Silver Fox & the Western Hero: Warrior's Path: A LitRPG/Cultivation Novel - Book 6

by M. H. Johnson

  Time to play it to the hilt.

  57

  Alex gazed at the projection of the muscle-bound cultivator whose dark eyes glittered with the same furious satisfaction mirrored in Headmaster Sudong's gaze, which was further echoed in the merciless laughter shared among the dozens of cultivators present who were also eager for a chance to tear a piece from Alex's hide as the Silver Giant continued to pound in the door.

  "Soon, maggot!" Sudong roared, scouring the chamber which Alex had stripped barren of every single book. "Soon you will be made to pay for all your crimes and reveal where you hid all my prizes before I tear your intestines free, one loop at a time, after shattering every single bone in your body!"

  Alex placed his hand against the crystal display before him, doing his utmost to focus.

  Even he was surprised to hear his laughter echoing so loudly through the outer chamber as dozens of grim-faced cultivators froze in surprise, just as startled as he was by how well the sound carried.

  "Bravo, Sudong! You solved the riddle in one!" Alex's clapping resonated so loudly that several men winced and covered their ears. "So, before I surrender any prizes to thee, you must answer a riddle in three! What is it from these chambers that you most desire?"

  Sudong's eyes lit up. A cold, predatory smile overtook his rage. "And now you are trapped in verse, as this farce of a play finally comes to an end. Excellent! You wish to know what I most desire? Your head on a plate, you damned Ruidian piece of filth!"

  This earned fierce grins and nods from the suddenly silent room below, everyone now gazing at their master as if he were the star of their play.

  Alex felt a savage sense of exultation at that demand, though all he did was laugh aloud. "And such you may have, should you wish it thrice. For then you will have neither princess, treasure, nor tomes. But perhaps my head shall suffice?"

  Sudong's eyes blazed. "What trickery is this?"

  Summon Portal skill check: Failed!

  Alex laughed again, for all that he wanted to howl with frustration. Knowing he had to work slowly. Carefully. He had no choice but to multitask while his heart pounded with dread.

  "No trickery at all, but the rules of the game. You can howl in protest, but the results will be the same. The prize you solicit thrice shall be yours. Yet you will find nothing but mocking laughter, once you breach these doors."

  Alex guffawed with mirth as Sudong's face twisted with rage, before hardening into a fearsome smile. "Fool. Thinking to use the communication crystals against me? Princess Cui Chan! You will strike dead that damned Ruidian, protect the prizes within, and present yourself before me on your hands and knees. Your master commands it!"

  His malicious grin dropped when all that answered was Alex's mocking chuckle.

  "Poor headmaster, thinks himself so brave. After daring to make Cui Zhe's daughter his slave! But what does it mean, you might ask, to find your princess not up to the task?"

  Sudong’s features blotched with fury. "No. She was infernally bound! Bound to collar and curse. Bound to me! There is no way you could have freed her. You will surrender my prize to me immediately!"

  "And such you may have, should you wish it thrice. But then you will have neither my head, nor pristine alchemical supplies, nor fifteen priceless Golden tomes. But perhaps a crippled princess shall suffice?"

  Summon Portal skill check: Success!

  The headmaster's eyes widened in dismay as he reexamined the massive outer chamber, empty of everything save scorched walls and strangely pristine book shelves. "You will surrender those tomes immediately! Every last one!" he roared. "And you will surrender every damned book, scroll, treatise and manual you stole from this room!"

  Alex returned a defiant smile. "I don't suppose you can put what's happening on speaker for our friends, can you, WiFu?" he thought as loud as he could.

  "And the fifteen priceless Golden Tomes I will surrender to you, should you wish it thrice. Descendant of my enemies, so well aligned to frigid ice! Is this the prize you wish to claim, for all that it will lead to your eternal bane?"

  Alex heard several curses and exclamations, the cultivators' voices carrying surprisingly well through the crystalline interface.

  "He has the emperor's treasures!" hissed one of Sudong's assistants.

