by Charles Dean
“Mom!” he yelled as he left the building, looking around for the sixty slaves being prepared.
“Are you the young man who purchased item ninety-four?” A woman said, practically manifesting from out of the shadows in front of him.
“I . . .” How strong is she? “I am,” he replied hesitantly. The person in front of him was a reminder that the Qi Condensation Stage wasn’t the end of the road. It was just another brick at the beginning.
“Excellent. Follow me to their holding pens,” she said, walking calmly in front of Lars.
Mom, Mom, Mom, Lars continued to repeat in anticipation as he followed the woman in the dark-blue and black hanbok that hid her entire figure.
I have to admit that even I’m having trouble holding back my anticipation. I can’t wait to see that woman’s face. She’s been really good to us even by doting mother standards.
She is the best, Lars agreed as the woman led him toward a warehouse and storage building that, while lacking the opulence and majesty of The Owner’s casino, was equally large if not more grand in size. Outside of the storage building, there were six rows of ten adult slaves, almost entirely women, and three teenagers chained and shackled one after the other in lines. It looked less like a gathering of sixty-three people and more like a bunch of farm animals being led out of the barn. Just the sight of it and the knowledge his mother was in that group caused Lars’s stomach to turn over on itself.
“Don’t worry, sir. As per the acquisition notes, they’re all healthy, unused, and in good condition. They’ve even been bathed, fed, and dressed. Your man also acquired four carts, eight horses, and food for a five-day journey so you can properly relocate your slaves to your new residence.”
“I see.” Lars, who hadn’t even considered that, noted that he needed to remember to thank Birkett as his eyes darted around looking for his mother within the group of slaves.
“Is that . . . little Tailless? Did Tailless run away only to get captured too?” he heard one of the old villagers say as he walked toward the group. The jeer stung a little.
“No, he’s . . . What the hell?! How did he become so strong?!” another gasped, clearly dumbfounded.
“He’s with the auction girl. Why is she treating that tailless bastard with such respect?” said one of the jerks that had hit him so many times as he was growing up, still not grasping the situation.
“Quiet your tongue while he is working, or I’ll kill you myself,” Su Ryeon threatened. She had caught up to Lars with Daniel, Weatherly, and Birkett.
“You can do whatever you wish after the purchase is final,” the auction official warned. “Do not harm the products prematurely.”
“He’s . . . He’s buying us? But . . . And how is he . . .” another villager said.
The shocked expressions would have, on any other day in his life, been too good not to savor, but Lars didn’t have time for that today. He was too busy searching through the crowd for the only person that mattered to him from the old village.
“When you have finished inspecting the purchase, please give your signature absolving the house of responsibility for the product,” the woman said, handing Lars a scroll.
Lars grabbed it, but the moment he did, he saw what he had been looking for: his mother. “MOM!” Lars couldn’t help but yell as he rushed over to the woman that had loved him his entire life, elated to see her.
“Oh . . . Oh my gods . . .” Lars’s mother looked over at him. She covered her mouth with both hands, and tears began welling up in her eyes. “You’re . . . You’re safe. You’re safe and . . . You’re safe and . . .” She repeated herself a few times as Lars rushed over to her as fast as he could.
“MOM!” Lars repeated, relief washing over his whole body as he took in the sight of her face.
However, before Lars could reach her and hug her as he desperately wanted to do, the lady that had led him to the storage facility appeared between him and his mother.
“Sir, until you sign the paper finalizing the relinquishment of the item into your possession, we cannot allow you to interact with the goods,” she said. “I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just I would hate to see the merchandise damaged while in our care and for you to file a complaint or use said damage as a means of contesting the purchase.”
“Then—” Lars had to restrain himself from cursing as his eyes darted to her, but then his gaze snapped right back to his mother as if she would vanish the moment he took his glance off her. “Give me the stupid pen,” he continued, having trouble keeping his composure.
