He used to think that the guillotine was a barbaric device. A relic of a bygone era, when people were less educated, particularly in the teachings of morality. Indeed, people must have been crueler, back then, more bloodthirsty even, to be executing people in such a savage way.

So he had thought. But now he knew that it was, in fact, one of the best ways to die. Given his options, possibly the very best way. A feeling of pressure, just the briefest jolt of pain, and then it was over. Being unexpectedly beheaded was a blessing, given all the horrible ways one could meet their end.

It wasn't something he'd ever expected or wanted to have an opinion on. Carpenters, he supposed, would have all kinds of opinions about wood coatings or nails, perhaps even about deforestation. If you wanted to know what kind of powertool to buy, you'd be well off asking a carpenter. A tailor, on the other hand, might go on at length about the benefits and downsides of double woven cotton. When in need of expertise on fabrics, they'd be the perfect person to turn to.

Barry hadn't considered himself an expert in anything, though he would have been able to explain a few interesting things about evolutionary biology. In the old world, if you'd had him over for dinner, he would have happily gone on for hours about different styles of dance. That was before.

Now, Barry knew about dying.

Given the circumstances, he fancied that he might well be the world's foremost expert on it.

In the last three weeks, he'd died thirty-eight deaths in the virtual training environment and remembered every single one. It wasn't the kind of thing one could forget, no matter how much you tried. Each death was an extremely intense experience, burned into his soul.

The general rule with dying was simple: the faster, the better. He'd been unpleasantly surprised by the resilience of the human body, his in particular. There had been ample opportunities to regret bringing his Durability as high as he had. It kept you alive longer, whether you liked it or not.

How ignorant he'd been just a few weeks ago, to think that being cut in half was a terrible way to die. Today, he'd have to rank it somewhere in the top half of possible deaths. The shock to the body made everything hazy and prevented you from feeling too much pain. You'd bleed out quickly. An unpleasant, yet acceptable death, all things considered.

If you were perforated by spikes, on the other hand, they would keep the blood from flowing out and it would take much, much longer. In a fit of hubris, he'd gone straight into the obstacle course right after a considerable increase in his Speed and stumbled off the top of the first wall. Never again.

This had several effects on him, which he observed with morbid interest. He knew a thing or two about evolutionary biology from his studies, so he could fully appreciate how evolution was letting him down here.

The process was simple: once something seriously hurt you, certainly when something killed you, you would grow to fear it. Even just glancing at the spikes would now cause his body to release adrenaline and cortisol, increasing his heart rate and making him feel anxious. As a result, his performance actually got slightly worse in areas where he'd died before, which added to his frustration. Only in his latest attempts did he think that some improvement was starting to show again. It might be his body simply building up resistance to the constant spikes of cortisol and adrenaline, similar to what happened with a seasoned alcoholic.

On the positive side, there was another effect at work here, which he'd learned of as the range-frequency theory. The actual theory had been quite complicated, talking about the role of range and frequency of past experiences in how people evaluated various things. His simplified recollection of it went something like this: people subconsciously rank new experiences against all similar experiences they've had so far.

For someone who'd won the lottery, finding a thousand dollars on the street was not that meaningful - they'd already reached what one might consider the highest possible experience of 'lucking into money'. By contrast, a person who'd never won anything in their life would be ecstatic when finding that amount. It worked with sensory experiences too; if you'd grown up in a quiet environment, the traffic in a city would be felt as extremely loud, and the reverse was true as well.

For someone who'd repeatedly felt some of the most excruciating pain possible, well, a cut to the arm was barely worth noticing. It seemed to be helping with his anger issues, too. He'd gotten much better at taking a beating without losing his temper. Apparently the mantra 'repeated exposure will yield positive effects' that Pokka had kept repeating did have some truth to it.

It took more than a few hits to bring him into rage now, which had allowed him to reach record results in the marble-dodging exercise, despite its difficulty being increased to match his elevated Speed and Senses Stats.

Another benefit of his suffering during those weeks, was that he could now look at the Roid-Bull standing across from him and feel only a moderate amount of fear. His pulse was elevated, but not to the point where his heart was hammering in his ears, and his mind remained blessedly clear.

After five previous attempts, the preliminary conclusion was that it delivered good deaths most of the time. It was nearly as big as a bus and moved incredibly fast, so a frontal hit would kill him instantly. Being crushed under its feet was also a relatively fast demise. The worst it had done so far was to snap him up in its jaws, which still didn't take very long to kill him, but was an awful experience nonetheless.

The goal of this training was simple: to stay alive while continuing to move around for at least thirty minutes. Barry had proposed it himself, after another long discussion about leaving the cave turning towards his odds of survival against a Roid-Bull. His reasoning had been that he'd managed to outsmart one with just his base Stats, so after several weeks of training and with higher Stats, he should almost certainly find a way to survive. Pokka had insisted that his survival was an unlikely fluke, projecting that he'd die at least ninety five out of a hundred times.

So far, the score was zero to Barry, five to the Roid-Bull.

