Sten moved like a man who had spent hours on hours practicing his walk. Heel, roll, ball, toe. Striding with purpose that he had not felt in a year. He knew it was ridiculous, getting his hopes up so soon. But I'm lost in the dark, beneath the mountain.

He needed this, so he desperately grasped for it, unheeding of traps or potential regrets. There was nothing more left to regret, it was already in him. The only choice left was whether to accept it. This [Quest] was a chance to say no.

His shoulders were relaxed, despite his inner turmoil. His father had made him practice that too, there was no end to the knowledge about reaching the Human body's potential that his father possessed. He could barely explain half of it, it was all distilled into training. And he knew the why, even if he rarely knew the how of what made the training work. For this he had made Sten subsume his body in near freezing water, he actually had to break a thin layer on top to get in, and then practice relaxing his muscles when they wanted to shake the most. He could not do it. It was always at the end of a grueling leg and back session, and no matter what effort he summoned, even by the end of the week, his damn shoulders would not stop shaking. His father did not do something ridiculous to discipline him, like ban him from dinner until he focused up. A growing body needed every meal even before you trained it, and it was his mind that was being trained. No, he managed it all with a look. Of disappointment, and if Sten failed to react to that, utter disdain.

He was treated like a weakling, allowed to skip training and arrive at the late sessions completely rested, so he could give it his all. It was humiliating, because he knew his father's thoughts, and how those thoughts wormed their way into the rest of his siblings. Even the ones who did not always follow his lead were still moved to pity.

It took a month, but by the end Sten could relax enough in the freezing cold that staying in for minutes at a time did not inhibit his speed at all, although forcing his chilled muscles to move too fast in such a condition did injure them. Skills would solve issues like that though, Sten's older siblings assured him. Father knew what he was doing.

All those preparations obviously came with expectations, that Sten ended up thwarthing when he lost another sibling for the 3rd year in a row. It convinced him that something was missing, that all these methods could not have just sprung up from thin air, it required such an intimate knowledge of the body that it could surely not be sought by someone looking to destroy.

He looked towards healing for answers, both for ways to prevent further deaths in the family, but also to find a path forward beyond his father's teachings.

When it all came crashing down, and his father ended up taking him out to the barn to beat some sense into him, with his mother screaming in the rain outside the locked doors. These words met Sten's eyes as he finally gave in:

[Class Aspirant detected. Pugilist. Kumite Bloodline. Yes/No?]

Yes.

Sten's recollection was of arenas housing hundreds of thousands, filled to the brim and chanting for more and more brilliant displays of skill. Impossible-to-see people, and bright lights, with a lifetime of effort on the line in each minute of combat.

When he had come back to his senses, with his father looming, he had felt queesy, like his whole future had been decided, but when he saw the placement of his Aspirant Skill he turned white as a ghost.

[Class granted: Naturalborn Pugilist]

[Skill granted: Blood Control]

[Passive granted: Unnatural senses]

[Skill granted: Weighted Footwork]

[Skill granted: Iron Knuckles]

[Skill granted: Emphatic Strikes]

[Skill granted: Cognizant Shielding]

[Skill granted: Cerebral Negotiations]

[Skill granted: Feinted Flurry]

[Skill granted: Inured Bone]

[Skill granted: Kumite Bloodline]

He didn't know what the last words meant, all Sten knew was what the tier of an Aspirant Skill indicated. But he feared his father did and that he would take them as ultimate proof of how Sten had been wasting his time doing anything but fighting.

When he refused to name his Skills the beating continued. It wasn't until his father was certain that Sten had been using at least three Skills that he finally relented and turned from the bleeding form of his boy. By then Sten had leveled thrice. He used [Blood Control] to stop the bleeding himself. His mother briefly made sure he was not dead, and then went to his father.

Sten did his damnedest to start thinking of the man not as his father, but by his name Birgir from then on.