  "I was sworn access to those tomes when I took the oath!" snarled another.

  "Yes, you damned Ruidian bastard! You will give me those tomes, you will give me those tomes, you will give me those tomes!"

  Alex chuckled to himself, almost imagining the frustrated howls he could hear, a world away.

  "Thrice you have asked, and thrice I have heard! You need not say another word. The tomes, and the explosive secrets they hold, are now yours."

  With a final glance at the cracked jade vault door, now reinforced by a shimmering gold portal bracing it, he darted for the stairwell as his foes renewed their pounding.

  "Ha! We have you, youling fool! You have sworn thrice to surrender your prizes, and the Covenant of the Fox binds you! Now open this door and surrender our spoils, and we will, in turn, give you unending pain!"

  Alex exchanged a fierce grin with an awed looking Xun Hu.

  "I can't believe they actually..."

  Alex quickly shook his head.

  "Now correct me if I'm wrong, Headmaster Sudong, but you didn't specify exactly how I was to give you these books!" Alex hollered into the air, delighted when the communication crystal conveyed it effortlessly. He was equally pleased to note that his Perception still allowed him to see the furious expressions on the hologram-like spirit Qi projection from the foyer perfectly.

  Sudong grew apoplectic. "You will surrender them to me right now, you pustulent worm, or I'll—"

  Alex winked at the kitsune beside him, nudged her through the gate leading back to his palatial chambers for safety's sake, and began dropping priceless golden tomes, one after another, into the golden pyramid of portals at the bottom of the stairwell.

  Each of those tomes fell through the topmost three pyramid panels before plunging through the bottommost one and into the chamber below.

  The trapped prizes immediately turned incandescently hot before unleashing explosive shockwaves so intense that they managed both to deafen him with an incalculable roar and knock out the audio-crystal, even as the panels of the pyramid grew white hot, and the portal securing the cracked Jade door began to buckle against the inconceivable force of multiple eruptions ripping through the chamber beyond.

  And still, a madly laughing Alex continued to drop his tomes through, each one releasing the concussive detonation that would obliterate almost any thief, shockwaves of jarring force resonating off the bookcases designed to maximize the effectiveness of the ultimate thief deterrent. He couldn’t suppress his madcap grin or the furious vindication he felt, catching sight of dozens of holographic figures bouncing around the torus-shaped room like pinballs.

  Before seeming to break up into dozens of tiny holographic pieces and disappearing from the display entirely. And still Alex kept dropping tomes.

  Willpower check made!

  Summon Portal skill check made!

  Your portals hold! You have taken 2 Light Wounds & 1 Medium Wound.

  Power Healing engaged!

  Even as his nose began to bleed from the strain of maintaining the golden gates that kept the cracked vault door and the pyramid from erupting with the Gold-tier curses he was triggering, he took fierce delight in the obliteration caused by each tome he dropped, vividly imagining the screams of his dying enemies, though he couldn't hear a sound.

  And then he could, when Eternal Fox regenerated his hearing, and he realized that he was surrounded by utter stillness aside from his own racing heart and ragged breathing.

  He raced to the front foyer, frowning at the now massive cracks in the jade vault door, where his golden gate was still holding strong.

  He was surprised and pleased to see that the audio crystal hadn’t been destroyed. Rather, it had just be
en knocked to mute.

  But all he heard when he threaded the tiniest bit of spiritual energy into it was a strange dripping noise, and the holographic display showed a scene of absolute devastation.

  Stunned, he crashed to his knees as the flood of experience roaring through his soul nearly obliterated him, and he desperately began channeling as much as he could into what he now thought of as his emergency circuit-breaker skill.

  Congratulations! You have successfully slain two Gold cultivators, twelve Silver cultivators, twenty-seven Bronze cultivators, and seven Basic cultivators.

  You are now ready to level-up to Bronze Rank 7!

  You have failed to save versus meridian strain.

  You have successfully channeled excess Experience into Potency Mastery!

  Potency Mastery is now Rank 3.

  Potency Mastery is now Rank 4.