Considering whether to still increase his Stats before this attempt, he remained perfectly still so as not to trigger the huge monster. Despite being several hundred yards away, he knew it would sense even the smallest vibrations and would promptly investigate.

An increase in Speed would take time to get used to, and most of the other Stats wouldn't help, except for Senses. He still had trouble tracking the Roid-Bull's movements and reacting in time, so an increase there could help. It would sharpen all of his senses, but also somehow improve his reaction time, so that he could better keep up with things that were happening at high speeds.

With a mental command, he increased Senses by another two points and looked at his overview.

Stats

Strength: 14

Durability: 16

Speed: 26

Senses: 13

Intelligence: 10

PE Capacity: 100 KJ

Abilities

[Halt Wave - Sphere]

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[Cast Wave]

[Direct Manipulation - Waves]

[Blur Image]

[Camouflage]

[Direct Manipulation - Light]

Wallet

Unallocated Value: 6640

Value allocated to Stats: 390

Value allocated to Abilities: 480

Value spent on items: 1350

He'd been steadily increasing his Stats over the last weeks, which was necessary to get used to the changes. An increase of more than two points in Speed would cause him to stumble with nearly each step for at least a few hours. It was getting better though, as the relative change of a single point became lower.

Looking down, he'd perhaps gained a bit of muscle mass, but the changes were barely noticeable. As Pokka had explained, they were somehow changing his body on a molecular level. Fiber by fiber, his muscle tissue would be changed to a stronger material with all the same properties that were needed to keep his body functioning. The receptors in his eyes, ears and nose would be improved, as would the nerves running through his body.

Intelligence was the most baffling, where the size, strength and something called the 'dendritic complexity' of his neurons would be increased in line with the Stat. The growth was slower than other Stats for some reason, but over time it would increase speed of thought, improve memory and allow for more connections to be made.

The thought of being changed like that was deeply disturbing to Barry, so at least for Intelligence he was holding off on increasing it over 10, while for the other Stats he felt that he had no choice.

Given his focus on Speed, Pokka had advised him to maintain his Strength and Durability at least at a fourth of his Speed Stat, ideally a third, as otherwise he'd risk damaging his own body over time. Senses needed to be kept closer to fifty percent, or else his environment would turn to an unrecognizable blur when he moved at a sprint.

With a Speed of 26, he felt that he was ridiculously fast, three times faster than he was before. From the tests he'd done, he was sure he could sprint a hundred meters in under 6.5 seconds. If he went to the Olympics today, he'd easily win all of the running competitions. He'd probably win most of the other categories as well, come to think of it.

And yet, that was still nowhere near the speed of the Roid-Bull. It was a monster in every sense of the word. The VR representation of it looked exactly like the ones he'd encountered before, easily twice the size of a rhino but without a horn, covered in thick, overlapping slats of gray hide, with a long and flat maw lined with vicious teeth.

The best tactics for dealing with this beast remained the same no matter how often he thought them over: avoidance. In this virtual environment, there was no cliff to try and lure it off, no trees or rocks to hide behind. There was just a dull, gray sky above an endless expanse of desert. Which was why he'd been spending most of his time getting better at Abilities meant to keep the bull from noticing him, regardless of the environment.

He toggled [Direct Manipulation - Waves] on and shifted his mindset, focusing on something beyond his normal senses, creating imaginary feelers as Pokka had taught him to do. After a few moments, he was ready, not needing to meditate anymore after many hours of training.

Then, he cast [Halt Wave - Sphere], which created a sphere around him that would stop soundwaves. Pokka had spoken at length about different kinds of waves and how the names in the Abilities were unfortunately imprecise. For his purposes, it was important that the sphere would stop sound from traveling, no matter through what medium. So it would cover for any sounds he made, but also the sound traveling through the ground which the Roid-Bull was highly sensitive to.

The challenge was that the sphere from this Ability would remain in place instead of moving along with him. What he had been practicing, was to somehow pull it along as he moved, using Direct Manipulation.

Closing his eyes, he focused on the imagined tentacles sprouting from his back, creating six in total. With them, he could sense the minor ripples around him, coming from the sound of his breathing. As he followed their trajectory through the air, he could sense where they stopped, absorbed by the invisible wall of his sphere. He then attached three to one side of the bubble, at different heights, that he could use to push it out.

It took a while to get the bubble to move, as he had to push only a minute amount of energy into it, without changing its properties.

Finally, the bubble stretched out to the side, elongating into more of a distorted oval shape. He stepped along with it, then pulled at the other side to bring it back to its original round form. Caution and precision were necessary here - stretching it too far would cause it to collapse. He had to keep repeating this, pushing at it to stretch it out and pulling the other side over, as he slowly started to move forward. At first about a minute passed between two steps, but as he got into a steady rhythm, it gradually decreased until he could move at a slow but steady pace.

Thus Barry moved, with long, slow strides across the reddish brown sand and cracked rock. He didn't pay any attention to the sounds he made, all of his focus taken up by manipulating the sphere that contained all sound. From the outside, he looked like a fuzzy smear of colors due to [Blur Image], mostly black from his hair and navy jumpsuit interspersed with smaller areas of lighter shades.

