The world is unforgiving, and the monsters that lurk in the dark do not give you second chances. The ancient philosopher, Confusion, once said “You must be like water, in the fire, for water is like fire and never stop moving. Your mind is like an empty chalice, for that chalice is half-full.”

As we trek through the world untouched by the hands of civilization, we must be wary of the shadowy trees that close in on us. The road we take is nary traveled upon by others. The grass is overgrown, the stones plentiful. Just like every path in life, this road we take leads to the northern land of weeb shit. 

To be careful is to not fall into darkness. It is as they say; as you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at your juicy boypussy and licks its lips in anticipation. To keep a solid balance of dark and light is the path to equilibrium, which, like all other paths, leads to the northern land of weeb shit. Such has the ancient philosopher, Cao Su, declared: “There is a time for pissing and a time for cumming.”

Our trials and tribulations do not end here. There is a dark path ahead, and we must change ourselves for the better in order to endure it. To rid oneself of worldly pleasures is the virtue of the undying dragon. Those who only see suffering see not the complete lack of proper grammar. For what worth would men be, if men could not change oneself? My patience wears thin but is durable like stone. A thick level of patience can cut through stone. While my adversaries indulge themselves, I train my body, mind, and spirit in this godforsaken land.

“Is this what happens to people that don’t sleep in a proper bed for a week?” Min asked, peeking at Seni’s diary.

Immediately, Seni slammed his diary shut. “I’ve also been subsisting on dry tofu sticks and rice crackers for a week. Let me have my mind degrade in peace.”

Ainsworth, who had been periodically looking up into the sky for the past hour, turned towards them and said, “Guys, I think it’s snowing.”

“That means we’re getting close. Onwards, comrades!”

Liuan raised her hand. “Actually, let’s take a break here. It’s going to get a lot colder from here on out...well, that’s what I’ve been told. We can do a count of our remaining supplies. But please don’t start a fire, the smoke is going to attract any pursuers. If it comes to it, I’ll make a magic flame.”

Almost immediately, everybody dropped onto their behinds and leaned their backs onto the nearest tree. A forest enclosed them on both sides of the road, and any view of the world outside had long since been lost after taking an uncountable number of twists and turns. A couple of snowflakes drifted through the wind overhead, sticking themselves in the branches and leaves.

Seni felt something that could only be described as odd trembling, and he turned his head around to look into the forest, where only the tall grass and occasional boulder were in sight. 

“Did you feel that?” he asked. “Maybe there’s an earthquake.”

“Nope,” Ainsworth replied bluntly. 

Nervously, Seni patted the ground, which felt solid enough. “I guess I was just imagining- whoa!”

His entire body lurched back, and he fell flat on his back as if there was never a tree that he was leaning on in the first place. 

A cloud of dust and dirt flew into his eyes. Coughing, he opened his eyes to see a dark shadow cast over his head. Strangely, there was an object positioned directly above his head.

“Roll to the side!” Liuan screamed at him.

Just as the object came crashing down, he rolled himself out of the way. It came to a thud into the ground directly next to his head. Picking himself up, he scrambled away from the tree trunk that had just tried to crush him.

“What a missed opportunity,” a youthful voice exclaimed. “And I would have gotten him, too, if it wasn’t for the lady.”

A small girl with pure white skin, to the point of looking like a ghost, was standing on the treetops. She grinned, looking down at the party of four. 

Instead of hair, a thicket of enormous white leaves hung from her scalp. Despite having no clothes on, none of her privates were visible, and her legs ended in nubs that she somehow maintained a perfect balance on.

“Seni...doesn’t she look an awful lot like how you do in your immortal form?” Ainsworth asked.

“In case you’re wondering, I don’t know her,” Seni replied. 

The girl hopped around from treetop to treetop. “It’s been a while since I came face to another one of my kind. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can keep you alive in this world much longer.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, kid. What in the world could you possibly do in a four-on-one?” Min retorted.

