by Charles Dean
What? No, of course not. I’m just trying to make sure you don’t humanize the EXP source too much. I’m worried you’ll do something dumb to save her, or you’ll forget, as you seem to already have, that she was sent by people to murder you, and is currently our slave.
“Collecting rocks,” Desdemona answered while Lars was still listening to the voice in his head. “It’s not really a hobby, is it?” She paused to look up at the sky while walking.
“I mean, I don’t know. I’ve heard of worse hobbies. There used to be a guy who came to our village every year just to check out what knives we made,” Lars replied with a laugh. “You should have seen the way he could spend five hours talking about knives. I asked the guy—I think Blaze was his name, but I don’t know since he had some weird way he spelled it—if he used any of them, and it was like I had stabbed him with the knife myself.”
“He collected knives but didn’t use them?” Desdemona asked, snickering.
“You sure you have the right to do that when you collect rocks? Or are you telling me there is a use for the rocks you collect?” Lars asked with a snicker of his own. “Maybe you build small castles out of them?”
“I did at first . . .” she said. “Well, not castles. I built little villages out of them . . . but that was when I was younger. Now, I just look for fascinating, unique, or interesting ones.”
“How big was your collection?”
“Before I got . . . umm . . .” She scratched at the spot on her neck where the collar was as if she could feel its intangible grip. She was acting like the Qi was choking her too tightly despite Lars having been told that wasn’t exactly how the collars worked. The collars were only ever felt by the wearer if they were disobedient. “Well, I had a few hundred buried a few miles from the sect so that no one else would know where they were. I even found several crystal-like rocks with interesting colors.”
“Did you ever have a favorite rock in the collection?” Lars asked. He didn’t care about rocks, but it was nice having a conversation that wasn’t all doom and gloom, especially since it distracted him from the fact the skin on his thighs was covered with monster blood and his sweat, making his clothing stick to everything.
“A . . . umm . . . a small red one. It might seem dumb to pick that one since it had no shine or luster, and it was rather dull looking to be honest . . . but when I held it, I felt warm sometimes. Sometimes.”
“It doesn’t seem dumb. We all have to like what we like,” Lars replied.
“Well, what about you? What were your hobbies?”
“Trying to cultivate,” Lars admitted with a sigh. “I have spent almost every year of the nearly two decades I’ve been alive trying to cultivate. Go figure that the moment I finally figure it out, it’s already too late.”
“That was your only hobby?”
“Oh, and reading. I read a ton. A traveling salesman used to bring us books by some Mejia guy every now and then,” Lars said.
“Books? How could you even afford books?” she asked, looking at him incredulously. This didn’t surprise Lars. After all, books were incredibly valuable, and he couldn’t even produce a little bit of Qi. It stood to reason that most people would think he was broke. In the world Lars knew, power was influence, and influence was money. If you were strong enough, people would pay to be around you. On the other hand, being weak often meant that some random person would take what belonged to you. The more wealth you accrued, the more likely you were to be the target of a higher-stage cultivator.
“I . . .” Lars chuckled. “I wrote books too. I would trade a copy of my latest work, pretending it was a great master’s, for a big discount on whatever I got off the merchant.”
“You can read and write?” She gave him another sidelong stare. “If you’re well-read and can write properly, then how come you were in the village and not trying to take one of the imperial qualification exams?”
“Because the emperor protects his council, right?” Lars shook his head. How do you come from a place where you were treated like a slave—before the collar ever found its way around your neck—just because you were useful and still not realize that showing off your skills can quickly be a curse if you don’t have the strength to protect yourself?
Well, in her defense, you’re still the idiot here. All of that beautiful EXP in the village, completely wasted as that ungrateful sect of hers killed them before you could. Imagine if you had all that power from every soul in the village you used to live in coursing through your veins. Would you have to worry about any threats? You could easily have been on the emperor’s council, holding your head high without fear. That is, if you wanted to lower your head that much and become some empress’s whipping boy.
Whipping boy? If it came with a bed, I might actually take that offer at the moment, Lars chuckled to himself. “Hmm . . . Though, I just might apply if it means we get a bed and a place to lay our heads for once,” Lars said aloud.
“I don’t think it’s a bad idea,” Desdemona said. Then she froze where she was standing. “Wait, do you hear that?”
“You talking?” Lars asked as he came to a halt, careful not to cover up whatever noise he was listening for with the sound of his footsteps. “Or is there—” Lars went quiet. He could hear it too. Running water. It was faint at first, but he recognized the sound well enough, and he could even tell which direction it was coming from. “Water!”
“YES!!!” Desdemona, who had been wearing a face like she had bitten into the sourest fruit in the world for most of the walk, lit up like a bonfire in the middle of a harvest celebration.
Neither of them needed water. Water was easy to make, as Lars had just learned. However, trickling water meant a creek, and creeks led to rivers, and rivers led to towns. If there was water, it meant they wouldn’t be walking randomly anymore. They’d have a destination, and if they took the time to build it, they could even have a boat—which meant that they wouldn’t be stuck building up the worst case of what Lars’s mother used to call “swamp-ass rash” he had ever experienced.
