Chapter 279 - An Unexpected Duel

Eric froze upon finding himself suddenly stepping onto the gritty ocher sand of a vast, indoor arena, an oval stretching a good fifty yards at its farthest point. His did his best to ignore the apprehension he felt as he spotted near two dozen hard-eyed men on the stone seats behind his corner of the arena, all of them wearing cultivator robes of a sect he recognized all too well.

On the bright side, Eric thought, the gravity was less than 10% heavier than Earth norms, and the air was so shockingly fresh and pure and rich in vital spiritual energy that Eric would have been grinning from ear to ear, if he wasn’t halfway certain that he was about to be tried and perhaps executed by overpowered bastards who of course had found some way to skirt all the rules and strictures binding humanity itself so tightly to planet Earth.

Bunbun cleared her throat. “You know, it occurs to me that there was one distinct possibility, however slight, that we didn’t account for.”

“That the supposed entrance to the final boss chamber was actually a portal to a cultivation arena?”

Bunbun nodded. “That’s what I like about you, chief. You just get it.” She gestured with her tiny paw once more. “I mean, the evidence is as clear as the glare coming from grumpy frown face over there, but at least you can read a room well enough to know that we are well and truly fucked.”

Eric’s gaze was immediately drawn to an elder looking dark elf whose eyes blazed like fiery orbs of spiritual plasma, freezing Eric where he stood. If that man hadn’t broken through to Bronze, then Eric was a clueless tadpole who had no business even leaving his mom’s nursery, let alone daring orange tier dungeons.

It was only when he found the resolve to tear his eyes free of that hypnotic, perilous Bronze tier gaze that he spotted a half dozen coldly smiling pale-skinned elves seated separately from the cultivators. All of them were blessed with piercing green eyes and golden locks much like his own. And all of them save one radiated the aura of competent White tier Classers, kitted in translucent glassine armor that radiated multiple levels of protective mana to Eric’s arcane senses.

Yet whereas the cultivators were gazing at Eric with the cold, clinical detachment of scientists peering at a bug under a microscope, the handful of elves radiating the sharp taste of arcane power were gazing at Eric as if his very existence was a personal affront. Most especially the centralmost woman who was peering at Eric with the same warmth and affection as he thought most girls would upon waking up to a leach between their breasts...which was to say, none at all.

Eric, for his part, was gazing at the woman also radiating the power of a Bronze. And what a contrast it was to taste the spicy tang of System Arcana versus the feel of blistering hot dessert winds scraping across his soul that was a Bronze Cultivator’s ascension.

But what was truly sending shivers of awed disbelief down his spine was how very much the ivory-skinned elf’s every move and gesture mirrored Aurelia’s perfectly.

She was the mirror image of their mother, just as much as Elonia was.

Eric felt a twist of dread in the pit of his stomach, painfully certain he knew who the person gazing at him with such contempt, mirrored by the children who only looked somewhat like her, must be. Children who had two Sylvan parents, and thus shared both their traits. Children who were at least as old as Eric was, gazing at him as if he were a bug they’d love to squash under their feet.

“Fucking hell.”

His bunny winced, instantly getting it. “Boy, do I hope it’s not one of those kinds of stories...”

Eric flashed a tight smile. “Of course this is. How could it not be?”

Then Eric was buffeted by a wave of spiritual pressure so great even the sands began to vibrate, sending him crashing to his knees.

“Silence! The gate has been opened, the inquisition accepted. You kneel before us to be judged for your actions!”

The two parties went deathly silent as the elder cultivator spoke, glaring daggers Eric’s way. The man’s killing glare heightened as his nostrils twitched.

“You would dare wear the mithril armaments of the Feng Ren sect? You will remove and surrender such immediately, and you will do so now!”

The room went deadly silent when Eric did nothing but glare from where he kneeled… before forcing himself back to his feet.

“I will not.”

Eric’s voice was cool, betraying no trace of the terror roiling in his blood under the ice-cold gaze of a man who could kill him in the blink of an eye.

“He dares to mock the elder’s commands,” hissed a figure in the crowd.

“And he accepted judgement’s gate!” whispered another.

“The fool just signed his death warrant,” stated a third.

The elder flashed an ice cold smile. “Is that your final word on the matter, supplicant?”

Eric ignored the frantic pounding of his heart and Bunbun’s soft whimper as well.

“I accepted no ‘Gate of Judgement.’ I entered what I thought was the portal to an orange tier bosses’ layer,” he declared, refusing to flinch away from what were now dozens of cold-eyed glares.