  You may now safely channel a full 40% of the potency (experience) needed to gain any Bronze Rank into your skills before Vitality or Willpower checks are required to avoid meridian strain or potential obliteration!

  You may now recover an additional 4 Qi Points per second for the four minutes after besting an opponent, as you claim a portion of your foe's spiritual energy as your own!

  Alex cried out in pain as blood poured out of every orifice, feeling like his meridians were being shredded under the weight of so much fearsome, terrible potential. He had no doubt that if he hadn't been able to conceptualize such an absurd skill as Potency Mastery, he would have died this day, no matter what he did, where even survival would doom him. A fitting trap that, for all he knew, the gods had used to destroy him countless times before.

  "Well not this time, assholes!" Alex shouted at the heavens as he began the agonizing process of restoring his seared peripherals once more. "I took all your pieces off the board. Do you hear me? All your pieces are dead!"

  Of course he heard nothing in response, wondering if his momentary communion with the smirking WiFu and his furiously protesting relatives had been anything more than a spark of delusion. Not that it mattered. Victory against his enemies was just as sweet either way.

  Or so he told himself, during the agonizing hour he spent fully restoring his internal systems, as he was forced to wonder just how close that deadly surge of potency had come to killing him.

  Only then did he remove the gold portal and prepare to open the badly cracked jade door... though not before manipulating his final two gates in the room beyond, just in case.

  "Divide and conquer, every time," he whispered to excuse his paranoia, no matter that his enemies were already dead.

  58

  You have failed to save versus nauseating stench! You are momentarily stunned.

  Alex was rocked back by the charnel reek in the room beyond. No matter how ruthless he had felt in the moments that he had unleashed explosive death upon his enemies, or how clever he had thought himself, outmaneuvering foes that in any other time or place could have effortlessly obliterated him... being confronted by the horrifying reality of dozens upon dozens of victims dying to concussive blasts was almost more than his stomach, or conscience, could bear.

  He couldn't help wincing as he caught sight of more than a few decapitated heads gazing at horrors he couldn’t even imagine amidst piles of shredded corpses. Bright red chunks of flesh, flayed by explosive force and being blasted around the circular chamber perhaps scores of times, had left the entire chamber covered in blood and gore. Alex held back a retch, so thick was the coppery tang of blood on the back of his tongue.

  For a heartbeat, he regretted that his injuries and caution had dictated he restore himself completely before daring to venture outside. Any souls slowly slipping into the darkest of all rivers had long since sunk, along with their priceless soul stones, well before Alex was in any position to claim them for himself.

  Then he felt a flash of shame, recalling his initial resolve to only tear free priceless cores from the darkest of foes who had been nothing but a blight upon this world.

  But after all he had endured, all he had been through, forced to accept that even the gods above were so hungry for his death that they would twist the rules of fate as much as they possibly could to achieve it... he couldn't deny that he was now a far more ruthless, darker version of himself than he had been before leaving Dragon Academy.

  And that was when his eyes caught sight of it.

  The weapon one of his enemies had wielded with a smirk, perhaps also sensing the death it promised, thinking it would be Alex's doom.

  A prize he had never expected to see again.

  One of a pair of priceless oversized shark-toothed dao that he had thought forever lost.

  Yet there the blade lay, perfect, whole, utterly without a scratch, perhaps the sole intact artifact he saw in a sea full of shattered bodies and ruptured treasures, save for the golden tomes he nearly tripped over that were immune to their own detonative blasts.

  So perhaps he could be forgiven the sudden tunnel vision as he raced for his too-long denied prize in the split second before blinding pain tore through his body and soul.

  But he would not be the one to do so, he thought, internally howling at his own folly as laughing death came for him at last in the form of a massive Gold Titan that Alex's Qi Perception only pinged upon as his right hand clasped the hilt of his beloved blade and his left arm was absolutely obliterated by the deadly hammer that had torn it completely off, although it had barely caressed his flesh, sending him spinning through the air like a top spraying blood.

  Willpower check made! You resist fatal shock!

  Finesse check made!

