, who himself was also leaving the cabin to meet up with some friends who lived in the nearby cabins. Of all 4 residents of Slave Quarter #344, Glauster had the healthiest social life by a wide margin—and he frequented the so-called hang-out spots that were scattered throughout the enclave almost daily.

The other three were much less sociable. Romulo had no real friends at all besides his cabinmates due to his status both as a transhuman and as a fighter in the weekly fight club, Gork had few friends because he spent all of his free time doing medical work, and Midday actually had a decent number of friendly acquaintances—but he rarely had time to talk to anyone those days because his steady degeneration had lengthened his workdays to the point where all he usually had time to do during the day was exactly that: work.

Now that everyone was gone or asleep, all Midday could do was spend the next hour lying in bed, suffering the bad taste of Devil Peppercorn with no end in sight. And then, when the flavor-induced torture finally did end, Midday was too exhausted to do anything and so he just went to bed immediately afterward.