by Charles Dean
“Easy enough,” Lars declared, but he didn’t even believe it as he said it. There’s no way that taking a life would ever be easy, and the fact that he was one of the Qi-less meant it wouldn’t be fast. Each consecutively higher stage of cultivation signified an exponential increase in combat capabilities. A Stage 2 Qi-Gathering Cultivator could easily defeat a Stage 1 Qi-Gathering Cultivator, who could easily defeat someone who was Qi-less. No matter how good Lars was at fighting and using an opponent’s force against him—a fighting style that Katie had insisted he practice so that he might survive long enough for her to show up and save her “already well-trained servant” if he ever got into a fight—wouldn’t matter. If someone was twice as strong, twice as fast, and could create magical laser beams out of their hands, defeat was certain. That was likely why the voice had always encouraged Lars to kill people in their sleep, burn them alive in their well-made houses, or resort to other nefarious methods.
“Running? Yeah. It is easy enough. And that’s why I keep suggesting it,” Ramon replied impatiently.
“No, killing someone.” Lars took a deep breath, closed his eyes, mustered all the courage he could find, and then took a step toward the town.
“Seriously?” Ramon asked and then reluctantly started slow-jogging after Lars.
The unpaved roads on the outskirts were only broad enough for a cart and a person to walk along at their widest, and they were formed by taking rocks that had been shattered into fine, sand-like granules and then hardened with a special Fire Qi to make a sort of cracked, brick-like surface.
The first houses Lars passed were small one-room homes where the poorer members of the village lived, and Lars ignored all of them as he made his way into the town. The residents here had already fled or been killed, and the thatching that made up the roofs was barely burning now as the winds emanating from the battle between cultivators near the middle of the town blew the flames farther toward the woods, nearly suffocating the roof fires in the process. Making his way through the charred buildings, bodies, and rubble, Lars headed directly for Dawn’s house, which was on the way to his mother’s.
He knew her house was just a stone’s throw away, and it was a guaranteed pit stop if he was to make it to his mom, but he found it hard to press farther into the town with how eerily devoid of life the place seemed to be—so much so, in fact, that the unsettling feeling slowed his pace considerably.
Lars and Ramon made their way onto the third block, and Lars peeped into the window of one of the houses on his right. Two people were lying dead on the floor, and a young woman, somewhere in her mid-teens, was huddled in the corner, crying. Her face was an unrecognizable mess, she was covered in wounds, and one of her legs was completely missing.
“I think everyone who isn’t a bandit has already tried to flee. Just like we should,” Ramon said.
“So, most are either dead, fighting, or looting,” Lars observed.
“Or . . . that . . .” Ramon added after seeing what Lars was looking at. They both knew what had happened to the woman from the state of her clothes, but neither of them voiced it, and Lars refused to even let his mind think it.
Kill her. She’s easy. It’ll be a great first go.
Lars was tempted to listen. All he had to do was walk in there and find out if he could save her life and move her to safety. If he couldn’t, he’d have to put her out of her misery. But he had to find Dawn and his mother first. Dawn was in the patch of small one-room houses smashed together a block ahead of him.
I’ll help her when I’m finished with this. He moved away without saying a word and then remained silent until they reached the first person he had to save.
“I don’t get it,” Ramon whispered from behind him in a barely audible voice.
“What?” Lars asked, looking around.
“Why they left her alive.” Ramon lowered his body to imitate Lars’s crouched posture. “She must be worth some money, so why would they leave her alive? Aren’t they bandits? Don’t they always take women and young men as slaves to sell?”
“Don’t think too hard on it,” Lars said, checking both ways before sneaking over to Dawn’s stone house. Most of the roofs here looked like they were dangerously close to crumbling inward due to the ongoing fires in this part of the town, and if Lars was going to rescue anyone, it had to be soon. Anyone caught inside a collapsed house would suffocate and burn to death otherwise.
Please don’t make me beg. I will, but don’t make me. Just kill someone. Kill someone before someone kills you.
“This is your friend, Dawn, right?” Ramon asked, heading over to the door.
“Yeah, it’s her,” Lars responded.
“Don’t hope for much,” Ramon said as he stepped into the doorway ahead of Lars. “She probably ran away.” The doorway was small, barely big enough for a broad-shouldered man to go through alone, and as such, Lars couldn’t see around Ramon.
“Empty?” Lars asked as Ramon looked into the room.
“Of precious belongings,” Ramon answered with a gulp, instantly turning around. “Lars . . . just . . . She’s not here. Let’s go. And if she’s not here, your mother, who is farther in, won’t be here either. Let’s just leave. There’s nothing in this town for us.”
“You could have left without me,” Lars said, pushing past Ramon to check for himself. Something about the porcupine-blooded man’s face told him that not everything was as he made it out to be, and Lars was right.
There, in the middle of the room, just like the woman they had passed a moment ago, was Dawn. Both of her legs appeared to have been broken, and her shattered hand was crumpled up and lying on top of a knife—not that she could ever hold it again. She was a Stage 4 Qi-Gathering Cultivator with dual elements, wind and ice, and yet there she was, crumpled on the floor with her Qi doing nothing more than keeping her body alive through the nightmare. Even the proud plumage that served as her tail had been ripped out, and the feathers had been scattered about her body to show that she had been thoroughly broken.
