by Dante King
Hazel! A figure lay before the pantry door, groaning softly. There was no time to check to see how she was doing, or even note if she was alive or not. With a grunt, I tossed her over my shoulder, the rope dart wrapped around the other. The shell of flowing water around my body extended to hers as well, keeping the flames off of her as I strode from the collapsing kitchen.
As I stepped back into the common room, half the ceiling gave with a groan. Flaming bits of debris rained down on the spot where we’d been standing, burying the corpse of the cultivator beneath it. Kij and the others were already gone. She’d heeded my advice, evacuating the tavern before the flames could consume it.
I shifted Hazel and put her down on top of the bar. “Hazel? Are you alright?”
She didn’t look wounded. I tugged up the side of her shirt, expecting the worst, but her skin was clean and unmarked. The cultivator hadn’t touched her. She’d—
Hazel blinked and sat up, coughing fiercely. She hacked and sputtered, holding a hand over her mouth, and I grabbed one of the bottles in the high-class section behind the bar and handed it to her. With a groan, Hazel downed half the bottle in a single gulp, regaining herself with one final cough.
“Did you kill the bastard?” were her first words. Practical as always, I thought with a smirk.
“He didn’t get out,” I said, jerking a thumb at the wreckage. “Now let’s get out of here before we join him.”
Hazel was still shaky on her feet. I tossed one of her arms over my shoulder, letting her lean on me for support as we made our way out of the Hungry Herb Tavern. I only turned back once, right as we reached the front door. Through the sliding screen near the back of the common room, I could see tongues of flame consuming Lyra’s garden. The space where we’d drilled, where my guild had practiced its cultivation—where Lyra had done magic for the first time. It was in flames.
It’s only a place, I told myself, forcing down the hurt. It doesn’t matter. The people are what matters. And I’ll be damned if I let the Hollow Frog Guild take a single one from me!
We emerged into the chilly night air, the sudden shock of the cold like a slap in the face. More buildings were ablaze as the fire spread, and it looked as if the few citizens who’d arranged buckets of water had fled for the hills. No one was fighting the fire—which meant it would consume the town utterly.
Hazel saw the same thing I did. “We need Lyra,” she muttered, shrugging off my arm. Apparently she’d recovered enough to walk. “Where the hell is that woman?”
“She’s dead.”
Hazel and I turned to see two more cultivators, both wearing the flowing robes of the Hollow Frog Guild, walking around the back of the Hungry Herb Tavern. Neither of them were men I recognized, but that didn’t really matter — all of them were the same to me. I felt my gorge rise at their boast, anger flowing through my veins.
I didn’t let them see it. “Liars,” I told the pair, twirling the rope dart between my arms. Regina faintly crackled with energy, as if her eagerness to jump into combat were something I could feel as part of myself. “Your friend back there lied to me about Hazel, as well. It was the last lie he ever told.”
The two cultivators shared an uneasy look. “Plini said you wouldn’t have a weapon,” the first one said: a man nearing his twilight years, with an angular face and a close-cropped goatee.
“He also said Eric Hyde uses the scythe and the snake spear,” the second man added. He was almost painfully ugly—the kind of man who signed onto the Hollow Frog Guild to attempt to patch over other defects in his character. “Our master said nothing about a rope dart.”
With my enhanced senses, I could feel the men’s fear. Their boasts were meant to hide how terrified they were—both at finding me armed, and with one of my harem girls by my side. I got the distinct impression the Hollow Frog Guild had planned their attack in such a way as to avoid both of those things. They’d intended to burn me out while I rested, separating me from my harem girls beforehand.
They’d failed. And now, thanks to these two, I knew which of the Hollow Frog’s lieutenants headed up the strike team. Plini, I told myself, thinking of the barrel-chested cultivator. He’s probably pissed I killed his protege. Must have asked Guildmaster Ji himself to head up the attack…
The men’s courage needed buttressing. “Pathetic weapon,” the first man said, pulling out a curved blade similar to Hazel’s dao sword. “A little needle with some rope attached…”
“Come a little closer,” I said with a smirk, “and I’ll show you how much this needle can sting!”
