by Charles Dean
Oh Gong reached behind her back and pulled out an iron rod seemingly from nowhere that grew a little in size. “How, how come my poison didn’t—”
She never got a chance to finish her words before Lars’s Qi blade slashed her throat.
“You’ll pay for that!” the purple-tailed woman said as she rushed over, her fist igniting in the air as it came crashing toward him. Lars easily moved to the side and kneed her in the stomach with as much force as he could before slashing his Qi blade down and separating the woman’s head clean from her neck.
Lars then turned to the fourth woman, whose tail indicated she was likely raven-blooded, and his two-foot Qi blade remained extended as he faced her, savoring the feeling of 1018 stat points and the elemental Qi flowing into him. “Well?” he asked. “Not gonna stop me from murdering Bok Kyu?”
The woman just smiled and slowly moved toward the hole in the wall Lars had made when he entered. “It won’t matter what you do. They’re going to kill you,” she said with a laugh as the lizard-tailed guards Lars had been avoiding earlier smashed through the hole in the wall.
Forget it, Lars thought, about to turn and book it once more. Even though he was now even stronger, having just gained another 1018 stat points from the three kills, as well as 218 Lightning Qi, 75 Metal Qi, and 150 Fire Qi, he didn’t know if he could beat the lizard men yet. He looked at the door and the walls, thinking about running again, but Ophelia immediately objected the moment his eyes began to look for an escape.
That girl is precious Qi! DON’T YOU DARE LEAVE HER THERE! It’s worth the risk, Lars! Fight her. Fight them! Fight them right here! You can kill all three of them, and we can soak in that beautiful Qi until our brains melt from the ecstasy!
Do you even have a brain?
Are you calling me an idiot? I’m the genius here. I’m the one who taught you. How dare you think such a rude and offensive thought?! You should show some filial piety toward your master!
Wait, wait, I meant a fleshy one. A tangible one. Not questioning how smart you are, just . . . I didn’t know you had a body.
Of course I do! It’s yours now, hahaha. It seems I’ve stalled you long enough that you don’t even have a choice about fighting. Go get ‘em!
Lars felt a little used as he reactivated Knife Hand and took a deep breath, preparing for the battle he was going to have with the men he had been running away from. He thought about the 1,490 unspent points that he still had and how to distribute them. The opponents he was facing could have nearly 1,300 points in every category. Only his Speed, at 1,623, exceeded that. Since he was already down to only 297 hit points after being stabbed, he didn’t believe he could build himself into a tanky individual like one of the turtle-blooded, defense-oriented cultivators Ophelia had mentioned. No matter what happened, he knew he’d probably be dead in a single punch, so he had to decide in the span of a second whether he wanted to try and put all of the unspent points he had into more Speed so he could dodge their blows with incredible ease or if he wanted to put them into Power so he could kill them off quickly.
POWER!
Ophelia’s one-word vote came in perfectly, and Lars raised his Power from 539 to 2,029, making him 200 times stronger than someone who hadn’t entered the Qi-Gathering Stage of cultivation. This way, even if Shawn and Adams each had 1,279 Resistance, the maximum possible score for an average Stage 6 Qi-Gathering Cultivator, Lars would still be able to kill them in two solid hits apiece. That wouldn’t work, of course, if they were heavy Fortitude junkies who practiced a technique that gave them lopsided stats favoring defense. If they were only around the middle of Stage 6 and normal, then he would be able to one-shot them.
Win or lose—Lars gulped and prepared for the fight—it’s going to be over in about one hit for any of us.
The first of the two lizard-tailed men attacked him with the same upper and lower attack combination that he had used in the kitchen. His tail swept around at the same time as his left fist, sweeping in a wide arc as the guard spun the momentum of his body, clearly putting everything he had into the double attack.
“Shawn! Get him!” the woman called as the guard made his attack.
This time, though, Lars didn’t try to jump back. He had learned from the last encounter that doing that only left him in a worse position than when he started, so he tried something different. Leveraging his Speed, he rushed forward to punch the lizard man in the belly.
