54

Chapter 54: Molding toolsNotes:

Over 100.000 words!

Whooooohooooo

EDIT: 26.000 Hits!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Chapter 54

Reinhard joined her for dinner that evening. He had been very busy running errands throughout the city which left Tanya to question why he constantly did all the work himself. Of course he had his duties as the head of his noble house and as a royal knight, but did they really require him to run around on foot like a common mail boy? Delegating simpler tasks to your subordinates was how work hierarchy functioned after all. Human society was built on the concept of diving and diversifying labour.

He claimed that he didn´t mind the menial labour and that his status as the Sword Saint made it so that he basically never tired, but Tanya was sceptical. In the future she would need to keep a close eye on him so he did not overwork himself. If he had breakdown due to stress that would be terrible for her!

The next day she felt more than refreshed enough to inspect her troops. She needed to see how far Reinhard´s training had settled in for the new recruits. Tanya had promised her 204th battalion hell and they should not think that they would get off easy just because she had been away for a week on a diplomatic mission.

Soon, very soon, they would be broken down, pieced back together and subsequently polished until they had completely been transformed from filthy slum rats into monsters of steel and ruthlessness. Tanya was confident that with her past experience as a teacher they would successfully be reshaped as some of the finest soldiers Lugnica had ever seen. (If they didn´t die before then, but that was highly unlikely, seeing how abundant magical healers were in this world.)Then they would finally become a useful asset to society, instead of wasting away in unemployment.

With an anticipatory glint in her icy, blue eyes she strode through the halls and into the courtyard where her future instruments of violence were stationed. It was still early in the morning, but if the recruits had followed her instructions then they should already be out of bed and clothed for the day. If not then they were in for a rude awakening.

"Assemble!" she barked out, her magically enhanced vocal cords rattling the nearby windows.

Many shocked faces pressed themselves against the glass and she had suppress a smirk. Rookies were too easy to frighten. A few minutes went by before she made a head count and became a little disappointed that nobody had shown up late or in their pyjamas. That would have given her an excellent opportunity to make an example out of the poor fool. Well, that would most likely still happen in the upcoming weeks when they needed every minute of rest they could get and slept in.

"Greetings my hopeful applicants! I hope the time has not been boring without me. Are you still absolutely determined that you want to grasp this opportunity I gave to you? That this is the right job for you?"

Low murmurs filled the air and her smile turned cruel.

"Have you already forgotten me? I go out for barely one week and you think you can do whatever you want? Speak up, because I can´t hear you lot!"

Tanya gave them her best glare to properly scare them into submission.

"NO, SERGEANT DEGURECHAFF!" they shouted as taught.

The execution was messy, but they had much time to learn. Honestly, the military terminology had no real value in this world because Lugnica's military was organized differently, but she forced them to use it anyway. It reminded her of fun times.

One man had decided to keep his mouth closed and stared lazily at his feet. Unacceptable.

She pointed at him: "You there! Run five laps around the field."

"Ohh why? I didn´t even-"

"Silence! Make that ten laps before I get really pissed off. And trust me you don´t want that to happen if you value your health. What are you waiting for? Go, go, go! Or I let you run until you pass out from exhaustion!"

He took off and Tanya could finally see the collective realization set in that this training would not be enjoyable. They looked like mice in front of a snake who knew that they were about to get eaten.

"So do you know what I have been up to in my absence? I´ll indulge you. We are now allied with the Emilia Camp and if things go smoothly soon with the Crusch Camp as well."

Some whispers broke out and thanks to an auditory amplification formula she could make out some stupid comment about a half-devil. Bigoted discrimination against her business partner could not be tolerated.

"What you think about these people is irrelevant! If you can´t keep your prejudiced opinions to yourself then I will gladly escort you to the front gate. I have no time for people that want to prove the world wrong about what they can and cannot do while simultaneously judging others without even meeting them! All you need to know is that we have probably less enemies now. Isn´t that a reason to be excited?"

"YES SERGEANT DEGURECHAFF!"

"Good. Because I think so as well. Anyways do you have heard what else I did two days ago? I killed a sin archbishop of the witch´s cult and the White Whale Hakugei."

A chaos of disbelieving voices broke and Tanya let her recruits express their confusion for a bit. "What?", "How can that be?", "How in Shaula´s name-", "That´s impossible!" and "I'm telling you she ain´t human!" were among the loudest and most often repeated yells before she suppressed all sound in the area with a spell.