“Just put your hand on the contract and channel some Qi into it. That will provide a unique signature,” she instructed.
It’s safe. That’s a standard contract. Let’s free Momma quickly. I want to feel one of those warm hugs as soon as possible!
Lars trusted Ophelia and followed the instructions of the woman, channeling a little Qi into the contract and tossing it back toward her.
“Thank you for your business. Item ninety-four is now your responsibility,” she said. She disappeared as quickly as she had appeared in the first place and left Lars to wonder exactly how strong The Owner was if she could so easily control a woman of that power.
“Mom!” Lars cried, picking up where he left off as he hugged his mother, ignoring the feel of cold steel pressing into him from the shackles she was wearing.
“Son!” she cried, sobbing into his embrace. “Son, what did she do to my boy? What did she do to you?”
Even if the feeling of Qi entering his body after a kill was intoxicating, it had nothing on this moment. The feeling of his mother’s loving embrace was beyond wonderful, and he closed his eyes and let himself savor the moment.
“That’s touching and all, but we should go,” Su Ryeon said.
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Lars agreed. He formed a sword with his Knife Hand skill and quickly used it to cut the remaining chains and shackles off of his mother. Then he did his best to remove the smudges from her face the same way she had done for him when he fell down as a child.
He noted the nearly vacant looks in the eyes of the nearby villagers and that they didn’t say a thing as they stared at him. His mother was weeping, he was having trouble keeping his nose from being the dam that burst and making him cry too, but they just stood there, silently, like their souls had been dead for days, and they didn’t know what to do.
“You want to finish the contract with them?” Su Ryeon asked as she looked at their hollow expressions before looking back to Lars.
“Them?” Lars said, his mind filled with the thousands of small slights they had delivered upon him. Even the best of them had at most pitied him.
“Come on . . . You have to save us. We’re all . . . We’re all from the same . . .” one of the brats his age that had bullied him pleaded.
“I’m not taking any of them with me, and if that one speaks again”—he pointed to the one who had just talked—“kill him,” Lars told Su Ryeon, gritting his teeth. He didn’t actually plan on her killing any of them, but he didn’t want to deal with them ever again. It took every ounce of his self-control not to beat a few of them the exact same way they had beaten him in the past, and he was only exercising that amount of willpower because his mother was there. “Otherwise, free them,” he added before turning back to his mother.
“Huh?” the person in front of Lars said. “You mean . . .”
“We’re not slaves?” another one of the villagers asked.
“You’re not going to keep us, like, to do your work for you?” a blonde child asked.
“I think he means not to talk or question it,” Su Ryeon replied as she ripped the chains in half on the first slave. “If you interrupt him again, I’ll take pleasure in ending you without an order.”
“It’s good you’re freeing them,” said a voice coming from behind Lars, causing him to quickly turn in place. “We have business with that one.” A man, six and a half feet tall with shoulders as wide as a door frame,
stood pointing at Lars’s mother. “And it’s easier if she isn’t in someone’s care.”
“She’s free, but she’s my mother. Whatever business you have with her, you have with me,” Lars said while placing himself between the man and his mother.
“You had a child?” The man’s face began to turn red. “That bastard raped you, and you kept the child?!” The man’s voice was even louder this time, filled with Wind Qi that smashed into Lars and forced him to dig his feet into the ground just to stay standing and not be flung back like a kite in the wind. The villagers were either thrown to the ground or launched against the cages behind them.
“Hey now, this one is in our protection,” Weatherly said as he stood in front of Lars.
“So, if you could calm down and talk reasonably, that’d be for the best,” Daniel added, moving between him and the large man.
Lars began studying the man, noting his features and trying to figure out what was going on. He had never seen this man with bull-like horns and a ring through his nose, but this man knew his mother well enough to know details of his father and his conception.
“I wasn’t raped!” his mother protested from behind him, somehow unfazed by the voice’s effects. The former slaves promptly began getting up and running as fast as they could to the carts and horses on the other side of the warehouse.
