Divine Arsenal: Dual Weapon Cultivation

by Dante King

  Hazel didn’t respond. Anna trailed off, looking forlorn.

  “You’d better leave her be for now,” Lyra said, shaking her head sadly. “I caught the tail end of that fire spell Guildmaster Ji cast on the poor girl. She’s in for a rough time of it.”

  Something hard jerked inside of me. Anger flared in my chest.

  “What the fuck did he do to her?” I growled. “I swear, I could kill him…”

  Again, Lyra’s hand went to my thigh. This time, though, it wasn’t sexual—she was just trying to calm me down.

  “Guildmaster Ji is a Late Embryonic Soul Cultivator,” Lyra explained, clearly expecting me to know most of this already. “On top of that, he’s got Engrave Comprehension of the Second Level of Fire Mastery—his favorite little torture specialty. An ability called Sear.” She shuddered. “Used on someone with a low enough power level relative to the caster, it literally removes a Cultivator’s ability to cultivate. Unfortunately, I don’t think Hazel was powerful enough to resist…”

  I heard Anna gasp. To tell the truth, I felt the same way. “You mean… she’s lost her abilities? Her cultivation?”

  Lyra glanced back over her shoulder at the unmoving Hazel. “I’m afraid so,” she whispered. “Most Cultivators, he couldn’t do a thing like that to them. But Hazel was only a Late Mana Gateway—effectively only three stages up from someone with no Cultivation knowledge at all. I bet it was almost easy for Guildmaster Ji to rip that power away from her.”

  The thought of it made me want to be sick. I’d only known about Cultivation for a short amount of time, but already it had made my life so much better. The powers I wielded, the ability to sense the world around me in ways I never had before—the intensity and intimacy of the sex I had with Anna. I couldn’t imagine ever giving that up, or going back to the senses of an ordinary human.

  Hazel probably wishes Guildmaster Ji killed her, I thought, swallowing hard. Poor girl…

  “Is there any way to reverse it?” I asked, right before a more immediate question occurred to me. “Hey, how do you know all of this? Are you a Cultivator?”

  Maybe Lyra was more powerful than I was—or even Guildmaster Ji. She’d mentioned she’d traveled alone all the way here through the valley, after all.

  Lyra laughed. “No,” she said, shaking her head. My heart sank. “I’m from a lesser clan. The best I can do is keep Cultivators nice and lubricated with my drinks. I watch them, though. They visit my tavern, though infrequently, and I catch… snippets.” She flashed a secretive smile. “Barmaids hear everything, you understand. So I’ve been able to pick up a little bit of the lingo here and there. The deep secrets however, are carefully hidden.”

  I understood. “None of this makes sense to me,” I admitted, giving Hazel a guilt-filled glance. “Hazel tried her best to explain it to me, but I’m totally lost. I wouldn’t know an Embryonic Soul if it slapped me in the face, Lyra. I’ve been lucky enough—or skilled enough—to make it through so far, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep running on instinct…”

  Lyra’s perky lips pouted in a frown. “Where do you come from that you don’t even know the basics of Cultivation?” she asked. “I’m not talking about the details of abilities, just the absolute basics. The bedrock.”

  I gestured toward Anna with my chin. “A place called Earth,” I said. “We don’t have Cultivation there.” Briefly, I explained the county fair to Lyra; the tent and the encounter with Eliezer.

  Unlike Hazel, she reacted like she believed every word. When I finished, she whistled through her teeth, her eyes wide.

  “That’s one hell of a story, young man,” she said, her eyes brimming with sympathy. “I feel for you. I’m not friendly with too many people who hold sway around here, and no one’s really any more powerful than Guildmaster Ji, but perhaps we could make contact with someone who could help you. Get you and your girl here back to this Urth place…”

  “Earth,” I corrected, wiping my forehead. The cart veered left at the intersection, taking the turn wide. The oxen protested with every step, snorting against the reins. “And I don’t want to go back there.”

  “Really?” Lyra sounded intrigued. “Whyever not?”

  Anna and locked eyes from either side of Lyra. I didn’t need to ask her if she felt the same way as me: I already knew she did.

