by Eric Nylund
The crowd grew slightly less rowdy.
He yelled, “The challenge match is about to begin!”
Yeah, this was happening—whether I wanted it to or not.
The gorilla went on, “The rules of this challenge? There are no rules!”
The crowd screamed and pounded on one another as their anticipation of seeing my blood grew.
My adrenaline kicked in.
I forced my pulse to slow.
Easy. Save it for the fight.
“And the stakes?” the gorilla yelled. “If, or rather when, the challenger suffers a humiliating defeat, and if he is not killed, he will join our ranks. Another in a long line of recruited adepts and priests and slaves!”
Howls of ape laughter and rude gestures bubbled through the spectators.
“In the very, very unlikely event that the challenger wins—”
Boos and hisses and feces were lobbed into the arena.
“—he wins his freedom, his belongings, and—”
The spectators drowned the announcer out, and tossed rotten fruit and coconut husks at him.
He roared and bared his teeth.
That settled them down.
“And,” he continued, “he will also win freedom for his companions, who will rejoin him in their boring, sober, sad lives.”
He turned to Cho and then to me.
“Are the combatants ready?”
I made a show of rising to my feet with great dignity and nodded.
Master Cho drained his gourd and in the process spilled half the amber liquor down his chest. His attendants rushed to him and slung a bandolier over his shoulder with three similar containers attached.
Hey, hadn’t he said no equipment?
Cho gave the announcer a thumbs up.
We approached the center of the arena.
Cho started to wander off in the wrong direction, but his crew of lemurs steered him back toward the ring.
We halted four paces from one another.
What kind of drunk was Cho? The happy-go-lucky karaoke signer? The emotional I’ll-always-be-your-best-friend type? Or a “mean” drunk?
I’d go out on a limb and guess “mean,” which meant if he got me on the ropes, he might not stop beating me if I passed out. Or if I was dead.
“Let’s have an entertaining fight,” the gorilla whispered to Master Cho. “You wanted me to remind you, sifu, to not instantly kill the challenger like you have many times before.”
Master Cho grinned.
The gorilla turned to me, considered, and said, “Die well, stranger.”
Thanks, buddy.
The gorilla backed off and barked: “FIGHT!”
I fired off Perfect Motion and gave Cho a quick bow.
Master Cho bowed as well, but kept curling over, and remained that way… snoring.
Oh, for a ranged weapon right now.
Of course, this was a trick.
And of course, I still had to give it a shot.
I circled around and crept up.
The monkey audience hissed at me and called warnings to Master Cho.
He snored louder.
I jumped and used a spinning hook kick for its power, speed, and distance.
The instant before I made contact, however, Cho’s head rolled out of the way in the wooziest of motions.
He grabbed my foot and wrenched my leg straight. He then vaulted up, somersaulted, and upside down in the air planted his foot in my face…
I woke a moment later—slamming onto the ground.
He rolled to his feet and chuckled.
The spectators gushed a tidal wave of cheers.
He’d knocked off an impressive quarter of my health.
I got up and worked my jaw. Cracked, but still in one piece. “You little drunken excuse for a furry.”
I checked my anger. I couldn’t afford to lose my cool.
“Yoush gohanna loohk-hup mush bettur wid no teehesh,” he said.
Lovely. He might have the Taunting Tenor ability too.
I used a Spiritual Regeneration to top off my health, then made a snap call.
I closed on Cho and loosened a series of probing strikes—not overcommitting like I had last time. I needed to see if he’d counter them as I’d seen in the scrolls.
He did, lazily swatting my punches aside as if he were playing with a toddler. He yawned and I got a strike through his guard.
I took him open-palmed under the chin—snapped his head back.
That should have broken his C-5 vertebra.
Cho’s head, however, came right back like it was made of rubber, apparently no worse for the wear because he was still grinning.
Had he just tested me?
His smile faded. He launched a barrage of weaving snake strikes that cracked ribs, and jabbed me in the armpit, sending lightning strikes of pain down the side of my body. One sliced at my throat.
I backpedaled to avoid the windpipe-crushing blow. Barely.
Ouch.
And wow.
His attacks had been nearly impossible to predict. They didn’t follow the laws of physics—never going where I thought.
How to penetrate such a flawless defense? And how hard did I have to hit to get through his feeling-no-pain state?
There was no such thing as a perfect martial art. There had to be weaknesses.
He staggered back. This had nothing to do with any attack of mine. He’d simply lost his balance.
Master Cho pulled a fresh gourd off his bandolier and helped himself to a snootful, closing his eyes in bliss.
The crowd chanted: “Chug—chug—chug!”
He obliged.
If anything might distract him, it would be savoring the taste of his brandy.
I took the chance, moved to his side—lunged, going for his neck.
He dropped his chin and caught my wrist, pulled the arm straight, and rolled forward, using the same damn maneuver he’d just used on me!
And once more, I slammed onto the sandy arena floor.
This jolted my memory and I recalled this move from one of Cho’s scrolls. It was the Sticky Face Sticky Hands technique.
So that stuff wasn’t just propaganda to scare off the competition. Not good. At all.