Never thought the sound of a creek would do it for me, but it does. It really does. If I had a tangible form, I think I’d be wet right now.
You’d dive into a creek? Lars wondered but then ignored the rest of the thought as he practically ran in the direction of the creek.
You really are the idiot here, but sure. Let’s go with that. For all the effort I’ve put into you, I’ve been worried you’d die out here.
You coulda pointed me in the right direction, Lars grumbled internally, if you were so worried about me dying.
Could have, but where is the fun in that? Not to mention, aren’t you glad I didn’t? Now you have more experience and higher skill levels. You’ll look like a proper cultivator by the time you reach whichever city this leads to, despite not being one at all.
“Lars!” Desdemona called from behind him. “Slow down! I can’t go that fast.”
Ugh. Lars groaned internally as he turned to see her doing her best. He half-expected to hear another message from his master about how he should just kill her and save the bother of waiting for her, but the voice was surprisingly silent as he stood there, a hundred paces ahead of the woman and waited for her to reach him.
He could tell that, when she did, she was more than just a little relieved.
“You good?” he asked.
“Yeah . . . just don’t run too fast. I’m still hurting all over. Too much movement might reopen one of the wounds that I’ve been doing my best to heal with steady Qi circulation while we walk,” she explained.
“‘Kay . . .” Lars replied, wondering if he could do the same. He had just gotten his hit points back after taking a long rest.
“Thanks for . . . Thanks for not leaving me,” she said before they began walking once more.
Lars didn’t reply. The sentence dug into Lars because, even now, a part of him wanted to listen to his master and leave her.
It only took half an hour to make it to a
river after reaching the creek and following it. The river was bigger than any Lars had seen before, and if there was someone on the other side of it, Lars imagined that, at most, all he would see was a dot on the horizon. However, following the river downstream, they took several hours to reach any sign of life.
Lars could never have imagined the city even in his wildest dreams. There were dozens of ships coming in and out of the harbor, and its walls were so long that they nearly extended as far as he could see in either direction. They were tall too. In his village, the buildings’ walls had been as tall as ten feet, and Lars had always considered that to be amazing. He had loved sitting on top of the thatched roofs while reading, feeling closer to the sky, but here, it felt like the walls were so high that if one were to walk across the top of them, they could just reach up and pluck a star out of the sky.
“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Lars asked, partially out of curiosity, partially just because he didn’t know what else to say.
“I . . .” Desdemona looked over at Lars. “I don’t know where we are. I’ve never heard of a city this big near your town. The senior brothers and sisters within the sect talked about places they went to a lot . . . but they never mentioned this place.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“I don’t know. But if they didn’t talk about going here . . . there must have been a reason why,” she said.
“The only thing I’m hearing is that this place is likely safe from their designs,” Lars said, a smile creeping across his lips. “And it’s big enough that we can probably completely disappear inside it.”
Or, conversely, there are plenty of people you can make disappear inside of it before anyone is the wiser. You’ve been stuck in the woods, but here is where the real EXP is at. There must be a million bodies filled with Qi for you to take inside there.
Lars didn’t even dignify the notion with a thought.
Hey. You don’t have to do anything. But while you’re doing nothing, your mother’s life—if she is still alive—will be in perpetual danger. But hey, don’t look so glum. As long as you abandon the woman who raised you and ignore the person who's been with you all your life, I’m sure you can live happily ever after with your slave in this new town—a city filled with opportunity.
Lars gulped, trying to control his emotions as he walked toward the new city with Desdemona, uncertain what awaited him.
Beautiful boobs, bouncy butts, and bunches of buffoons to kill. That’s what’s waiting for us. That’s what real civilization has always had to offer. Lots and lots of everything we could ever hope for.
Chapter 4
Name: Lars
Level: 2
Power: 75
Speed: 40
Fortitude (HP): 40
Resistance: 40
Unspent: 109
Elemental Abilities
Wind Qi: 56
Toxin Qi: 32
Fire Qi:18
Ice Qi: 8
Water Qi: 6
Unassigned Qi: 15
Abilities
[5] Advanced Reading Level 1 [32,987/1,000,000 Words Read]
[10] Knife Hand Level 2 [0/10 Unaware Combatants Killed]
[20] Toxin Immunity Level 4 [1/10 Toxins Consumed]
[N/A] Unyielding Ice Veins [No Level]
Item Skill Progressions
Enslavement [1/5 People Enslaved]
The line to get in the city was longer than Lars had anticipated. He hadn’t realized that so many people would be entering a city, especially from the port side as Lars was doing, in the middle of the afternoon. Thankfully, the guards at the gate seemed to be doing their job just fine for the most part as they rushed one person after the other through, only momentarily stopping people.
“I.D. stones,” Desdemona said in a voice so low it was practically a mumble as they stood next to each other in line. “Everyone is going through quickly because they have I.D. stones.”
“Of course you need I.D. stones,” a man behind Lars said.
