SSS-Class Profession: The Path to Mastery-Chapter 352: Beyond the Breaking Point

The plank was becoming unbearable. My muscles screamed in protest as I held the position, sweat dripping steadily onto the mat beneath me. My arms trembled with the effort, my core burning like fire. Most people would have given up dozens of minutes ago, but I held on, counting each second as it crawled by.

Thirty more seconds. Twenty. Ten.

When I finally allowed myself to drop, my arms gave out completely, and I collapsed face-first onto the mat. For a moment, I lay there gasping, feeling the familiar relief that came after pushing past your limits.

But relief wasn’t what I was after tonight.

Without giving myself time to recover, I rolled onto my back and began a set of sit-ups. Not the controlled, measured movements of a normal workout—explosive reps that sent fire through my abdominal muscles with each repetition. My form deteriorated quickly as fatigue set in, but I didn’t slow down. If anything, I pushed harder.

Twenty-five. Fifty. Seventy-five.

My vision began to blur at the edges, but I kept going. My body was giving me warnings to stop pushing so hard. But I refused...Those warnings were designed for normal people following normal limitations.

I wasn’t interested in normal anymore.

At one hundred sit-ups, something in my lower back popped audibly. The pain was sharp and immediate, radiating down my spine and into my legs. A rational person would have stopped, assessed the injury, maybe called for medical attention.

Instead, I rolled over and began doing push-ups.

The pain in my back made each repetition agony, forcing me to compensate with muscles that weren’t designed to handle the load. My shoulders began to burn, then my chest, then my arms. By rep fifty, my form had completely broken down—I was basically just throwing my body weight around in movements that vaguely resembled push-ups.

But I didn’t stop.

Somewhere around rep seventy-five, I felt something in my right shoulder give way. Not just muscle fatigue—something structural. The joint made a wet, grinding sound that would have made Alexis pale with horror. The pain was so intense that my vision went white for a moment.

I kept pushing.

The rational part of my mind was screaming warnings. This wasn’t training anymore. It was more akin to self-destruction. I was pushing my body so far beyond its limits that I was causing genuine damage, possibly permanent damage. Any doctor, trainer, or medical professional would have physically restrained me by now.

At rep one hundred, my left wrist snapped.

The sound was audible—a sharp crack like a branch breaking. The pain was indescribable, shooting up my arm and into my shoulder like lightning. My hand immediately went numb, unable to support any weight at all.

I switched to one-armed push-ups and kept going.

This was insane. This was beyond reckless—this was suicidal. I could feel my body breaking down in real time, organ systems failing as I pushed them past their structural limits. My breathing had become ragged and shallow, my heart racing so fast it felt like it might explode. Sweat wasn’t just dripping anymore—it was pouring off me in sheets, creating puddles on the gym floor.

But beneath the agony, beneath the systematic destruction of my physical form, I could feel something else. A strange sort of clarity, like I was approaching some fundamental truth about the nature of limitation itself.

Twenty more one-armed push-ups. My functioning arm was shaking so violently that each rep barely lifted me an inch off the ground. Something in my elbow was grinding with each movement—bone against bone, ligaments stretching past their breaking point.

Thirty. My vision was tunneling now, the edges going dark as my body began shutting down non-essential systems to preserve core functions.

Forty. I could taste blood in my mouth, though I wasn’t sure where it was coming from.

Fifty.

I collapsed completely, my one functioning arm finally giving out. For several minutes, I lay on the floor unable to move, my entire body convulsing with pain and exhaustion. Every breath felt like knives in my lungs. My broken wrist was swelling rapidly, already twice its normal size.

A sane person would have called for help. Would have recognized that they’d pushed too far and needed immediate medical attention.

Instead, I forced myself to my feet and staggered toward the pull-up bar.

The movement sent fresh waves of agony through my damaged shoulder and broken wrist. My legs were shaking so badly I could barely walk, and I had to brace myself against the wall to keep from falling. But I made it to the bar, gripped it with my one functional hand, and began pulling myself up.

The first rep nearly made me pass out. The second rep made me vomit—a thin stream of bile that splattered onto the floor beneath me. The third rep actually did make me black out for a moment, and I came to hanging from the bar with no memory of completing the movement.

But I was still holding on.

Pull-up number four. Five. Six.

My grip was failing, my palm slick with sweat and probably blood. The bar felt like it was cutting into my fingers, and I could feel the skin beginning to tear. Every muscle in my back and shoulders was screaming, and my broken wrist was sending constant spikes of agony up my arm.

Seven. Eight.

On rep nine, I heard something in my spine crack. Not the healthy pop of a joint adjusting—something deeper, more fundamental. The pain was so intense that I actually screamed, a raw sound that echoed off the gym walls.

I pulled myself up for rep ten anyway.

My body was shutting down. I could feel it happening—systems failing one by one as I pushed past every safety mechanism evolution had built into human physiology. My vision was almost completely gone, just narrow tunnels of light surrounded by creeping darkness. My hearing was muffled, like I was underwater. Even my sense of touch was beginning to fade, though the pain remained constant and overwhelming.

Rep eleven. Twelve.

I was no longer consciously controlling my movements. My body was operating on pure determination, muscle memory, and something that went deeper than conscious thought. Some part of me that refused to accept limitations, refused to acknowledge breaking points, refused to stop.

Thirteen. Fourteen.

On rep fifteen, my grip finally failed completely. I dropped to the floor like a sack of broken bones, hitting the ground with a wet thud that would have been sickening if I’d been capable of processing the sound properly.

But I wasn’t done.

Somehow, impossibly, I forced myself to stand again. My legs buckled immediately, sending me crashing back to the floor. I tried again, using the wall for support, and managed to stay upright for a few seconds before my knees gave out.

