by Sarah Lin
Street Cultivation 2
Version 1.0
© 2019-2020 Sarah Lin
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The story so far...
In the modern world, qi is money. Problem is, Rick doesn't have much of either to spare. Between his dead-end job taking punches at the local lucrim combat gym and paying for his sick sister Melissa's school fees, it's a struggle to make ends meet. On top of that, Melissa suffers from a condition that drains her lucrim and threatens her life.
When a group of rich young men with powerful Birthright Cores decide to cause trouble at the gym, Rick knows he should just accept the inevitable beating, but his pride gets the better of him and he stubbornly fights back as best he can. Eventually, Rick’s boss steps in to call off the fight, and Rick manages to stay on his feet long enough to watch Mike leave before passing out.
He wakes up to find his injuries healed by his favorite client, Lisa, but soon has to rush off to help his sister survive a serious lucrim seizure. His bad day then gets worse when he checks his mail and discovers that his absentee parents have both been killed. Though he hasn’t heard from them in years, as the next of kin it falls to him to settle their affairs.
At the lawyers’ offices, Rick discovers his pit-fighting Uncle Alan waiting to claim his parents’ inheritable lucrim cores, and is forced to fight him in a ritual challenge. Rick barely wins the challenge, only to discover that in addition to the meager cores, he is saddled with three Aura Leeches to pay off his parents’ debts. To stave off the extra drain on his income, Rick asks his coworker Henry to help him join the local underground fighting ring called the Underground.
At first, Rick outperforms his own expectations and manages to earn some valuable prize money. That changes when the arena’s eccentric owner, Alger, surprises the novice fighters by throwing them into a melee against a savage, overwhelmingly-powerful fighter named the Slayer. Rick survives against the odds, but his left arm is shattered. Worse, the Slayer then hunts him down in the infirmary and tries to murder him. Rick seeks refuge with Granny Whitney, a kindly-seeming old lady who had offered to heal his arm… and then promptly murders the Slayer and blackmails Rick into fighting for her in the arena.
With his arm healed, Rick resumes his training, but is surprised to receive a legal summons from a company called Maguire Incorporated. It turns out that an experimental lucrim core had passed into Rick’s lucrima soul during his fight with the Birthrighter, Mike, and his father’s company wants it back. Rick surrenders the core without incident, but runs into a furious Mike on the way out and finds himself the subject of a vicious grudge.
Rick keeps his head down and carries on fighting at the underground arena, aided by his unscrupulous new mentor and her brutally effective medications. He escapes an encounter with one of Mike’s cronies unscathed, but his luck runs out when his sister’s health takes a sharp turn for the worse. Aided by Lisa and - reluctantly - by Granny Whitney, Rick teaches Melissa to build a shell around the lucrim-consuming flame at the core of her soul.
Back at the Underground, an exhibition match turns out to be instigated by Mike and his cronies, who try to ambush Rick. The ensuing brawl quickly spirals out of control and Rick finds himself helping Emily, a strong middleweight fighter, to defend another fighter from a hitman trying to take advantage of the chaos.
Rick discovers that Emily will be fighting alongside him in an upcoming multi-tier tournament at the underground arena, so Rick trains hard with her and Lisa to make sure he can qualify. Shortly before the tournament, however, Rick runs into Mike, who challenges him to a formal duel. Rick tries to decline, but is forced to accept when he receives a panicked phone call from Melissa about a stranger breaking down their door.
With a massively one-sided duel to prepare for in addition to a grueling arena tournament, Rick throws himself into training, learns a new speed technique, and purchases a dangerous medication called Deathbane. Just before the tournament, Rick uses the Deathbane to rebuild his lucrima soul by inciting the team’s heavyweight fighter to beat him within an inch of his life. Granny Whitney is thoroughly unimpressed, but grudgingly heals him in time for the tournament.
Rick and Emily perform well in their tiers of the tournament, but their welterweight and cruiserweight teammates are knocked out and the heavyweight matches are a dead heat. The tournament is on a knife-edge between the teams led by Granny Whitney, Alger, and a local mobster known as the American Basilisk, when Rick is called up for one last round. He struggles through and is the last man standing, but passes out once he leaves the arena. When he awakes, he discovers that Granny’s team has been victorious and his debt is now fulfilled.
Freed of his obligations at the underground arena, Rick turns to preparing for his grudge match with Mike. Together with Melissa, he hatches a plan to use a wisp of her ether void as a secret weapon to disrupt his opponent's defenses, but Mike has a trick of his own: as the fight begins, he uses a technique to bind Rick’s voice so that he can’t surrender. Mike launches into an all-out assault, aiming to take advantage of his vastly-superior strength, but Rick uses his fighting experience and Melissa’s void flame to force Mike into burning away his lucrim without landing any critical blows. Once Mike burns through all his energy, his defenses fail and Rick breaks his leg, forcing Mike into a humiliating - and legally binding - surrender.
After the duel, life returns to normal. Back at the gym, Henry dramatically announces his resignation, buoyed by the promise of bigger rewards at the Arena and a loan from an Advanced Lucrim station, a new technology from Maguire Incorporated which sounds suspiciously familiar. Rick shakes his head and turns to his boss to ask for a raise...