Sweat rolled down his temple as he took one careful step after the other, looking straight ahead with a vacant gaze, unaware of his surroundings. The steady pace helped him get into a rhythm; a push to the side of the bubble, followed by a long step, finally followed by a pull on the other side before repeating the cycle. His PE capacity was steadily ticking down as the Abilities consumed the energy.

The Roid-Bul remained still as he approached, showing no sign that it was aware of him.

For a while, everything went well, but as he reached the twenty minute mark, inevitably, his exhaustion built up to the point where he made a mistake. Barry was so absorbed in the rhythm of his steps, that when his push to the side unexpectedly brought no result, his right foot, already moving, landed outside of the bubble.

Instantly, he realized the mistake and looked back to see the Roid-Bull already turning around to face him. The downside of [Halt Wave - Sphere] was that it would stop all waves in both directions, so he didn't hear its movements nor could he feel any tremors in the ground.

Gathering his focus, he pushed again at the side of the sphere, needing to step out of its path without being detected. It moved this time and he took a step to the side, but he saw the Roid-Bull bracing for its rush and knew it wasn't far enough.

He deactivated the Ability instead, stepping out to the side and ducking. Having anticipated its path correctly, the beast flashed by his side, just barely missing him as its jaws snapped closed over his head. There was a blast of air as it rushed past.

Knowing he had but a moment while it came to a stop and turned back, he made to reactivate the Ability and push the sphere out to the side once more, but again he was just a touch too slow, the monster already turning for another charge.

As the Roid-Bull came at him again with that impossible acceleration, he instead bent his knees, braced, and jumped straight up. He kept the Ability active, planning to have the bull pass underneath him so that he would come back down inside the sphere, hiding the sounds of his landing.

As he saw it coming, able to judge the distances with his improved Perception, Barry had a moment to regret his decision before the top of the bull's head clipped his feet, and then the barren landscape turned into an incoherent blur as he was sent into a spin, coming down hard, vision swimming.

Dazed, he could just barely make out a grey blur, and leapt out to the side, stumbling as he landed. His intuition had been correct; the beast had missed yet another charge. Shaking his head and quickly rubbing tears and sand out his eyes, he used his improved eyesight to focus on the bull's hind legs. As soon as there was a twitch in the massive muscles, he again leapt to the right.

His jumping had always been strong, but with the added Speed and Strength he bounded from left to right, nimble as an antelope. Time after time he dodged, but the Roid-Bull was smart, learning to come to a stop and turn around faster, so that his timing window got ever smaller.

After a dozen such adjustments, he was in nearly constant motion, leaping and flipping off his hands, feinting and changing direction to just barely stay out of its reach. Moving at that speed and intensity quickly wore him out, and before long he made a small mistake, allowing the creature to clip him with its head while passing by.

He tumbled over the sand, twisting his leg, too dazed and exhausted to get up fast enough. Feeling resigned, thinking that at least it would be a good death, a desperate idea popped into his head. If he couldn't move away fast enough while remaining unnoticed, perhaps misdirection would work instead. With a thought, he activated [Cast Wave] and pushed what he hoped was the right amount of energy into it, aiming a few yards to his left. He kept himself still and to his surprise, the bull took the bait, veering to the left and snapping at the air.

It then brought itself to a stop, faster than before, turning around as it grunted with frustration. He suspected the beast was using some form of Momentum Ability to make itself move so fast, but there was no way to be sure.

Instead of activating his sphere, he used [Cast Wave] again, quickly adjusting it with his [Direct Manipulation - Waves] to create a series of small waves in the rock that he hoped would mimic his footsteps.

Again, it rushed forward, then stopped and turned around with another angry grunt. Seeming to give up on the repetitive pattern, it began to dig at the spot where he'd cast the waves as it produced ever louder noises, until it finally stomped heavily at the ground, cracking the rock. Barry was surprised to see it repeated this several times, even going so far as to rear up on two feet, before stamping down with its front hooves to thoroughly smash the rocky soil.

Then, it stood still, and Barry watched with amazement as the broken rocks floated up from the ground, then shot forward lightning-quick, covering a wide arc in front of the bull. That, he thought, was entirely new. He remained still as the rocks flew wide to his left, not making any noise, but then it turned towards him, the next batch floating up.

He had a moment to wonder at its intelligence, if it was smart enough to methodically comb the area around it as a countermeasure to stealth, when it fired the next wave of rocks. Despite his improved eyesight, he barely saw the rock coming before it smashed straight through his head.

The next moment, he was taking the VR helmet off, still shaken by that flash of horrified realization that he was about to die. The effect stayed with him for a good while, his heart pounding and body breaking out in sweat, even though he wasn't hurt.

It had been an excellent death, all things considered, but that didn't help his mood as he sat, staring at the all too familiar walls of his rocky prison, waiting for his body to stop shaking.

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