The New World
Copyright© 2024 by Dark Apostle
Chapter 13: Growth and Skill
Fan Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 13: Growth and Skill - The story follows James Smith, a man who dies and finds himself in a surreal afterlife courtroom, where his life is judged as "zero sum"—neither good nor evil, just utterly average. Dissatisfied with being consigned to eternal mediocrity, he manipulates the cosmic bureaucracy into granting him a second chance in a new world, where he is reincarnated as a child with his memories intact and perks... - edited by my lovely Steven.
Caution: This Fan Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Ma/ft Mult Coercion NonConsensual Reluctant Slavery Lesbian BiSexual Heterosexual Fan Fiction Farming High Fantasy Rags To Riches Restart Alternate History DoOver Extra Sensory Perception Body Swap Furry Magic Incest Mother Sister Politics Royalty Violence AI Generated
After his first fight, things changed for him. Temujin, the master trainer, called for him and stared while James stood in front of him.
“You have impressed us with your dedication and focus. You now have a choice to make. You can continue on the warrior path, or you can try to be a member of our elite guard.”
“What is the difference?”
“You can see the warrior path, one fight after another, until you earn your freedom or die. The elite path requires your brain as much as your body. You will have to learn to read and write, and understand war. Then, when you venture forth, you will be able to rely on something besides your muscles. Only a very few each decade are offered this path, one I took many years ago.
James studied him, thinking through the options. Reading and writing are necessary if he ever wanted to practice magic, but not anything he could admit to the trainer. But not fighting every day or week, each time where a single slip or mistake could mean death sounded great. “I accept your offer. What do I need to do?”
Temujin clapped his hands, and a wizened old man walked into the room. “Follow him, and he will start on your training. The training is as hard as the wheel. Not everyone can learn. We will see if you are able.”
The man gestured and walked out of the room, with James following. After a short walk, they came to a different yurt, one with a pile of scrolls on a shelf and a table with two chairs. James was surprised that there were so many candles in the room.
The man gestured at a chair, “Sit and listen.”
Once James sat, the man said, “My name is Marcus. Here are the rules: You will treat me with respect. If you raise your hand to me, you will die. These scrolls never leave here. They must be protected from fire or spills at all costs. No food or drink is allowed here. You will be given a task a week—succeed, and I will continue to teach you. Fail and you will never be given another chance.”
James nodded, his face expressionless, but he was smiling inside.
Marcus continued, “You will spend every morning with me. In the afternoon, your focus will be on your physical and weapons training. Now let us begin.”
He stood and unrolled a scroll. James recognized that there was writing, but did not understand what was written.
For the next hour, Marcus explained what writing was and why it was necessary. “Don’t think this is a trivial exercise. In many ways, this is more powerful than your sword. With your sword, it is you against the world. With writing, you can summon others to help. Then it would be you and your men-at-arms against the world.
Now here is the alphabet. Each letter means something, and you must learn the letter and its meaning. Then I will show you how they are combined to create words that others can understand.”
Seven days a week for months on end, Marcus drilled James on learning to read and then write their language. Marcus was shocked by how quickly James picked up the material. He couldn’t know that James already knew how to read, just not this language. James viewed the teaching as a version of phonics, which was how he learned English. This language was simpler, with fewer letters and concepts.
As the days passed, James spent the morning with a pen in his hand and the afternoon with a weapon—sword, bow, quarterstaff, sling, or knife. The afternoon trainers seemed to resent the time James was spending with Marcus, so they pushed him as hard as they did when he left the wheel. Perversely, James enjoyed the break from thinking and threw himself into learning the new weapons and techniques. ‘If I have to learn to fight, I should be deadly in everything they offer. Failure means death, and I have spent most of my life on this world in this camp.
After four months, Marcus took him to Temujin and declared, “He is a record student. In a short time, he has mastered reading and writing. I can teach him to read other countries’ languages if you desire.”
Temujin stared at James, and long minutes went by. “We do not have another one for you to train. Go ahead and teach him how to read maps and other languages. It stops when there is another.”
James nodded and thanked Temujin for the opportunity.
