Remember to check out the new prologue, newly-written and not originally posted!

Part I

Part II

In This Chapter, Logan completes the conditioning phases of his training, before unleashing his unbridled fury upon the greatest opposition he has faced so far

From the reports of Erushed Lovedwheel, Director of Defense, sent to His Majesty Minkot Figureslick, King of the Steel of Worlds concerning the progress of the 8-year-old Logan Cudgelurdge in his training, as pertains to the Dwarven Super Soldier Project:

21st Limestone, 215

Dwarven Super Soldier Project Progress Report: IV

The previous training sessions of Logan, especially those detailed in my second report, indicated that one fundamental focus of Logan’s training must be on his physical attributes. As noted in his initial recruitment report, Logan Cudgelurdge was born physically weak and very clumsy. Through his current training, he is no longer weak, and is indeed tough and slow to tire, there is still much improvement to be made in order to shape Logan into the perfect super-soldier.

About two months ago I called together the great minds of the fortress, setting up a meeting in the library to brainstorm ways to effectively raise Logan’s physical and mental conditioning. One scholar brought to my attention that Swimming increases all combat-related attributes except toughness. He advocated a design involving minecarts to simulate the movement of a dwarf while swimming, speeding up the learning process exponentially. Of course, he doesn’t know about the classified Dwarven Super Soldier Project, and the fact that our trainee in question is 8 years old and, while probably perfectly capable of pushing the minecart all by himself, is too light to trigger the Dwarven impulse ramps and cannot use this method. However, swimming did seem to be a great way to raise the attributes of young Logan with 0 risk of losing such an asset to a freak accident. Even better, Logan already had novice skill in swimming, meaning that he wouldn’t have to be taught the basics.

I immediately ordered the construction of a fully-automated facility for training swimming After a month, the construction is fully complete:

Pictured Above: Bottom Level of the Conditioning Chamber

On the top level, a pressure plate attached to a retracting bridge means that Logan will walk over the plate and onto the bridge, get dropped into the pool, have to swim his way out of the chamber, and repeat the process as he crosses the bridge again.

Logan goes through this course non-stop for a month. Each time, he improves his swimming technique, and the strain of the constant training makes him harder, better, faster, and stronger. Finally, after this month of training, Logan comes out, thirsty as hell, with a Grandmaster skill level in swimming. Examination by our medical dwarves indicate that Logan is now at peak physical condition, being mighty, absolutely inexhaustible, and agile. His toughness is still not at optimum level, however. This can only be increased through combat.

Now that Logan has been fully conditioned, it is now time to return Logan to the old Agoge methods of combat training: setting him loose amongst enemies, for a no-holds-barred beatdown. Previous sessions had him pitted against a lone enemy, usually handicapped in some way, although these enemies were always in a berserk rage and unable to feel pain.

We captured four Troglodytes from the cages, among other things, all having wandered up from the caves and into our cave traps. After losing one Troglodyte to [REDACTED], we have three completely healthy, fully-functioning Troglodytes in the pit, ready to be released. One Troglodyte was injured when a resident Philosopher started beating him up as he was dragged into the Agoge from his cell, but these injuries were minor and would not affect his combat ability too much.

Logan marches into the Agoge arena, the Troglodytes behind a floodgate and ready to be released. I personally pull the lever to close the arena, then step back to observe.

The floodgates open, and the Trogs filter out. Forgive my expression of emotion in a formal report, but what happens next… Armok’s hoary beard, it was terrifying.

Upon seeing Logan, the three Trogs charge, one taking a huge lead. Logan, as the Trogs approach, enters the legendary state of the warrior’s trance for the first time in his 8 years of life:

In previous training sessions, Logan mainly relied on his speed, endurance, and skill in dodging to take out enemies, exhausting them and relying on counters. With his new conditioning, Logan now fights with a raw power usually reserved for warriors with years of training. He takes the initiative, giving a bone-bruising punch to the lead Trog in the leg. Calmly slipping past the Trog’s massive blows, Logan follows with a powerful roundhouse to the head, rocking the Trog, bruising the Trog’s skull and causing her to sway in place:

At this moment, the Trog experiences mortal fear. She should: these opening blows already communicate the death to come.

Logan, with his newfound speed, unleashes a flurry of blows before the Trog can grunt from the first one’s impact. He shatters a leg in a single punch, collapses a hand with another, and fractures a forearm with a third:

More blows follow, too numerous and fast to keep track of. All I can see is the Trog, battered and broken in the space of a few seconds, her comrades not even close to reaching her yet.

Logan continues his flurry of blows, calmly slipping past the terrified attacks of the fast Troglodyte. He smashes the Trog’s feet in two swift blows, causing both to explode in gore, tearing the ligaments and tendons in the right foot and outright shattering the ankle of the left foot.

At this point, the other Trogs have closed the distance and are attacking. Logan keeps his focus on the first Trog. He pulps her right forearm, shatters her right ankle, then shatters her arm completely, disabling her right side, all while dodging the blows of the other two Trogs.

This onslaught of shattering blows is too much for the lead Trogolodyte, and she passes out from exhaustion. Mercifully, her suffering is not drawn out: after three powerful blows, Logan dismantles her head, killing her.

Logan then turns his attention to the second Trog, the unmarked one with no pre-existing scars. He immediately disables his leg with a powerful punch, tearing through all that fleshy mass right down to the bone, and bowling the Trog over. His second punch fractures the Trog’s skull, and rocks his head so hard the force tears his nervous system.

