Chapter V: Scamming Combat Techniques III

City 19 Arena

The Mind Net

The Great Plateau

Month of the Pangolin 2, 172 ,328 DE

As the effeminate Cultivator's punch actually lifts me off the ground, I cannot keep the surprised expression off my face. Bloody mist explodes from the point of impact, and the whirlwind carries me backward almost four meters. Looking at my stomach, I see shredded skin past the flapping remnants of my torn robes.

Torn robes? Ha. I never bothered to change my appearance to the loincloth I normally wear when hunting. With a thought, the bloodied white robe disappears, and except for a pair of boot, the loincloth becomes my only clothing.

The balls of my feet lightly touch the ground, and I skid backward another meter. "Nice punch. But that takes way too long for just one attack."

"Even if those Heian trash morons are wrong about you not being a Cultivator, you're still an imbecile like they said. What makes you think Tornado Fists is a single use attack?" The effeminate Cultivator holds up his, which is still enclosed in the miniature whirlwind.

I put on a confused expression. "I know I'm just an imbecile, but doesn't fists, the plural, imply both fists. Looks like you only half-assed your mastery of your technique, oh great, okama genius."

As the effeminate Cultivator's face twist in rage. I grin. "An I can't Cultivate. I don't have a drop of Yuan Qi in my Body. I practice what you could call Body Cultivation, a type that doesn't need Yuan Qi."

"Hey, limp dicks. Stop watching Beast's okama baiting. I'm the one that's gonna kill you." Due to the arena's natural suppression of sound, Vorn's mocking voice makes it sound as though he is much farther away than he is.

What would be supposedly immutable laws of physics in the main Realm can be very malleable in the Mind Net. A one kilometer diameter space can contain three kilometers or three thousand or whatever the construct controlling the Mind Net deems the necessary space to be. The interior area of the arena tends to grow and shrink with the number of users it needs to contain, and sounds tend to be muted when the distance between users exceeds about fifty meters. That distance can and will change depending on how an arena is being managed by the construct at any time.

Hearing Vorn's jab, the effeminate Cultivator looks over his shoulder, and I silently close the distance between us.

"Boo!"

Spinning around, the effeminate Cultivator flails wildly at my head, but as I arch my body backward, his hand and forearm sail past my face. The winds enwrapping his arm still shred the skin on my nose and forehead. I snap a simple front kick into the Cultivator's balls, and as he staggers back the whirlwind disappears.

"Gaijin, your gaijin buddy is a nasty bastard."

"Did wreck someone's balls again? That dog-nose bastard is a fucking pervert."

"That poor okama. Being an okama is bad enough. Can't imagine what it would be like being a eunuch too."

Vorn scoffs. "We're in the Dream World. He'll still have his balls in the real world. Just like you'll still have your arms."

"What are dreaming about gaijin? AAAAARRRRRRRR!"

As the burly Cultivator finishes his question, Vorn's great sword lop of the human's right arm, and a fraction of a second later, he cuts off the left one. With a mocking grin, Vorn kicks the burly Cultivator in the balls and sighs. "Damn. There something satisfying about seeing you with that expression."

The burly Cultivators knees buckle and he falls face forward.

"Old Sugihara's down! Everyone! Get him!" As he screams one of the other burly Cultivators leads the other four in a charge at Vorn.

With a kick I flip the effeminate Cultivator over so he can see the fight. "Watch. They don't need your half-assed Tornado Fists to put up more of a fight than you with it. You squandered half or more of your potential strength to make yourself look some okama bitch. Perfect complexion. Tender, jade-like skin. Pretty enough to be a female. Inferior muscles. Weaker bones. Can't take a little pain. You're a fucking joke."

With five burly Cultivators attacking him, Vorn backs away in a series of arcs. He uses one Cultivator to obstruct others, and only uses his sword to block the attacks he cannot dodge. For him, they are nothing more than living, breathing training dummies, but each of those Cultivator has the strength to kill the effeminate Cultivator I was toying with.

From the way the five burly Cultivators all use the same fighting style. Their style focuses on speed and strength, and from the feel of the Yuan Qi leaking from their Bodies, they should be using a Martial technique to boost their already well-developed physical capabilities. They technique should be a core technique from the same clan, school, or sect. Sects are not common east of the Kami Kaze Mountains, but they do exist. Since the six humans have different enough facial appearances and scents that, if they are are related, they are very distant relations at best, they are most like from the same school or sect.

