“Or have you already forgotten about that rabbit stew I promised you?”
Hadjar turned around. Steppe Fang stood behind him. He was smiling.
“We’ll start with the rabbit stew, then enjoy the festival, and you can talk to the shaman after that.”
Hadjar nodded.
***
“Come in,” the shaman, sitting inside the simple tent built from several wide beams and a wide blanket that acted as its walls, urged him. All orcs lived in these kinds of ‘buildings’. A fire burned in the center of it. The smoke was vented out through a circular hole in the roof, which could be covered with a mat when it rained.
Hadjar hesitated in the doorway for a moment. The celebration was booming behind him. The orcs danced around a huge fire, the heat of which was so intense that it was impossible to get close to it. Drums thundered. The orcs were having fun, celebrating their victory over an enemy they’d fought for millennia. The result of thousands of years of deception and clever manipulation from the Emperor of Lascan. Hadjar hated intrigue!
Hadjar was about to enter, but then paused and shuddered. The memories of his recent ordeal in the illusory, alternate world were still vivid. Waving them away, Hadjar went inside.
An old orc sat cross-legged by the fire, wrapped in a blanket. Time had faded his skin to a gray mesh pattern. He had white hair, which was in a ponytail, and half-glassy eyes that stared at both the flames and the void.
“Sit down.” The orc pointed with the pipe he was smoking at a mat on the other side of the fire.
Hadjar sat down and held out his hands toward the flame. It moved toward him like it was alive, twining around his palms and licking them with tongues of orange fire, then resumed its endless dance.
“It likes you. Fire and wind are eternal allies and enemies alike. One can make the other stronger, but it can also destroy it.”
Hadjar looked at his palms. He couldn’t feel any changes in the energy flows. So, whatever it was the shaman had done, it hadn’t been a Technique.
“Isn’t that the case with all the primordial elements?”
The shaman, who was still staring into eternity, bared his lower fangs. One of them was broken, and the other had been almost completely filed down.
Hadjar shuddered. Steppe Fang had already told him which orcs got their fangs cut off.
“It’s a good night for two former slaves to talk,” the old orc took a drag on his pipe and exhaled a ring of smoke. “Ask your questions, little hunter.”
Chapter 625
“The Sword Spirit’s seal-”
“It’s the mark of a Weapon’s essence,” the shaman interrupted him. “Don’t call this entity a Spirit. You insult your ancestors.”
Hadjar nodded. He realized he’d known that much, but habit had made him call it a Spirit anyway.
“Steppe Fang tried to explain it to me, but-”
“He doesn’t know much.” The shaman shook the ash out of his pipe into the palm of his hand and then threw it into the fire. “I once served an alchemist who taught me a lot.”
Hadjar realized that the shaman held no grudge against his former master.
“He wasn’t my only master,” the old orc predicted his question. “But he was the one who freed me, or rather, gave me a chance to regain my freedom.”
“Got it.” Hadjar felt a little strange in the presence of the orc. “How can I remove the mark of the Weapon’s essence?”
The shaman said nothing. He took out a leather bag from under the rags of his blanket. It contained ground tobacco mixed with roots and mushrooms. The old orc filled his pipe with the mixture. A spark flew out of the fire with a loud crackle. It floated through the air and fell straight into the pipe. The old orc slowly inhaled. He exhaled a column of smoke. It swirled like a ribbon and wrapped itself around Hadjar. It got under his clothes, touched his skin and hair, caressed his face, and then returned to the pipe.
“Haven’t you already begun your journey to freedom?” The old orc continued to smoke. “You’ve already broken three lines of the mark. A little of your freedom has returned to you.”
“Three lines,” Hadjar said with a slightly weary sigh. “And there are still 996 to go.”
“The journey to freedom is never quick.”
“I thought you could give me some remedy, potion, or knowledge that would help me-”
The old orc laughed. He looked into the fire. The smoke that came from it formed into shackles and a slave collar.
