But with the captain of this voyage himself now seeking to aid one particularly unwelcome passenger... all his precautions had just been rendered worthless. There was no more wiggle room. Not even for a disciple of the God of Chaos and Change.
He needed to leave immediately, lest one particular Fate Card suddenly supersede another, and Fog of War be trumped by evidence of people that spiteful players would go out of their way to punish, just for being in the sights of the pawn they despised so completely.
For daring to waste so many of their Fate Cards.
For committing the high crime of surviving their bitter hate for so long.
And worst of all, his greatest affront by far, Alex had learned their darkest secret.
What they had done to a mutated boy whose only crime had been being born imperfect.
Locked in a cage, left to die in a soulless, lonely laboratory with the remnants of unspeakable experiments locked in alternate cages, the child’s ancient transcendent bones bombarded by endless violent Qi energies Alex could only think of as radiation. A soul trapped in a vessel that must have been suffering unspeakable pain, forced to play the role of damned fool for the eternal amusement of a clan that had somehow achieved not only immortality, but divinity.
Until Alex had brought the boy’s ancient bones into a chamber that resonated with the complexity of the grandest of supercomputers. Or, in this world, the most complex and ethereal of melodies.
His master had finally ascended, fully and completely.
And there wasn’t a damn thing their enemies could do about it.
Alex laughed at the heavens as he all but flew through the trees.
“I will survive, you bastards! I will make it to Baidushi, disrupt your curse, learn every bit of forbidden lore you would hide, and one day I will achieve Silver, Gold, and Jade! One day I will ascend to the heavens themselves, and then it’s on, motherfuckers!
“Do you hear me? It’s on!”
The overcast heavens answered with sudden peals of thunder, flashes of lightning, and a torrent of rain.
Alex howled with bitter mirth, taking gleeful pleasure in the fact that with Fog of War in effect, his enemies hadn’t heard a thing.
Even if, in their heart of hearts, they were forced to feel the first spikes of fear.
Knowing a worm was coming for them.
A worm that would burrow into their hearts, and eat them alive.
___________________________________________________________________
Alex Hammer
Class – Cultivator: Disciple of the Dual Path (Unlimited potential. This is a Divine path.)
Rank 3 Divine Bronze Cultivation Achieved
Physical Characteristics
Strength - Bronze Rank 2 (26) (Relentless Resolve is now recognized as a core element of your path.)
Vitality - Bronze Rank 2 (26) (Eternal Resilience is now recognized as a core element of your path.)
Quickness - Bronze Rank 1 (20) (Chaotic Unpredictability is now recognized as a core element of your path.)
Finesse - Bronze Rank 1 (20) (Mastery of Oneself is now recognized as a core element of your path.)
Spiritual Characteristics
Scholarship - 12 (Exceeds 75% of Population.)
Perception - 17 (Exceeds 99% of Population.)
Willpower - 17 (Exceeds 99% of Population.)
Qi Pool - Bronze Rank 5 (40) (All meridian gateways are open. Forged and peripheral channels enjoy added resiliency!)
Health Points: 385
Perks
Insightful – Rank 2
Charismatic – Rank 2
Lesser Shadow Affinity - You can now see Shadow Qi! You have +5 to spot all those using Shadow to ambush or confuse you.
Favored Skills
Golden Realms Kung Fu – Rank 6
White Crane Kung Fu – Rank 7
Silver Swan Kung Fu – Rank 6
Poison Spitting – Rank 4
Stealth – Rank 4
Qi Disciplines
Adderstrike – Rank 8 (0.5 Qi cost per strike. Internal Qi is undetectable and extremely hard to counter. You now hit faster and harder than ever before, and are better able to harmonize your temporary invulnerability at the moment of impact with other abilities, such as Storm Flight!)
Black Swan (Soul Strike) – Rank 4 (You have discovered an advanced Silver Swan assassination technique! Strike with the fury of a tsunami behind your blow! This technique can shatter lesser wards. Water-Steel Qi elements involved. Cost to use: 4 Qi and risk of meridian strain, unless used after Silver breakthrough made, or in a storm.)
