Death's Favorite Warlock

by Charles Dean

  Su Ryeon stared at Lars for a minute as they walked, her face a continuous brick wall facade that hid every thought behind it better than the best liar. Then, instead of replying to the subject, she just said, “We’re here.”

  “Oh . . .” Lars had been oblivious to their surroundings and the movements around him, despite doing his best to look for any potential threat, as he was continuously distracted by Su Ryeon’s figure. He hadn’t noticed the fact they had somehow walked up next to an amazingly large building. Most surrounding establishments were small stores or stacked shops with a few stories and dingy exteriors that weren’t much to write home about, but this building was different. Instead of the usual wall that surrounded the nicer compounds, this one had a large walkway surrounding it. The walls to the actual building were nearly ten or eleven feet tall. Multiple arches jutted out from them, dotting the walkway surrounding the building, and stood supporting the framework of the fanciest sloped stone-shingled roof he had ever seen. He couldn’t help but stare at the pillars too. They weren’t simple cylinders or wooden bars to hold up the roof, but carved, snake-like stone dragons. The dragons’ lower halves had tiny feet that pushed against the floor with their long tails curling around them, and their upper bodies culminated in open maws breathing a fire that was the same girth as the dragons and which acted as the pillars’ capitals.

  To further embellish the dragon arches, each scale had clearly been hand-painted turquoise with a yellowish line to separate it from the next. The fires had been painted yellow, orange, and red, and the roof was the same turquoise as the dragon. The underside of the roof had small closely packed beams that looked like decoration as they spread out from the center of the roof, each painted turquoise as well but with thin blue and yellow rings. These beams continued, with spacing no more than three fingers thick, all the way up the wooden cylinders until they met with the walls, which were a white so stark that its absence of color was as eye-catching as the dragons that helped hold up the building’s roof. A strip of brown about a head’s length in width went across the top of the white walls and down each of the corners.

  In all of Lars’s years, he had never seen something so magnificent.

  “Pick up your jaw lest they know you’re from the country and aim to take advantage of you,” Su Ryeon warned. “Once you’re a target, either they take from you more than you’d ever give, or they punish you for not rolling over and letting them have their way. There is no winning if you become a mark.”

  If they try to kill me though . . . Lars grinned a little as he thought about the potential to gain Qi without breaking his self-imposed guidelines.

  “You like honesty, and you smile at the idea of people taking advantage of you. I’m beginning to think you really are a glutton for abuse.”

  Su Ryeon’s cold tone didn’t escape Lars’s notice. He decided not to bother refuting it, though, as he walked up to the door of the establishment. There, blocking his way, were four men, each of whom was at least a Stage 7 Qi-Gathering Cultivator, and they were armed with glowing weapons.

  The same way a shackle can be imbued to block the Qi of the person it restricts, ome weapons can be imbued to bolster the Qi of the person holding it.

  So, even though they’re only Stage 7 Qi-Gathering Cultivators, they may fight much more fiercely?

  That is the sum of it. And also . . . if Su Ryeon’s mouth keeps flapping so impetuously, you can always spank her. Mmm . . . yes, you could spank that perky bubble butt.

  How are you, who has no body, more perverted than I am? Lars sighed.

  “You’re late,” the man farthest right and closest to Lars said as Lars stopped in front of the men.

  “What?” Lars blinked. I don’t remember having an appointment. He looked over at Su Ryeon only to have her shrug her shoulders back at him, affirming that she was equally as lost about what they were talking about.

  “You’re late,” he repeated, “and you should have brought someone lower. No one is going to pay to watch a slaughter. Why did you bring a teammate you knew would be too strong for the audience to allow?”

  “Maybe it's his announcer,” the man just left of the first guy suggested. “But it doesn’t matter right now. We can grab one of the spares to make the fight even.”

  “Make the fight . . . What fight? Huh?” Lars had no idea what they were talking about.