“I can’t believe you included me,” Ainsworth grumbled under his breath. 

“Enough talking!” Seni declared. “These hands are rated E for everyone!”

He clenched his sword hilt and rocketed off the ground to face the girl, but found himself to be facing a thick tree trunk that cast an enormous shadow over them.

The girl peeked out from behind it and stuck her tongue out. “Since when did I say that I was alone?”

The bark of the tree began to crack, and the other trees seemed to melt into the largest one. It grew appendages on both sides, slowly morphing as the wood creaked, coming to resemble - 

“Oh, no,” Min groaned.

It was a giant of a golem, big enough to smash an entire house underfoot. What was most harrowing was its lack of a head, and the countless vines that sprouted from where its neck should have been, spraying a sort of saplike liquid as they thrashed like tentacles.

“So you were the one behind our first monster encounter,” Seni muttered. “Well, this should be easy enough.”

Before the golem could make a single move, Seni placed his hand on it, and the monster of wood immediately halted in its tracks.

It keeled over backward and slammed into the ground harder than an anvil falling from a cliff. The ground trembled, with dust clouding up their vision and the trees (which seemed like toothpicks in comparison to the colossus) being crushed.

“If you know I’m the same type of immortal as you are, why would you try something so idiotic?” Seni commented. 

The girl popped up from another tree, sticking her head out of the leaves. “Interesting! I’ve never seen someone do that before. What did you do?”

“As if I’d tell you.”

“Did you drain its vitality?”

Seni remained silent, clenching up his small fists.

She leaned on the tree while standing on a thin branch that somehow supported her weight. “Let's see...I’ve got just the idea. My children! Ravage!”

Raising her hand into the air, all was silent for a few seconds as the party tensed up in anticipation. 

Then, a roar, a rush, a horde of screaming descended onto them like a tidal wave.

“Oh, fuck no! We’re running!” Seni shouted, turning heel and dashing away. 

“Don’t leave me behind!” Ainsworth called out.

Liuan grabbed Ainsworth and hoisted him up onto her shoulders as Min blew past them, following Seni’s footsteps. 

At the front of the group, Seni dug his feet into the ground to propel himself as much as he could. His lack of height made him slower than Liuan, who soon caught up to them with long strides and Ainsworth riding on her shoulders.

“Min!” Liuan shouted. “Do we still have our supplies?”

“Y-yeah!” Min replied back, panting and gasping with the heavy load in his arms.

“Toss it to me!”

Min slung the pack towards her. The arc was weak, dipping down far sooner than anyone expected.

Ainsworth leaned down from his spot on Liuan’s shoulders and snatched it just before it hit the ground. “Got it!”

“Nice!” Seni exclaimed. “Min, I’m going to move back and sweep you into my arms.”

He was so tired that he couldn’t even muster up a response and held up a thumb to answer Seni. 

Ainsworth nervously looked back and immediately whipped his head around, focusing only on the road in front of them.

“What the hell are those things!?” he shouted. 

Their speed gradually accelerated, and he felt the wind slam into his face, blowing his hair back and whistling in his ears. 

“Fuck if I know!” Seni replied, peeking back at the horde hot on their tail. 

“They’re humans,” Liuan muttered in a voice so low, Ainsworth could hardly hear it over the wind screaming into his ears.

“They’re WHAT!?” Ainsworth yelled back, almost in disbelief at what he had just heard.

“We can talk about this later. According to the map, we’re somewhat close to a town, but I do not imagine this girl would be too fazed about trampling over a couple of settlements to kill us.”

“You do realize we can’t just run like this forever, right? There has to be something else,” Seni yelled.

“Of course, I have accounted for that. We must reach the mountain pass into Hintar. There are more than a couple of immortals guarding the border. I’ll try to slow her down.”

Liuan raised her hand up. The cracking of roots and groaning of wood rose to surround them. Ainsworth lowered his head, expecting another strange attack from their pursuers, but turned to witness several trees being uprooted. 