The two cultivators shared a look. A spark passed between them, and the older man stepped forward, brandishing his curved sword with all the anger he could muster. I watched him as he walked, gauging the space of each stride and estimating the strength of his limbs. Unless he was holding back, I had a pretty good idea that I could take him—or Hazel could.
I twirled Regina over my head like a lasso, getting into the swing of using her as a weapon. With a stutter step I feigned to the left, then jumped right and let the silver spike fly. It soared through the air, the chains connecting to the rope whistling like a wind chime as the sharp point sought its target.
At the last moment, the old man twisted and parried the rope dart out of the air. So he was holding back! A clever trick, but one that would only work once. Now that he’d shown his strength, I wouldn’t underestimate him again.
Behind me, Hazel drew her own sword, growling like an angry dog. Though the flames and her fight against the cultivator in the Hungry Herb Tavern had weakened her, she didn’t hesitate a moment before backing me up. Good girl, I thought.
The old man swung again, then again, slashing back and forth through the air to ward me off. “You should have stayed in your room,” he said sadly, glancing from me to Hazel and back again. “You and your whore. Then I wouldn’t have to get my hands dirty tonight.”
“Your hands are covered in blood,” Hazel snarled back, baring her teeth. I could tell the man was intimidated by her fierceness. “Tonight you die, you fucking monster!”
“Stop dancing around with your blade and fight me,” I added, gripping the rings clasping Regina’s base. “What are you waiting for, the whole town to burn down?”
The old man laughed. “Not at all,” he said, letting the blade drop to his side. “Just waiting for my comrade to get in touch with his sensitive side.”
His words were meant as a jibe, but I ought to have been grateful for them. After all, they saved my life.
I didn’t hesitate. Dropping the sharp point of the rope dart, I twisted and grabbed Hazel by the shoulders. She let out a little whoop of surprise as I shoved her to the ground, the motions so much like the way I’d treated her in the bedroom that memories of it flashed through my mind and made my cock throb as we hit the dirt.
As we landed, a bolt of pure flame sizzled through the spot where we’d just stood. It hit the blacksmith’s forge across the street and exploded, destroying in an instant the last bits of the building that remained upright.
Cultivator Detected!
Realm 2: Level 1: Stage 3 (Late Embryonic Soul Cultivator)
“Holy shit!” I heard Regina scream in my head. Now I understood how these two cultivators had set fire to the Hungry Herb Tavern with such brutal efficiency. The younger man was a Fire Cultivator, and from the looks of things, a Late Embryonic Soul Cultivator.
His older counterpart was merely a decoy. I needed to be careful around this man.
As if to underscore the point, the older cultivator took that moment to turn tail and run. His younger companion didn’t look put out at all by the sudden retreat—if anything, he appeared to have expected this move.
“Get to the Market,” the younger cultivator said, a vicious sneer on his face. “I heard Hyde tell his sluts to gather everyone there. They’ll be sitting ducks for the Hollow Frog Guild!”
No! I couldn’t let them ambush the villagers! If the Hollow Frog managed to regroup
on my people, they’d be dead. I only had one chance to stop the man. Reaching out into the world, opening my senses, I seized it.
This time, the rope dart felt like a natural extension of my body. Regina’s rope felt good in my hands, flexing in my fingers the way the muscles of her thigh flexed while she rode me. I took aim at the fleeing cultivator, twirling the rope in a tight spiral. The air filled with a high-pitched whistling sound, like one of those ultrasonic dog whistles back on Earth.
The rope dart soared forward, making not a single sound. The cultivator didn’t even turn around—he was far too focused on getting away, on spreading his message to the rest of the group. The spike took him directly through the back of the neck, puncturing his spine and emerging from his throat. A bright spray of arterial blood erupted like a cumshot, staining the ground.