Even though Vorn is neither slow nor lacking in agility, his strength and endurance are clearly his strongest attributes, but he focuses his training more on improving his weaker attributes. Giving up on Yuan Qi Cultivation to become a Triune is just one, if the most extreme, example of the steps he is willing to take to become stronger, and it is already paying off. His Body has become stronger and faster from sealing his Mana to it, and by the second, he is improving in the use of it. But the way he is going about avoiding the five burly Cultivators is looking too familiar.

"Damned smug cat, what are you doing?"

While continuing to avoid the five Cultivators by smaller margins, Vorn laughs. "I call it Dumb Doggy Steps. It's modeled on the shambling of a retarded dog. Surprisingly, it works halfway decently."

"Asshole."

"Like you can talk, you retard pot."

"If you're done playing, finish those weaklings off."

For a few minutes more, Vorn continues to dodge the five Cultivators. With every step and turn, his style looks closer and closer to the way I avoid his attacks when we spar. He gets hit far less than he he would normally hit me, but the attacks of those Cultivators are not the same level of speed and power as Vorn's.

Struggling to his knees, the effeminate Cultivator glares at me. Resentment fills his eyes, while fear, shame, and hate inundate his scent.

"Do you think you're stronger than any of them?"

Unable to hold my stare any longer, the effeminate Cultivator looks at the stone paved floor of the arena. His clenched fists tremble. "I surrender."

As the Cultivator disappears from the Mind Net, I walk toward the nearest Cultivators, who are not engaged the fight with Vorn, a pair of androgynous males. "Surrender or get killed!"

The two males look at one another.

"I surrender."

"I surrender."

Seeing my look in their direction, more cultivators disappear from the Mind Net. After just a few seconds, other than unconscious female and the ball-busted male, the five Cultivator being toyed with by Vorn are the only ones left. One by one, the five stop fighting and look around.

A defeated expression appears on the face of the burly Cultivator lying on the ground. "I surrender."

The other five quickly surrender and disappear. The few remaining Cultivators, who had been watching the show, follow suit, leaving only the unconscious female. After I break her neck, she disappears, without even knowing how she was 'killed', and a more golden words appear over the arena.

Team Battle Mode Concluded

Team 1: Victorious

273 Challenger Defeated

Challenge Multiplier Average 2.15

Total Arena Points: 5934

Points Per Team Member: 2967

Vorn looks up at the letters. "Arena Points?"

I nod. "You can only spend them in the Arena Shop. There are, at least, ten kinds of points you can earn in the Mind Net. Most people never get anything other than the general points that can be used on most any service in the cities. The other types give you access to specific shops that have technique and general knowledge books not available elsewhere. According to the shitty old man, the Arena Shop has one of the two best collections of techniques in the entire Mind Net."

Vorn snort. "Shit. No one ever told me that. Not that it would have done much good. Cultivators can't use %99.9 percent of the techniques in here to begin with."

"There are a few places with training manuals that have nothing to do with the manipulation of a specific Power. They're meant for developing your Body, Mind, or Soul, but since your follow the Scripture of Origin, now, they're useless for you. Once you become a Triune, you could give a few of those training manuals a shot. Same goes for the techniques in the Arena Shop." I put on my best superior smirk.

Vorn frowns at me for a moment, before looking tired and shaking his head. "Do you practice those in the mirror?"

"My smirks? Of course."

"You're a real asshole."

"Follow me." I head for one of the exits from the arena floor. Beneath the stands, I take a twisting path that ends up in a large room with fifty cubicles lining the walls. The arena has four of these rooms, one in each cardinal direction.

I point at the cubicles. "Step into one and say 'Open Shop'."

"Open Shop." Standing in a cubicle, Vorn appears to gape at the blank wall in front of him.

The sales listing for the Arena Shop is only visible to the being that opens it. According to Old Man Jones, the ordering of the listing varies for each being, dependent on their affinities and the strengths of their Body, Mind, and Soul. Some techniques require certain levels of affinity with various Elemental or Amalgamate Powers: Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Blood, Bone, Metal, countless other affinities or specializations of larger affinity types.

"Unless you can find something that will work with your Beast Blood Cultivation and don't require the Trinity, you should wait until your a Triune before spending your points. There's no telling what you'll actually need at that point."

Vorn looks at me over his shoulder. "Are there techniques that will work with Beat Blood Cultivation?"

I shrug. "Probably. But whether or not you can use them without the Trinity is the question. The War Masters knowledge millions or billion of times that of the retarded Cultivators. Probably more than that. They roamed across countless Realms and fought Demons and other creatures of the Primal Powers on even footing. Do you think Beast Blood Cultivation technique are outside the realm of their knowledge."

"Probably not." With a contemplative look, Vorn turns back to the list that only he can see.