Then, they smashed directly into the path of the horde, launched by an unseen force.

Although the bodies flew high, and many were crushed like ants under a giant boot, they simply climbed over one another. Mindlessly roaring and raging, putting their all into catching up to the party of four.

“Damn!” she exclaimed. “Can you look through our travel bag? Do we have any oil?”

Ainsworth, who had been looking through the bag on top of his shoulders, whipped out a canister of oil and dropped it into Liuan's hand. 

Without hesitation, she clenched the canister, poking holes into the metal cylinder with her fingers. A couple of droplets of oil leaked out and stained the ground, but she quickly threw it behind them.

The speed at which the canister flew caused it to burst the moment it struck one of the horde members - whose head also burst open - and drenched them in oil.

Liuan snapped her fingers a couple of times. A spark ignited on her index finger, then a burst of flaring light, and a small blue flame on the final snap. She drew her hand in an arc, and flicked her finger behind her, sending a beam of flames piercing straight through into the horde. 

The sheer heat burned straight through their emaciated bodies as if an enormous spear had been driven through them. Then, the beam narrowed into a blindingly white light, thin as a thread of spider silk.

Ainsworth could hardly hear the roaring wind anymore. It was as if all of the sounds in the area had been sucked out by the display of magic. 

Then, the beam expanded into a roaring explosion of fire that engulfed the center of the horde. 

Instinctively, Ainsworth turned away and squeezed his eyes shut as the heat of the flames could be felt on his back. 

Perhaps they were relentless in their pursuit, unwavering even as their flesh was torn and their eyes gouged out by their comrades stepping over them. But the damage on their bodies took their toll as their skin and muscles were burning, crackling, and popping in the heat. 

Even as their legs burned out, they crawled towards the group of four rapidly disappearing into the distance.

Ainsworth turned around to see the horde had stopped in its tracks as the fire began to spread. The girl who had attacked was standing on top of a tree, tapping her foot and glaring at them as they continued to run further and further away.

 

…

 

Kunio stroked his beard as Akane whaled on the training dummy with all the techniques she had learned over the past couple of days. She used the inner blade of the scythe to hook, followed it up with a hilt smash, and brought the tip of the blade whipping back to stab into its abdomen.

“Perhaps I was worried for nothing,” he admitted, groaning as he felt his knees ache when he stood up from his seat. “You’ve certainly got the physical ability to wield an anime bullshit weapon.”

Akane proudly patted her tight bicep, flexing her arm. “So, how’s that for progress?”

“It’s good. Very good, in fact. Almost prodigal. But not enough. You’re nowhere close to standing a chance against a live opponent.”

“Really, now. Do you desire to test out that theory?”

He laughed, leaning his head back and cackling to the skies, slapping his knee the moment he heard her proposal. “Girl, you don’t happen to know the definition of ‘overconfident’ do you?”

She scowled. “What’s the big deal?”

“Young lady, fighting fish is a far cry from fighting humans.”

“Are you serious? The fish I’ve fought my entire life are far more dangerous than any regular bandit!”

“And are regular bandits going to be the opponents you’ll be facing in the upcoming tournament?”

She fell silent, averting her gaze from the old man.

He nodded at her silence, then stretched his back. “I suppose I can’t teach without demonstration. Toss me a weapon from the shed.”

Akane’s face brightened up, and she immediately began heading to the shed. Then, she turned around and asked, “Which one?”

Kunio waved his hand in response. “Doesn’t matter.”

A dull blade flew out of the shed, and Kunio immediately snatched it out of the air, smiling to himself as Akane walked onto the field with her scythe in her hands. 

He was holding a short sword in his hand - the type that assassins and thieves often used as a sidearm. It didn’t even have a hilt guard. 

“You said any weapon,” Akane reminded him.