Lars was dead tired from their travels and hadn’t paid attention to who was waiting in line behind them, only paying attention to the mostly average-looking people in front of him. When he turned around, he immediately noticed solid-white furry ears popping out of the head of a white-haired man who stood half a foot taller than he did. “Oh my, you look even worse from the front than you do from the back, you tailless peasant.”
Tailless peasant. Lars winced. He hadn’t been called that in a long time.
“What? Did you lose it in a fight? Did someone rip it out so that no one would confuse you for a man with dignity? Or did you cut it off yourself, ashamed of your own lineage?”
The highbrow, snobby voice grated even more than the insulting words as Lars stared at the man, slightly in shock. He had forgotten the stories his mother had told him of how cruel most of the world outside the village was, but this was a reminder.
If this is how people act to random strangers in this city, what are they like to people who do something worthy of their ire? Lars paused as he decided how diplomatic he wanted to be. He didn’t know if he could just ignore the man or if that would cause him to be even angrier. He could still remember the slap across his face that the cat-eared bastard back in his home village had given him when he tried to ignore the name-calling as a kid. It wasn’t enough to be humiliated; he had to give his attention and time to the person humiliating him too, or else he’d be attacked again.
He’s only a Stage 3 cultivator. You can sense that, right? You understand Qi enough to tell that, right? It means you could just beat him up here. A quick surprise attack with your Knife Hand in the right spot? It’d be a 3 or 2.5 times vulnerability coefficient with an effective power of 225 thanks to the skill. You could pop him like a zit in front of everyone watching. And, the best part is . . . you’re not in the town yet. That means the guards wouldn’t have jurisdiction. You could just kill him, Lars. Kill him, Lars.
As tempting as the thought was, being a scummy piece of crap jerk didn’t feel like reason enough to murder someone to Lars. “It’s a long story,” Lars said, giving a small, weak smile as he tried not to show how hard he was clenching his teeth. “But thanks for the information about the I.D. stones. It has been a rough day, and . . .” He paused, trying to think of how to de-escalate the situation further. “Well, my driver used to handle such things. They were always beneath my station.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, he could tell that the lie wasn’t only befuddling to the man in front of him, but also to Desdemona. He quickly gave her a glare as if to tell her to follow his lead.
“Your driver? You, looking like the poorest country bumpkin I’ve ever seen, had a carriage driver?” the man replied dubiously, laughing.
“Why wouldn’t I have a driver? The distance I travel on errands for my master . . . It is too great to ever consider doing the carriage stuff myself. After all, what else are servants for?” Lars could read the confusion on the man’s face as he tried to process whether what Lars was saying was true.
“Ugh,” groaned the woman next to the confused man. She had tiny, little horns popping out of each side of her head and an ox-like tail wrapped around her dress. “Another loud-mouthed farmhand who thinks that we can’t tell uncultured riff-raff when we see it just because we can’t know exactly where he is from. What master? Are you going to pretend that some nearly twenty-year-old cultivator that can’t even reach Stage 2 has a personal master of any import or status? Filthy liar. For this, I should have you hanged when we get inside the city.”
“Mishil, quiet,” the man said quickly and harshly. “She has a slave collar.”
The woman’s mouth hung open for a second in surprise before quickly shutting. “I see,” she said. “So, your . . .”
“Yes.” Lars nodded as he began recounting one of the stories he had read when he was younger. “We were robbed by bandits on the way here. It was rather difficult escaping during the confusion, and I was force
d to abandon our bodyguards during the escape. I am still quite upset, having lost . . .” Lars was about to say “so many good people,” but then he remembered something his mother had always told him: the cruel care more about treasures than people. “Having lost such treasure. But, alas, it’s better than losing my life.”
With every word that left his mouth, Lars could tell that he was not only drawing surprise from the people in front of him but also from Desdemona, who increasingly looked more and more befuddled. She had put a hand over her mouth, likely to stop the people they were facing from seeing her changing smirks, but from where he stood, Lars could see them clearly.
“Oh my . . . and your master,” the snobbish man began, his eyes sharpening as a half-smirk drew itself across the left side of his face, “he must be someone of great prestige to trust such treasure to . . .”
“Her apprentice.” Lars stressed the word “her,” thinking of how annoyed she would be to get called a man, “and yes, she is of great prestige, and she will forgive me this issue, but not the bandits. I can only imagine the cruel things she will do to them . . .” Lars paused as he let a warm smile paint itself across his face for dramatic effect, using the image of how good it would feel to beat up the dirty sect members that stole his mother from him as a source for his joy. “And I can only hope to watch as she tortures them slowly for years.”
With that last statement, both the woman and the man lost the amusement that had been beginning to appear on their faces.
“What a tragic event.” The woman’s words seemed sincere as she gave him a pitiful look. “And here, if not for the fact you were able to afford such a high-class bed slave as you keep in your company, I would have taken you for nothing more than a peasant who needed to volunteer his spot in line for us. I feel deeply ashamed for not recognizing one of my own kind. Tell me, did they also . . .” She glanced down to where Lars’s tail should have been.