South Wind’s story had abruptly ended here. The Scholar hadn’t known the rest. Actually, none of the people to whom Hadjar had spoken during his trip knew the last part of this legend. They were only interested in the fact that, somewhere in this world, there were six Techniques that could make them immortal if they studied them. The desert dwellers believed in the gods with the same zeal that the people of Lidus had.
“Northerner,” someone nearby said.
Hadjar turned around and saw Ilmena. She was as hot as a piece of coal pulled out of a fire. Her daggers, still flashing slightly, swayed near her thighs, drawing the eye. It took Hadjar a couple of seconds to soothe his heart and the heat sparking to life just below his belt. The girl noticed his reaction, and she smiled victoriously.
Women. Some things were universal, it seemed.
“Milady,” Hadjar responded in Lidish.
The girl grimaced slightly and the smile disappeared from her face.
“Your language sounds like a dog growling. How do you speak it? By the spirits of the desert and the Great Stars, I’m afraid to even imagine your songs.”
“They’re no worse than yours,” Hadjar shrugged.
Ilmena snorted.
“More than your bards, I feel sorry for your women. Compliments in such a rude language must sound like real torture.”
Hadjar didn’t look, but he still felt Shakh glaring at him with the help of the instincts he’d developed during the war. Hadjar wasn’t a narcissistic asshole, but, apparently, he sometimes wanted to be playful, just like Azrea.
Insolently holding Ilmena by the waist, he pulled her closer to him, covering the belt that held her daggers with his other hand.
“I don’t know why you want to take revenge on that boy,” he whispered in her ear, an act that looked very intimate and erotic from the outside, “but you better leave me out of it.”
Confirming his hunch, her velvety, warm palm stroked his cheek. Ilmena clung to him as tightly as if their bodies would soon merge together.
“Don’t pretend you don’t like it, Northerner.”
Ilmena’s palm crawled farther upward until it dug into Hadjar’s turban. He smiled bloodthirstily. A second later, the girl screamed and recoiled. A scarlet trickle ran down her fingers, and a happy, victorious growl came from beneath the turban. Azrea hated it when people touched her. She tolerated it only at the request of her two-legged.
“Ilmena!” Shakh shouted.
He wasn’t as quick as the girl, but he was fast enough to make Hadjar interested in having a real fight with him. He was swift enough that most of the spectators didn’t even notice when he began moving.
His daggers flashed. The shorter one rested against Hadjar’s groin, while the longer one was against his throat.
“Remember your ancestors’ names, Northerner,” Shakh growled, his eyes turning black with anger. “Ilmena, are you alright?”
Hadjar stood calmly. Without moving a muscle, he watched the scene unfold. For some reason, it made him feel a slight longing and a bit of nostalgia. It was foolish to deny that he was trying to find his brother’s features in Shakh. The brighter the sun shone, the clearer Hadjar understood that he looked for these features not only in this particular young man, but in everyone. Sometimes, it even seemed like his brother was calling out to him. In the whisper of the wind, he sometimes heard: “Bloodthirsty hobo lunatic...” followed by kind laughter.
Alas, these were only the mirages of the past, same as Nehen’s whisper — the witch whom Hadjar hadn’t been able to love. She, in turn, hadn’t been able to remain human and had chosen the life of a beast.
“I don’t need your protection, boy,” Ilmena spat, clearly demonstrating the fiery temper of the desert women. “Damn it.”
She pulled a handkerchief from her belt and wrapped it around the bite. Hadjar knew it wouldn’t help. The blood wouldn’t stop flowing for an hour, no matter what body Techniques the warrior owned and what drugs she used. Azrea’s bites never healed within the first hour — it was most peculiar.
“Dirty barbarian!” Shakh moved his dagger, trying to cut Hadjar’s manhood.
Hadjar couldn’t bear such humiliation. He took a single step back. An imperceptible and smooth movement. Like a feather floating across the water’s surface, he slipped aside. In Lidus, such a Technique would’ve been enough to get away from the majority of practitioners. Shakh was faster than all of them had been.