“When was I complaining?” he replied. “I’ll have you know, when I was younger, I-”

He abruptly cut off his sentence and rushed straight at Akane, lashing out with his sword. 

Akane sucked in a quick breath as she whipped her head back, dodging the blade by a hair’s width. She focused her mind, then jabbed her hilt forward to attack, but Kunio had already transitioned into a thrust.

She spun to the side, barely avoiding the thrust, and brought the scythe back to strike at Kunio in a sweeping motion. The head of the scythe swooped in from the side, but her opponent had already made his move. 

He moved forward into her body, causing Akane’s attack to miss completely. 

Grabbing onto the handle of her weapon, he threw himself forward and thrust his sword before she could even react.

“Now that ended quite fast, didn’t it?” Kunio commented, the tip of his sword barely touching the skin on her neck.

Letting go of her breath, she stumbled back and stared at him.

“What? Is there something on my face?”

“How...are you so good?”

Sighing, Kunio walked back to his seat and plopped himself down, massaging his aching knees. “I don’t look like it, do I? Well, old men do seem to have a habit of telling stories. Sit down, and I’ll tell you. Not a story, but my lesson. Tell me, how did I pull that off?”

She blinked. “I don’t know. It was so fast.”

“Yes, I suppose that would be an answer. Speed, or rather, aggression. The greatest defense is a good offense. Fish are mindless, driven by instinct and rage. Men are not. They are calculating, calm, angered, panicked, and, most of all, afraid. What you need is overwhelming force - the illusion of overwhelming force, at least. To make your opponent feel as if they haven’t a chance to defeat you. Your massive scythe does a good job of that.”

“But you aren’t intimidating at all,” Akane retorted.

“No, I’m not. I’m a withered old man with a sword that looks more like a kitchen knife than a proper weapon. That is where the aggression part comes into play. I attacked first, therefore, I was on the initiative. A good fighter, such as myself,” he placed a withered hand on his tiny chest, with a cheeky grin smeared all over his wrinkled face. “will use their aggression to control the fight. If you just stand around waiting for the opponent to attack first, then you’re already decreasing your chance of winning. Think about it. If you just do nothing, then the opponent has far too many ways to strike. If you attack first, then that will limit their options. They must react to what you are doing, or else they lose. Get what I’m saying?”

“Did you predict my moves or something? You know, since you seem so experienced.”

“That’s part of it. Because the way your enemies will react to your attacks is limited, you can more or less tell what they’ll try to pull, to some extent. The weapon type also matters. Look at yours. It’s heavy, long, and looks like a cross between a war pick and a bardiche. I don’t imagine you’d do well at deflecting fast thrusting attacks, so you’d probably move your body out of the way.”

He made a couple of thrusting weapons with his short sword, chuckling to himself. 

“Besides, the only lethal blow you can deal with a weapon like this is stabbing straight through your opponent. Slashes hardly ever kill anyone. When I got close to you, you had a chance to knee me in the gut, too. The guys at the tournament are gonna be savage. Honor means nothing to them. That fancy stuff is for the immortals. For us humans, it’s a world of struggle.”

Akane folded her hands together. “Hmm. Is there anything on the field that I can use in the real competition?”

Kunio stuck his sword into the ground and flicked some snow at her. “You can throw the dirt in someone’s eyes, I guess. Or shove it down their pants.”

She rubbed the freezing snow off of her cheek. “Thanks for the demonstration.”

He still had a grin on his face. “Hey, anytime. I’m thinking it’s time we move on to sparring. I don’t feel too good just getting paid to sit here all day. I’ll start off with a spear since that’s probably the most common weapon you’ll be up against, then I’ll move towards teaching you about fighting against nodachis, axes, clubs, and all the exotic stuff.”

She opened her mouth to ask whether or not there was something else she was supposed to do before the sparring began, but realized that if there was, Kunio would have mentioned it already. He was her teacher, after all. 

The only thing she had to do was prepare for an ass-whooping.