“When we are enslaved by others, it’s easy enough to get free.” A smoky axe broke the shackles and they disappeared. “But when we deprive ourselves of our own freedom,” the smoke assumed the form of a gold bar, then a female and male silhouette, the pair entwined together, then a crown, a scale, and finally, it took the form of a hieroglyph that looked like a beetle and was made up of 999 sword slashes. “We must win our freedom back ourselves.”
Hadjar shifted slightly. During the show put on by the smoke, he’d felt neither the slightest shift nor any anomalies in the energy flows. Even the subtlest Technique would’ve caused some fluctuation. Like how even the smallest drop of water caused a web to vibrate, which would immediately alert a spider.
“So there’s no way around it?”
There was still hope in Hadjar’s voice. He sensed that he needed to get rid of the mark as quickly as possible. He still considered himself a swordsman and respected the Sword. It was the path he’d chosen. It had saved his life more than once.
The further he traveled along it, however, the more clearly he realized that this path wasn’t for him. It was missing something important. The Sword was too straightforward and strict. Hadjar wasn’t. The path that Hadjar was following became thinner and more fragile with each step he took. After coming this far, the path of the Sword had become alien to him. The way to his true path, which he could follow to the very end, was being blocked by the mark. The Weapon didn’t want to let its follower go so easily, even if it led to his death.
“No.” The shaman shook his head. “Everyone should fix their mistakes with their own two hands. No one can take back what someone else gave away.”
Hadjar touched his heart, his forehead, and then sent something to the sky.
“Thank you, wise shaman,” he said. “I’ll continue to fight. May the new life of your tribe be better than the old one.”
Hadjar got to his feet and headed for the exit. At the very threshold, he caught a leather pouch that had been thrown at his back. It was the size of a fist and didn’t weigh much. It also felt pliable and slightly rough, as if it were stuffed with rice. He opened it and peered inside. He was pleasantly surprised to see it contained crushed fern roots. These didn’t seem as rare as the fern Steppe Fang had used to send Hadjar to the Spirit World, but they were still good. Judging by the echoes of energy being emitted by the powder, these roots had been at least three thousand years old.
“Thirty-three centuries.” The shaman cleared his throat. “It’s a mixture of a fern and a wormwood flower, crushed beneath the light of five stars in a mortar that had been washed in a spring that wasn’t even a day old at the time. This is much better than any potion a human could ever make for you.”
“Thanks-”
He turned back to the shaman. He was still sitting in front of the fire, staring into the flames. During their conversation, the shaman hadn’t looked at Hadjar even once. Of course, the old orc was a profound existence. He knew and could do things that most humans and orcs couldn’t even fathom. His powers were mysterious and incomprehensible. But even so, he couldn’t have known what Hadjar wanted from the orc tribe. In addition, the powder he had prepared could hardly have been created in a week, or even a month. He’d most likely needed at least a year to make it. The best alchemists of the Empire needed that long to create their strongest potions.
Where had Hadjar been a year ago? In the Kurkhadan oasis. The one where the half-breed Dah’Khass had gone to, the only survivor of her people. And for
some reason, one strange demon needed her badly.
“Tell me something, shaman,” Hadjar put the bag in his spatial ring, “When exactly did you have that dream, the one where you saw me and Steppe Fang?”
Hadjar was ready to summon his inner dragon and draw the Black Blade.
“Our tribes have been sitting in one place for too long, North Wind,” the orc was still looking at the fire. “We’re free hunters who have walked this land for centuries. Fighting the Dah’Khasses almost took away the most important part of us — our freedom. Besides me, there are few in the tribes who know its true value.”
Hadjar could name at least one other orc who did. Her name was Purling Song. By the High Heavens, she really did make the best rabbit stew Hadjar had ever eaten. By some strange coincidence... or maybe not a coincidence, she was also the wife of one of the two warriors the orc’s prophetic dream had chosen.
According to the fairy tales, Helmer always kept his word, if he wanted to…
Hadjar looked at his ring.