Just before he made contact, however, a strong gust of wind pushed against him. It didn’t stop him from landing the blow, sending Shawn flying back and into Adams, who was coming up behind him, but it did soften the attack enough that Lars wasn’t able to put his momentum into it or hit the guard with anywhere near the force he should have. Lars was blown back a half-second later and smashed into the wall hard enough to shake the house’s frame. The wind kept blowing, pushing him harder and harder against the wall.
“Get him!” the woman yelled. “Adams, kill him while I have him pinned!”
“Damn, freaking wind,” Lars snarled as he tried to escape. The way the wind was pushing him, slightly upward, his feet didn’t come close to the ground. He felt like a sitting duck, stuck watching Adams throw his comrade Shawn to the side and rush in for what was going to be a very easy kill.
Lars felt like he was stuck underwater with the current pressing against him rather than standing in a room. Wait . . . Lars blinked as an idea struck him. It is just like water! Rather than flailing his feet against the air or trying to kick off where he had no real leverage, he turned over and sprung off the wall, pushing with his legs and hands at the same time and twisting in the air so he could face the direction he was going as his massive strength let him soar, even against the strong wind, into the air past Adams, who was now scurrying to turn around as Lars shot like an arrow overhead. The wind user adjusted her hands and began yet another deadly-looking move, and Lars used his only ranged attack to strike at her before she could send him crashing into the ceiling.
Opening his mouth and taking advantage of the fact his Flame of the Pill God was now a much higher level, he let out four streams of fire and sent them toward her. She quickly created a gust of wind that stopped two blazes from reaching her. The repelled flames were pushed back toward Lars, but the other two, which he had swept out toward his left and right, escaped the wind attack and traveled across the walls and then the floor before reaching the girl and coiling around her body. She opened her mouth as if to scream, but then she was quickly roasted to death before even a sound could exit her lips.
“HEI FENG!!!” Adams yelled loudly as the woman’s burnt, dried-up body collapsed onto its knees before falling face-first onto the floor.
Shawn climbed to his feet and began furiously yelling while stamping the floor. Lars, still in the air, was unable to react when a stomp cracked the ground, shattering not only the wooden floor into bits, but also the entire building. The roof even broke into pieces, which fell to the floor with Lars.
What is the point of that? Lars’s confusion quickly went away as he lifted the debris off his head. While he was still trying to get up—the rubble making it hard to move as it gave Lars few places to put his hands—he saw that both Shawn and Adams were fine. Unlike Lars, who had been flying through the air, they had still been on the ground when the roof collapsed, and their tails had quickly swept away the debris around them as it fell.
“You’re dead now!” Shawn shouted, rushing at Lars as fast as he could while throwing aside debris.
Doing his best to ignore the cloud of dust from the shattered shingles, cracked floor, and broken wooden beams that somehow kicked up all around him, Lars put his hand down and tried to push himself off the ground, but he ended up hitting a mostly intact tile, cracking the tile and sliding forward instead.
Shawn leapt into the air, his tail coming straight down at Lars like it was a giant rolling pin and Lars nothing more than a little ball of dough that needed to be smoothed out. He tried rolling out of th
e way; however, that failed too. He was stuck on all sides by a mountain of debris. Panicking, Lars did the only thing he could think of: he punched his fist into the ground and pulled himself forward and through the rubble, using his hand like a climber’s pick. His body shot toward the wall he had broken in through earlier, and Shawn’s attack landed inches away from where Lars’s body had been.
Lars didn’t have a chance to celebrate the miss, however, as Adams launched an aerial attack at Lars’s new position. This forced Lars to pull himself across the ground once more, stopping only momentarily to throw one of the roof’s clay shingles at Shawn’s face with the hand he didn’t currently have stabbing into the ground. Then he chucked another one at Adams’ face and then one more at Shawn’s. It was obvious the shingles didn’t hurt them at all, but that wasn’t what Lars was after. He wanted the shingles to break apart, to shatter and create a larger cloud of dust in front of the lizard men in hopes it would obscure their vision—or, at the very least, their reflexes would force them to spend time and energy dodging the would-be attacks rather than just ignoring them and going after Lars again.