She turned toward the door, and Lars saw that her face was covered in tears and blood and that her eyes were empty of life and filled with fear. She must have thought that he and Ramon were the bandits coming back for a second round and was terrified. When she saw that it was Lars, however, her eyes widened, and new pools of tears formed in them as she gasped out one word: “Run.”
It was the same word that Ramon had shouted at Lars, but unlike earlier, it felt like a thousand bricks had crushed Lars’s chest and slammed him into the ground.
“They’ll be back. They’re . . . Y-you must run,” she said, struggling to get the words out.
“No . . . No, I can’t. I’ll . . .” Lars looked at her body.
She’s already dead, and you know it. It’s only a matter of time before fate catches up to her. Do her a favor. Do her a kindness. Kill her so that she doesn’t have to keep suffering. Can you imagine how painful life must be for her right now? Look at her. Her Qi is barely holding her heart intact, and her body is struggling to even function. Kill her.
The proud, controlling, arrogant voice in his head was different than usual. Its tone didn’t feel demanding; it felt pleading.
“I’m sorry,” Lars said as he walked forward and crouched next to Dawn, picking up the knife underneath her hand.
“Please, run after you finish it,” Dawn said, looking at the weapon.
“I will,” he promised. That was the first time he had ever lied to her. He still had to find his mother, and the rage in his heart was only growing greater by the moment. If he just had the power to do it, he would murder every single bandit in the village with his own bare hands.
“Thank you,” Dawn sighed, and her muscles relaxed, leaving her lying there like a bag of sand, her eyes staring up at Lars.
Lars found it hard to swallow as he raised his knife and pressed it against her throat. Even in her condition, he knew he didn’t have the strength needed to kill a Stage 4 cultivator. “I’m sorr
y,” he said one more time. He wanted to say more. There were a thousand feelings he wanted to express, but his throat seized up, and his heart stopped as he sunk his dagger into one of the only parts of her body that would let him kill her off easily: the soft flesh of her neck.
A moment later, with the knife still deep inside her throat, the silent and painful moment was broken by one of the blue notifications. Even without the prompt, he could tell something was different. Green, blue, and purple lines drew themselves in the air between Dawn and him, starting from her heart and ending in his. He felt a warm sensation like sunshine, a cold sensation like ice, and a refreshing sensation like wind on the hottest summer day all overlapping and competing with each other as one after the other washed over him.
Congratulations! You have completed the following quest: First Blood.
Reward: My, the amazing and wonderful and beautiful me’s, undying gratitude at letting me finally experience this feeling.
You have accessed the level-management system. All of your stats, levels, skills and abilities can be accessed from the system menu. This can be done at any time by saying or thinking the words “System Menu Access.”
The level management system tutorial is about to begin. Would you like to wait for a more convenient time or begin now? Say “Yes” to begin now or “No” to reject the idea of waiting for a more convenient time.
Answer not required. Tutorial beginning anyway.
The level management system information tab displays three key parts. First are your physical combat stats. There are four separate combat stats: Power, Speed, Fortitude, and Resistance. A score of 10 is considered the average ability score for an unleveled and untrained adult. This means that an individual with a Power score of 21 is 110% more deadly with his physical attacks than the average person. Likewise, a Speed score of 6 means that an individual has only 60% of the agility that an average adult is expected to have.
The two remaining stats determine one’s toughness and ability to withstand attacks. An individual who has high Fortitude but no Resistance will take nearly full damage from most attacks but have a large health pool to assist the individual in staying alive. A person with exceptionally high Resistance, however, will find that most attacks do not hurt him or do drastically reduced damage.
The second set of information presented represents your ability to use, control, and manipulate different types of elemental Qi. The higher the number, the stronger your talents with that Qi attribute are and the more abilities you’ll be able to learn. Specific abilities require a specific proficiency in different types of Qi.
The third and final information tab is a collection of your learned abilities and skills, both for combat and otherwise. These abilities will allow you to infuse your power into skills or techniques to improve its effectiveness. The number in front of each ability is how many stat points are required to advance the ability to its next level. Each advancement may exponentially increase the efficacy of the ability.
Name: Lars
Level: 1
Power10Speed 10
Fortitude (HP)10Resistance 10
Unspent16
Elemental Abilities
Wind Qi:4
Ice Qi: 4
Abilities
[5] Advanced Reading Level 1: When you focus, you can read two times faster than an average reader. As such, time will seem to move twice as slowly while you are reading.
You must now spend all 16 points that were gained from completing the quest and absorbing the Qi of your recent kill. You must mentally allocate the points into either stats or abilities before you can exit this screen.