“You weren’t wed, so you were raped, and that is the story you will tell anyone, or else I will kill everyone who hears otherwise,” the man repeated. Even though his voice wasn’t as loud, it felt just as powerful, if not more so, and Lars was once again forced to dig his feet into the ground, refusing to budge from his spot in front of his mother.
“Jung, I won’t lie. I loved him. I loved him, and I love our child.”
“Your child?! How dare you?!” He stomped on the ground, pulled a spear out from behind his back, and rushed toward Lars at a blinding speed.
Weatherly and Daniel, true to their promise when Lars hired them, did everything they could to stop Jung, but the bull-horned man cut Weatherly in half so quickly and with so much power that his top half shot off into the air, and his bottom half bounced away across the ground, carried off by the force of Jung’s blow.
Daniel nearly blocked the first spear thrust, but it wasn’t enough to save him. The thrust was redirected almost instantly and tore a large chunk out of his left side. The next swipe decapitated him and sent his head rolling into a wall to their left.
“I’ll kill myself!” Lars’s mother shouted quickly, the words only making it out of her mouth as Daniel’s body hit the ground. “If you touch my son, I will kill myself right here. If you stop me from killing myself here, you’ll have to stop me every second of every day for the rest of my life.”
“You, the most promising talent of the Choseon family, are going to kill yourself for the bastard of that man?”
“He isn’t a bastard; he is my child. He has as much of the Choseon bloodline in him as I do,” she said.
“All the more reason to kill him, so his existence does not drag the name of Choseon into the gutter,” Jung growled, his eyes more menacing as he lowered his gaze onto Lars.
Part of Lars wanted to flee as fast as he could in any direction away from this monster in front of him, part of him was practically frozen in fear from the aura of power and destruction the likes of which Lars had never felt before, and part of Lars wanted to stand his ground, to make sure that this murderous beast never got close to his mother. The end result, though, was that Lars stayed where he was, silently watching the drama as his mother behind him continued to argue with Jung.
“He is my child. He is a member of the Choseon house, and if you kill him, you kill me,” his mother repeated.
“You gave up your precious childhood to raise this worthless, tailless little brat. Why?” Jung pressed. “Do you wish to spit on your ancestors’ graves as you let a . . . disgusting abomination like him exist? Why are you protecting him with your life?”
“Because he’s my child,” Lars’s mother answered.
Lars glanced backward and saw that she had somehow gotten a sharp object off the ground and was holding it to her own throat, clutching onto it as if it were the only floating piece of a ship left after a violent storm at sea. “Because I love him more than I love my own life, so if you move an inch, if you dare to kill him, you have killed me too.”
“I’ll take that risk,” Jung said, a sinister smile appearing on his face as he raised his spear into the air.
The force of the Qi aura Jung emitted had pushed Lars half a foot into the ground.
“His existence is more intolerable than your death,” Jung snarled.
“NOO!!!!” Lars’s mother pleaded, but she as well as everything around Lars was knocked back by the Wind Qi, isolating Lars, who held his ground as he awaited his swift death.
Your stats! RAISE YOUR FORTITUDE AND RESISTANCE! RAISE YOUR POWER AND STRIKE BACK! DON’T DIE SO EASILY!
Ophelia’s words snapped Lars back to reality, breaking the fear that Jung’s strength had gripped him with. He quickly dumped 10,000 of the 31,118 points he had just gotten into Fortitude; 10,000 of it into Resistance; 10,000 of it quickly into Power, and the remainder of it into Speed, raising his Speed to 4,177. He then punched up at the incoming spear with every bit of force he could. He had no expectations of not dying instantly, but he wanted to make sure that he didn’t go out standing still like a sheep awaiting slaughter.
Congratulations. You have reached Level 8! You have been awarded 320 unassigned affinity points.
