by Charles Dean
Jill was wearing an exaggerated frown. “Ah, you can tell I need help? It is indeed a shame that my weakness is so obvious. If I were stronger, like my younger half-brother, then . . . then a young master such as yourself wouldn’t have to ask me how he can be of assistance. So pitiful.”
“Oh, I just meant . . . is there something you wanted?”
“Of course! I want to be stronger and more powerful like you promised you’d help Matthew achieve,” she said without breaking her overly obvious “woe is me” act in the slightest. “I was just afraid to ask, but since you’re asking instead, it is such a relief.”
Lars didn’t know what was wrong with the women in this house. Between Maggie and Jill, it was like he was dealing with the most cunning people he had ever met in his life. Even when he got something he wanted out of an exchange with one of them, he felt like even that desire was their doing. “There is no chance that . . . Maggie is your mother as well, is there?” Lars asked after thinking about the similarities.
“Ennn.” She nodded. “A wonderful mother indeed. She produced a fine son and a daughter that apparently you, the great disciple of Hsein Ku, approve of as well.”
Lars sighed. “I want a back rub tomorrow before I teach you anything,” he grumbled after a moment's thought. He had planned on making her a disciple if possible after that first massage, but since he knew she wanted it desperately, he figured he could milk her for at least one more massage.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, bright and early, Master Lars,” she said with a smile. Her sad frown from a moment ago when she was faking pity on herself was completely gone. “And don’t worry, I won’t tell my father how you defiled his daughter’s innocence under his very roof less than an hour’s time after breaking bread with him. That would be a terrible thing to reveal about such a kind man as yourself.”
Yup. Yup, I’m dead, Lars thought as he watched her finish her veiled threat, bow her head one more time, and turn around so he could admire her graceful exit.
WAIT! STOP HER! DON’T LET HER LEAVE!
“Hold on,” Lars called out, obeying his master.
“Is there something else you need?” Jill asked as she whirled about. “Did you want to begin cultivating right now?”
No. Tell her to bring that ham sandwich. I wasn’t kidding.
You really are going to get me killed.
Hey! It’s my gifted knowledge that will be teaching her, so she’s my disciple, and my disciple better get me a damn ham sandwich.
“Could you . . . run to the kitchen and get me a sandwich with ham, stone-ground mustard, lettuce, tomato, and some bacon?” Lars asked.
Attaboy.
“It’d be my pleasure, Master Lars. Is there anything else you’d like?”
“No . . .” he said tentatively, giving enough time for his master to potentially interject with another outlandish demand first.
“Then I’ll be right back with your ham sandwich and a cold glass of milk to wash it down. It is truly a blessing that you’ve come to House Neukdaegalbi,” she said, turning and leaving.
Man, I know we’ve had a rough go of it lately . . . but all in all, pretty damn good day, wouldn’t you say?
Quiet. We eat that ham sandwich and go straight to sleep. I think I’m burnt out on your little quests for the day.
Oh, don’t be a sour sport. Remember that feeling we shared in the prison? All that Qi flowing into us? Try to act like that didn’t feel divine. This day has been great, and we’re a lot closer now than we were at the start of it to being strong enough to help your mother.
Lars rolled over and closed his eyes while he waited on the ham sandwich his master insisted on them getting. He scarfed it down after it arrived, rinsed his mouth with the milk after, and then lay back in bed, closed his eyes, and tried to go to sleep. The only problem was that his master was right. That feeling of the Qi pouring into his body had been the best feeling of his life, and he couldn’t get it out of his head as he tried to go to sleep. It took nearly half an hour before his mind was finally able to wander off and sleep set in.
-----
Lars woke up to the chilling feeling of air across his cold body and a foot literally pressed against his side.
What in the hell? he thought as he opened his eyes and looked around to see whose foot was interrupting his peaceful rest.
Desdemona. Lars frowned at the girl—or, rather, at the only part of her he could see: her foot. The remainder of her was bundled up in the covers with her head on the other side of the bed.
He was just about to yell, “Wake up,” when he remembered the exact nature of their relationship.
How is yelling, “Wake up,” at a slave or a person any different? No matter what happens, the end result is the same: they wake up. It’s not like a person can go, “Oh, you said to wake up? Well, I choose not to hear it because you don’t have any authority.”
Just let me be me, Lars grumbled at his master, annoyed with the fact she was actually right this once.
I’ll let you be as soon as we don’t have to deal with that foot. Wake the woman up and kick her out of . . .
“Desdemona,” Lars said, moving the foot away from him.
“Not home. Come back later, Rickett,” Desdemona mumbled from inside her blanket cocoon.
Blerg. Frowning, Lars grabbed some of the covers and began yanking them, trying to cover his body. Even though the weather didn’t seem that bad, lying out naked in a room as the morning breeze struck him left him chilly, and more than that, being in a bed without a nice, warm, heavy blanket just didn’t seem right.
However, just as he started yanking the sheets, Desdemona pulled back without even properly waking up to look around and see what was happening. She had plenty of covers, enough to cover her and another five women the same size, but for some reason, her nearly unconscious self defended every inch of linen that the luxuriant bed provided as if all the sheets were her birthright and ceding a single square centimeter of fabric would spell her certain death.