At the cost of several points of damage from the rubble and debris scraping against him, Lars’s little plan bought him the precious moments he needed to clear the largest pile of debris in the center of the room and stand up.
“You’ve only bought yourself a few seconds. You’re still going to die for what you did to the girls,” Shawn sneered, rushing forward with Adams. The two came at Lars shoulder to shoulder with their tails dragging across the ground behind them and kicking up another wave of dust and debris in their wake.
Lars gulped, knowing he couldn’t dodge them. He extended his Knife Hand’s Qi blade over his right hand and rushed toward Adams, who was to Lars’s right.
When he came in close, Adams threw the same sloppy punch Shawn had thrown earlier, forecasting exactly where it was going to land, and Lars was able to sneak in before the blow could reach him, jamming his Qi blade into Adams’s ribs as they collided. While the force was almost enough to knock Lars back, his momentum was greater, and the collision ended up sending Adams barreling to the ground. Shawn tried to protect his colleague from a follow-up attack with a tail sweep, but Lars extended his foot in the best downward smashing kick he could manage, landing it directly on top of Shawn’s tail and blowing the appendage apart. Bone fragments flew out as the muscles shredded into pieces. The severed end spun away, sliding through the debris and leaving a solid crimson trail like it was drawing flowers across the ground.
As Shawn screamed out in pain, Lars didn’t expect him to keel over and die, but Qi began pouring out of Shawn the moment the kick landed. Not wanting to lose time on a dead man, Lars quickly turned back toward Adams, who was still trying to get up, and kicked him as hard as he could in the ribs. Blood spurted from Adams’s mouth and wound, and the man flew high into the air like a punted ball, landing some twenty or thirty feet away moments later. His body exploded across the ground from the force of the fall, his soft flesh flattening against the ground, partially separating it from his mangled bones.
Ahh . . . That’s the spot, Lars thought, reveling in the feeling as streams of Qi larger than any he had felt before ran through the air and into him. They lit up every node of pleasure in Lars’s body. This just . . . This just feels too good . . . I could get addicted to this feeling . . . The euphoria from gaining 2,114 stat points, 408 Fire Qi, and 175 Wind Qi persisted, taking longer to fade than usual, and his mind, nearly blank, struggled to collect itself.
It really is that good, isn’t it? For me, before, it was always just a thing I knew was happening. With your body, though, the joy of newfound power is more tangible than I could have ever imagined. Days like this, Lars, I’m so glad to be with you—well, for a different reason than usual, that is.
It really does hit the spot. He sighed as the pleasure faded. Its absence was jarring and left a lingering hunger within him, a yearning hunger his conscience wouldn’t ever let him appease without good moral reason.
Chapter 10
Name: Lars
Level: 5
Power: 2029
Speed: 1623
Fortitude (HP): 447
Resistance: 320
Unspent: 2114
Elemental Abilities
Fire Qi: 1077
Wind Qi: 495
Metal Qi: 280
Ice Qi: 272
Earth Qi: 246
Lightning Qi: 218
Water Qi: 115
Wood Qi: 66
Toxin Qi: 32
Unassigned Qi: 85
Abilities
[10] Advanced Reading Level 2 [15,109/2,000,000 Words Read]
[10] Knife Hand Level 2 [1/10 Unaware Combatants Killed]
[20] Toxin Immunity Level 4 [2/10 Toxins Consumed]
[N/A] Unyielding Ice Veins [No Level]
[N/A] Falling Water Dancing over the Moon [No Level]
[N/A] Flame of the Pill God Level 6
Item Skill Progressions
Enslavement [1/5 People Enslaved]
Active Quests
Go slap yourself!
Don’t be sad.
“Dear gods above and demons below, I asked for one simple thing: no mess. I didn’t judge you for your clearly murderous habits, your weird intrusion into my room during my only day off in a month, or that stupid, stupid, freaking look on your face you seem to get randomly, like you’re not with us. All I did was ask a single, simple favor. Not a hard one. Not hard at all. I mean, was it really that tough? UGH!!!” The man who had been reading the picture book was fussing through the hole in the wall as he stared at the broken building Lars was standing in the middle of. The guy’s eyes darted left and right as he took in the carnage Lars had created.