"Enough. If you do not believe me than I implore you to visit the great entrance hall later today. They should have mounted the beast´s head by then."

Removing and stuffing the colossal head of the whale had been accomplished far quicker than she could have imagined. Once again she had to admire Reinhard´s competence and diligence in carrying out her orders. On the other side, water magic apparently helped a lot with the process.

In a few days time everybody would know about Hakugei´s death anyway, so it was useless to keep her kill a secret. Instead she had decided together with her knight that a trophy made from its body would do nicely at the entrance door to remind every visitor of their camp´s power. The exhibit was nearly seven metres long and would take up much space, but they both agreed that sheer awe-inspiring oppressiveness would be worth it.

"Now... I have heard from Reinhard what he had you do last week. But that, my beloved recruits," she ginned savagely "was just a warm-up! On the ground everybody! I want to see thirty pushups now!"

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Felt was immensely glad for the torture Tanya called training. She was no weirdo who enjoyed pain or anything like that, but the relentless cries in her ear, the feeling of the rough gravel on her hands, the overwhelming physical exhaustion... it distracted her. It numbed the pain in her heart.

Two weeks ago her life had looked so differently. Everything had been so much harder and yet also simpler at the same time. She had just been Felt the thief, the fasted runner in the capital and orphan from the slums. Nothing more and nothing less. But she had hated that life! Or had she? She wasn´t so sure anymore.

Day in, day out she had left the slums to steal from the rich and give to herself which had worked splendidly so far. Of course there had been more than a few close calls over the years where she had nearly been caught, but through a miracle she had managed to escape every time. Then in the evening or sometimes the early morning she came back to the loot house and had to endure the stench of misery once again.

All those weak, suffering people on the streets... and they did nothing to better their situation! They had given up! How pathetic. Felt worked hard (it was honest work from her perspective at least) to improve her living conditions and one day make it of this shit hole that she would never call "home". Because to describe it as anything but a cesspool of hopelessness and decay would mean that she developed a connection to this place. A connection that could bind her to the slums forever and she feared nothing more than that. To be stuck in this garbage dump for the rest of her life was worse than hell itself in her opinion.

Felt swore to herself that she would become strong.

Strong enough to escape and build a true life for herself and those she cared about. (Which only really was Rom, but later in life she would certainly make more friends.)

So when a mysterious client approached her with an offer of ten holy gold coins how could she say no? This was the money she needed! Finally her ticket to a new, prosperous life was in reach...

And she took the job like an idiot.

Like a stupid fucking kid who didn´t know any better!

"Agggggghhhhh!" she screamed in frustration as she punched the training dummy so hard that her arm became numb.

The deal was supposed to get her and Old Man Rom out of the slums. Instead it got the only person she would consider family killed.

Because that black-haired bitch decided it would be fun to play with his guts. Because she had been too weak to fight back. Because the only thing she could do was run. Because she had failed the mission like a damn child. So many reasons why he was dead...

So many reasons to blame everyone and herself.

Including the strange blonde watching her train with these piercing, blue, crystal eyes. If Tanya had not intervened and taken the insignia she stole then maybe that bitch wouldn´t have turned her blade on them. Maybe...

It was enough to drive her sick.

She punched the dummy again with more force than was healthy.

"And? So what?" Felt asked herself silently.

Even if they got the money what would she have done with it? Where would she have gone? Where would she have worked? Would she have continued to steal, because it was the only skill she possessed?

She didn´t know.

And that hurt the most. Her future had always been uncertain. The knowledge that all the money she wanted would probably not have helped her find her place in the world felt suffocating.

When she strained her body hard enough and focused all her attention on accomplishing tasks and following orders then that weight got pushed to the back of her mind and life seemed bearable. She simply wanted to forget it all. Felt had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, so she would accept this path Tanya had laid out for her and hope for the best. It was her only choice. Anything was better than to become one of those living husks in the slums.

At least now she had an actual goal:

To get stronger so that nobody could ever hurt her again and to show all those self-righteous nobles and ignorant citizens that she and those by her side would not be forgotten! If Tanya wanted her to be a killer then she would become the deadliest there was. Felt would carve her name into history itself!

Notes:

Is that a healthy way to deal with trauma? What do you think?