“The Lord of Nightmares doesn’t always give people nightmares, does he? Sometimes, he sends them dreams... or prophecies.”
The old orc looked up from the flames and turned to Hadjar. His eyes lit up with something that Hadjar, even after he became a Lord, would not want to encounter.
“One day, little hunter, you’ll learn that a mind without wisdom is like a blade without a scabbard — it cuts not only its target, but also its master.”
The old orc turned back to the fire. Hadjar suddenly realized that he was standing outside the shaman’s tent. He had no idea how he’d gotten there.
“Damn it all to infinite hells,” Hadjar swore.
He felt like he’d already heard the phrase the shaman had used somewhere else, but he couldn’t remember where.
By the High Heavens, he hated intrigue!
Chapter 626
Hadjar, deciding not to delve any deeper into the motives of the demon and the mad shaman, looked around. The orcs were still celebrating. Moreover, given that nothing seemed to have changed, it was like Hadjar hadn’t even entered the tent at all. Only the little bag of powder in his hand hinted that it hadn’t all been a dream.
Steppe Fang and Purling Song sat to the right of Bear’s Rage, his father and chief of the alliance of orc tribes. Even though it was a festival, the chief was talking to some orcs, still dealing with important matters.
The orcs’ hierarchy was easy to determine by the number of feathers in their hair. After defeating the Dah’Khasses, Steppe Fang now had a long headdress with ten feathers. Hadjar had only two, both of them woven symmetrically into the Bedouin ornaments in his hair. They were also brightly colored: one was scarlet like blood, but more vibrant somehow, and the other whiter than the first snows that fell on the mountain peaks in the winter season.
Hadjar decided not to bother his friend. Instead, trying to be stealthy, he moved away from the festival. Here, within the endless maze of tents, he often encountered young orc couples seeking solitude. The orcs were generally tolerant when it came to sex. As long as the orcs weren’t bound by family ties, they could switch partners several times a night. Nero would’ve liked it. Einen would’ve found it all distasteful.
Finding a dark corner immersed in the gloom of the moonless night, Hadjar sat down in a lotus position, though he didn’t really need it for meditation anymore. Only a mortal striving to overcome the frailty of their body had to use this pose.
He took the pouch that the shaman had given him out of his spatial ring. He set it down in front of him and, untying its strings, looked at it through the World River. The energy that the powder emanated was mesmerizing. Sometimes, as it pulsed, it assumed the form of the fern’s root it had been made from.
Hadjar had no doubt that he would get a lot of Imperial coins for this in Dahanatan, even for just a gram of the powder, and he had fifty. It was difficult to even calculate how much one pouch like this one could cost. Moreover, Hadjar figured that the specially prepared powder would cost much more than the original fern would have. It was a decent reward for all that Hadjar had endured.... The memory of Derek, Alea, and Irma made his chest tighten. Hadjar immediately banished the memories of the recent past from his mind.
When one cultivated, their mind had to be pure and free of all worldly concerns. Otherwise, instead of making progress, Hadjar would receive a blow to his Core that would render him helpless for a week. Or he might even regress, and no one could ever continue to progress along the path of cultivation after that.
Hadjar spent a while circulating the energy in his body according to the instructions written in the ‘Path through the Clouds’ scroll. It was difficult. The Technique wasn’t exactly suitable for the human energy body. What dragons had from birth, Hadjar had to master through sweat and blood.
Quite literally, in fact. Sweat ran down his back, and blood trickled from his nose and eyes.
Half an hour later, when his energy body was warmed up and his Core burned with its own power, Hadjar, without interrupting his meditation, drew the Black Blade. Without any hesitation, he drove it straight into the center of the Sword’s tattoo. The blade sliced through muscle and bone, almost touching his heart. If Hadjar had put too much power into the thrust, he would’ve committed suicide. And if he’d held back too much, the shaman’s powder would’ve gone to waste and wouldn’t have helped him. Removing the sword, Hadjar didn’t allow his wound to heal. Taking the little bag, he held it up to the wound and, by circulating his own energy, sucked in the energy of the powder.
