Street Cultivation, page 38
"I've been looking forward to this, kid. Your defense is good, for a featherweight, but we'll see how well it holds up against me."
It was obvious he was talking trash, but Rick decided to just smile back. "Sure, should be interesting. Out of curiosity, do you work for the American Basilisk, or did he just recruit you for this?"
"Our boss prefers to stay in-house." The man cast him a scornful glance. "Unlike the old woman, who just uses whatever pawns she finds lying on the street. What did she promise you? I wouldn't count on getting it."
"If you're all official... did he give you those coats as uniforms, or did you all just independently think that the best look was running around like you're in a movie?" Rick fixed a smile on his face, which became easy when he saw the irritation in the other man's face.
"Keep talking like that, kid, and see where it gets you. I've been looking forward to this."
"You the final boss, then?" Rick stepped up to him and poked him in the chest. "Then I'll take you down and get everything that's coming to me."
They might have said more, but at that moment the ramp finally descended into their space. When Rick moved to walk up, his opponent shadowed him, glaring. Soon they stood underneath the glaring light, roughly in the center of the arena, facing one another. Rick put up his fists, his opponent dropped into a fighting stance with open palms, and they both awaited the signal.
The buzzer sounded and Rick used a Bunyan's Step to run away.
While the cloaked man stared in surprise, Rick instead rushed another opponent. The other man hadn't been expecting him at all, allowing Rick to land a jarring elbow strike to the skull. Wasting all his strength on the person who was likely the strongest opponent was stupid, especially given that his goal wasn't just to win. He needed to earn points by taking down others first.
Unfortunately, none of the remaining fighters were weak. Though Rick tried to land followup blows, his opponent pushed him back with a rush of aura. A moment later he was drawing a gun, but Rick didn't have time to think about it, because the man in the cloak was rushing at him.
Dropping back to the floor, Rick barely avoided the hand swiping at his face. Damn, this opponent was fast. Worse, the other man nearest them was now aiming down at him. Rick used another Bunyan's Step to throw himself across the arena, evading the gunshots and getting further away from the man in the cloak.
When Rick hopped back to his feet, he saw that another of the fighters was rushing them, cloaked in a flaming aura that seemed to cause pain just by entering it. Though Rick pretended to be watching that fight, he actually monitored his surroundings, looking for other opponents.
One of them was creeping up behind him... carrying an actual sword? Rick pretended he didn't notice until the blade thrust at his back, then he spun to the side. It cut just past him, glancing off his arm, and then he slammed an elbow into his opponent's face. The woman tried to raise her sword and cut again, but she didn't have the speed for it. He kicked her hands, knocking away her blade, then took her down with several more blows.
Yet as he turned back, he was surprised to feel a line of pain across his chest. Somehow she had dealt another blow, one he hadn't even noticed. It was fortunate that he'd been able to turn her ambush against her, or he might have taken even more injuries.
In any case, the remaining three fighters were still clashing. The man in the cloak managed to peel away from the other two and came for him. Rick smirked and raised his hand, gesturing for his opponent to come at him.
Then he sprinted straight past him in another Bunyan's Step.
He nearly collided with another one of his opponents. Though Rick dealt a blow to his neck, he was surprised when it glanced off. Whoever this man was, he was tough, with a defensive core that might be better than Rick's.
But Rick didn't need to fight him. The man launched a wild haymaker, so Rick redirected his movement to send the man stumbling behind him, nearly colliding with the man in the coat. That gave Rick time to-
There was a gun in his face, held by the last of his opponents.
His mind froze, yet his body moved on instinct. Somehow Rick slapped it aside before the man could fire, then reversed and smashed his elbow into his opponent's face. Worn down by his fight with the others, the gunman finally went down.
Finally free for a few seconds, Rick caught his breath and got his bearings. To his surprise, he discovered that the large fighter was staggering back, bleeding from his ears. As Rick watched, the man in the cloak attacked again. His hand just seemed to slap his opponent in the chest, doing no damage to the man's muscular body... yet a moment later he spat up blood and collapsed onto the arena floor.
The man in the cloak turned to him and Rick felt a moment of concern. He knew that Granny Whitney must have been preparing him for this man's technique, yet the idea of taking this risk... no, it was nothing compared to the risk he'd taken attacking Teragen. Rick pushed aside his misgivings, instead putting on a smirk.
"You think that's gonna work on me? Come on, then!"
"Oh, I will." The man in the cloak abruptly surged forward, moving with even more speed than he'd displayed before.
Rick tried to meet him with a punch, only to have his arm swept aside. He had planned to leave an opening, but it turned out to be unnecessary: his opponent was inside his guard in a single movement. Then the palm hit his chest and his insides twisted painfully.
Pushing through, Rick rammed the base of his palm straight into his opponent's nose. As it snapped, he saw the cloaked man's shock over the pain. He was used to disabling targets with blows like that and wasn't prepared for someone as apparently normal as Rick to have trained internally. Instead of tearing apart his internal organs, after all of the painful pills, his body merely twisted in response before resisting the energy.