  “I want to learn to Cultivate,” I said, feeling my resolve harden with every word. “This world… it’s literally magic. There’s dangerous creatures everywhere, and absolute bastards like Guildmaster Ji, but this world is like nothing else I’ve ever seen. I could never have a life back on Earth like this.” I snickered ruefully. “Besides, I swore I’d kill Guildmaster Ji for what he did to poor Hazel. I made a promise, and I’m not the kind of guy who backs down from one of those.”

  Anna looked at me proudly. “I want to Cultivate too,” she said, her tone fierce. “I want to be the best weapon I can possibly be for you, Eric. The best woman, too.”

  Lyra nodded, understanding my problem on a profound level. It felt strange how quickly the two of us connected—dimly, I wondered if my Cultivation might not have something to do with that. I barely knew her, yet I already considered her a friend—the kind I could confess anything to without judgement or worry of her spilling secrets. I liked her immensely; more than that, I felt comfortable around her.

  “Well,” Lyra said, rubbing her chin as she guided the oxen, “if you’re going to spend any amount of time in this Zone, I’m sorry to say your best bet at getting stronger at Cultivation just rode through the front gate after setting your friend on fire.”

  Shit. “I was worried about that.”

  Lyra sighed. “You don’t have a lot of options, I’m afraid. The Hollow Frogs hold this area, and their local leader doesn’t like you very much. As an outsider, you’d need to join a Guild to learn to Cultivate.”

  “So we find another Guild,” Anna said with a shrug. The cart nearly ran over a slow pedestrian—Lyra yelled at them, balling up her fist and scaring the person off though it was her own fault.

  “Easier said than done,” Lyra said as she sat back down. “You have no clan. You’re not even from this world. No reputable Guild would take you in as an apprentice, even with your experience.” She snorted. “Well, the Shadow Guilds might, but they’d just as soon knife you in the back and harvest your Core as actually teach you anything.”

  I remembered the brief mention of them Hazel gave me—the fifth, forbidden method of Cultivating. “Yeah, no thanks,” I said, dismissing the idea for now. “What about doing it on my own? Hazel said there were people who Cultivated alone.”

  Lyra made a face. “There’s nothing stopping you,” she said, trying to be gentle about it. “But without a Guild, you’ll be looked down upon by other Cultivators. They consider a man without a Guild to be like a ship without a rudder—or a man without a head. Basically useless, in other words.”

  I nodded to show I understood. “I don’t give a shit what the other Guilds think of me,” I said—and to my surprise, I meant it. I’d never been a terribly anti-authority guy back on Earth, but the idea of whatever passed for the establishment looking down their nose at me didn’t bother me in the slightest. As long as I had my power, Anna—and maybe a couple other girls, like Hazel—I’d be fine. More than fine. Happy.

  “You say that now,” Lyra said, the corner of her lip curling in a smirk. When I didn’t respond, a strange look entered her eyes. “You really don’t care, do you, young man?”

  I shook my head. “I told you—I’m not from this world.”

  Keen interest filled Lyra’s eyes, and suddenly I had to cross one leg over the other. “I believe it,” she purred. “I’m looking forward to sharing a few drinks with you, Eric. And your girlfriend, of course.”

  She’d meant it to disarm, but Anna looked even more eager than I did to get closer to Lyra. Did she feel the older woman’s Mana, too—or was this good old-fashioned attraction?

  “Sounds like
a plan,” I said, leaning back in my seat. “All I’ve got to do is get strong enough to get revenge on Guildmaster Ji, then fix whatever’s wrong with Hazel. From there, the sky’s the limit.” I leaned over and slipped an arm over Lyra’s shoulders, taking Anna’s hand. “After all, I’ve got a fool-proof method to power both of us up…”

  I looked forward to getting some practice in, too. But first, Lyra was going to wine and dine us. What could be better than that?

  Chapter 11

  I had thought this tavern Lyra wanted to bring us to would be right around the corner. I could already taste the beer, smell the roasting meat, and hear the quiet murmur of conversation. It felt like ages since our last meal—the cast-iron pot and Hazel’s magic pill—and my stomach had begun growling in a very undignified manner.