The dragon meditation Technique required the use of the root of a thousand-year-old fern. Its flower was considered a priceless gem, but its root was worth much more than the leaves or stem, because it was the ‘heart’ of the plant. The energy of the root had to be used in such a ‘heart-to-heart’ way.
Hadjar was using the essence of a root that was three thousand years old. So, the energy he was inhaling was almost seven times thicker and more potent!
The energy of the powder was drawn into his body and funneled into his heart. Many mortals, in the pursuit of cheap power, cultivated their muscles: their arms, legs and torso becoming as hard as rock. But they always forgot about the most important human organ — the heart.
This section of the ‘Path through the Clouds’ meditation Technique was dedicated to the heart. As soon as the viscous, thick energy enveloped it, Hadjar’s heart began to beat at an unthinkable speed. The resulting rush of adrenaline sent a terrible spasm through his body. He froze, unable to move. Then the pain came.
Once upon a time, when he’d been just a practitioner, Hadjar had cultivated using the Cores of monsters. In Empires, especially among the nobles, this method was considered barbaric because of the pain, not to mention the risk involved if one made a mistake, so almost no one used it. That pain had been nothing compared to the pain he was feeling right now. Hadjar dismissed it like it was an annoying mosquito. Paying no attention to the terrible agony, he continued to follow the Technique described in the scroll. After everything he’d been through in the past few weeks, the pain was no worse than a refreshing, icy shower.
While continuing to draw in the energy of the powder, he didn’t stop circulating his own. This hadn’t been mentioned in the dragon meditation Technique since dragons couldn’t maintain both processes at once because of their physiology. The human energy body, more flexible when it came to cultivation, could.
And so, gradually, after going through his heart, the energy of the powder moved to his solar plexus, getting closer to the Core of his energy body. With a sharp push, it broke through the last barrier and started surging into his Core. With every breath Hadjar took, his heart and Core became much stronger. In the physical world, every single one of Hadjar’s breaths sent out waves of power that dug out a hole several feet deep, burying him in it.
Four hours later, after the powder in the pouch finally ran out, sitting in a pool of his sweat and blood, Hadjar opened his eyes th
at flashed with a bright, blue light. The energy they released formed a sword, not a black one, either, but a blue blade. The vision only lasted a moment, then faded into a haze.
“The advanced stage,” Hadjar whispered.
He clenched and unclenched his fists as he tried out his new abilities. He was certain that he could now easily destroy even Eon Mrax with just a few attacks. Hadjar got up, climbed out of the ravine, and looked to the east. There stood Fort Darigon, where his mission was waiting for him.
“It’s time to head back.”
Chapter 627
The ‘Drunken Goose’ tavern, which stood at the intersection of four roads, was as noisy as ever. On the first floor, in the common room, there were hundreds of guests. Sitting at round tables made of solid oak, they mostly drank ale. They raised their drinks high in the air and shouted out toasts:
“To the scoundrel who led us to the Baron’s castle!”
“To the treasure map left behind by the old scientist!”
“To the booty of both kinds!”
The tavern at the crossroads was famous for its interesting patrons. Bandits, mercenaries, sky pirates, and other ‘soldiers of fortune’ usually gathered here. The first floor was usually occupied by the noisiest idiots, while the second and third floors were occupied by the quiet types making all sorts of deals.
That was why the figure wrapped in a gray cloak stood out against the background of the noisy first floor. The man sat in a corner of the tavern and calmly drank something from a tall, wooden mug. The foaming drink disappeared into the shadow of his hood. Sometimes, briefly revealed by the light of artifact lamps made from rock crystals, his black hair could be seen. Two feathers, red and white, had been woven into it on the left side, and some ornaments with ancient hieroglyphs on them had been woven into the right side of his hair.
Dragon Heart: Land of Demons. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 7 Page 36