The third time, I made it to my feet and stayed there, swaying like a tree in a hurricane but refusing to fall.

I staggered toward the free weights.

What I was doing had transcended stupidity. This was active self-harm on a scale that defied description. I was systematically destroying every major system in my body, pushing past pain thresholds that should have been impossible to endure. If Alexis walked in right now, she would probably have a heart attack before calling an ambulance.

But I couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop.

I picked up a twenty-pound dumbbell with my functioning hand, the weight feeling like it weighed twice as much due to my exhausted state. I began doing bicep curls, each rep sending fresh jolts of agony through my damaged shoulder and broken wrist.

The pain was becoming something beyond physical sensation. It was transforming into a living thing, a constant presence that filled every cell of my body. My nervous system was so overloaded that I couldn’t distinguish between different types of damage anymore. Everything just hurt with the same overwhelming intensity.

Ten curls. Then twenty and then thirty.

At rep forty, something in my bicep tore with an audible ripping sound. The muscle bunched up in a knot under my skin, useless and grotesquely deformed. The pain was so extreme that I actually laughed. It was a broken, hysterical sound that didn’t seem to come from my own throat.

I switched the weight to my broken hand and kept going.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. I was trying to become stronger by destroying myself, pushing toward some theoretical breaking point that would somehow unlock new capabilities. It was the kind of logic that only made sense when filtered through rage and desperation.

But as I continued the impossible workout with a hand that shouldn’t have been able to grip anything, something strange began to happen.

The pain wasn’t disappearing—if anything, it was getting worse as I accumulated more damage. But my relationship to it was changing. The overwhelming, consciousness-destroying agony was still there, but it was becoming... distant. Like it was happening to someone else, or like I was observing it through thick glass.

I could still feel every broken bone, every torn muscle, every damaged joint. But the sensation was becoming more abstract, less immediate. The pain was there, but it wasn’t controlling me anymore.

Fifty curls with my broken hand. Sixty. Seventy.

My body was operating on systems that shouldn’t have been functional. Bones that should have made movement impossible were somehow still supporting weight. Muscles that had been torn beyond repair were still contracting. My nervous system, overloaded beyond any reasonable threshold, was adapting in real time to conditions that should have shut it down completely.

At rep eighty, I passed out.

When I came to, I was still standing, still holding the weight, still moving through the motions of the exercise. My consciousness had simply... left for a while, but my body had continued operating without it. The pain was still there—perhaps even worse than before—but it felt muffled, like it was traveling through layers of cotton before reaching my awareness.

Ninety curls. One hundred.

I set the weight down and immediately vomited again, this time bringing up actual blood along with the bile. The taste was metallic and wrong, and I could feel more blood running down my chin. My broken wrist had swollen to nearly twice its normal size, and my torn bicep looked like something from a medical horror show.

But I was still standing. Still conscious. Still capable of movement.

I walked to the other side of the gym and began doing jumping jacks.

The movement sent shockwaves of pain through every damaged system in my body, but the intensity felt... manageable. Not because the pain was less—if anything, it was worse than before—but because I was processing it differently. Like my nervous system had found some new pathway for handling overwhelming input.

Ten jumping jacks. Twenty. Fifty.

My broken bones were grinding against each other with each movement. My torn muscles were contracting in ways that should have been impossible. My cardiovascular system was operating in crisis mode, my heart beating so fast and irregularly that it felt like it might stop at any moment.

But I kept moving.

One hundred jumping jacks. One hundred fifty. Two hundred.

The pain had become something like background noise—constant and overwhelming, but no longer the primary focus of my attention. I could feel my body continuing to break down, systems failing in cascade as I pushed them past every conceivable limit. But the breakdown wasn’t stopping me anymore.

At rep two hundred fifty, my vision went completely dark. Not the gradual tunneling I’d experienced before—total, immediate blindness as my optic nerves finally gave up. But my body kept moving, guided by muscle memory and some deeper sense of spatial awareness.

Three hundred jumping jacks in complete darkness, my body a symphony of destruction and impossible persistence.

And then, just when I felt like my physical form was about to collapse into component atoms, something shifted.

The pain was still there—every bit as intense as before. I could still feel every broken bone, every torn muscle, every system operating beyond its design parameters. But it wasn’t... affecting me the same way. It was like the volume had been turned down on signals that had been overwhelming my consciousness.

My body had found some new equilibrium, some way of functioning despite damage that should have been instantly incapacitating.

I stopped the jumping jacks and stood perfectly still in the darkness, listening to my labored breathing and feeling the strange new relationship between my consciousness and my physical form.

That’s when the notification appeared, visible even through my damaged vision as text that seemed to burn itself directly into my awareness:

SKILL ACQUIRED

Pain Resistance (Lv. 1) - Reduces physical discomfort from injuries, allowing continued function despite damage. Physical damage remains unchanged, but neural response to pain stimuli is significantly diminished.

I stared at the notification for a long moment, feeling a grim satisfaction settle over me like a blanket. Once again, I had pushed the System beyond its normal parameters. Once again, I had discovered capabilities that weren’t supposed to exist.

Pain Resistance. A skill that no one in recorded history had ever achieved, because no one had ever had a job title like mine and no one had ever been stupid enough to systematically destroy their own body in pursuit of it.

But I had. And now I possessed an ability that would allow me to function despite injuries that would incapacitate normal people. Not because I was tougher, not because I healed faster, but because I had trained my nervous system to process pain in an entirely different way.

Standing there in the darkness of the gym, surrounded by the wreckage of my own physical form, I smiled.

Before passing out on the floor with my consciousness fading.