  “Kid, why are you acting dumb? You’re Benny the Butcher, right? Here for the fight, right?” the second man said. Lars wanted to correct him, but the mention of a fight left him silent as he wanted to hear the rest of it. “You’re the one that was supposed to have shown up an hour ago to fight the monsters, no?”

  “I . . .” Lars looked over at Su Ryeon.

  “No, you can’t bring her. She’s too strong. No one will bet on a fight between a three-tail and a Stage 9 cultivator. You should have brought a more marketable teammate,” the one who first spoke said.

  “He might have been banking on those tits distracting our brains,” the man next to him added, all four of the guys chuckling. “But when it comes to money in a gambling house, no beautiful woman is going to make people lay down gold on a sure fight.”

  “And sure fights lose coins,” the guy who spoke first continued, a serpent’s tail swishing out from behind him, its tip reaching all the way to his face as it gently pressed into his chin. “Well . . . whatever. We don’t have time to waste. Just head inside, One Eye will figure out what to do with you,” he continued.

  “One Eye?” Lars was still a little confused.

  “Yeah, just head in and take a sharp right. Go to the end of the room and head down the stairs to the trainer’s pit. Also, I don’t know where you were fighting at before, but you can’t come to a match late still covered in blood from an earlier job. If you had died in whatever fight you were in this morning, we’d have been screwed,” the man on the far right blabbered on as he opened the door.

  On instinct and without thinking, Su Ryeon decided to intervene. “I don’t know who you have my master mistaken for, but he’s actually—”

  “Could you please be quiet?” Lars said, cutting her off. He tried to think of a way to explain the words that she had already let slip. “These people are just doing their jobs. There is no reason to worry about their rude tone.”

  Su Ryeon’s eyes narrowed, her eyebrow arched upward, and her mouth stopped halfway open as a horribly uncomfortable-looking expression spread across her face while she stared at Lars. “Like I said. Stupid.”

  HAH! She thinks you’re stupid? She’s the moron. This is brilliant. This is great. FREE STATS!! Let’s go farm, Lars. Let’s go farm them all. It doesn’t matter who we’re fighting. All we need to do is “accidentally” kill them at the end.

  If it’s a person, I’m not going to kill them. I just want the money if . . . Lars started off saying that, but as the words left his mouth, he began to think differently. He knew he shouldn’t, but he started to feel a yearning for Qi just thinking about the fight. I just want the money, he repeated to himself. I need it to save my mother.

  Lars, you don’t have to ever lie to me. I’ll always be here for you.

  Thanks . . . Lars replied, wanting to add, “but it wasn’t a lie,” only he couldn’t. He was still thinking about how good it would feel to have his body filled with Qi again. Let’s just . . . Let’s go get some money, he thought as he walked in through the guarded door and into the large building, the outside of which had left Lars stunned initially but now felt plain as he walked into it. There was so much happening that it was hard to take it all in. Table after table was set up with people so densely packed around that Lars could barely see the tables through the throng. The walking spaces between the tables had a near endless stream of women and men oiled up and half nude. Their outfits sparkled like the shiniest fish scales Lars had ever seen, and their fluffy dog, cat, squirrel, or fox tails puffed and stood up behind them as they carried trays of glasses or bowls to the tables. They only stopped when
they reached a table—where they would bend down at the waist only, their legs stiff and butts jutting outward behind them—to serve a customer.

  “What are they even betting on at the tables?” Lars asked as he continued to look at the rows of them to his left.

  “Everything,” Su Ryeon replied. “There is no accepted game in the gambler’s demesne that isn’t played here. If you’re brave enough or desperate enough and unable to live through a loss, they even have tables downstairs where you can sign up for a game of rushin’ roulette.”

  “Rushin’ rou—”

  “It’s where two slave collars are presented to the gamblers, who then must mutually decide on which one to put around whose neck. Then they’re told to channel Qi at the same time into them. One of the collars is real; one of the collars is fake. If yours is real, all your belongings and your person are forfeited to the one in front of you. If yours is fake, you double your assets and gain a slave at the same time.”