While his opponent was stunned, Rick managed to land a blow to the stomach. Yet his next attempt was blocked, his opponent grabbing his arm, wrenching it aside, and striking him several times on the chest. The pain was worse, but nothing like what he'd been forced through.
Spinning backward with the force on his arm, Rick flipped into the air, slamming a knee into his opponent's head. That made the man in the cloak stagger further, but he stayed on his feet. In fact, he was only stunned long enough for Rick to land safely, then they were trading moves again.
The blows had weakened his opponent, however, so the man's movements were no longer as smooth as they had once been. Rick managed to land a brutal kick to his knee, opening him up for another blow to the skull.
It still wasn't enough. The man in the cloak responded with a flurry of sweeping movements, forcing Rick to back up. How long could his opponent maintain such an assault? Normally Rick would have wanted to fall back and find an opening, but he was exhausted and beaten from the fight, not to mention the internal damage. He needed to end this, so he had to make an opening.
When another palm rushed at him, Rick stopped trying to block or dodge. Instead he traded blows, his elbow striking his opponent's face at the same time the palm hit his shoulder.
Finally the man in the cloak fell and didn't get up. Yet Rick felt something horribly painful in his gut and the world spun around him. When he fell, he tried to catch himself with his left arm, yet it hung limp, as if damaged by the final blow. He barely managed to prop himself up with his other arm.
Letting himself fall to the ground and rest would have felt so good, and forcing himself to straighten up was agony. Yet Rick slowly got back to his feet anyway. Not for the sake of winning more points in the match, but because he wanted to be standing at the end of it.
The crowds cheered as he straightened up, yet he didn't feel any sense of pride. This last opponent might actually have been stronger than him, and his hand-to-hand skills were definitely superior. That was even before his ability to cause internal damage was considered. Without Granny Whitney specifically training him to resist it, and the surprise blows that advantage had allowed him to land, he wouldn't have been able to win.
In a way, he was just a weapon being wielded by another. So his opponent had been right, but it didn't really matter. Rick didn't care about the glory, only the results. If being used as a tool was the price he paid for survival and steps toward a new life for himself and those who mattered to him, then he would pay it.
Now it was finally over. Rick tried not to stagger as he left the arena and walked between the stands, but he was exhausted. When he licked his teeth, he discovered that there was some blood in his mouth. The rest of him didn't look great either, the blood from the cut covering his chest and waist. But that was fine - there was no one else in his power class left standing, so he was done.
Except as he walked out, Rick saw Mike watching him, and remembered that he wasn't done at all.
For him, the true final round would come in two weeks, when he fought Mike. There would be no buzzer to end that fight and no allies to help him. The Birthrighter sneered at him, but Rick realized that was just fine. Mike had come to check his progress, but he saw only Rick at his weakest.
For the next fight, he would create his own advantages. Hopefully it would be enough that he could defeat someone well above his power class.
As he painfully mounted the steps back to the team's room, Rick found his mind wandering. Had he earned enough points for their team to catch up? Would it matter at all, since the last match would be Teragen's anyway?
Who would be waiting for him when he came back? He hoped that Emily had recovered from her injuries, and wished Malati a swift recovery as well. His mind wandered to Anthony before he remembered that Granny Whitney had abandoned him for his failure. How had he forgotten that? Rick's thoughts spiraled out lazily, then he clutched at his stomach as it cramped up.
His foot missed the next step and his face slammed into the stairs. Rick's body went limp and he collapsed, alone in the stairwell.
Chapter 53: The Tournament Ends
Rick drifted in a warm space, unconsciousness wrapping around him softly... until something lanced straight through his heart.
He jerked upward, wide awake in an instant and completely disoriented. If not for a hand pushing him back down, he might have ended up thrashing wildly. Yet as his brain caught up to his body, he realized that there was no need to panic. Emily was the one pushing him down, though she took her hand off his chest now that he was awake.
Currently he lay on the floor of their room. He felt a bit beaten up and everything in his chest hurt, but he didn't feel anything that felt like a mortal wound. In fact, the worst pain was on his face. Only then did he remember falling down in the stairwell.
"I fell..." He touched his face and his fingers came away with blood. "What happened?"
"I saw that you didn't arrive and suspected that you hadn't made it up," Emily said. "Don't worry, you seem to be in decent condition. The worst-looking wound is actually the one you got from the stairs, and that's superficial."
Though he was grateful for that, Rick realized that there was something much more important. "What about you? You look... completely fine."
"I am." Emily raised her hands in front of her, flexing them slowly. "Whitney had some of her specialists take care of me. I'm not sure what they used, but I've never been healed so quickly."
"And Malati?" He realized that he could look and saw that the other woman was sitting in her chair, watching the arena. "Same for her, I take it?"
"That's right. I'm not sure why Whitney didn't heal you."
"It's because of the stunt I pulled back at the farm." Rick painfully shifted so he could rest his back against the wall. "She said she wouldn't help me anymore."
"Hmm. Well, I was concerned that you might have a concussion, so I shocked you back awake. You seem to be fine as far as I can tell, but you should really speak to a medical professional."
Rick nodded slowly. Now that the important issues had been addressed, his mind wandered back to the tournament. "What about the match? How many more fights are there?"