The blow was too fast for him to even see all of the movements, but he threw his arm up defensively and hoped for the best. Lars felt his body nearly explode. He bounced off the ground and flew up into the air, awaiting death. But it never came. Out of the 14,500 hit points he should have had, he still somehow had 3,345 remaining. To further add to Lars’s confusion, not only did he not die in one hit, but he was gently gliding to the ground in the same way a feather might if it fell off a bird’s wing mid-flight. Stranger still, the spear had struck his fist and nearly broken his hand and arm in the process, but didn’t cut his flesh.
“This is official Choseon business. I’d kindly ask you not to interfere, old man,” Lars heard Jung say from below him.
Lars’s descent stopped, leaving his body hanging in the air, cushioned on all sides like he was in a giant pillow prison above the ground.
“But, my young little Jung, it’s also my business. That child, as of yesterday, was officially accepted into my sect. He is mine to watch over, so if you were to kill him right in front of me, it would be a grave insult. For my sake, can you spare an old man and leave this be?”
“Then turn around. That’s an easy enough solution. You won’t have to see me kill him at all,” Jung replied.
“He’s so talented though. Wouldn’t it be a waste if he died just because of a little pride?”
“The pride of Choseon is nothing to laugh at. It is great enough to crush your whole sect like a bug underneath its foot,” said a third man, suddenly entering the dialogue happening below Lars.
“Ha! Now that my brother is here, try to stop us from finishing the job!” Jung shouted proudly.
“Quiet, Jung! You may be willing to risk her life, but I am not,” yet another voice said. “You are to return to the clan. I will escort the young mistress back to the fold. We will speak nothing of this encounter, and we will speak nothing of the existence of the child.”
“But . . . he’s my child. Please, please, let me take him with us,” Lars’s mother pleaded. “I need to be with my boy. I need my little boy.”
“You want to threaten us with your life? Fine then,” Jung’s brother said. “But we will threaten you with your child’s life in return. If you speak of his existence, I shall exterminate it. Let it be from now on that you had no child. Let it be as if your dalliance never occurred, your sin never manifested, and your existence as the prodigy of Choseon was never tainted by that chimera-
blooded monster. You will work hard, you will do as you’re told, and you will reach the stage of cultivation you should have been at already if you hadn’t spent the last two decades without our cultivation materials to aid you. Fail at one of these things, and I swear on my auroch blood he will die.”
Chimera-blooded? Lars didn’t understand that term with respect to a cultivator at all. He had never heard of it. He had heard of what felt like a thousand types of cultivators, but not once had he heard of a chimera-blooded one.
“Fine,” Lars’s mother agreed, her voice cracking as she consented. “But if I find out any of you touched him, that will be the day that I die too.”
“Have a good day. I trust you’ll watch over the child in case I need to make good on my promise to the mother,” Jung’s brother said to the old man.
“You can accomplish much more with politeness than with threats. You should try it sometime,” the old man protecting Lars replied.
“That’s true, but . . .” A giant bolt of lightning suddenly struck Lars, breaking the Wind Qi’s hold on him and smashing him back into the ground, where he was left still staring upward. “It’s still best to make sure my threats are understood,” Jung’s brother said.
Lars tried to move, but couldn’t. He looked at the 10 health he had left. The Lightning Qi had left his body in a stunned state and struggling to breathe, almost as if he had woken up with sleep paralysis, and pain gripped every fiber of his being.
Why? Lars wanted to scream the question, but his lungs couldn’t even gather enough air for that one-syllable word.
Lars, don’t worry. Even if you die, it’s okay. I’m here. I’m here with you, Lars. It’ll be okay no matter what happens because I’ll still be here for you, Lars.
Ophelia’s gentle voice, more soothing and calming than he ever heard from her, cradled his consciousness as the sky turned black, and his eyelids slowly shut. Only 10 health . . . I’m powerless compared to other cultivators. Lars let himself succumb to the darkness, his willpower not great enough to even move a single toe out of the shocked state. It’s like I’m right back where I started.