  “That’s . . . so messed up.” Lars gulped as he thought about it. “Why is it called ‘rushin’’ though?”

  It’s “Russian,” not “rushin’,” and it’s named after a country that doesn’t exist anymore. Honestly, given the fact that the cultivators of that country took over nearly all of their neighbors, drawing lines of fire across the world with their stolen cultivation techniques before they fell, like every other country, to internal strife and petty power grabs, I’m surprised that this form of the twisted little life-or-death game is one of the only things still around to remind the world they were ever a thing to begin with.

  Su Ryeon proved less knowledgeable than Ophelia. “Who knows? It just is and always has been.”

  “Is there a game you’re good at?” Lars asked as he looked at the bag of gold he was holding.

  No. Don’t even think about it.

  Fine, Lars grumbled.

  “Because of my Lunar Light Qi, I’m quite skilled at anything dice related,” Su Ryeon replied.

  “Oh . . .” Lars noted this before turning right and walking away from the tables, heeding Ophelia’s advice as he made his way toward the end of the room and followed the instructions of the guard.

  “You’re not seriously going to go meet this One Eye, are you?”

  “What do I have to lose?”

  “Your life. You have your life to lose and, consequently, mine too. Could you at least pretend to consider your safety?”

  “I am considering it,” Lars replied. “I need to kill more things to stay alive.”

  “What? What nonsense is that? Killing only builds enmity and creates even more chances for you to die.”

  “I’ll explain later . . . maybe.” Lars added the “maybe” as he finished descending a rather steep flight of stairs and opened the door into a room filled with other people who, like him, were covered in blood that somehow came in more than just one color. Most of them were injured. Every single one of them lay against the wall with their head bandaged up and a nearly dead look in their eyes. Lars began to believe that, rather than some fighters’ room, he had entered into an infirmary that was at maximum capacity as he looked at the men and women sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall and nursing their wounds as they sat in silence.

  “Benny the Butcher?” a man said as he emerged from across the room and started striding toward Lars. It was impossible not to both hear every syllable the guy said and see him clearly from across the room. His voice boomed against the walls as this giant of a man walked toward Lars.

  A Stage 9 Qi-Gathering Cultivator, Lars mouthed as he watched the eleven-foot-tall monstrosity, arms and legs as thick as wine barrels and breaking at the seams with muscles, walk over to him. But . . . what is he? He had to ask. The man was just so different from anything Lars had seen before. It wasn’t just his size, but also the stone-like substance that covered the left half of his bald head, stretching over his eye, down his face, and out across his left arm.

  That is a gortenfaskel, but it’s easier just to think of them as stone giants. They are a rare breed of cultivator, and this one is likely strong enough to crush your new bodyguard in one hit. The reason they are so disfigured, and their body is so far from human, is that they aren’t the descendants of cultivators who refined a single monster or animal. Rather, like most giants or disfigured abominations, they’re the children of experiments and perversions cultivators used and discarded to better understand the nature of Qi. A Stage 6 Qi-Gathering Cultivator who is a stone giant generally has enough Power to match Su Ryeon, and this Stage 9 one . . . Be careful.

  You don’t have to tell me twice, Lars thought as he took in a deep breath and tried to calm his nerves while the massive, ogre-like being came up to him.

  “He’s not Benny the Butcher,” Su Ryeon said. “He just came down here hoping he could join the fights and take your missing champion’s place.”

  Lars opened his mouth in shock as the woman next to him revealed his plan. He considered how to get back at her if this denied him a chance at Qi or, even worse, got him in trouble with this monster that could probably kill him in a single hit.

  Spanking. My vote is still spanking.

  The man looked down at Su Ryeon and then over to Lars, bending down until his face was inches from Lars’s. “You come down here covered in”—he sniffed a few times, tilting his head as he did—“more than a few people’s blood, bringing with you a naked woman, and try to take the place of a cowardly champion?”

  “That’s not a problem, is it?” Lars asked.