His dagger shimmered in the air like a steel haze, and Hadjar felt the touch of the cold blade. A flash of acute pain burned his long-suffering right side, where his opponents had struck him hundreds of times. However, at that moment, Hadjar didn’t particularly care about that. The simple leather wallet, whose ribbons had been cut by Shakh’s blade, slipped off his belt.
Hadjar’s hands grabbed his sword faster than his mind could inform the body that it was making a mistake. Shakh, who’d been looking at the scratched northerner with a victorious smirk until then, suddenly felt his heart skip a beat.
It seemed to him like, for a second, the world narrowed down to just the two of them. Everything around them disappeared, leaving behind only the two clear blue eyes and the dragon rising up angrily in them.
The northerner emanated inhuman, bestial rage. It was as if Shakh had unknowingly killed the cub of a Sand Tiger and then come face to face with its inconsolable mother. In such situations, there was only one outcome — someone had to die.
Hadjar’s sword struck Shakh’s head faster than the young man could comprehend what was happening. The attack was so powerful that two white stripes appeared in the air, and long cracks and cuts appeared along the parade ground. A booming metallic chime sounded, and then the earth trembled.
Shakar, who’d noticed the situation heating up, was there just in time. He blocked the Northerner’s strike with his broadsword. However, the power of the strike boggled his mind.
Shakar had fought thousands of battles against other practitioners and cultivators. Not one of them had made his hands tremble. Not out of fear, however. The simple truth was that they were shaking because he’d barely withstood the immense power of the attack.
The Heaven Soldier stood ankle-deep in a small ravine, at the edges of which stone spikes seemed to jut out of the ground. He had literally been driven into the ground by the enemy. If he’d been a simple practitioner and not a cultivator, he would’ve been cut in half as easily as a dry log.
The mad gleam disappeared from Hadjar’s eyes as quickly as it had appeared. His breathing calmed and the dragon once again fell asleep in his eyes. Sheathing his sword, Hadjar bent down and picked up the wallet.
“I beg your pardon, honorable Shakar,” Hadjar bowed after securing the wallet.
“It’s okay, Northerner,” the stunned Shakar managed to pull himself together and calmly sheathed his broadsword. “Our sun always has a strange effect on your people.”
“Forgive me, boy,” Hadjar said to Shakh.
With that, he turned around and walked over to the other side of the parade ground. The islander, pretending to be asleep, had carefully watched the spectacle unfold. Hadjar noticed. If he could choose his opponent, he would definitely prefer to avoid facing off against that bald man.
“Boy,” Ilmena smiled and, deliberately flipping her hair in a way that ensured it lightly brushed Shakh’s face, followed after Hadjar.
“What does he-”
Shakar put his hand on his nephew’s shoulder.
“By the Great Stars, nephew, if you fight against him, one of you will die.”
“He is two stages lower than me!”
“Perhaps,” Shakar nodded. “Perhaps he is. But I’ve heard stories about a swordsman who appeared in Lidus. A man who, before ascending to the level of a true adept, had almost reached the ‘Wielder of the Sword’ level of swordsmanship.”
“That’s bullshit!” Shakh said.
“Maybe,” Shakar remarked thoughtfully. “But what if it’s not?”
&n
bsp; The bards from Lidus had sung about a Mad General, whose sword was as dangerous as a young, angry dragon. By the Gods’ mercy, Shakar hoped that this was just a coincidence...
Chapter 261
After making sure that the parade ground was ready for the upcoming battle and that the spectators wouldn’t interfere, Shakar went to the center. He picked up a pre-prepared leather bag from the ground and dropped two pairs of dice with two identical hieroglyphs on each pair into it.
“Approach me one by one,” the chief of security explained. “You will fight in a fair duel until one of you surrenders, based on which dice you draw. The pair with a falcon hieroglyph will go first, the pair with a snake hieroglyph will go next.”
Hadjar, who wasn’t feeling particularly patient lately, immediately took a step forward. As the others watched him intently, he came up to the bag and, looking into Shakar’s eyes, placed his hand inside. After a moment, Hadjar showed everyone the snake die he’d drawn.
