SSS-Class Profession: The Path to Mastery

Actually," Alexis said, a calculating gleam entering her eyes, "there's something I can offer you right now. No preparation required."

She moved to one of the equipment cabinets along the far wall, her movements purposeful and clinical. I watched as she opened several drawers before finding what she was looking for. It was a small, innocuous-looking metal canister with scientific labeling that I couldn't read from my position on the examination table.

"What is it?" I asked, though part of me wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer.

She returned to her desk and set the canister down with the careful precision of someone handling dangerous materials. "Pure capsaicin extract. The primary alkaloid responsible for the sensation of heat in spicy foods."

I felt my eyebrows rise. "Capsaicin? Like... peppers?"

"Like peppers, but concentrated and purified." She opened the canister with a small tool, revealing a fine, almost crystalline powder that looked deceptively harmless. "This particular preparation clocks in at approximately eight million Scoville Heat Units."

The number meant nothing to me initially, but the way she said it—with the kind of reverence usually reserved for discussing high explosives—suggested it was significant.

"For reference," she continued, seeing my confusion, "a jalapeño pepper rates around five thousand Scoville units. Habaneros are typically between one hundred thousand and three hundred fifty thousand. The hottest natural peppers in the world, like the Carolina Reaper, reach about two point two million."

I stared at the innocuous powder, my mouth suddenly feeling very dry. "And this is...?"

"Eight million. Nearly four times hotter than the most extreme natural pepper on Earth." She pulled out a precision scale and began measuring with scientific accuracy. "Capsaicin is technically classified as a neurotoxin—it binds to pain receptors and creates the sensation of burning without actually causing thermal damage. It should trigger both Pain Resistance and Poison Resistance simultaneously."

The implications of what she was suggesting hit me like a physical blow. This wasn't just eating spicy food. This was ingesting what amounted to concentrated chemical warfare in powder form.

"So I just... take a spoonful?" I asked, hoping I was misunderstanding the scope of what she had in mind.

Alexis laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. It was the kind of laugh that suggested I'd just said something profoundly stupid.

"A spoonful would kill you," she said matter-of-factly. "Probably within minutes. Respiratory failure, circulatory collapse, complete neurological shutdown. Even with your resistance skills, there are limits to what the human body can survive."

She finished measuring and held up a tiny amount of powder on the end of a calibrated measuring spoon. The quantity looked almost microscopic, barely visible to the naked eye.

"This is point-five grams," she said. "Roughly equivalent to eating twenty Carolina Reaper peppers simultaneously, but with none of the plant matter to dilute the active compound. It's going to be..."

She paused, searching for the right word.

"Unpleasant."

I stared at the minuscule amount of powder and felt sweat beginning to form on my palms. The rational part of my mind was screaming that this was insane, that deliberately ingesting neurotoxins was exactly the kind of reckless behavior that had gotten me into this situation in the first place.

But another part of me—the part that had pushed through yesterday's training session despite every signal from my body telling me to stop—was already committed to seeing this through.

"What should I expect?" I asked, trying to project confidence I didn't feel.

"Pain," she said simply. "More pain than you've likely experienced from any single source. Your mouth, throat, and digestive tract are going to feel like they're literally on fire. Your body will flood with stress hormones. You'll sweat profusely, possibly experience nausea and disorientation. The effects typically peak around twenty to thirty minutes after ingestion and can last for several hours."

She moved to a nearby monitoring station and began activating various medical sensors.

"I'll be tracking your vital signs throughout the experience. Heart rate, blood pressure, neural activity, stress hormone levels. If anything approaches dangerous thresholds, I have countermeasures available."

The clinical precision with which she discussed my upcoming suffering was somehow both reassuring and terrifying. On one hand, I knew she had the expertise to keep me from dying. On the other hand, the fact that she felt the need to monitor me so closely suggested this was going to be far worse than anything I'd experienced before.

"Ready?" she asked, holding out the measuring spoon.

I looked at the tiny amount of powder one more time, took a deep breath, and nodded.

"Let's do it."

She handed me the spoon, and I could immediately smell the capsaicin even through the small quantity. It had a sharp, almost medicinal odor that made my sinuses tingle just from proximity.

"Open your mouth wide and dump it directly onto your tongue," Alexis instructed. "Don't try to taste it or let it sit. Swallow immediately and then drink this."

She handed me a glass of what looked like milk.

I raised the spoon to my mouth, positioned it over my tongue, and tipped the powder directly into my mouth.

For the first few seconds, nothing happened. The capsaicin felt like any other powder—slightly bitter, with a texture that was almost chalky. I swallowed quickly and reached for the milk, thinking that maybe the concentration wasn't as intense as Alexis had suggested.

Then it hit me.

The sensation began as a warm tingling on my tongue, but within seconds it had exploded into something that felt like liquid fire spreading through my entire mouth. The burning sensation was unlike anything I'd ever experienced—not the pleasant heat of spicy food, but something that felt genuinely destructive, as if my mouth was being dissolved from the inside out.

I gasped, which was a mistake. The intake of air seemed to spread the capsaicin to my throat and sinus passages, creating new centers of agony that radiated outward like expanding stars of pain.

"Oh my god," I managed to choke out, though the words came out as barely intelligible sounds through my rapidly swelling throat.

The milk helped for approximately three seconds before the capsaicin overwhelmed even that relief. I could feel my body's natural defenses kicking in—saliva production went into overdrive, my eyes began streaming tears, and sweat started beading across my forehead despite the comfortable temperature in the office.