“It matters not!” Snapped a scholarly looking cultivator as the ivory elves snorted some distance away. “Legal precedent has been grounded in countless inquisitions! If you dare the gate, then you accept all judgments to be rendered within!”

The elder gave an imperious nod at those words.

Eric quirked a cynical eyebrow. “Really? And that’s why the System made it clear I was under no penalty for leaving my world, despite my status?” Eric shook his head. “I was brought here under false pretenses. It was a trap. Even the System acknowledges this.”

“Bah! You think we’re the System’s lapdogs? Think again! This is a Sect Inquisition! A matter between cultivators! This has nothing to do with the plague that has taken over far too many worlds as it stands!” Hissed the tall, scarecrow-thin, scholarly cultivator who nonetheless radiated nearly as much spiritual pressure as the elder himself.

The elder, however, was frowning thoughtfully.

Eric blinked as multiple social perks came into play. “Yet you all stand here ready to pass judgment, before a gate deep in an inviolate Orange Tier delve.”

Eric’s lips curled in a feral grin. “Give me your cultivator’s oath that no goblin seer or Bloodtear Associate was involved in the formation of this portal behind me, a portal I sense is barred to my stepping back through, which effectively makes me a victim of interplanetary kidnapping… and I will answer one question you have for me. My own cultivator’s oath upon it.”

Scarecrow’s eyes widened. “How dare you attempt to set terms, boy! You? A cultivator? Ha! You think we’re blind? You think we can’t see the crude sigils carved into your flesh, the crudest and most barbaric of all cultivation paths? Pathetic! Your words mean nothing!”

Eric tilted his head in mock bemusement. “But you do acknowledge that the patterns carved into my flesh ARE a path, however crude you declare them, no?”

They were words that earned nothing but a contemptuous pursing of the lips, but no one denied it. Which was just fine with Eric.

“Then you accept that I am a cultivator. A cultivator who risks the same peril to his foundation by breaking his oath as you all do. Perhaps even worse, crude and ‘fragile’ as you no doubt think my path is. And that by its very nature implies another truth as well, does it not, ‘learned one?’

Two dozen gasps echoed across the sands, spiritual energy sending dozens of dust-devils swirling in the arena sands as Eric instantly removed the top level of his armor with a surge of his will, his essence infused greater beast hide armaments now safely tucked back in his ES Space to reveal his mithril armaments in all their lustrous beauty.

“He dares flaunt our clan’s greatest treasures!” Roared a powerfully built cultivator radiating a potency Eric judged to be only slightly less fearsome than the beasts he had been risking his life fighting for days on end. “For this alone, he signs his death warrant!”

But curiously, Scarecrow said nothing, merely giving an angry shake of his head.

Instead it was the elder who spoke.

“It means that the boy before you, one of Aurelia Silver’s get, has managed to best one of our own in an honorable duel.”

Eric carefully said nothing to the hisses and angry curses such a pronouncement earned, neither denying, no confirming. Doing nothing to goad, or deny, no matter the sudden calls for Eric’s head by more than one of the robed figures watching on.

“Silence.”

A single word from the elder present, and the curses and murmurs instantly stopped, not a whisper to be heard, save a snort from one of the ivory skinned youths looking on a short distance away. And even he flinched under his obvious mother’s cold glare.

The elder gave a begrudging nod.

“We have questions.”

Eric nodded, Social Perception, and his What The Other Party Wants perks making it damn clear that his interrogator had all sorts of questions.

“If you answer our questions to the best of your ability, we will not oppose your return when our meeting is done.”

Eric couldn’t hold back his smile when Know The Score and Nose for Trouble blared a gut feeling that he had already pieced together. Still, he’d let his opponents think him an easily countered piece, because confidence, condescension, and indulgence meshed so damn well together.

“I have no doubt of that,” Eric said. “And if you wish to trade cultivation techniques for questions answered, I think we can both walk away richer in knowledge than we were before.”

His words earned nothing but wide-eyed looks of outrage and calls for Eric to be brought to the mistress, whoever the hell that was. Eric sure as shit had no interest in finding out.

Instead he waited out the sea of seething discontent, locking gazes with the elder himself, waiting for the right moment to speak.

“Knowledge that happens to include the location of a territory blessed with Epic tier Spiritual Energy levels. A territory that now includes, among other things, a Transcendent Fire Peach Grove.”

Eric couldn’t help smirking when derisive contempt turned to shocked cries of disbelief, and avariciousness the likes of which he hadn’t sensed from anyone save members of the Snicklit Clan.