I’ll let the next few images speak for themselves: they’re snippets of the fight, showing whatever key moments and debilitating injuries that we were able to capture despite Logan’s blinding speed:

All of these shots are directed towards the unmarked Trog: the other Trogolodyte is also attacking, and contributes to some of the dodge messages, but Logan simply lets the marked Trog’s blows pass by and focuses his attention on destroying the unmarked Trog.

Here’s a flash-report of the unmarked Trog at this point during the battle:

Our Chief Medical Dwarf also makes an intriguing observation. In all previous training sessions, Logan, despite his quick endurance conditioning due to his dodging training, has consistently tired out after his legendary onslaughts. This is completely expected, considering the force of his blows, the warrior’s passion he contains, and the unbridled fury with which he executes his blows.

This time? No sign of exertion at all. Logan’s still operating at 100% capacity. Guard hasn’t dropped, stance is full. Hell, there isn’t a single drop of sweat on him. And the Troglodytes, despite being completely healthy, haven’t landed a single blow on him: he’s completely uninjured.

Returning our attention to the fight, we witness Logan shattering the formerly-unmarked Trog’s right hand with a roundhouse kick, before performing a sharp one-two that bruises the poor Trog’s now-empty stomach and smashes his left hand, sending the Trog under.

Logan lets the Trog go under, and turns his attention to the third Trog. He disables the Trog’s left foot, preventing him from standing, and breaks his arm with a bunch:

The Trog doesn’t stand a chance. Logan reaches into his mouth, grabs his tongue, and fractures his other arm. The pain is too much for the Trog, and he passes out. Before his head even touches the ground, Logan punches him in the head, sending his head rocketing down,

Turning his attention back to the second Trog, Logan delivers a single punch, ending the second Trog’s pitiful existence. Moving on to the third Trog, he delivers 3 rapid punches, killing his final enemy.

Logan leaves his martial trance, straightening over the neat line of corpses strewn out in front of him. As he turns away, a small smile on his face as his imagination already flits to his next make-believe adventure, our Chief Medical Dwarf makes the same startling observation: He still hasn’t broken a sweat.

In short, your Majesty, the training is progressing beyond our wildest dreams. Who the hell can take out three healthy Trogs, bare handed, in a matter of seconds without breaking a sweat, AT THE AGE OF EIGHT no less. Hell, when the captain of the Mine Defense squad fought a single, minorly wounded Troglodyte back during [REDACTED], she suffered multiple cuts and contusions and was drenched in sweat and blood by the end, and she was armed with one of the King’s masterwork steel warhammers and was wearing armor. This kid is already better than what our normal squads provide: he’s at the same combat level as the most elite squad members of the fortress, and has a better mental fortitude and spirit than all of the squad combined. See his brutal, unpanicked efficiency when dealing with the Trogs, and compare it to our elite squad whose members are now on vacation because they are too traumatized after the whopper of a siege we had where we killed 54 goblin affiliated enemies at the loss of one of our soldiers and two civilians. They were more affected by the death of their enemies than by the death of their friends! Not Logan: he has been conditioned to feel nothing about the death of anyone but his comrades in arms. Additionally, the members of the elite squad have been unfocused due to lack of praying and creative thinking. Logan, having already completed his life’s work by forging Perplexbreaks, has filled his capacity for creative thinking, and he is undistracted by other things like praying. What’s more? The creation of Perplexbreaks was conditioning in itself: because of the intense mental strain Logan went through, he can no longer go insane due to stress. In other words, he’ll continue operating at peak capacity even if the entire fort burns down, he’s been beaten to a pulp, he’s been swarmed by everything he detests and hasn’t had a drink in 50 years. He can only be broken through the brute-force method of forcing him to stay awake for half a year, and it’s unlikely to happen unless he is ordered to.

There are still improvements to be made. Logan’s toughness can be increased, although given that nothing has touched him so far this attribute may be of no use. His skills can still be improved: Although his skills have improved at an incredibly rapid pace since his conditioning, there’s still a lot to learn before he comes of age. He’s currently an expert-level fighter, and a proficient observer, and a talented dodger, and the last training session has bumped him up to Adequate Wrestling and Adequate Fighting. To become a true Super-soldier, he must attain a legendary rank in all of these, preferably by the time he’s twelve.

His kicking and biting skills are at dabbling: this is fine, as he seems to prefer to use his fists. He must learn to kick and bite at a legendary level in order to become a super-soldier, in case some accident causes him to lose function of his arms. He’s also only at dabbling armor user and discipline, and has no weapon skills. He will develop his armor user, discipline and weapon skills when he comes of age at 12 and officially joins a state-sanctioned military squad. His kicking and biting skills can also be developed then: there’s no way of controlling whether Logan uses his fists, feet, or teeth in open combat. If he kills the enemy, the enemy is dead, it’s just the cause of death that’s different.

Phew, that was a long post, and an even longer setup! There was a massive 140-gobbo siege while Logan was going through conditioning, and I was worried that Logan might drown while I was focused on commanding the squads. His badassery prevailed, though, and he swam through without any trouble. Yet another distraction occured when a caravan-pulling bull attacked a raven. The raven lashed out back, and the bull chickened out. As the bull ran off in terror, the cart was toppled, causing the merchants to panic and evacuate the map. If the bull had a tenth of the mettle of Logan, or just kept to himself, I would’ve gotten to trade. Oh well.

I’ve decided to post here instead of Imgur, so that there is a concise record of all posts kept in one place. Enjoy!

Keep a lookout for part 4! Blessings of Armok upon you!