It was at this point that Lars realized she had gone from being a Stage 2 Qi-Gathering Cultivator to a Stage 3 Qi-Gathering Cultivator overnight. Moreover, without even being able to sense her Qi, he could tell exactly how much she had improved since their fight with the overly large clawed bipedal creatures in the woods.
The cultivation method we gave, like most good bird blood cultivation methods, overemphasizes Power and Speed to the detriment of Fortitude and Resistance. Because she is practicing the phoenix blood technique, her elemental constitution has changed from one with wind and water to one of fire.
Yeah, I’m still confused about that. How exactly does elemental Qi work? How is it that I have burning-hot Fire Qi coursing through my veins, so hot that I can shoot flames from my fingers but I don’t take any damage? Yet . . . the Toxin Qi, at only 32 points, nearly killed me? I don’t get elemental types at all . . . It had been weighing on him, but the events of the last few days had bounced him back and forth between one problem and the next, or one event and the next, so often that he hadn’t had time to really think. When he finally did, he was too worn out and dead feeling inside to process what he was thinking about. Now that it was the morning, and the subject of her Fire Qi had been brought up, he had to put a voice to his curiosity. Why don’t fire elemental cultivators just die from their own flames then?
If I say it’s “magic,” you won’t just ignore the issue and leave it alone, will you?
Probably not . . . Lars laughed, the noise prompting a very weak, shallow foot attack from the woman still holding tight to the covers. Lars was positive that he could take them from her but knew that he would definitely rip the sheets in the process.
Well, remember how, when I explained the damage formula earlier, I said that it was the formula for “melee” attacks?
Lars nodded. Yeah, I remember. So the formula is different for ranged ones?
Kind of. There are actually several different formulas and factors. Basically, almost every
ranged attack will fall into the category of an elemental Qi attack. This is because it’s nearly impossible for a cultivator to have neutral Qi. These elements have strengths and weaknesses. If you were to use fire to attack someone who is innately attuned to the fire element, like the girl next to you, and then to do any damage at all, the fire attack would need to exceed four times the usual Resistance threshold. This is because the phoenix has an innate fire constitution. The fire part of the Fire Qi attack isn’t hurting them; the overpowering nature of Qi smashing Qi is.
So, like, if she has a Resistance of 120 . . . I need 480 Fire Qi to even start hurting her? Lars asked.
Not exactly. Qi attacks are concentrated, but Resistance is spread out across the body. As such, if no other factors are considered, and you hit someone with an attack using 100 points of elemental Qi, and they have 100 Resistance, you still hurt them. Their resistance is only 80% as effective as it should be, so you’ll shave off 20 hit points with that attack if you’re using an element that is neutral against their innate constitution. After that though, the damage is much easier to calculate than melee attacks, as it’s just Qi smashing Qi. With Resistance though, if you’re using Fire Qi to attack a fire cultivator, then your Qi is essentially only a fourth as effective as it should be.
So, if I’m using a fire attack against someone that has an innate fire constitution, then I’d need to use at least 321 points of Fire Qi to do 1 point of damage to them?
Remember that it’s a factor of four, so no. You’d only be doing 1/4th a point of damage. To do a full point, you’d need 324 points of Fire Qi.
Okay . . . Lars was beginning to understand. But what if it’s water versus fire?
In that case, the Water Qi attack, if it was somehow doing damage, a thing that’s hard to imagine as people can, you know . . . just go with the flow or swim usually . . . then, technically, instead of being divided by 4, it’d be multiplied by 2. With 41 points of Water Qi or Ice Qi against a fire user, as both of those counter fire, you’d deal two points of damage against someone with 100 Resistance. The thing is, though, at your level, there aren’t a lot of skills that can properly leverage the elemental power of Qi. At the Qi-Gathering Stage, you can create streams of flame or spouts of water. You can chill something you put your hand on or light a campfire with ease. The abominations that are immortal . . . Their element can freeze the lava in a volcano or turn the frigid poles into an inferno. Their elemental Qi attacks defy reason and nature. Yours, for the moment at least, just pass for parlor tricks. So, don’t worry about the damage formula so much as how you can use the elemental Qi to shape the flow of the fight to your advantage: wind to help you move faster, water and ice to slip up your opponents, water and fire to create a wall of steam. Your thinking of elements so far has been correct.
Lars nodded along. I see . . . but that still doesn’t answer my original question: Why did the Toxin Qi hurt me, but the Fire Qi didn’t? It’s much lower than my Resistance, so it shouldn’t actually be able to do damage to me.
Well, remember how I said that it isn’t the fire element that is doing the damage but the overpowering Qi if they have an innate fire constitution?
Right . . . so if the Qi is part of you and not pressing into you from an aggressive force, then it doesn’t do damage? Does this mean that I have a fire constitution with every element that I have but toxin?