In my half-dazed condition and while my thoughts had wandered elsewhere, it hadn’t registered that Cho still had my arm.
Big mistake.
He snapped the elbow.
It felt like razor wire whipsawed through the joint—so intense every muscle in my body clenched.
He twisted about me, further torturing the joint, and his free arm and legs entangled about mine.
Agony haloed my vision with pulsing red.
If I didn’t get out of this soon, I’d pass out from the pain.
I shifted, balled up, and kicked out my legs.
Normally this would have broken his hold, but his ground fighting style was beyond “soft.” It was like trying to wrestle hairy Jell-O.
He got his calves about my throat and scissored them together. A textbook-perfect chokehold.
Now I was passing out.
I withdrew…
and floated in the aether.
Too close.
I had to admit, Master Cho’s Drunken Monkey boxing was astonishingly effective.
So what was my next move?
I had one surprise. I had to use it.
I coiled a smoldering blue-white ley line about the length of my body. Oh man, it was c-c-cold. My nose burned with menthol; my skin crinkled so tight I thought it might split.
I took one more second to center myself then reluctantly returned to the fight.
The cold flowed to Cho with the sharp crack of water flash freezing.
He squawked, jumped off me, and danced about swatting ice from his upper thighs.
I lay in the dirt, panting, fuming from the extreme chill.
Well, that worked. Yay?
My health was at 13 points.
Loathing what I had to do, but ha
ving no choice, I pulled my arm straight (hoping this action didn’t do enough damage to finish me off). I clamped down hard to hold my screams inside. Then while Cho was otherwise occupied, I spammed Spiritual Regeneration until I was back to good… although I didn’t think that elbow would ever feel the same again.
I’d be able to fight, though.
With my spiritual mana at 20/90, however, I wasn’t going to last much longer.
My usual strategies of using the terrain to my advantage, and/or outwitting my opponent wouldn’t work here.
Surrounded by hundreds of bloodthirsty spectators in a simple sandy arena offered me few options (although kicking sand into Cho’s face seemed like my best, albeit, desperate tactic).
And outwitting Cho? How? He seemed to be both frighteningly cunning and so sauced I wondered if he even understood what he was doing. There was nothing there to outwit—just a happy idiot savant.
Cho staggered closer, stopped, and swayed back and forth like he was trying to pick a direction to fall. “Yeep…” he gargled. “I booord. Lezt end dus aaa mak youz monkey, hookay?”
CHAPTER 33
“Now I shooo youz how stron arrr eyhhe…”
Cho waved his hands, kicked right and then left—flopped and tumbled on the ground, looking… like a three-year-old imitating kung fu after watching Enter the Dragon.
Was he too drunk now to fight? Or was he messing with me again?
This time I wasn’t taking the bait.
Cho’s capering shifted gears and he launched into a display of flawless acrobatic kicks, standing double and triple backflips, going faster, still faster until he blurred into a continuous sinew of motion.
No drunken dance was this.
It was the Strangest Attractor technique.
There was no way I could engage Cho and not get caught in that web of death.
He ended with the best spinning kick I’d ever seen—a full three-hundred-sixty-degree sweep in midair.
His adoring audience clapped and called for more.
He bowed and waved, lingering and smiling at some of the lady chimps.
Regardless of his intoxicated condition, Master Cho was just too skilled.
I faced a simple choice: yield or die.
Or wait… what if his murderously effective moves depended on him being drunk? Could I change that condition?
Maybe.
I could get him so drunk he’d pass out.
Highly unlikely given his supernatural capacity.
Okay, how about me getting sloshed and using his own Drunken Monkey techniques against him? That might work, if I knew Drunken Monkey boxing.
One last possibility. Yes. This was it.
I had to sober the monkey up.
Somehow.
Cho turned and looked me over. He made a fist, cracking his hairy knuckles. “Wee finnish dis, so Iz getz hon wid moar-hor drinkin.”
He took a full gourd from his bandolier, popped the cork, and tilted it to his mouth.
How the heck, though, was I going to dry him out when he was still drinking? Given his body mass, and how much he’d already guzzled, I was astonished he hadn’t keeled over from alcohol poisoning.
…Poisoning, huh?
I opened my inventory and focused on one of the potions I’d picked up at Hiltmyer & Co.
KARL’S GUARANTEED DE-TOXINIFIER
(Tier-IV alchemical, rare)
DESCRIPTION: Colorless oil with a burning cinnamon aftertaste.
SPECIAL ABILITIES: Scours the imbiber’s blood, lungs, bones, and other organs of all organic toxins, poisons, venoms, radioactive elements, and heavy metals.
WARNING: This elixir will not counter magically-cursed poisons or the effects of psi-program viruses. Toxins/poisons et al. are excreted via the most expeditious means and may induce immediate vomiting, sweating, and/or excretion.
VALUE: 2,500 golden quins.
As much as I hated to admit it, ethyl alcohol was a poison… so the anti-toxin just might purge it from Cho’s blood.
No alcohol, no drunken monkey, no special techniques.
The problem was how to get him to drink this?