“Uhh . . . sorry?” Lars didn’t know how to respond to the angry man.
“Birkett, get the broom; Birkett, get the mop; Birkett, take out the trash; Birkett, clean the pipes; Birkett, do the dishes . . . It’s always me. It’s ALWAYS me. Gods damn this. You know I’m going to have to clean this all up. Every single bit of it. I wouldn’t be surprised either if that slave-driving crime-lord-wannabe, Bok Kyu, tries to get me to put the shingles back together and rebuild the whole damn thing without any tools . . .”
“Could you not whine at the murderous psychopath, Birkett?” the other man said as he came up and tugged on his friend’s shoulder. “I really don’t want you to die here, man.”
“Oh, come on, like you really care, Ben. The only reason you’re trying to stop me is that, if I die, you’re going to be stuck doing this alone instead of me,” Birkett complained.
“Bro, come on, this guy is clearly off his rocker. Look at that stab wound in his back, and look at that smile on his face. Just come on! Let’s get out of here,” Ben whispered to Birkett, but not softly enough that Lars couldn’t hear it clearly.
“No, I’m done with this. I don’t care what Bok Kyu does to me anymore. I can’t do this. I can’t do this again. If he makes me clean this up, I’m going to either shove my broomstick up his rear so far he’s spitting out splinters, or I’m going to die trying. I just . . . I can’t do it, man. One day off, one day off a freaking month, and this happens . . .”
“Uhh . . . really sorry about that . . .” Lars couldn’t help but pity the man and feel his frustration. “But you know I’m going to kill Bok Kyu, so it’s not like he will be able to order you around after I’m done . . . so, uhh . . . cheer up, buddy.”
“Ah, so you’re going to kill my employer and leave me homeless and on the streets. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. You know I went to the imperial college, right? Ben and I both did. We learned accounting and business management from the top advisors in the entire school. Great marks we got too, and this is what we do. I mop and sweep, and he dusts walls and polishes countertops. Ten years. Ten years in school for that,” Birkett grumbled. “All because that damn king closed the Civil Service Exam to new applicants right as we graduated.”<
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“Bro . . . just . . . please leave the murderous, homeless-looking guy alone. He just toasted Shawn and Adams in two hits. He broke a building. Can we please leave? Bok Kyu doesn’t know we stayed in today. We can pretend we went to the market for food. Let’s just get out of here . . .” Ben said, pulling at Birkett’s arm again as his face continued its descent from slightly worried to pale and mortified as he took in more and more of Lars’s work.
“Relax,” Lars told Ben, who looked like the anxiety might finish him off any minute. “I am not killing anyone who isn’t committed to this horrid enterprise of Bok Kyu’s. You’re fine.”
Despite Lars’s assurances, Ben didn’t seem to be buying it at all. He was still trying to pull at Birkett.
“Well, if you’re going to kill Bok Kyu, you need to do it away from his fatal female foursome,” Birkett suggested. “Those four girls will kill you instantly before you even get a chance to do anything. Two of them are practically a single step away from being Qi-Condensing Cultivators, after all. The only reason Bok Kyu hasn’t let them make the breakthrough is that the bastard is too cheap to pay for the upgraded slave collar that would keep them bound once they progress.”
“Huh?” Lars didn’t understand what Birkett meant. Lars had been there in front of Bok Kyu earlier, and he didn’t notice any “fatal females,” much less four of them. Bok Kyu had seemed . . . less capable than he was, and that was even before Lars’s murderous rampage through the estate. The slaves too seemed weak. He had expected the toughest one to potentially be a Stage 3 Qi-Gathering Cultivator, but he couldn’t tell. They didn’t give off the same feel as most Qi-Gathering Cultivators. “Who are the fatal female foursome?”
“Gisaeng One through Four, they’re the fatal female foursome,” Birkett explained. “They might look like the only reason Bok Kyu keeps them around is that they’re young, beautiful, and can’t say ‘no thanks’ due to their collars, but Bok Kyu doesn’t touch them. He keeps them as his true guards. One breath from any of them could have done what you did here.”