Chapter 1: Soul Application
Power surged within Rick's soul, arcing from his body to form a perfect aura blazing at full strength.
"Yeah, okay. Hold it for a bit." The official glanced over his aura for a fraction of a second with a bored expression, then waved at it lazily. "That's enough. You can put that away now."
Rick nodded and sat back down in the office chair, which managed to look luxurious while being completely uncomfortable. When no further questions came immediately, he fiddled with the sleeves of his combat outfit. He hadn't wanted to wear the gift from Granny Whitney, but it was the best clothing he owned and he needed every edge for the job interview.
"Okay, next up is the transfer test. We'll start with a minute in between spheres and go from there."
He'd practiced for this, though he was surprised to be given marble spheres instead of bars. It felt like one contained much more lucrim than he thought could be crammed into a marble, so they must have some way of concentrating it that he didn't know about. Regardless, his job was the same: draw the lucrim out of the first sphere, hold it without absorbing any, and pass it into the second.
Since so much was on the line, Rick was utterly focused during the first test. But after that the official had him hold lucrim between spheres for three minutes. Waiting that long, his attention began to wander and he had to resist looking at the clock.
If this took too long, he'd be too late to see Melissa. Given the unpredictability of job interviews like this, he'd suggested that he could just skip this one, but Melissa had insisted. The world didn't care about their schedule and they had to rearrange their lives around it. She'd understand if he ended up missing her ceremony, but he'd be upset with himself.
"Okay." The interviewer made another inscrutable mark on his clipboard and then looked up, still without much expression. Though everyone at the bank was well-dressed, th
is official's suit didn't quite fit and he didn't seem particularly invested in his job. "That concludes the practical portion of your application."
Rick set the spheres back on the table and tried for a confident smile. "I passed?"
"If you hadn't, we wouldn't continue to the interview portion. Now..." The interviewer glanced down at his clipboard, then back up at him. "Why are you passionate to join the Branton Central Bank family?"
When Rick had started on all these interviews, that question had really thrown him. What he wanted was a job that paid better than getting punched at the House of the Cosmic Fist - all he was passionate about was earning his way to a better life. But after several awkward interviews, he'd realized that the interviewers didn't really care, either.
The question was just a test. He gave a bland answer that he thought they wanted to hear, the same one he'd given at the last interview with a few names changed around.
"Uh huh." Once again, the interviewer's eyes dropped down to the next question, then back up. "And what would you say is your greatest strength?"
"I'd say friendliness. I worked at a gym and learned to provide customer service with a smile no matter how much clients needed to vent." The answer was complete bullshit, but he thought that was what a bank would want to hear. Maybe.
"Okay. What is your lucrima portfolio's greatest strength?"
There was a real question, and Rick didn't hesitate. "My defensive core. I've invested approaching 20,000 lucrim into a solid build and it's rated as Level VII."
"Uh huh." The interviewer scribbled something down - good? bad? - and moved on the next question as if Rick's most powerful asset meant nothing. "What's your greatest weakness?"
"I..." Rick gritted his teeth in something that was a distant cousin to a smile. "When I see a problem, I tend to try to implement a solution right away. In the past that's led me to move too quickly, so I've taken steps to surround myself with people who can help me optimize first."
He hated himself for giving such an awful answer. There had been at least one early interview that he'd bombed because he'd taken the question seriously. Maybe pride, maybe commitment to family over work, or more likely something he wasn't aware of. But no, apparently instead of searching himself for a real answer he was supposed to give an awful fake one. Interview guides said he was supposed to be authentic, but every other instruction ordered him not to be.
Regardless, Rick forced his way through the rest of the bank's interview. Unlike some of the first interviews, he felt prepared for everything. There had been rumors that they asked strange questions about manhole covers, but he didn't get anything like that. It was an entirely boring interview until eventually the official stood up and extended a hand.
"Thanks for coming in, Rick. We'll keep your resume on file and contact you if we decide to move forward."
"Thanks for talking to me." Rick shook the man's hand - not too weak, not too firm - and did his best to find a real smile. "Do you have any idea when you'll make a decision?"
"Uh, we'll contact you when we decide to move forward."
Another non-answer, but Rick thought he saw the truth in the bank clerk's eyes. He resisted the urge to vent his frustration, but couldn't help but grimace as he spoke. "I didn't get the job, did I? Did I fail the practical lucrim transfers? I thought my control was perfect."
"Oh, sure, you did fine there." The interviewer shrugged, actually throwing off a bit of his robotic nature and seeming to really look at Rick for the first time. "Kid, what you've got to understand is that doing transfers properly isn't that special. There are thousands of people who can pass the practical tests, so we need another way to pick candidates."
"I see." Since the man had actually given him an answer and he was fairly sure he'd failed the interview anyway, Rick decided to push on. "What do you actually choose by, then? Mastery certifications?"
"Those wouldn't hurt, but that's more for security positions. For a job like this, to get in the door, you really need membership in a decent sect or a college degree. Honestly, we wouldn't have interviewed you if we weren't required to interview a certain number of candidates by HR."