“Fair warning, the grove has just recently been planted, but they will grow at seven-fold rate, in soil capable of nurturing even Silver Tier Spiritual Fruit to full maturity. And yes, before you ask, these are pristine fire peaches. Peaches worthy of being planted in each meridian of any cultivator with a complete 5,6,7 or Royal meridian configurations.”

The assembled cultivators were speechless, gazing at Eric with an odd intensity that left his guts crawling. It was Scarecrow who spoke first, however, as if desperate to disparage Eric’s assertion in whatever way he could.

“Rubbish! There are no six meridian configurations! You but seek to entice us with tales and rumors, like any adventurer too long exposed to realms of nightmare and dream.”

“Like the realm you worked with Bloodtear to pull me right out of?” Eric smirked, shaking his head. “And as a matter of fact, a six tier Reverse Dragon is just such a configuration.”

“No elf would be tainted by reverse flows. Your words are meaningless!” hissed Scarecrow.

Eric shrugged. “So who said the individual I’m referring to is an elf?”

Then Eric felt it, a probing touch against his meridians from the elder gazing at him with wide eyes that saw far too much. Yet it was a the softest of touches that felt more like a tickle than anything else against his pristine tier cultivation. Because no matter how twisted and bloody his path, with Death herself his mentor, it was one that promised Gold at the very least. And the one who dared to probe had peaked at Bronze, and his already strained foundation could advance no further. All of this Eric sensed while locking gazes with the elder. For information truly was a two-way street in the realms of Spiritual origin.

The elder flinched and hissed, eyes widening with an odd flash of vulnerability, as if Eric had glimpsed secrets the man would rather keep forever private. Yet Eric was wise enough to carefully school his features, making it abundantly clear that he was wise enough to keep his mouth shut about matters that didn’t concern him.

The elder cleared his throat and spoke. “You have already implanted your meridians with Divine Tier Spirit Fruit! I see it in you! You would dare to take my clan’s prize?”

Eric quirked his brow. “Still think I’m lying? Because the question isn’t whether or not I’ve made use of those fire peaches for myself, but whether or not I was thoughtful enough to bring a select handful or two with me to plant in the richest soil I could find as a gift to give my own future descendants, when the pocket realm I fled closed behind me forevermore.”

Eric allowed his words to sink in for long seconds as the Elder paled, his gaze both hostile and thoughtful.

“We have questions. Would you be willing to answer them for us?”

Eric gazed at the elder for long moments, mind racing with the prizes he would seize, and the peril he risked. “What cultivation techniques are commonly taught to inner sect disciples after Wind Strike is learned?”

Eric’s innocent-seeming query earned fresh hisses and urgent murmurs to ignore this farce and send him to the mistress once more.

The elder flashed Eric a cool smile matching Eric’s own, both of them knowing the stakes for which they really played. “This, I will share for free. Wind Step and Wind Blade. But the wisest pupils master Wind Ward before daring anything else.”

Eric clenched his jaw, doing his best to suppress his excitement. But alas, his brilliant Perception didn’t teach him to school his features, and even with Journeyman Negotiation, his acting skill was forever his weakness.

The elder’s smile grew. “I see this interests you. Answer all of my questions, and I will share a pristine variant of one of our standard techniques, complete and whole, free of all tainted influences.”

Eric clenched his jaw, forcing a smile the equal of his counterpart. “Two questions answered, for each of those techniques you would trade. And each of them complete and whole, free of all tainted influences.”

“The audacity!” Hissed Scarecrow, glaring at Eric with contempt. “You will accept ten questions for a single one of our priceless techniques and be grateful, beyond grateful, for such largess!”

Eric frowned, but it seemed the elder was pleased to have Scarecrow continue the bargaining, and clearly, by the way the man was rubbing his hands together, Eric wasn’t the only one with ranks in Negotiation or a similar skill. So Eric played another card, gazing the Elders way.

“Three questions. And one of them includes the fate of your son, should you choose to ask it, Grandmaster Arenso.”

Eric couldn’t help but feel a certain visceral thrill at the elder’s alarmed expression, Scarecrow man’s eyes narrowing to slits of disdain.

“Arrogant fool! For your insolence alone you will be made to kowtow before your masters! And if you think for one second that you can manipulate the elder of our—“

“Four questions!” The Elder declared, desperate eyes locking with Eric’s own. “You will answer four questions for one pristine quality standard technique!”

“Wind Step,” a breathless Eric said. “And I accept.”

For a heartbeat Scarecrow looked outraged, before schooling his features. “Yes, grandmaster. I will prepare the manuscript at once.”

Arenso glared at the suddenly blanching dark elf. “You will get our guest the copy within my personal library, and you will do so now.”

The man immediately swept a graceful bow. “At once, my master.” Before seeming to fade with the breeze.