“How about a dance, Northerner?” Ilmena smiled warmly.
The way she walked over to Shakar, her wide hips swaying and her ankle bracelets glistening... Gods and demons, at times like this, Hadjar realized why Nero had used to caution him against prolonged periods of abstinence so often.
Hadjar didn’t see which die Ilmena pulled out. He covered his eyes and plunged into meditation in order to calm his heart and animal instincts. In a battle, no matter how difficult it may be to maintain, he needed a cool head and a steady hand.
Judging by the sighs of the disappointed crowd, Ilmena had pulled out a falcon die.
“You got lucky, Northerner,” her words only confirmed Hadjar’s assumption.
Next came the islander. How did Hadjar know this with his eyes closed? Despite his refined and powerful Technique, Shakh was good with his daggers, but not that good. Hadjar would’ve definitely heard him moving across the sand or at least felt it. The islander moved as smoothly as foam across a wave.
Without using his eyes, Hadjar couldn’t locate the strange warrior with the staff. This was unnerving, because no one, not even the Governor of the Empire, had been able to conceal his presence from Hadjar’s instincts so well. Therefore, he was very pleased to hear the disappointed sigh of the crowd and feel the light tension emanating from Ilmena.
“The pairs have been decided!” Shakar announced, throwing the snake die to Shakh.
While the young man was happy to have gotten so ‘lucky’ and seemed eager, the chief of security looked at his nephew and the northerner a little nervously. He stood some distance away, his eyes closed and breathing evenly. He was clearly meditating to center himself before the fight.
“First pairing, you may enter the arena and begin.”
Observing an old tradition, Shakar bared his sword and stuck it in the center of the six-pointed star.
Hadjar opened his eyes. He wasn’t going to miss a single moment of the upcoming battle. Not a single movement made by Ilmena and the islander should escape his gaze. Maybe his life would depend on it in the future. Like never before, he felt how shallow and incomplete the knowledge Balium and Lidus had about the path of cultivation was.
Hadjar felt like a baby bird thrown out of the nest, one that had previously believed that the world was confined to the branches of its tree, but could now see that, besides those branches, there were hundreds of other trees and thousands of branches all around it.
The bald islander walked to the center of the arena first. He looked calm and only the bulging veins on his arms showed that he was taking his opponent seriously.
Ilmena continued to sway her hips and pretend that she was indifferent to what was happening. Despite her considerable power and amazing Technique, she clearly lacked experience with real battle. Unlike the islander.
“Begin, and may the Great Stars favor you.”
Shakar gave the go-ahead and stepped aside.
For a while, the two fighters stood motionless. They looked at each other, trying to get a read on one another, and at the same time, a battle was raging in their minds. Hundreds of times, they clashed with their opponent’s ‘shadow’, trying to find the slightest gap in their foe’s defense. Hadjar had been fond of doing this sort of thing at the start of a battle as a youth, until he’d realized that no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t foresee accidents in a battle.
The islander moved first. As if parodying Shakh, he thrust his staff into a shadow on the sand. Immediately, it roiled like boiling water and another ape’s maw appeared. Despite its sharp fangs, this Technique, once it attacked, resembled a series of rapid strikes from a staff more than the thrusts of a spear.
Ilmena, smiling wryly, whispered something and lightings flashed all around her. Hadjar managed to perceive only the outlines of an eagle’s wings before the girl was behind the bald warrior. Her daggers flashed like scarlet steam, similar to the faint memory of a recent fire.
With a hiss, they plunged into the islander’s back... and immediately got stuck in a liquid shadow. Ilmena was sucked into a sort of vertical oil puddle while the islander suddenly jumped out of the ape’s mouth. This trick impressed Hadjar even more than Ilmena’s Technique had.
Gods and demons! What was happening here? Hadjar didn’t understand how this was even possible. Compared to what he’d just seen, his ‘Ten Ravens’ Technique looked like a child’s trick!
“Boulder Storm!” the islander shouted.