You have learned the advanced Black Swan variant: Soul Strike. Requires affinity with Water, Steel, and Dark Qi Elements. Requires contact (of one sort or another) with the River of Souls. Rank is identical to Black Swan. For daring to risk oblivion, you may effortlessly pierce any ward, armor, or body cultivation technique below Gold as you slice through your enemy’s spirit directly, channeling the River of Souls itself! Cost: 8 Qi and moderate meridian strain. Consecutive uses in the same day will increase cost, and your risk of being claimed by the river you channel. You risk slipping into the river forevermore if you dare to sleep before sunrise the next day.
Bullrush – Rank 6
Dark Qi Projection – Rank 4
Forest Flight – Rank 3 (You now instinctively understand how best to spring through the trees, very much like a squirrel in his favored terrain! You may have no weapon in your hands while using this skill. Speed exceeds that of a racing horse, and increases with each Rank. Fatigue and Qi drain are virtually nonexistent. You are channeling the Qi of the forest.)
Forest Sense – Rank 3 (You are now able to commune with the forest and sense woodland disturbances at significant range. When surrounded by woodlands, you can rest in a meditative state almost as good as sleep that leaves you aware of any predators approaching. A successful skill check will encourage predators to leave without having to break out of trance.)
Piercing Strike – Rank 1
Qi Absorption – Rank 4
Qi Deflection – Rank 0
Qi Flood – Rank 2
Spirit Crane Strike – Rank 4 (Claim the limitless potential of your enemies! Increased skill rank increases ability to harvest Soul Stones of greater potency. Warning! Extreme karmic penalties may apply… negated by Cleaved Fates card! You can sense the specific potency of all eternal Soul Stones claimed! Note: this skill puts you in contact with the River of Souls for up to one full day. You risk oblivion, slipping into those very same waters, if you dare to sleep before the following dawn.)
Storm Flight – Rank 3
Water Walking – Rank 4 (Now you can race upon waves, or ride the very raindrops in the air! Qi drain: Minimal. Synergizes with Wind Running during stormy weather. Congratulations! Whether due to transcendent insight or sheer stubbornness, you have managed not to drown in rapids that should have claimed your soul long ago. Penalty for daring to enter waters eager for your death has been halved!)
Wind Running – Rank 2
Qi Perception-Linked Disciplines
Qi Perception – Rank 6
Artificer – Rank 4
Find Weakness – Rank 5 (This skill may be used against artifacts, constructs, demons, spirit beasts, and cultivators. A basic skill check with Qi Perception lets you sense the weakest points in any target’s physical form and technique. Advanced skill rank and successful use of Soul Sight is needed to spot the weaknesses in a cultivator’s Qi Wards. Adept Status Achieved! You now enjoy an additional 100% penetration bonus against all physical defenses and body cultivation techniques when striking humanoid targets whose weaknesses you have found!)
Soul Sight – Rank 5
Spiritual Teacher – Rank 6
Body Cultivation Techniques
The Eternal Fox Unified Cultivation Technique – Rank 10.3 (Master Rank Achieved)
0.5 pounds of lost flesh will fully regenerate per hour. (Power Healing can boost this one-hundred-fold with th
e use of a beast core, spirit pearl, or unspent experience.) Note. Tapping into experienced earned immediately after killing an opponent will allow for healing that transcends all normal limits with a successful skill check, depending upon the severity of the injuries suffered!
Breakthroughs currently in effect include Saintly Aura, Longevity, Regeneration, Power Healing, Dark Qi Recycling, Pristine Light Cultivation, Pristine Dark Cultivation, and Pristine Form.
You are effectively immune to all toxins and caustic agents that do less than 100 damage per second. You have achieved Cellular mastery. All cells naturally revert to their ideal age. Eternal youth has been achieved!