Lars, who couldn’t see anything else because of the screen’s enormity, was a little annoyed that he didn’t have time to decide what to do with the points and that he was being forced to allocate them before he could move or do anything. However, he also knew that the longer he took thinking about it, the more likely it was that his mother was going to befall the same fate as Dawn. He quickly allocated 8 of the points to Power, hoping he’d be able to hurt someone if he had to, and the remaining 8 points into Resistance. He was tempted to split them between Fortitude and Resistance, but with his currently low level, he was worried that he’d be so heavily impacted from a blow due to the difference in Qi levels that he wouldn’t be able to get up and run, even if he had the hit points to survive it. He was praying that his hunch, that Resistance would lessen the impact and stunning effect of attacks, was correct, but he also didn’t want to find out if he was right anytime soon, given how much pain and danger that would entail.
Congratulations on completing the mandatory tutorial!
Quest: Five Finger Fillet.Objective: Kill five more people with a knife to receive a bonus ability.
“Dude?! What are you spacing out for?! We need to get out of here!” Ramon pleaded, pulling on Lars’s shoulder. “Get your act together. She’s dead, but you aren’t. You will be, though, if you don’t get out of here soon. Let’s go, man!”
“Huh? Oh, yeah . . .” Lars had to collect himself as he remembered what he was doing, why he was here, and what had given him his first level. He was experiencing a strange sort of high from the “level up” as newfound strength and power coursed through his veins.
“We need to go back to the house we passed earlier,” he said.
“She’s dead too, man. Let’s just get going,” Ramon insisted. “We don’t want to end up like them.”
“Just—” Lars looked over at Ramon. The spiky-tailed guy was, for some reason, doing his best to save him and drag him out of the town. But Lars just shook his head. “Look, I don’t know why you’re with me, but I need to do something before we leave. I need to find people who are like her, and I need to make sure they don’t die suffering.” He didn’t want to spell out that he was going to kill five more of them for a quest so that he could gain a new ability and hopefully save his mother. That would probably cost him his only ally—an ally whose motives he still didn’t understand yet.
“Fine. I’ll help you, but . . . you’re going to have to do the stabbing. I can’t do that. That’s . . . too much. I understand what you’re doing, but I’m no killer. But I’ll tell you if I find houses that have survivors that . . . need your help.”
“That’d be great,” Lars answered. He immediately made his way back to the girl he had seen through the window earlier, the one who was waiting at death’s door. He tried not to think about what he was doing. He told himself over and over again, This is necessary. I need the experience, and she’s going to die anyway. If I don’t level, I can’t save anyone. Her eyes seemed to express gratitude as he slid the knife into her throat, and he watched as they closed for good.
Lars didn't know how to feel as he watched the life slowly fade from her. He knew he should have felt guilty, but at the same time, he felt wonderful as the streams of purple Qi and blue Qi streamed from her body into his. Warmth and strength and a sensation like water flooded his heart as the Qi entered him.
Congratulations. You have successfully killed Jenny. You have gained 8 stat points. Your elemental affinity with Water Qi has increased by 2.
That’s it, huh? Lars stared at the dead woman in his arms to whom he had shown “mercy.” Only eight stat points and two elemental Qi points. That’s all this woman’s life was worth? Lars shook his head. He didn’t have time to wait around questioning it or puzzling things out, and when he walked back outside, Ramon was already pointing at another house.
“There’s one in here,” Ramon said. “They’re going to die anyway, though, so you don’t need to speed it along.”
“No, I do,” Lars answered, hurrying into the next house before it was too late.
Two houses later, he was killing his fifth, a boy that was likely only a few years younger than he was. Both of the kid’s legs had been cut off, and he was still desperately clinging to his already-dead mother. Lars didn’t want to take pleasure in the act, but the feeling of the Qi leaving the boy’s body an
d entering his own was almost euphoric. As much as he hated to admit that killing really was this great, this wonderful, just as the voice had said, she was right. Mentally, he was in shock. His world had been absolutely turned upside down, and he was now trying to commit acts that had repulsed him earlier. The only reason his psyche was even able to hold things together was that he had one objective in mind: get stronger. He had to get stronger, and then he needed to find his mother, rescue her, and get out of there alive. That singular chain of events was the only line of thought that was stopping him from breaking down and falling apart where he stood because of what he was being forced to do. Physically, however, he had never felt better. Every single kill was its own perfect slice of beautiful and warm bliss, and he was slowly starting to understand why the voice in his head had been so insistent in demanding that he attack people. It made sense now.
Did she know this would feel good? Did she know it would be this wonderful? He allowed his mind to wander before instantly crushing those thoughts. No, this is a one-off. I’m only doing this because I don’t have any other choice. There is no way I will ever do this again, he told himself as he withdrew his blade from the young boy.
Congratulations! You have successfully completed the following quest: Five Finger Fillet.
Reward: You have been awarded the new skill Knife Hand.
Skill Details:
Knife Hand allows the user to perform an unarmed strike that will temporarily extend attack range by one foot in order to hit targets that are just outside of one’s reach. Damage dealt is increased by twofold if the target is struck at a vulnerable spot, and the target is either unaware of his assailant, stunned, disabled, or already critically injured.
Skill Note: Some people use their fingers to make a point in discussions, but the truly motivated and enlightened use their fingers to make a knife.