Eric suppressed a smirk. Clearly there were more advanced techniques still, and he knew damn well he had forever to get there. But still, in every RPG he had ever played, absolutely nothing beat a good distance-closer for melee builds. And being the hybrid warrior caster that he was… he’d be a fool not to do all he could to boost his already considerable maneuverability advantages.

“Now, for your first question. Tell me what you can about my son.”

Eric gazed at the elder for long moments, sensing the pain beneath the man’s tight, angry gaze, realizing once more that there was no absolute truth. That tyranny from a son’s perspective may be tough love from a father. And however monstrous certain acts… or boys led to believe their fathers had actually committed certain acts… the bitter regret Eric sensed in the man’s gaze made it clear that things weren’t quite as cut and dried as a certain young master might have thought.

“I can tell you that Lai Wei Arenso is alive and well in a pocket realm that has blossomed into so much more,” Eric said, conceding so many truths with a single gentle smile, ignoring the sudden whispers his ears could all too easily make out. “He is accompanied by Pavel, who acts as his mentor, guardian, and friend, as well as a third cultivator who is a boon companion to them both.”

Eric closed his eyes, ignoring the gossip, hostility, and awe he sensed flowing about him in waves, focusing only on the glimmers of a glorious dream he knew to be as real as the gritty arena sands he stood on even now.

“All three of them stand on the cusp of legends they themselves will be responsible for forging in a virgin world filled with spiritual treasures beyond compare. All three of them will blossom into cultivators and leaders worthy of any clan. All three of them will make their mark in guiding an entire lost clan to greatness, the rich gifts of their bloodlines flowing for a thousand generations and more, the gifts of their insights and bloodlines serving as the bedrock for an entire world and all that will spring from it’s forging.”

The Elder gazed at him for long moments, ignoring the outraged cries of contempt and disdain.

“This wild half-blood mocks us with his broken path and lies! He seeks to steal our techniques, nothing more. He should be struck down at once!” Roared one pinch-faced cultivator who nonetheless radiated a powerful killing aura.

“He does not,” Elder Arenso said softly, yet forcefully enough to instantly silence everyone gazing their way. “he speaks the truth. Or so he believes.”

“Then how!” snapped the cultivator who had been glaring so hotly Eric’s way. “If he knows the fate of your boy, what of mine?” The man turned his furious gaze back to Eric. “Well, half-blood? You said there were three survivors, one of them clearly a human using a reverse cycle technique. So what is the fate of my Kinsaro? What of Kinsaro’s companions? Tell me where they are in this faerie tale you would dare to paint us. Tell us you didn’t kill them all in cold blood!”

Eric ignored the man, turning instead to the Elder, who nodded his head. “You may answer.” Eric held the man’s gaze for long seconds, before Mater Arenso grunted. “What are the fates of the others who joined my boy Lai Wei?”

Eric slowly shifted his balance, sinking into his stance, hands lowered toward the hilt of his sheathed mithril blade as he turned to lock gazes with the incensed cultivator whose secrets slowly became Eric’s own.

Unified Perception Check made!

You have embraced North Star Iado Stance!

“They died by my hand,” Eric said, his voice stretching tinny and slow even to his own ears as his sense of time blazed like fire in his mind, seeing every shift in expression from the pinch-faced dark elf radiating such contempt Eric’s way.

The look of surprise. The half shake of his head, as if to refuse what his eyes knew to be true, sensing the veracity of Eric’s words. The offhand way the mixed-blood bastard had dismissed his son’s execution like it was less than nothing.

He could sense so clearly the white hot fury compelling Scar’s father, for it could be no one else, to leap to the sands, headless of Master Arenso’s furious roar, Scar Senior howling as he summoned a titanic volley of wind as he drew his blade and prepared to cleave down with all his might.

It was a strike that could slice even the Eldritch Root in half, Eric would give him that.

Perhaps even the Dragon Turtle Eric had fought so desperately to overcome.

But Eric had read the hunger in the desperate, furious man’s eyes.

He had sensed the man’s desperate need to close. To see the look in Eric’s eyes when he struck him so hard with a Tier 7 Wind Cleave that Eric’s Mithril Mail would avail him nothing when the sheer force of the killing blow ruptured every organ within Eric’s body and sent him whirling through the air to smash into a bloody pulp against the far Colosseum wall.

More than anything else, Kinsaro’s father needed to make Eric pay.

Eric could sense it all in a single eternally stretching heartbeat, tasting the absolute hatred in his foe’s gaze as the man put every ounce of his force and fury into a singular deadly assault which Eric had absolutely no hope of parrying.