Metabolic Mastery Subskill is now at Rank 3! (You can survive for extended periods of time without food, water, or oxygen. Risk of death is now minimized! Increased ability to tolerate pain and metabolic strain while surviving on Dark Qi alone!)
A Path Cloaked in Mist
You have permanently gained 8 points of Impact Resistance, 4 points of Cutting Resistance, and 2 points of Piercing Resistance! Your peripheral meridian channels are now Extremely Resilient, and enjoy a total +5 modifier to all durability checks, +6 against all meridian-searing attacks based on Flame.
Biochemical Mastery – Rank 6
You are now able to near effortlessly synthesize hydrochloric acid, alcohol, and most other compounds naturally found in limited quantities within the body, as well as synthesize or cure any poison or alchemical formulae mastered, save for those reliant upon silverbell or shadow blossoms.
Unused Eternal Soul Stones
1 Gold (Rank 1)
2 Silver (Rank 1, 7)
2 Bronze (Rank 4, 7)
___________________________________________________________________
13
Alex all but flew through the air as he sprang from tree to tree, intuitively knowing just where to leap, trunks and branches springing just where and how he needed for a perfect trajectory as he raced back to the site of the original battle, guts churning with the ghosts of memories he did his best to push away.
Instead he breathed deep, taking in the forest in all its glory, verdant foliage rustling under a clear blue sky, countless branches dangling the most delectable fruit imaginable as the scents of a thousand different blossoms perfumed the air. A serene smile came to his lips as crimson flashes of screams, blood, and desperate panic at last began to grow distant and faint, scenes of battle seen from a distance, many years ago.
But one thing he would never forget was how the adrenaline, or perhaps Dark Qi, released when mortal peril was upon him, filling him with such hate for his aggressors, along with a desperate need to quench his hot wrath in the blood of his enemies. But there was an almost crystalline lucidity to his fury.
A berserker’s madness combined with a tactician’s savvy.
That, along with a vicious knack for survival, was what had kept him upright when so many of his foes had been reclaimed by the River of Souls, the vilest of them forever stripped free of the sweet, sweet power that had once been theirs.
Their power now Alex’s, forevermore.
In those moments he was the ultimate PvPer, reveling in out-strategizing his foes, sensing their growing panic, rejoicing as their mocking contempt and overbearing confidence transformed to dread and darkest despair.
Before his final blows took them out of the game for good, forever tarnishing their rankings, allowing him to reign supreme in late night game sessions when he should have been studying, in a life lived and lost a thousand years before.
And how furiously sweet triumph felt when his foes were real. How he reveled in arrogant, contemptuous ass-wipes getting absolutely destroyed by a supposed Ruidian they had all so casually underestimated.
Or so Alex was determined to remember each and every one of his bloodthirsty battles. The honey-sweet triumph of absolute mastery over his foes.
Trying desperately to forget their panicked screams, eyes wide with terror when they realized that death had finally come for them, and the grand life of a charming rogue they had thought themselves living, as if the world were the stage of their play with the gods themselves giving bemused nods at their antics, suddenly came to an abrupt end.
Realizing they were less than nothing only in the final moments before their inevitable death, and that neither Fate nor Alex cared a wit for their pleading sobs. And how much worse it was for the brightest of them, realizing only with their dying breaths that their desperate cries to a higher power would have meant so much more had they actually extended that mercy to others, forced to accept that they deserved a god’s benevolent love no more than every victim denied succor that they had slain.
Alex thought it had been shame as much as anything else that had so many of them ducking instantly into the depths of the River of Souls, only the barest few struggling against bitter retribution. But only from the truly unredeemable had Alex actually gone so far as to pass eternal judgement, tearing free their ability to cultivate not just for one lifetime, but for countless incarnations to come.
Finesse check failed! Perception check made!
Bullrush! You just manage to scrabble to safety!