  So imagine my surprise when Lyra rounded the corner, dropped off a few barrels of beer, and hightailed it back out the front gates.

  “Uh, Lyra?” I asked, watching the barbican retreat from view behind us. Anna looked confused as well. “I thought we were going to get something to eat…”

  The redhead made a face. Her features were more expressive than most people Anna and I had met since coming to this world—they seemed always to be in motion. “Oh, you thought the tavern was there?” she asked, jerking a thumb back at the Hollow Frog hideout. “No, those fools couldn’t run a latrine. Not that I’d say that while in earshot, of course.” She reached behind her back, pulling out a couple of parcels wrapped in wax paper. “Here, you two—eat up. We have a while before we reach the Hungry Herb, so it won’t hurt you to have a snack.”

  Inside the wax paper were thick balls of pungent rice. On the first bite, I realized the inside had been stuffed full of thin strips of dried fish. My stomach rumbled, and before I knew what I was doing, I’d nearly devoured the whole thing. Anna did the same.

  “My goodness!” Lyra looked pleased as punch. “I made those rice balls myself. Glad you two liked them.”

  “If that’s the kind of cooking we can look forward to at this tavern, then I can’t wait,” I said, grinning at the older woman. “How much further do you think it is?”

  It turned out to be quite a while. The sun dipped low in the sky as the cart wound through the fields, passing farmers working a nearby rice paddy. They sang in a tongue I didn’t recognize as they harvested the grain, moving in time like a well-oiled machine.

  The cart went over a bridge, with a red pagoda on either side functioning as a guard tower. More men in Hollow Frog uniforms lounged by these guardhouses, but they did little more than glance at Lyra before waving her through. The bridge formed an arch over a river with water bluer than any on Earth, brimming with koi fish.

  “Look at this place,” I said, shaking my head and catching Anna’s eye. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Beautiful and dangerous,” Lyra said heartily. “I’m glad I have the two of you with me, in fact. Keep your eyes open—bandits love ambushing caravans in this section of the Zone.”

  I found it hard to believe. Bandits in an idyllic setting like this? Yet as we emerged from the other side of a bamboo thicket, we ran into a militia group out on patrol. In contrast to the well-fed, well-dressed Guild members we’d seen back at the bridge, these men looked ragged and hungry. Were it not for Lyra’s assurances, I might have taken them for a group of bandits themselves.

  “Hello, Din,” Lyra said, waving to the leader of the militia group as she passed. “Strung up any bandits lately?”

  The militia leader looked over our group with a sour expression. Then he saw Hazel sitting in the back of the cart, and his face blossomed into outright disgust. He spit on the ground, and a moment later, the rest of his group did the same.

  “Very well, then,” Lyra said, rolling her eyes and urging the oxen on faster. “See if I stand you a drink the next time I see you at the Hungry Herb…”

  I kept an eye on the men until they were far enough away that attacking us would have been absurd. Turning back around in my seat, I addressed Lyra. “What was that all about? I thought people respected Cultivators in this world? They can’t already tell Hazel’s lost her powers, can they? That she’s been punished?”

  Lyra’s face grew hard. “That wasn’t about the punishment,” she said, sounding angry. “It was about her uniform.”

  “The Hollow Frogs?” I glanced back at Hazel, but of course she just stared into space. “I thought they ran things around here.”

  Lyra barked out a harsh, flat laugh. “Their mandate from the Emperor is to protect this area from monster attacks,” she explained. “And that’s exactly what they do. To the letter.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They defend the people from monsters,” Lyra said, shaking her head. “And nothing else. They don’t give a fig about bandits, or even family disputes. They won’t lift a finger to put out a burning building or look for a lost child. Those militiamen are poorly trained and poorly armed, but at least they care. The Hollow Frog won’t defend them or their families, so they’ve had to step in and do it themselves.”

  “It sounds like a Cultivator should step up,” I said, the wheels turning inside my brain. “If someone came to this region and started cleaning it up—showing they cared—they could probably take over pretty easily from the Hollow Frog Guild, couldn’t they?”

  Lyra stared at me as if I’d grown a second head. “You are ambitious, aren’t you, young man? No, don’t look at me like that—I like it. It’s good for a man like you to aim high.”