He attacked with his staff, aiming the blow directly at Ilmena’s head, who was still stuck in the trap. The spectators felt like, instead of a staff, giant rocks that had been thrown by a giant and sharpened by a hundred-year battle against the elements had been launched at the beautiful warrior.
Hadjar saw the islander unleash about a dozen swift attacks in a single moment. They were as fast and sharp as if the man had been using a siege spear. If such an attack struck an unprotected body, it would leave little behind.
“I give up!” Ilmena cried out in panic.
At the same time, the islander, snarling like an angry beast, redirected the attack toward the ground with considerable effort. It struck two yards away from the warrior, turning the sand of the parade ground into what a field normally looked like after a long artillery bombardment. It was easy to imagine what would’ve happened to the girl if she’d dared to continue the fight.
Landing on his feet, the bald man placed his staff across his back and bowed low, putting his palm to his chest. His shadow trap disappeared, freeing Ilmena, who fell to her knees.
Breathing heavily, from fright rather than fatigue, the girl rose to her feet and bowed low as well. When she walked back, no one teased her or laughed at her. Everyone understood that, had they been in her shoes, they most likely wouldn’t have been able to do much either.
Hadjar realized that anything could’ve happened in a battle against the bald warrior, and that Hadjar would likely not have been the winner.
“I hope you remembered all the names during your meditation, Northerner,” Shakh smiled, twirling his daggers like a circus acrobat.
The guards cleared the ground for the next battle. Shakar was talking to the islander about something. The bald warrior understood the local language poorly, so they spent some time looking for a language that was convenient for both of them. Fortunately, any self-respecting practitioner could speak at least three languages. With the help of his neural network, Hadjar could speak 26 languages and read 40. Unfortunately, in his current situation, his knowledge was limited to five.
“I don’t know how you screwed things up so badly with that lady,” Hadjar deliberately said ‘lady’ in Lidish. The word sounded similar to the local term for ‘a girl that I would gladly sleep with’. Hearing the ‘familiar’ word, Shakh got confused and frowned. “But I would advise you to forget about her, boy. Ilmena seems to like older men.”
With that, Hadjar, smiling arrogantly, stepped into the designated arena. It might’ve seemed like he’d started acting like the worst and most spoi
led nobles of his country during his trip. But that wasn’t it.
As always, he had a plan: He wanted to draw Shakh out and force him to demonstrate his Technique in full. As far as Hadjar could tell, what the boy did with his daggers wasn’t a Weapon Technique because Hadjar hadn’t felt the Dagger Spirit in them. He’d felt no Spirit at all!
The boy had used magic!
Hadjar was going to find out how Shakh was using it with a weapon.
Chapter 262
Hadjar stood in the center of the arena, close to Shakar’s sword. The locals regarded such a gesture as self-confident and full of bluster. Naturally, this upset the young boy.
While he was puffing, unwinding his turban, and pulling off his caftan, demonstrating his readiness to engage in a bloody battle, Hadjar mentally slapped himself. He was just six or eight years older than Shakh, but despite that, Hadjar thought his foe was a kid more than anything else.
“I want to see a fair fight,” Shakar said sternly, addressing both the foreigner and his nephew.
The Heaven Soldier was worried, but not for Hadjar. The former General felt a pang of loneliness at the realization. Immediately, the tiger cub’s claws sank quite noticeably into the top of Hadjar’s head.
“Got it,” Hadjar smiled.
Following Shakh’s example, he took off his sandals, unwound his turban and, to everyone’s surprise, moved the white tiger cub off his head. When she found herself standing on the sand, she hissed in displeasure and immediately hid in the red and blue folds of the turban.
Compared to Shakh’s trained body, where all the muscles could be seen so clearly that even a sculpture made by an experienced craftsman would’ve envied him, Hadjar looked a little more... realistic. He had definition to his muscles, but not nearly as much as Shakh did. Besides, it was very difficult to show off a body that was so covered in scars it was impossible to find an inch of skin unmarred by them.
Dragon Heart: Sea of Sand. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 4 Page 3