As James followed Marcus back to the yurt, he mused, ‘Life is strange. I drifted through my first life and achieved the impossible; I made no impression. Now, I upended my family at the farm and improved their lives. But before I could enjoy the benefits, I was captured. With all of the pain and suffering, I still ended up well on the path to accomplish my goals. I have a strong, trained warrior’s body, and now they are training my mind. This was something I could never have hoped for.’
Back in the yurt, Marcus pulled out a crudely drawn map and started to explain the mechanics of interpreting the map. To James, it was a puzzle as all of the normal rules for maps that he was used to were not there. No compass rose, legends, distances, etc.
Looking at the map, he could not tell where he was, the name of the country, where north was, or even the terrain. The map just showed roads, villages, and towns. He could study the map for days and not have a clue where Castletown was. Even after days under Marcus’s instructions, the map yielded no secrets. --- James groaned as he woke, sunlight leaking through the curtains and falling across the rumpled mattress. The lovely redhead from last night was gone. He barely thought about the wheel now. That was for the newly captured, not an experienced warrior or an elite in training. All of the chores he was required to perform were beneath him. They were for the innocent trying to survive and escape their fate.
James rose from the mattress, muscles tight and sore in a way that felt almost comfortable. He pushed aside the fur and padded toward the battered door, stretching and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Stepping out, he winced against the morning chill, trudged a few paces to the edge of the shack, and let loose a stream, the hiss loud in the quiet air. There was a heaviness to the silence, a sense of stillness that didn’t fit the camp he’d grown so used to—no distant shouts, no clatter of metal or the barked orders of guards. No angry voices or laughter or the thud of boots on hard-packed earth. Just wind, the soft creak of old wood, and his own breath in the air.
The quiet alerted him that something was wrong. He hurriedly pulled on his pants, boots, and shirt in quick, nervous motions and stepped out again, eyes scanning the camp. He grabbed his sword and considered putting on his armor. He decided to wait and stepped out to look around. No movement anywhere. No slavers leaning against the fence, no guards by the gate, not even the ragged cluster of boys who usually hovered by the kitchen or water barrels. The place was abandoned, eerily so, the chaos of bodies and noise replaced by a dead quiet that made the hairs on his arms stand up.
James checked the barracks, pushed open the rough wooden door with a sense of growing dread. The bunks were empty, blankets thrown aside as if their owners had simply vanished in the night. He checked the cookhouse, the fighting pit, even the filthy corners where boys sometimes hid to avoid work or the whip. Every space was the same—abandoned, devoid of life, but their meager possession still there.
No shouting, no groaning, no shuffling of feet. Even the dogs that prowled the edges of the camp were gone, the usual snarling and whining replaced by an unnatural calm. James stood in the center of the camp, spinning slowly, his frown deepening. Had everyone simply left during the night? Dragged off to another camp? Killed, one by one, in some mass culling he’d somehow slept through? Was it magic? None of it made sense.
He paced through every familiar corner, checked every place he’d ever hidden or worked. No bodies, no blood, no sign of violence. Just silence, as if the whole world had blinked out and left him behind. A strange sense of unease settled in his gut, a gnawing worry that maybe he was the only one left. Was it freedom, or some new trap? Was he dreaming, or had something truly catastrophic happened while he slept? The questions circled in his mind, cold and sharp, as he wandered through the ghostly emptiness of the place that had, for so long, been his cage.
James waited.
Most of the day, in fact. Out of boredom, he relit a few of the fires that had gone out. He did not know if the same force that took everyone in camp also extinguished the fires that had burned every day he was in camp, or if they just went out because they were untended. He circled the camp more than once, looking for some trace of life, a sign anyone was coming back. He even checked the Temujin’s quarters, but everywhere was empty. Nothing but dust and silence. The cunts had left, and they’d left him behind without a second thought.
James frowned, sitting by the fire he’d made from the woodpile. Fuck! Now what? The strange, yawning emptiness was more daunting than any whip or shouted order. He’d been caged so long, had learned to wait for instructions, to move when told, and stop when commanded. Even with all his memories of another world, his mind conditioned itself into obedience, day after punishing day.
With no one to order him around, James found himself adrift. For a while, he just sat, staring into the flames, waiting for answers that weren’t coming. Hunger finally kicked in. If he wanted to survive, he’d have to start living for himself, not the rhythm of another man’s cruelty.