So he didn’t.

DOOM FLURRY!!

YOU HAVE CRITICALLY STRUCK YOUR FOE!

Instead, Eric seized the Vor, pressing his assault the very instant his foe got into range, 318 Quickness, Slow-Time, and his Northern Star Iaido Stance allowing him to draw and strike even faster than a 70th level master could summon an elite tier technique.

The ultimate synergism between System Sanctioned Warrior Feats, A cultivator’s arts, massive Soul Reserves, and a stat pool several times what his level would indicate, boosted by the very peaches the elder clearly craved.

Yet none of those factors changed the sheer terror of facing down a man who could have so easily killed Eric, had he lost his nerve or dared to flinch.

Or had Eric made the slightest mistake.

The ultimate contest between skill, perception, and nerve.

Because unlike the movies, countless fights between both duelist and samurai didn’t take endless minutes, but were rather decided with a single exchange.

In the veritable blink of an eye.

As Scar Senior crashed to the ground, cleaved in twain in a great diagonal slash from left hip to right shoulder, the follow up stroke sending the cultivator’s head soaring through the air in a shower of crimson rain Eric’s evolved Blood Mastery greedily absorbed, his foes’ eyes blinking in stunned disbelief as they gazed upon the wonder and horror that was mortal combat, the arena now echoing with roars and hollers of dismay and fury from the two dozen cultivators gazing Eric’s way with looks that ranged from disgust to fury to almost reverential respect.

Eric ignored them all as his blade, a six foot long bar of crimson flame, drank in all the power and essence of the shriveling corpse at his feet.

Before turning his gaze to the only ones he actually cared about there.

The half dozen elves who had looked so eager for his comeuppance, just minutes ago.

“Well, sister? Are you truly ready to pit my nieces and nephews’ lives against my skill with a blade?”

Eric flashed the wide-eyed youths beside their shocked-looking mother a sad, sad smile. “If it’s all the same to you, let’s decline this dance. I think enough of our kind have died to goblin machinations, don’t you? Because I can’t think of anything those bastards would love more than enticing us all into killing each other, weakening our own faction, before they can...”

Eric swallowed the awful pain in his throat, eyes widening in sudden alarm, realizing he could say nothing at all.

Realizing he wasn’t permitted to.

All his suspicions regarding not only Goblin treachery, but their plans to wage a war of absolute genocide on the Elven people as a whole… he couldn’t whisper even a single word.

“Eric, Stop!” Bunbun’s desperate warning.

And he sensed it too. Immediately breaking off that train of thought as his own Danger Sense screamed in sudden warning.

Somehow knowing that, if he were to push… he’d blink onto the awareness of a very ancient, very powerful Silver Tier Arch Seer who would love nothing more than to crush Eric under his boot.

So he quickly snapped his gaze around to face the blanching elder, Arenso’s countenance lost somewhere between awe and horror.

“You killed him,” Master Arenso whispered. “You fused System techniques with our pristine arts and a vampire’s gifts into an unholy… and you dare to ascend, even as we speak!”

Eric couldn’t quite hold back the smile as his mind blazed with sudden insight, replaying that split second battle a thousand times in the minute he gazed at the Elder looking back at him in such horror, tasting the glimmering of so many truths.

The nature of Fang Senior’s Tier 7 Wind Strike variant, only now realizing just how close his foe had come to actually parrying Eric’s Doom Flurry and utterly obliterating him. But more than just humbling him, Eric thought he understood as well the minute shifts in stance and balance, and a dozen other steps he could take to increase his chances of surviving his next cultivation duel, all culminating in the glorious message now flashing across his mind’s eye.

You have survived a duel to the death with a cultivator more than 40 levels above your cultivation level! (Said cultivator was additionally 17 levels above your highest class.)

You have had a breakthrough as a cultivator! (Death’s Disciple), forging your soul in the fires of combat. You are now level 27, and enjoy +3 to Strength, Vitality, Quickness, and Spiritual Energy!

Iado (Fast Draw) is now Rank 18!

You have achieved Rank 30 in Swordsmanship!

You have achieved Elite Status as a blade master!

Strength, Finesse, and Quickness have each increased by 9 points as the swordsman’s eternal insights become your own!

Elite Tier weapon feats include Warrior’s Transcendant Grace (50% reduced weapon feat cost), Cultivator’s Transcendant Grace (50% Reduced cost of all Qi attacks channeled through Mithril Quality blades or better!) & Cultivator’s Fury (50% increased potency of all Qi attacks channeled through Mithril quality blades or better!)

You have chosen Cultivator’s Fury!