#gene goes from an evil tough guy to like. the energy of a wet cat living in a cardboard box all alone

[t4tdanvis]

I like to remove the timeskip but saying it still happens for rambling purposes. Laurence figures out something’s wrong when he gets Gene on the ground during the fight and then he starts begging him not to kill him, saying he won’t bother them again, saying he’ll be good and helpful if they just don’t “send him back” because Shad’ll be mad at him.

And then he finds out that now every time he kills Gene, Gene just wakes up in a cell of the “nursery” (nickname for the jail new knights are kept in while being turned/old knights are kept in for torture cycles.) After his first few failures, Shad got so tired of him that he changed Gene’s respawn point from his bedroom to the nursery so he wouldn’t have to see him until he’d succeeded.

It was very effective at the start because Gene would come out of torture cycles trying to get right back to work so he could see Shad again, but eventually Gene went from motivated to succeed to just scared of dying because he’d lost most of his confidence in his abilities and he didn’t know what Shad’s limit was. He can’t succeed, so how many times can he fuck up before Shad’s really done with him? He already doesn’t want to see him- how long until Shad gets rid of him like he gets rid of all the other disappointments?

laurance is trying to figure out what the fuck is going on while gene is just curled up in a ball screaming and crying and having a breakdown on the ground. laurance is just "ok i fucking hate you but what the hell is wrong why are you crying??"