  The look on Anna’s face was almost delicious in its intensity. “You really think you could do that, Eric?” she asked.

  “It’d be one hell of a way to get revenge, wouldn’t it?”

  God, I could just picture it. Me in control of this entire valley, with a whole bunch of grateful villagers paying me tribute in exchange for keeping them safe. I’d have a base of my own, with space to practice all the Dual Cultivation with Anna that I wanted. Maybe we could even get Hazel into the mix—or Lyra…

  The image faded as quickly as it had come. It’s a good goal, I thought, shaking my head, but maybe I should aim for something a little easier first. Like not getting murdered by Guildmaster Ji.

  “Honestly,” I said, changing the subject, “I’m a little surprised there aren’t Cultivators doing just that. Are they rare or something like that?”

  I realized I had no idea how many Cultivators there actually were in this world. The number of Guilds I’d heard about implied there were many, but I’d seen such a tiny sliver of this world so far. I knew so little about it.

  Lyra stared out into the distance, a faraway look in her eyes. “The Empire retains thousands of Cultivators as Imperial servants,” she said. “Tens of thousands, if I had to guess. But this world is very, very large, Eric. Even the Empire we belong to comprises merely a small part of it, and our Emperor numbers nearly a billion souls as his subjects. There are a great number of people with the power to cultivate—but each of them is a drop in the bucket compared to those who cannot.”

  “Wow,” I said, honestly taken aback. “This world must be way, way bigger than Earth, then.”

  “Billions of people,” Anna said, her tone dreamy. “This is insane, Eric. It’s like finding out the rest of the universe was inhabited all along. Only instead of hundreds of planets, it’s all stacked inside of one world.”

  “Not all stacked inside one world,” Lyra said with a shake of her head. “There are other spheres of existence—other planets—on which people reside.”

  “Holy shit,” I breathed.

  Anna shook her ash-blonde locks, trying to fill her imagination with those billions of souls. “And Eliezer wants you to conquer all of it!”

  Unlike everyone else we’d spoken to so far, Lyra didn’t seem ruffled by the mention of Eliezer at all. “You should feel proud of what you are,” she said, her hand back on my thigh. “You’re one of the rarest beings of all—a Cultivator who wants to use his abilities to help pe
ople, rather than subjugate them. If you keep that attitude, Eric, I know you’ll go far. One Cultivator can make quite a bit of difference, especially in a backwater like the Verdant Ruins.”

  At the flushed look Anna gave me, I coughed. “Two Cultivators, actually,” I said, nodding over Lyra’s shoulder.

  A shocked expression filled Lyra’s face. “Oh! Yes, right. You’re both Cultivators!” She swiveled in her seat, one round ass cheek lifting into the air as she leaned over to examine Lyra more closely. A flash of her tanned skin showed beneath the hem of her dress, something silky and black clinging to the curve of her mound. If Lyra noticed she was flashing me, she didn’t show it—or maybe she wanted to show off a little skin.

  “Yeah,” Anna said, matching the older woman’s smile with one of her own. “Eliezer made Eric into a Cultivator, then Eric did it to me.” Her smile turned naughty. “My transformation was way more fun than his, though.”

  For a moment, Lyra sputtered incoherently. “You became a Cultivator, without a Peak Supreme God’s magic?” she asked, something impossible shining in her eyes.

  “And not only that,” Anna said. “I got these horns, too.” She ran a finger over the golden horns on her head.

  “How did this happen?” Lyra asked, clearly amazed. “If you don’t mind me asking, that is. I’d be so curious to discover a thing like that!”

  Again, that strange second sight filtered through me. Just as I could see the patterns of the wind, or the hidden architecture within the progress of vines growing up a tree, I could suddenly read the muscles of Lyra’s expression like an open book. It was almost like telepathy.

  Lyra had wished all her life to be a Cultivator. It was why she collected knowledge about the art—why she spent so much time hanging around them, brewing them beer and giving them lodgings. Deep in her heart, she knew she had the talent to be a truly great one—but whatever special thing existed inside of those born with the power to Cultivate simply hadn’t been there in her case. It was one of the deepest regrets of her life.