Rick ground his teeth and managed to keep his tone civil. "A college degree? In what, lucrim management? Does that have any relevance to being able to do the job?"
The bank clerk shrugged. "Not really, but we need something to thin the herd. A degree shows, you know, discipline. Good luck out there, kid."
With that, the interviewer led him out of the room. According to the guides, Rick should have thanked him again, but he didn't have it in him. Though he'd gotten the sense that his lack of qualifications hurt his job search, having it thrown in his face like that was a different experience. He rushed out of the bank's lobby, glowering at the floor and then the pavement.
Here, it didn't matter that he'd won his division of a massive tournament. Nobody cared about what he'd overcome or how far he'd developed his lucrima portfolio from nothing. Even his defensive core was just a number on a sheet of paper to them.
Taking a deep breath, Rick tried not to let it get to him. This wasn't the first time, after all. He glanced at his phone to confirm the time and saw that he still had a while before the ceremony. Better to head in that direction, maybe grab some more info, and get there before anything could go wrong.
His job at the House of the Cosmic Fist actually wasn't so awful. After his lucrima soul had been battered by Mike and the tournament fighters, not to mention Teragen, he could take everything the clients of the gym could offer. The raise he'd forced out of Jimmy helped, too, and for once in his life he and Melissa didn't need to scrape together every lucrim they could just to get by.
Yet after a few months, he'd started to feel how limiting the position was. His pay was good by his family's standards, but low in comparison to most jobs and he didn't get many benefits. More irritatingly, he no longer got much training benefit from sparring with clients. If he stayed at the gym... well, he knew that he wouldn't be satisfied.
Coming up from his thoughts, Rick realized that he'd been aimlessly walking for a while. Toward the school, yes, but he wasn't going to get there by walking even if he ran. Still - he checked his phone again to be sure - he had time and there was no point getting there before the ceremony, since Melissa would be with her friends.
Since he had time, Rick headed instead to the park. He could get some more leads there, plus he'd be right next to the bus station for getting to Melissa's ceremony next. Since the two of them had plans afterward, it would be good to accomplish a little more to be prepared for tomorrow.
A few months ago he'd never even been to Anglepark, but it was one of Branton's important community centers. The park took up a block shaped like a right triangle, but perversely, wasn't named for the angle. Apparently Jeffrey Angle had been a native of Branton who had won a Jade Medal at the Olympics, though it must have been multiple decades ago because Rick hadn't even heard of him.
From a distance he ran his eyes over the familiar scene: a few picnic tables in the shaded part and a decaying plastic jungle gym for kids in the sandy part. It definitely wasn't Branton's best park, but it was kept clean and safe by the local community. There was some sort of sect that had taken the park as a public service project, so it was regularly used.
Most importantly, it was used for community announcements. Rick nodded to several regulars at the nearest picnic tables before stepping into the stone gazebo to check the message board. If people could just get organized and put their announcements online, his life would be a lot easier, but apparently the people in this part of the city liked doing things analog. Since they had a lot of resources for someone like him, he needed to follow suit.
His eyes skimmed over the familiar announcements, looking for new things that weren't local barbecues or other events. A colorful flier caught his attention due to its requirement of a generation rate of 50,000 lucrim or more, but it turned out to be an ad for some of the local lucrim sports. Interes
ting enough that Rick took a picture with his phone, but he didn't think he had that kind of competition in him.
Otherwise it looked like the usual bad job offers, no better than his current job. There was a drab sheet of paper with something about a role for skilled lucrim-users out of town - not terribly promising, but it had been posted by the Central States Lucrim Authority, so it was worth looking into. There were a few apartment listings, an ad for Advanced Lucrim stations, and a few local sports tournaments.
"Looking for a job, son?" An old man sitting at one of the benches in the gazebo called out to him. Since the man looked vaguely familiar, Rick nodded.
"I've got one, but it's a dead end."
"You take a look at that paper on the bottom left there. My cousin needs strong young types for his landscaping business. Pays a lot better than you'd expect, and you can make a lot more if you end up leading a crew."
To be polite, Rick looked at the paper. It did pay more per hour than working at the gym, but... "Thanks, I'll look into it." Rick took one of the tabs with contact information and shuffled around the side of the gazebo to prevent further conversation.
Once he might have thrown away the slip of paper, but now he found himself staring at it a while before putting it in his pocket. It was true that he was limiting the possibilities by only looking at jobs that required a strong lucrima soul. There was an entire world of people out there that had normal jobs and never fought a day in their lives, after all.
Was it pride that kept him from taking mundane work and throwing himself at job offers that never panned out? Rick leaned back against the wall and rubbed his forehead with one hand. He'd heard landscaping was sweaty and rough on the back, but he wasn't afraid of hard work - it couldn't be worse than being physically beaten at the gym. Was pursuing lucrim-based jobs just a stupid dream?
Rick shook off the thoughts. The main things he had to offer were his control of lucrim and combat skill. If his lack of qualifications made his current attempts difficult, it would only make trying to get an office job even more painful. Lots of jobs seemed to require a college or sect degree even to get in the door. No, he needed to stick to his strengths.