Not exactly. You have a special constitution that attunes with the elements of man. Consider it your one blessing and proper heritage as a true human. If Desdemona absorbed any Ice Qi the way you do, it’d begin wrecking her body immediately. Some types of Qi, though, like toxin, are not part of mankind’s heritage. Mankind may have played with fire and lightning, harnessed the oceans, and turned ice into nothing more than its food storage mechanism, but poison was always its enemy. It never achieved balance with it the same way it did many of the other elements. To make matters worse, it’s a damage-over-time effect that always deals some guaranteed damage, no matter what, and also inflicts other properties. You had 33 Resistance at the time, and you had just absorbed 32 points of Toxin Qi. If it were any other type of Qi, you’d have taken 5 or 6 damage at most since you had a neutral constitution—the amount by which it exceeded your Resistance—while you fought it and then expelled it, spitting it out of you like an unwelcome loogie. With Toxin Qi, however, the damage doesn’t stop. It seeps into your very essence and continues to wreak havoc until you either develop an immunity, or you die. To be honest, it’s one of my favorite types of Qi. Five stars. Would recommend.
Lars contemplated the meaning of that statement. He hadn’t realized exactly how powerful the Qi he had within him was. So even if the damage isn’t great initially, as long as it’s enough to actually hurt you . . . it’ll just keep hurting you, over and over again, until you die . . .
The best part is that Toxin Qi, like ice against fire, is always “super” effective against any non-Toxin-Qi-attuned creature. You only need half as much of it to break a person’s initial Resistance against it and begin killing them.
Lars looked at the 85 Unassigned Qi points. So all of these unspent points I have for elemental attunement . . . I should probably put them all into toxin.
Last I checked, you don’t have fangs, and I don’t see you getting every single person you fight against to drink a cup of water you hand them like you’re trying to repeat that to-die-for performance of yours from the jail yesterday. If I were you, I’d keep holding them. Who knows? You may find yourself with a rare element you want to drastically increase the power of.
What do you mean by that, find myself with a rare element? Lars asked. Can I not assign the points to any element? Do I have to have the element first?
Yes. It might be shown in a clean and easy format to you, but much like with the massive stat dump last night while you were walking, there is a lot going on under the hood that your body accounts for and works around naturally without you having to think about it, but it still needs a baseline to work. It might be able to stop you from tripping or busting your rear trying to relearn how to walk after your Power and Speed multiply by several-fold, but it can’t magically manifest an element out of nothing. It needs to steal a piece of it to work with. Once it has that piece, when you reach a certain threshold and have Unassigned Qi left over, it can attune that Qi to the element already within you.
That is a very long way of just saying, “Yes, you have to have the element first.” Lars scratched his belly, having given up his fight for the sheets with Desdemona. He was contemplating closing his eyes and trying to go back to sleep when his master interrupted him.
Don’t sleep in here. If you have to rest, go nap in the bath. It’s nice, warm, and we won’t have to listen to her rear end sounding off like a foul, fleshy wind chime warning of the coming butt-pocalypse. I know some people can’t handle spicy food, but you’d think someone with a newly acquired fire constitution wouldn’t be echoing out a symphony of sinister sounds warning of the smell-pocalypse. Her stomach should be able to handle that . . . stuff, so to speak.
That bad?
It was all freaking night. I hate sharing senses with you sometimes, and I hate your dumb need to sleep every freaking day. Can you please explain to me what the point of lying around like a moron is?
You weren't complaining about us sharing senses during the massage . . .
Whatever. Just . . . abandon ship. The sanctity of this place has been fouled.
Ha . . . okay. Lars consented and got up and grabbed the robe that he had been wearing last night before hopping into bed.
What? We don’t need to be putting on clothes to get into a bath. It actually defeats the purpose of it altogether. What are you up to?
I’m going to collect on that quest of yours yesterday. Lars took a moment to pop his neck and adjust his back, stretching a bit as he looked around the room. You promised me that I’d have the knowledge to write them cultivation books, so I’m going to go do that. It’ll be one less thi
ng on my plate.
He had been hoping that Matthew’s mother, Maggie, would have assisted him with the problem he mentioned yesterday, and sure enough, there was an inkwell, a quill, and stacks of blank parchment held down by a miniature wolf statue on the table near the villa’s door. When Lars went over to the statue, he found that not only were there blank documents being held tightly to the desk, but there was also a little note left for him.
Lars, when you’re ready to instruct my young ones, they’ll be in the main hall waiting for you. Jill will have breakfast ready for you. If there is anything else you need during your stay, do let me know. Don’t let the other staff know. I’d hate for Nathaniel to believe you are taking advantage of his hospitality, but I am aware that kindness is not a one-way street.
~Maggie
After reading the message, Lars sat down, picked up the quill, and began to work.
What?! No breakfast first?! Jill is probably waiting for us in some skimpy outfit with a beautiful meal. I wonder what it is . . . Maybe it’s something simple like toasted bread and salted and peppered eggs served with a plate of hashed and fried potatoes. Maybe it’s something sweet like jelly doughnuts . . . LARS. It’s food! Waiting for us! Eat first; we can work later. Don’t be the type of psychopath who passes up a potential plate of fresh bacon, eggs, and cheese bagels.
I’m not entirely sure what all of those foods are, but I need to keep my word. Especially after last night. We can’t always just be taking advantage of other people’s hospitality.