He got up, grabbed one of the bows that had been left behind, and went into the brush beyond the abandoned fence. The forest was cool and quiet. He stalked until he flushed a hare from cover, shot it through with a single arrow, and brought it back to camp.
James skinned the hare with a knife, careful not to waste any meat. He cleaned it, removing the guts and saving the heart and liver. He spit the carcass on a stick and roasted it over his fire, the scent of cooking flesh making his stomach clench with hunger. When it was crisp and hot, he ate slowly, savoring the simple meal, knowing that for the first time in years, everything he did now was entirely his own.
Fuck...
So he needed to get home, wherever the fuck home was.
The idea hovered in his mind as night settled over the empty camp, staring at the fire. Shadows crawled across the ground, the wind sighing through abandoned shacks and rattling loose planks.
There was no sign of anyone coming back. He chewed on a strip of meat, the flavor earthy and wild, trying to remember what home even felt like. Would he recognize it? Would it recognize him? The boy who’d left all those years ago was gone, replaced by something harder, forged in tedium and pain. He had only been at the farm for a few months, and that was while he was adapting to the new world.
He wiped his hands on his trousers and flicked open his stat window, letting the familiar display flicker before his eyes. All his numbers had risen—strength, endurance, agility, even obscure things like resilience and mental resistance. That last one stood out the most. Years spent grinding away at the wheel, chopping wood, performing the same mind-numbing routines had built up a hidden armor inside his skull. Where once he’d wilted from boredom or fear, now he could simply switch off, slip into a trance, and let the grind pass by unnoticed. He’d learned fortitude the hard way, letting each day’s monotony temper his mind as much as his body. He could outlast anything, now, not just with muscle but with will.
The slavers thought they’d broken him, but what they’d done was hammer out every weakness. He didn’t need to be whipped, didn’t whine or break. He just worked, his mind folding in on itself, finding some silent place of strength that nothing could touch. Boredom and pain had lost their sting. He’d mastered it all, carving out control where he could, letting everything else fade.
His other skills had blossomed, too. Taming was no longer limited to slimes; now he could reach into the wildness of beasts and bend them to his will, sensing their fear and intent, drawing them close. His senses had sharpened until he could see trails and movement that others would miss, and his appraisal had grown more sophisticated, letting him read the very health and mood of anything he studied. James knew that while the skills had grown, he needed to practice with them to refine his abilities. The slavers had driven that point home.
James let the fire burn itself down, watching the embers glow and fade as the night deepened. When the warmth gave out, he wrapped himself in a scavenged blanket and stretched out on the furs, exhaustion pulling him under. The wind rattled loose boards and whispered through empty rooms, but no one came. He slept through the night, deep and dreamless, wrapped in the kind of silence that had become both familiar and alien.
When he woke, it was still dark—too dark to do anything but lie there, breathing slow and steady, listening to the old world groan around him. Eventually, pale dawn crept in, washing the empty camp with a thin, silver light. He pulled himself up, stretched stiff muscles, and stepped outside to piss behind the shack, steam curling into the chill air. The whole place was still, the emptiness now absolute. The feeling of abandonment settled over everything, heavy as fog.
He began to check around, knowing he’d need to be ready for whatever came next. In the old captain’s quarters, he found a sturdy leather bag, cracked but usable, and claimed it for himself. Inside a battered chest, he uncovered his old familiar bow and a clutch of arrows. Near the foot of a bed, half-buried under rags and cast-off boots, he found a sword—surprisingly clean, the blade unblemished, the hilt well-wrapped in dark leather. He tested the weight, swinging it once through the air; it felt balanced, easy in his grip, as if it had been waiting for him. He dropped his sword and kept the new one. He searched in vain for any coins, but either they were too well hidden or weren’t in the camp, perhaps taken by the same forces that took everyone else.
James sheathed the blade and set about finding clothing for travel. He pieced together what he could: rough canvas trousers, a faded linen shirt, a coat patched in a dozen places but still warm. In the kitchen, he found a battered tin flask, still watertight, and filled it from the barrel near the door. He took food, too—dried meat, a sack of old grain, anything that might keep him alive if civilization was further off than he hoped.
As he moved, packing his new supplies, he kept an eye on the empty horizon. The world outside the camp seemed impossibly vast, unknown, and dangerous. He was alone, armed and provisioned, and for the first time in years, there were no walls to hold him back.
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