Alex hissed as his own brooding tore him free of the forest’s enveloping grace, quickly Bullrushing to an inviting branch a dozen yards away as he hurled down from the treetops, gripping the branch tightly, breathing ragged breaths, doing his best to clear his mind and forget the panicked screams of all the men to die by his fist and blade.
Because what disturbed him most wasn’t just their deaths, righteous as some could argue they were.
It was how, when his blood was blazing in the furious cauldron of battle, he reveled in every single scream, taking sweet dark joy in every killing blow.
Ruthless and compassionate, idealistic and calculating, a would-be hero, and, at times, a cold-blooded killer.
He was all those things. Dark and Light, idealist and monster.
Two sides of a single coin.
So like WiFu himself.
“Damn, I guess the captain knows how to clean up a site, after all.”
Alex sighed and shook his head, finding absolutely no trace of his former thick, reinforced boots or his masterwork fangtian ji. He didn’t even see any trace of the bandits, though he sensed bundles of nutrient rich soil, understanding that the forest had already claimed the prizes left in the underbrush like sacrifices. The code for dealing with fallen enemies, after all, was even simpler than with allies: strip the bodies of any prizes you care to keep or carry, and let the forest handle the rest. Only along roads near farming communities would anyone go to the trouble of burying one’s foe. Out here, hundreds of miles from anyone, with the threat of further bandit attacks now on everyone’s mind, no one cared if spirit beasts increased in frequency for a few weeks before petering back to normal.
Just the same, as much as he felt a warm fondness for the forest all around him, the thought that Ehuang’s smile would never again be the first thing he saw after his meditation was broken and he found his hands holding a warm bowl of chicken and rice stew, his shoulder leaned on by a girl he could never be more than friends with, who still happily regaled her days to him as if they were so much more...
He swallowed the lump in his throat, rested his forehead against the tree before him, and silently wished her well in the next life as his tears fed the roots below. Strangely, it was only after he allowed himself to mourn that he finally began feel a bit more at peace with himself, ready to do what he was now determined more than ever to do.
Get to Baidushi at all costs, just as fast as he could.
Because as much as he bitterly regretted not getting to Ehuang in time, there was someone else out there in Death’s crosshairs, a kitsune girl who had come to the aid of a young man who knew nothing about alchemy or cultivation, only that he was in trouble and in desperate need of help. They had quickly become friends. And for a time, it seemed, they might have been so much more.
But fate had other plans
.
Just thinking about Liu Li brought a storm of bittersweet emotions to his heart, but one resolve burned fiercely through his soul. No matter how potent the shadowy players determined to see both Liu Li and Baidushi perish in flame, Alex would do all he could to make sure that the girl who had come to his rescue would live happy and free for countless years to come.
No matter what it took.
No matter who he had to kill to achieve that end.
It was nothing for him to race back the way he had come at speeds far beyond the fast walking pace of the wagon train he had been a part of for almost a month.
So when Alex found himself racing past where the caravan was resting for the night, he took it as a good sign for him to rest himself, securing himself with his own belt strap in the crook of a tree well away from the three night watchmen he knew would be guarding, communing with the woods all around as he drifted into a state that bordered upon, but was not quite, sleep.
Perception check made!
He jolted to instant awareness when his Forest Sense made it clear predators with intent were closing in from a fair distance off, Alex quickly re-strapping his belt and girding himself when the predators entered Qi Perception range, and he knew exactly who was investigating.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say our little mascot has returned,” said Sha Shou with dark bemusement in his quiet voice as he casually strode among the trees below, not bothering peer up at any branches overhead as he did so, though his stroll was taking him unerringly close to Alex’s roost.
“Would be a shame if he had, after all that effort to cause a scene with the captain. Slid out of his contract smooth as silk, and is free to go his own way, no man’s master save his own,” said Tusha Zhe, whose particularly brutal lessons had instilled in Alex the drive, or perhaps desperation, to improve his abilities in every way he could.
Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior Redeemed: A LitRPG/Wuxian Novel - Book 5 Page 24