The cultivator dropped to his knees, then tipped over. The motion put extra pressure on the rope dart, and I tugged it free with a grunt. The spike shot back to me as if it were magnetized, returning to my hand.
“Oh wow,” Regina’s voice purred in my head. “I just killed that guy! It felt… oh fuck, it felt so righteous!”
She likes it, too, I thought, smirking. If there’d been any doubt in my head that combat would arouse Regina the same way it did to the rest of my girls, her reaction to ripping out the throat of an enemy cultivator banished it. With one down, I turned to the younger cultivator, twirling the blood-stained dart at the end of its rope.
“He won’t be telling anybody about my new weapon,” I said, readying myself in a battle stance. “And neither will you.”
Fear shone in the cultivator’s eyes. With only an instant’s hesitation, he reached into the flames around him, building up as much power as his body could hold. He didn’t lack for energy sources—even as he showed his teeth, the Hungry Herb Tavern burst into flames behind him, tongues of pure fire lapping at the windows like hungry tongues.
The cultivator threw up his hands, yelling over the sound of the inferno as he cast another spell:
Damon Casts Inferno!
Holy hell! I threw myself to the ground as a rolling wave of fire filled the thoroughfare. Thinking quick, I wrapped Regina’s rope around my forearm and reached for my own stockpile of energy:
Eric Casts Mana Shield!
Twin cones of overlapping armor plates snapped into existence over my knuckles. I threw my hands up before the blaze, absorbing as much of the attack as I could. I wasn’t worried about myself—I had an inkling that I could take whatever punishment this cultivator wanted to dish out. But that wall of fire would accelerate the destruction of the village—and maybe hit Hazel. I wouldn’t let her get hurt if I could help it.
The flames cascaded against the shield, making it shimmer dangerously before my eyes. At the same time, my own comprehension of the flames began to increase. I started to understand the way this cultivator drew on the flames to stoke the fire within, using them as fuel to power his high-level fire spells.
Fire Comprehension Increased!
Engrave Stage reached 70% (Inferno: Level 3)
Slowly, step by hesitant step, I closed the gap. More words flashed before my eyes as the cultivator reached for more flames, scorching the very air with the force of his magic. The fact that I wasn’t dead yet shocked him. His eyes widened as he threw more force into his attack, using both hands to toss fireballs at my shields.
He hadn’t expected this. His role was no doubt to slip into the town, set a half-dozen fires, and get out. Now he was face to face with the master of Clan Hyde, the monster that even his superior Guildmaster Ji feared. My grin stretched wider and wider as I walked forward, shrugging off the flames as if they weren’t even there.
Eric Casts Dark Wave!
I used the same spell that the Rust Beetles had used on me, and it conjured a black mist around the cultivator’s face. He stammered something, and I knew then that he had been afflicted by the same confusion as the one that had struck me during the beetle fight.
Then I was right in front of him. The fire trailed off, and the dark mist dissipated from around his head. The man dropped to his knees. His body began to tremble—he couldn’t believe I’d shrugged off his best. To tell the truth, I had trouble believing it myself: adding another weapon to my repertoire must have made me even more powerful.
“Thanks for the practice,” I said, feeling my knowledge of the flames increase. I hadn’t tested out my own inferno spell yet, but I was about to see exactly what it could do.
I wrapped a hand around the cultivator’s throat and unleashed the flame.
Eric casts Inferno!
Flames exploded from my palm, wrapping around the cultivator’s throat like a tight collar. The man screamed and screamed, the smell of sizzling flesh filling the thoroughfare as I roasted his throat from the outside in. His world became nothing but a pillar of searing flame as the spell covered his eyes, his ears, his universe.
I held him above the ground for long moments, until I was sure he was dead. Then I tossed him through the front door of the smoldering Hungry Herb Tavern, leaving him to roast in the coals.
