The First King of Beasts

"I can help you put it on."

The moment Eir said those words,, it felt like a truck was dropped on Dustin's body, and slowly but surely the weight started increasing bit by bit, like one after another truck was being added unto Dustin's entire body, and as time went by slowly, he could feel his entire body being crushed under the weight. He would tell Eir that it was too much, but then he couldn't even bring himself to speak a single word from his mouth, as he desperately gasped for air.

The pain all around Dustin had completely isolated his mind from any other thing around him, and he could no longer hear Eir's words or even process his own thoughts properly as he felt like he was dying. He occasionally caught sight of Eir's mouth moving, but to him nothing was coming out of them. He also didn't notice the rapid and inhuman speed at which his bones were constantly being broken and shattered under the weight only to be immediately regenerated at a rate greater than that at which his bone were shattering.

Dustin wasn't aware just how long had passed, but by the time he was able to regain his mind and reason, Eir was just sitting on a tree trunk that seemed to have been cut to bench level to enable him to sit on the trunk. The robe Dustin was wearing were no longer as heavy as he remembered, it was still pretty heavy, considering the fact that he couldn't even support himself up, not only after putting every ounce of strength into it, and even then only being able to raise himself millimetres above the ground. Dustin could only raise his head and look at Eir with anger, anger that quickly died off. He was the one disturbing about training anyway, so he didn't exactly have the right to complain now did he?

"Finally awake?" Eir said without casting his gaze on the struggling boy before him. He didn't have much to do than to sit there idly, not even something like a novel to read must have been very boring, but after all these years he seemed to have mastered the act of doing absolutely nothing. It was quite commendable actually.

Dustin couldn't bring himself to answer the question as he struggled to lift himself, only managing to get heavy grunting sounds out before falling back on the ground, not like he got up from it to begin with. "I'm I at least going to get something to eat?" Dustin asked, as now he couldn't even raise his head to look at the man.

"Sure why not?" Eir responded before proceeding with Dustin's feeding, personally carrying out the task by himself, not letting the boy get out of the weight that continuously pressed on him. It took a while and a bit of effort from Dustin's side, but he finally managed to finish the trail of meat after more than thirty minutes. The meat was tough and as though that wasn't tough enough already, he had an incredibly hard time swallowing.

"When.. would I be allowed out of.. thiiis." Dustin said, each time he did desperately gasping for air to refill his compressed lungs that clearly could not do their job well, trying to say the words as fast as possible. To that however, Eir only gave him a knowing smile, almost a smirk, and didn't respond. After watching the boy before him for a bit more and completely satisfying his sadistic needs of tutoring his student, he finally answered. "After you are able to stand on your own."

Really, Eir never got the chance to have his own student during his lifetime, and seeing someone so readily providing themselves to fill the void, it was clear just how quick he would snag the chance to impact centuries and possibly millennium of teaching into the boy. Now Dustin just had to do a good job and soak everything up.

The weighted training had two parts. The first one was completed and that was focused on reconstructing his bones to make them harder. The process of breaking and shattering the bones and then reconstructing them stronger over and over again assured that the most was gotten out of this first step. After that step, one would think the torture would subside, but no.. Only the true sadists knew that the pain only begun. It was simple really, for how can the bone be toughed and hardened beyond normality, and then every other thing would be left as is. It was only natural that the flesh itself housing the bones had to be toughed as well to bring forth maximum results. As such, the tearing of Dustin's muscles and breaking of bone while trying to lift himself up was the method that was going to see to this. The complete sadistic and masochistic side of this? The fact that Dustin would have to willingly inflict the pain on himself as he tried to get up.

And so, the process began.

..

The magic Eir was using to make sure that Dustin didn't die was a very interesting one, in fact there were two spell active in the vicinity rather than on Dustin directly as some would think. Using his magic, Eir could declare a portion of space to be his domain, and within that domain he could cast magic that healed anyone who was within it and the effectiveness and share speed the magic worked at was far too astonishing. With this healing skill, any slight change in the ordinary would be brought back to normal by healing the person. The other magic was one that caused regeneration to be possible in anyone who was within the proclaimed domain.

Though the regeneration magic could completely re-grow lost limbs, and could even reconstruct the brain without the affected losing any memory or being affected in anyway. All Eir had to do was further increase the potency of these spells while in turn causing the required time it took for them to completely heal the target take some few instances later than normal. Now instead of simply healing and regenerating the affected, the spells worked in a way that achieved the goal with some merits of completely reconstructing the target from a cellular level making him stronger and developing the body to be able to withstand the stress, making it stronger. It also helped his mind a lot as the process pushed it to mature much more faster and even above normal. Ultimately, the work of the healing and recovery magic was to work more on the mind and mental state of Dustin making sure he didn't become broken, while the regeneration magic focused on reconstructing his body and making it a whole lot more reliable.

This initial process proved to be very helpful, as it provided Dustin with the resolve to cause immerse pain on himself repeatedly in the attempt to getup. His mind had defiantly improved by more than a lot, more than what Eir speculated. There were absolutely no doubts or hesitation in Dustin's actions now. Though this could become a good trait and strength, or end up being used against him in the future, it didn't matter. The means to get out of his current predicament was the objective for now.

Eir could only look at the boy before him wistfully. Despite enjoying the show, he would rather not subject the boy to such a method if he could help it, but that was the thing, he couldn't! So for the time being, he would only look at the bright side of things and not worry too much, after all he took care to be cautious. If Dustin was to find out that he added a spell that would tear apart his muscles every time he tried to get up, he would be branded no.1 enemy for life! Honestly, there just was no way to his entire body subject to this training and fully bring out the best result from getting him to just try and stand up. It was simply impossible!

Time slowly passed them as Dustin was constantly subjected to such a brutal training regimen, and as to how much time actually passed, none of them kept tab. Dustin was too rattled in pain, and Eir on the other hand had stop doing such a very very long time ago. After so much torture in the name of training, Dustin was hard pressed getting information from him by captives would be incredible hard, as his resistance to pain had only shot through the roof, that is if they even caught him. What used to be incredibly painful and took Dustin so much will to get his senses to ignore had become so easy it was like holding a horse stance for 25 minutes while the limit you could do normally before collapsing was 10. Compared to the initial pain, this almost felt soothing in a way.

Both were sure that plenty of time had passed, and though they knew not just how long, they didn't care in the end. It wasn't like they were running out of time any time soon. This place they were in operated differently than the outside in the end.

"Huff.. Huff.. Huff.. ... Huff.. Huf... Fianally.. got to stand.. properly." Dustin muttered, as he struggle to get air into his burning lungs.

"Hmm.. Alright, now that you managed to get to your feet, you should rest for some time before we continue. I'm sure you are hungry."