  Bullrush!

  And it was only because of battle-heightened reflexes and the paranoia of a man who knows death is forever just a single misstep away that had him leaping away as the Titan's hammer whistled through the air, barely clipping his arm.

  But with such a deadly tool given to a Body Cultivator with a Golden heart pounding in his chest by an enemy who wanted Alex dead at all costs, it seemed that even the barest caress with that instrument of death was enough to tear Alex's limbs completely free of their sockets.

  And when Alex caught the gaze of the snarling cultivator roaring for his head, he could all but swear he saw Long Wang's stamp upon the man's features, the deity's hate-filled gaze burning through Double Li's own.

  You have saved versus dizziness. You sense your foe's true name! Power Healing engaged!

  "You will pay for what you did, mongrel of the Fox!" Double Li roared, raising his monstrous hammer, sneering cruelly at his one-armed foe. "You're your tricks will avail you naught! I will avenge my fallen brothers by tearing free your limbs, one at a time!"

  The monster then roared and charged, and Alex's already ragged heartbeat skipped yet again, tasting the sheer peril of daring to cross a Gold Titan with the fiery blood of dragons in his veins, wielding a divine artifact hungry for his blood.

  Willpower check made!

  But no matter the monster's howling roars, Alex had changed in ways terrible and profound since the day he had shivered with Liu Li and Liu Jian before the furious might of an enraged cockatrice. And the longer he gazed at his foe, the more clearly he sensed that the seat of the man's power was not the horribly warped Silver cables that he sensed fraying under the strain of even touching a god's chosen weapon, but rather the brilliant Golden heart pounding in the man's chest.

  Flooding his limbs with inhuman might.

  Limbs that still seemed the tiniest bit off balance, as if even this mighty titan had paid a price, at least in terms of concussions, after being sent spinning about the chamber countless times by blasts that had shredded nearly every other soul within. Yet there was no question that Double Li’s Strength was enough to tear even a Silver Giant limb from limb, and he was still just as fast and graceful as any Olympian.

  But no faster.

  And while Alex would have dearly loved to lead his enemy in a merry chase around the outer perimeter, that was impossible
, because he, in his paranoia, had split the donut-shaped chamber in half with an invisible pair of his gates leading nowhere, and accessible only by him.

  Paranoia which had probably saved his life.

  Yet he was still trapped in a living nightmare where not once, but thrice, oversized monsters had either shattered nearly every bone in his body or literally torn the limbs from his frame as he strove desperately just to survive. It was a miracle that he was still able to function, still able to focus, terror as well as Eternal Fox numbing the pain as he desperately fought for his life.

  All his focus was locked upon the furious Gold Titan smashing craters within the floors and walls of the chamber, eager to pound Alex to oblivion with that monstrous war hammer. He didn’t dare attack, not yet, desperate just to power heal in the brief moments of reprieve he had, each time he successfully darted away from his foe. Seconds that, to him, were as precious as gold as his blood was quickly restored, his left shoulder now ending in a knot of scar tissue that was miraculously pain free, for all that he would be forced to endure agony anew when it was time to regenerate the limb once more.

  Assuming he survived long enough to do so.

  "Give that fool not a moment's rest! Kill him, Double Li! Kill him now, and be worthy of Long Wang's gift!" roared none other than Headmaster Sudong as the whirling maelstrom of air and lightning upon the other side of the divided barrier coalesced into the vile man’s hate-filled countenance.

  And how grateful Alex was that his barrier stopped most of the headmaster’s killing aura, though he still felt the weight of the man's furious gaze.

  Willpower check made!

  But Alex kept his focus solely upon the bull-like Titan constantly charging for him, painfully aware that even a single tiny slip-up was death, and knowing all too well his peril as he was forced to dodge and pivot with only one arm, his balance slightly skewed. And this, more than anything else, was why Alex constantly raced away from his foe, changing directions rapidly while still keeping well out of the deadly war hammer's range, his goal to master his body even as he stayed just out of reach of the Gold Titan so eager to kill him.