When I turned around, Hazel was staring at me like she’d never seen me before. There was fear in those eyes, sure—but also, she looked more turned on than I’d ever seen her. Looks like Regina’s not the only one who gets horny for murder, I thought, grinning at my harem girl.
“Sorry you didn’t get to join in,” I told Hazel, stepping away from the sight of the carnage as if nothing had happened. “Better for you to stay fresh anyway. No telling what we might run into later…”
Hazel’s eyes bored holes into mine. “If we weren’t in the middle of an emergency,” she whimpered, her gaze raking up and down my muscles as she nibbled her bottom lip. “I’d have you tear my clothes off and take me right now—”
I’d love to have heard exactly how Hazel wanted me to fuck her. But before she could go into detail, a sound rippled over the burning town that caught and held my attention.
Hazel heard it, too. “What in the world is that?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.
Hah! Despite the circumstances, I found myself laughing. Found you, I thought. I knew you were alright!
“That’s the cavalry,” I said, taking Hazel by the hand. “Come on—it sounds like it’s coming from the Market. Apparently great minds think alike!”
“Whose mind?” Hazel asked as she followed me. But I think she knew. After all, there was only one person who could be casting water spells in the middle of this blazing inferno.
Lyra.
Chapter 18
The town was in tatters.
Nearly every building Hazel and I passed on our way to the market square showed some sign of damage. The Hollow Frog Guild cultivators who’d attacked the town had been indiscriminate with their fire spells. Commercial buildings, churches, the houses of ordinary people—all of them were fair game as far as Guildmaster Ji and his cronies were concerned.
Even if we were to snuff out all of those flames right that second, Lyra’s town would be recovering from this damage for a long while. They’d have to rebuild the Hungry Herb Tavern from scratch.
I couldn’t let myself think about it. If I started worrying about particular buildings, or particular people, the anxiety would consume me. Like a shark, the only way to stay above the fray was to keep moving—and keep heading for the scent of blood.
Regina hissed and moaned in my mind as we raced down the main thoroughfare. The woman had just received her first taste of blood as my weapon, and from the way she reveled in the sensation, she wanted more. She’d get it before the night was through.
We didn’t run into any more cultivators on the way to the Market. Either they’d done their job and retreated—which felt damned unlikely—or they were regrouping for another assault. We couldn’t afford to split our attention between the flames and the cultivators, but convincing the villagers of that would be one hell of a task.
“We have to change
our tactics,” I growled, startling Hazel next to me. She hadn’t been following my train of thought.
“Come again?” the blonde warrior asked, matching me step for step.
“We don’t have time to let the town burn down,” I explained as I ran. “We need to hunt those cultivators down and stop them before they do even more damage. We staunch the worst of the bleeding, but then we have to go after them.”
Hazel nodded grimly. “No wonder they’re hiding,” she realized. “They’re going to let us tire ourselves out, then swoop in and finish us off.”
The thought of it was at the forefront of my mind as Hazel and I reached the Market square. Just as I’d told the guests at the Hungry Herb Tavern, this was probably the safest place in the whole town to be. No permanent buildings filled the Market, only stalls and tents—most of which had been torn down by refugees to keep the flames from spreading. The main bulk of the villagers clustered around the fountain in the center of the square—the same one where I’d practiced my Earth cultivation what felt like a lifetime ago.
A figure stood at the front of the pack, clearly the figurehead if not the leader. A stream of water shot from her open palms as I approached, soaking a nearby building to halt the flames in their path. Her long red hair hung messily down her back, and her robes hung open so that she was practically naked, but Lyra looked fiercer than she ever had before.
These monsters had attacked her home. Now she meant business.
“Eric!” Villagers turned to see me and Hazel as we reached the fountain. “Eric Hyde is here!”
The cheers startled Lyra out of her firefighter routine. She turned, making no move to close her bathrobe as she quickly crossed the distance between us.