I had to figure that out. Fast.
I phased into the aether.
How about a little fast talk to trick him into downing it? Doubtful that would work. Why would Master Cho drink anything I offered him when he was in the process of knocking back that full gourd of brandy in his…
Ah, that was how: The gourd of brandy in his hand, conveniently tilted into his open mouth.
I wouldn’t have to convince him to drink anything, because he’d already be drinking it.
I just had to use my Small Pass ability and teleport the potion’s contents into Cho’s gourd. It would mix with the brandy, which he’d then imbibe as soon as I phased back from the aether.
I reached for one of the gold ley lines that corresponded to position and space. The glittering filament met my grasp halfway and made its usual solid-connection in the palm of my hand.
I couldn’t just tie the line to the potion in my inventory. That was a mere virtual projection. I’d need the actual object. So, I tapped the icon of the vial to summon it.
It remained in my inventory.
I tapped it once more. Nothing.
…And I thought I understood why.
The description of my Mage of the Line abilities had stated they appeared “almost instantaneous” from the perspective of those in normal space-time.
Almost instantaneous.
I could only think of two reasons for this “almost instantaneous” effect. Either no time passed in the aether and any perceived delay was from the split-second it took to transition here—or, and I hoped this was the case, time just moved very slowly in this dimension.
So, if the game interface was like other computer interfaces, it had a time-delayed response—a microsecond while the system processed a finger tap and executed the command triggered by that input.
That microsecond delay would either take infinitely long here (if time was truly stopped)… or something less than that (if time crawled along at a snail’s pace).
I waited…
for the span of twenty non-existent heartbeats…
and watched my reflexive mana tick down…
and kept waiting.
Come on come on come on.
A blue crystal vial popped into my hand. Yes!
I had to be quick—just 35/110 reflexive mana left.
I made a loop of the gold ley line and pushed it into the vial—just past the inner surface, so it encircled the liquid contents. I then made another loop, and with a flick of the thread and a mental push, directed it toward Cho and made it halt inside his upraised gourd.
I finished the Small Pass.
The potion within the vial shrank and vanished.
Had it worked? Did this count as teleporting one object into another? The description of Small Pass had warned of a lower chance of success.
Only one way to find out.
I phased back to normal space-time.
Cho’s gourd dipped slightly from the added weight.
He kept drinking as if nothing had happened.
I watched and prayed to all the gods of alchemy.
“Ahhh.” Cho dropped the drained gourd, raised his fists, and took a step toward me.
He halted.
His face went blank.
The monkey’s stomach rumbled… flexed, clenched.
Karl’s De-toxinifier then performed as advertised: Master Cho took two steps back—and power-vomited in a wide arc.
I successfully dodged.
The audience fell silent.
Cho groaned, held his gut, blinked, and his glazed eyes cleared. He shook his head and looked about as if he’d been soundly asleep and slapped awake, which I imagined was what it must have felt like going from fully ripped to completely sober in three seconds flat.
Master Cho may have not known the reason for what just happened, but the result was
clear enough even for his simian brain.
He glanced at the discarded gourd. “How—?”
His eyes widened as it dawned on him what this meant.
He grasped for the last gourd on his bandolier.
Oh no, you don’t.
I raced to Cho, stepped into the aether, grabbed a fuming filament of frost, then back—and dove for the chimp.
My fingers stretched for the gourd.
Cho tipped it.
An amber stream poured into his opened mouth.
I touched.
The booze froze. Instantly.
The gourd exploded.
Shards of ice bounced off my chi armor and lacerated Cho’s hand and face.
Solid chunks of brandy hit the dirt.
Cho’s face contorted with surprise—panic—rage.
“No!” he spat out through clenched teeth.
He attacked.
I deflected his strikes, redirecting his force, and landed a counter kick.
He got in a spear strike to my abdomen.
I punched him in the throat.
I fell backward—my breath hitching in my chest.
Cho clutched at his throat and coughed.
“Life’s harder when you’re sober, huh?” I asked.
“One is… hardly alive… sober,” he wheezed.
Cho had a few levels on me. That was obvious. But I’d just short-circuited his special abilities.
That’s all I needed.
This called for a new, ugly strategy.
I moved in, threw punches and kicks, not bothering to deflect, block, or dodge.
I simply had to slug it out.
I scored a half-dozen quick strikes to his chest and two to his face.
Cho ignored his defense as well, and hit back: a kick to my groin, two in my gut, and he bit my knee so hard his teeth sunk into the bone.
I landed a hammer blow on his skull.
He spun away and rubbed his head.
I jumped back, hopping to keep the weight off my savaged knee, and used Spiritual Regeneration to heal the damage.
Cho stood there panting wet wheezes, one eye swelling shut, as he watched my wounds fade.
Hair then dropped from his body in clumps, his arms shortened, and his skin smoothed. He looked… more human? Perhaps the drunken monkey god’s curse only worked as long as there was alcohol in the blood. That was good news for my friends, but for Master Cho? I couldn’t imagine what the hangover was like after, what? Decades of inebriation? Decades of being a chimp?