"It's already over." Malati called from her position, finally turning around to look at them. "I'm just watching them set up for the final ceremony. You missed a pretty intense final heavyweight fight, but as usual, they didn't go long enough for any decisive finishes. Teragen managed to earn us one point on the competition, but that was it."
"Then... the final score?"
Granny Whitney marched into that room at the moment, a smile on her face. "It was enough, dearie. You earned 4 points over Gerald's fighter, which was enough to tie up the score. Then Teragen won the final round for us, so we finished on top."
His reaction wasn't so much victory as relief. Not only was it over, he had succeeded. Granny Whitney would finally forgive his debt, remove his tracking bond, and let him go on his way. It wasn't true freedom, since he still needed to fight Mike, but it was a huge step forward.
Feeling better, he managed to get to his feet and check the screens, where he saw the final score displayed:
[1) Granny's Underground - 62 pts
2) Obsidian Thirty - 61 pts
3) Alger's Heroes - 55 pts
4) Serpenza - 41 pts
5) Verdant Mountain Sect - 36 pts]
Seeing the numbers listed so clearly helped him relax another notch. When he found the previous match's scores and added those points to his previous two... he had earned 24 points for his team, just over a third of their total. There was no way Granny Whitney could claim that he hadn't pulled his weight. Most likely no one would remember him compared to all the other fighters, but he'd made a difference.
"Yes, Gerald is very unhappy about all this." The old woman chuckled maliciously. "He left without even claiming his reward. And Alger won't be able to preach at me for at least a year. Yes, this is quite a victory for Granny Whitney."
Malati shook her head. "That's well and good, but is it a victory for us? You know I have my own priorities."
"Never fear, dearie! I was actually just coming to tell you that we should all get ready to go down and receive our rewards. It won't be too dramatic of a ceremony, and there are no medals, but I think you'll enjoy the gift baskets."
There wasn't time for him to do much more than step into the men's bathroom and clean his face. He looked like a bit of a mess compared to the others, who seemed almost as fresh as when they'd started. Though the worst injury was the damage done to his internal organs, the most obvious one was the line cut into his face by the stair step. If he hadn't been completely exhausted, it wouldn't have done any harm at all, but at the very end, he took such a stupid injury.
Yet it didn't matter. As he cleaned up quickly, Rick found himself smiling. After the end of the day, he would be able to leave behind a major set of obligations. That was a better prize than all of the rewards he would have been given.
When he stepped out of the bathroom, he found Granny Whitney waiting for him, hands clasped together on her handbag. "I took the liberty of claiming all of your rewards, dearie. Just in case you were thinking of making any... final adjustment to our deal."
"You made it clear you wouldn't help anymore." Rick touched the cut on his face, which still bled a little from the deepest part. "This is what I get. Don't tell me that you're going to exact more vengeance?"
"I thought about it." She gave him a grandmotherly smile and her eyes glittered. "But you helped carry our team to the end, and that counts for something. As I said, you're a fine young lad."
"This fine young lad wants nothing more to do with you, once his obligations are fulfilled."
Granny Whitney chuckled as if she knew something he didn't. "Fair enough, dearie. I'll just have that tracking bond off and then you can be free of me. There's going to be a celebration afterward, though, and you can attend if you like. It's up to you."
She reached out and grasped his wrist, but this time instead of pain, he felt something leave him. It was a complex process of unraveling, yet it seemed that the tracking bond was finally gone. When he confirmed with his phone, he let himself smile. Then this part of it was over.
Though part of him wanted to go straight home and begin preparing for his next fight, Rick realized that he was tired. Not just from the combat, but from all the tension of the tournament. Considering that he still needed to speak more with Emily and others, he could afford to spend a little time unwinding afterward.
Rick went down with the others and they marched out the main gate, victorious. The crowds cheered them wildly as they headed out to the arena, where Alger stood with the tournament organizers. Even though his team had come in third place, he seemed honestly excited to congratulate all of them.
Each of them received a basket filled with valuable items: potent philosopher's elixir, special medicines, training manuals, and more. Rick received a basket, but his was empty, as per the agreement. Alger went out of his way to shake his hand, though, telling him what a good job he'd done. Really, he seemed entertained by the whole event itself.
His smile faltered only briefly, when he greeted Granny Whitney. Rick couldn't hear what was said between them, but Alger handed her something with a sour expression on his face and turned away.
It was Rick's first time in front of a cheering crowd like that, yet he found himself mostly unmoved. That kind of praise and adoration didn't do much for him. He took the same approach as Teragen, who seemed to ignore all of it, impatient to go.
Yet when they left the stage, they were swept away by a crowd of officials and fans. Without warning, Rick found himself with women surrounding him, which was more alarming than anything. "I thought you did great!" one of them said, beaming at him.
"Yeah!" Another latched himself onto his arm, then oohed as she felt his muscle. "Wow, your arm feels so strong..."
Disoriented, Rick just tried not to be separated from the others as they were led into a large room overlooking the arena. It was lavishly furnished and decorated, with a table filled with food and drink. As he looked around the room, Rick saw a large number of women he suspected were escorts, but also serious-looking businessmen and others who did not seem likely to celebrate.