"Breathe through your nose," Alexis said, her voice calm and professional. "Short, controlled breaths. Don't panic."

Easy for her to say. My mouth felt like I'd gargled with molten metal, and the sensation was spreading deeper into my throat with each passing second. I could feel my gag reflex trying to activate, my body's desperate attempt to expel what it correctly identified as a dangerous toxin.

Through the haze of pain, I became aware of my resistance skills attempting to activate. Pain Resistance was trying to dampen the neural signals flooding my brain, while Poison Resistance was working to metabolize and neutralize the capsaicin compound. But the sheer intensity of the assault was overwhelming both systems—like trying to stop a forest fire with a garden hose.

"Heart rate one-twenty and climbing," Alexis reported, her eyes fixed on the monitoring equipment. "Blood pressure elevated but not dangerous. Stress hormone cascade is within expected parameters."

The clinical narration of my suffering might have been amusing under other circumstances, but I was too busy trying not to collapse to appreciate the irony.

The heat continued to build, spreading from my mouth and throat to my entire digestive tract. I could actually feel the capsaicin traveling through my system, creating burning sensations in places I hadn't known could burn. My stomach felt like it contained a small sun, radiating waves of nauseating heat that made me double over involuntarily.

"I need to..." I started, but couldn't finish the sentence. My shirt had become soaked with sweat, the fabric clinging uncomfortably to my skin as my body tried desperately to cool itself through evaporation.

Without conscious thought, I stripped off the shirt and tossed it aside, seeking any possible relief from the heat that seemed to be consuming me from within.

Through my peripheral vision, I caught Alexis's reaction—a slight widening of her eyes as she took in my exposed torso, followed by what looked suspiciously like a blush creeping across her cheeks. But her professional focus never wavered, her attention immediately returning to the monitoring equipment even as she processed whatever she'd observed.

"Fifteen minutes in," she announced. "You're doing better than I expected. Most people would have been on the floor by now."

The words should have been encouraging, but all I could focus on was the continued intensification of the burning sensation. It felt like every pain receptor in my mouth, throat, and digestive system had been dipped in acid and then set on fire. The capsaicin was relentless, immune to my body's attempts at adaptation or relief.

I found myself pacing around the small office, unable to remain still as waves of heat and pain washed over me. My hands were shaking—not from fear, but from the neurological overload that comes with sustained exposure to intense pain stimuli.

"Talk to me," I managed to rasp, desperate for distraction from the inferno consuming my insides. "Tell me something. Anything."

"The capsaicin is binding to your TRPV1 receptors," Alexis said, falling back on clinical explanation. "Those are the neural pathways responsible for detecting dangerous heat. Your brain is interpreting the chemical signals as actual thermal damage, even though no tissue destruction is occurring."

Her voice seemed to come from very far away, filtered through the static of pain that was dominating my consciousness. But the distraction helped, giving my mind something to focus on besides the overwhelming urge to claw at my throat in a futile attempt to stop the burning.

"Your resistance skills are working," she continued, checking something on her instruments. "I can see the neural adaptation happening in real-time. Your pain threshold is actually increasing as we speak, and your body is developing more efficient metabolic pathways for processing the capsaicin."

Twenty minutes. Twenty-five. The peaks and valleys of agony blurred together into a continuous symphony of suffering that tested every limit of my willpower. Several times I found myself on the verge of begging Alexis to make it stop, to use whatever countermeasures she had available to end the experiment early.

But each time, I managed to hold on for just a little longer. To push through one more wave of pain, to endure one more minute of chemical torture in service of becoming something stronger than I had been before.

"Thirty-five minutes," Alexis announced. "You're in the home stretch. The capsaicin concentration in your system should start declining soon."

As if summoned by her words, I began to notice subtle changes in the intensity of my suffering. The burning sensation was still overwhelming, but it no longer felt like it was actively getting worse with each passing second. My body had apparently reached some kind of equilibrium with the toxin—still drowning in pain, but no longer being dragged deeper underwater.

"Forty minutes," she said, and I could hear a note of professional satisfaction in her voice. "Congratulations, Reynard. You've just survived a controlled exposure to enough capsaicin to hospitalize most people."

Even as she spoke, I felt something shift inside my consciousness—that familiar sensation of the System recognizing significant achievement and responding accordingly. The notification appeared in my peripheral vision like a reward for enduring hell:

Pain Resistance has increased to Level 2

Poison Resistance has increased to Level 2

Despite everything I'd just endured, I found myself smiling through the lingering burn in my mouth and throat. It had worked. The experiment had been successful beyond even my most optimistic projections.

We'd found a way to level up my resistance skills without requiring weeks of gradual exposure or risking immediate death through extreme overdose. With Alexis's expertise and the right materials, I could potentially compress months of traditional skill development into single, controlled sessions.

"How do you feel?" she asked, finally moving away from her monitoring equipment to check on me directly.

"Like I just gargled with liquid fire," I said, my voice still rough and strained. "But also... victorious, I guess. It worked, didn't it?"

She nodded, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "Both skills leveled up simultaneously, exactly as predicted. Your neural pathways have adapted to process pain signals more efficiently, and your liver has developed enhanced detoxification capabilities."

The clinical description of what had just happened to my body was almost anticlimactic compared to the experience itself, but I could hear the genuine excitement in her voice. This had been as much a scientific breakthrough for her as it had been a personal victory for me.

"So," I said, finally beginning to feel like I might survive the aftermath of our experiment. "What now?"