  “Not a problem?” The one-eyed behemoth laughed. “Not a problem?” He paused to laugh again. “Of course it’s not a problem! You’ve got guts, kid. GUTS! And that’s the first ingredient of showmanship. I’ll tell you what, you go pick out one or two partners from among any of these fine warriors”—the man waved his arm at a specific section of injured people lining the wall next to him—“and I’ll slot you up for the next fight.”

  Lars frowned. Every person in that section was another Stage 7 Qi-Gathering Cultivator like himself, but none of them looked like they’d be up for a fight in the next week or two.

  “Can’t I just go it alone?” he finally asked as the man waited.

  “HA HA HA!” The giant’s loud forceful laugh blew back the hairs on Lars’s head as a drop of what Lars hoped was rain, despite being underground, hit his forehead. “You got real guts! Fine. If you want to go it alone, you can go it alone! The fight is all yours. We can discuss your payment after.”

  “Not before?” Lars felt cheated.

  “I don’t feel like haggling with a kid who probably won’t live.” One Eye smiled. “If you win, though, I’ll pay you enough to make you want to come back and do it again.”

  “That’s—”

  “And that bag you’re carrying,” One Eyed said, “you can leave it with your woman. We don’t allow outside weapons or items into the arena. If you pull out a destruction rune, the audience will accuse us of having rigged the damn fight, and we won’t be able to collect, but we’ll still have to pay out.”

  “Okay . . .” Lars said, noting the word “outside” in front of “weapons” as he thought about what weapon would suit him if he were to use one. “Are there at least weapons provided?”

  “Of course. For a man with guts like yourself, I’ll let you pick anything you want,” he said as he walked Lars over to the door at the other end of the room near the spot from which One Eye had emerged earlier. Unlike the door behind Lars, this one was a heavy, flat square wooden block that looked more like a shield One Eye might hide behind in battle than an actual door with the way it was secured by four different beams. Next to the door, there were two racks filled with weapons and a grumpy-looking, short, fat penguin-tailed man guarding them.

  “He needs a weapon,” One Eye said to the penguin cultivator.

  “How many points does he have?”

  “None, but he’s going in alone, so do me the favor and toss him whatever he wants from the bottom row
,” One Eye said.

  Lars could tell that the bottom row of weapons was incomparably worse than the top row just from a glance. The types of weapons were the same, but the top row of spears and swords and the like were glowing with Qi that occasionally pulsed around their edges, and the bottom row was just glowing with the bare amount of energy needed to tell there was any at all. The weapons looked sturdy, better than any he had seen before, and they had a very faint purple glow, but they weren’t pulsing with energy vibrant enough to catch one's eye across a room like the top row’s weapons. Either way though, Lars knew better than to argue the details.

  I wonder what I should . . .

  Pick the spear. You don’t know any of these weapons; you’ll just be clumsily slashing and hacking with them. They aren’t worth it for you.

  I don’t know spears either . . . Lars contested, not sure why she’d suggest that one. At least with a sword, hacking and slashing and poking all seemed much easier.

  Uncle Miller always said that an amateur with a spear can beat an amateur with a sword any day of the week, and a master with the spear can defeat a sword master in over half their battles. A spear is never the wrong decision, unless you need style points. Then go with the axe.

  Well . . . we are fighting in an arena and likely going to get bet on . . . Lars thought as he looked from the spear to the axe. He knew Ophelia wouldn’t lie to him, that her advice came with much more knowledge than he could ever summon, and if she said the spear was the best weapon, then it was. However, the moment the word “axe” entered the picture, Lars felt a little captivated. The axes on display were one-handed weapons, each with a shaft that didn’t even extend the length of a longsword. Attached for the head of the axe was a block of iron that looked on one side of the shaft like it was part of a sledgehammer with its blunt round end and then, on the other side, extended out over a hand’s length into a crescent moon, the top perpendicular to the axe’s shaft and the sharp bottom poking out in a way that could easily be used to hook something and pull at it.