Gestation by John Gold (love books to read .txt) 📗

“What money?”

“Yup… We’ll be waiting for you at the stand—your mother shouldn’t have to see this. I’m going to double the whipping, and you’re going to get thrashed every day this week.”

It doesn’t look like the surprise on my face means anything to him. He takes my crying mother by the shoulders and walks away.

When I get back, Bernard gives me such a cuff that I see stars. My health drops into the red zone.

“Pull yourself together—you have a battle coming up. The odds are twenty to one against you.”

I go over to the healer, Bernard calling after me.

“Nobody’s been able to touch your opponent yet. They’re already calling him the champion.”

“I’m betting on myself.”

The battle is just as serious as the previous two. All anyone’s been able to see is the height difference, which is why they’ve tried to kick me or finish me off with a quick attack. The only problem is that this last opponent really is strong. He’s a friar, too, with the benefit of experience, but he also knows how to counter what I have. I end up having to use everything I know: I parry his blows, aim for his vulnerabilities, stay aware of my surroundings, use his strength against him. For a friar, he has as much health as a tank, and his defense is so good that my hits barely do anything. After the battle, I realize that that was the best experience I could have had. Where did he pick up his skills? I certainly wouldn’t mind having his health. We bow to each other, signaling our mutual respect, and a wave of applause breaks over us.

∞ ∞ ∞

Rachel watched Ownie trying to calm Grunt down, the latter still having a hard time getting over his loss to a younger kid. Just then, applause broke out. Everything was going according to plan. Some people were out looking for information about the ritual; others were collecting money. Her father wasn’t about to give them a second chance. The clan didn’t forgive mistakes! She needed to get everything else ready, though her helper’s whining was starting to really get to her. What did they know about being weak?

“Stop your sniffling already! He just beat a Level 20 friar who was leveled-up like a tank. Do you hear the crowd?”

“Screw you. You’re a girl, you’re used to being weak, but I’m the strongest in my group! The strongest at the academy, and some shrimp just took me out.”

“Shut up.”

Rachel could have said a lot more, but nothing that came to mind sufficed for what she was thinking. How do you explain something a person can’t understand because they don’t have the experience yet? How do you read a word without knowing the letters? Grunt was nothing, used to his soft, cushy life.

In a month, Rachel would be turning eighteen, and she’d be able to do whatever she wanted. First, however, she had to take care of the deal with her father.

∞ ∞ ∞

Just like he promised, father thrashed me thoroughly. His punishment was for me to learn how to stay hidden in an urban environment and get my stealth up to 25. For every day I wasn’t able to do that, he said I’d be getting another round.

Survivability +2

My butt stings so bad! I even got a debuff: I haven’t been able to sit down for twelve hours. Whenever I try, I get this unbearable pain. Father is smart though. Even his punishments are designed to make me stronger. I’m not going to be able to do what he asked me to do today. First, I need to head into the city to meet with Bernard.

After the tournament, the mage told me to stop by the city library the next day.

Murokami, Level 292, is the librarian. He’s enormous for a human, looks more like a bookshelf. His light, radiant clothing isn’t enough to hide the knotted muscles covering his arms. One eye is missing, and there’s an ugly scar meandering across his face in place of it. The contrast just makes the remaining eye seem that much more alive as he scans the lines of the book he’s reading. It’s an odd scene that doesn’t really fit. He’s the kind of librarian you don’t need a guard for. The worst part is that he isn’t letting me in without an adult. I could, apparently, ruin or steal the books. I’m forced to use my stealth, though Murokami may have just let me in unofficially.

Bernard turned out to be right where he promised he’d be: on the second floor in the northern wing’s farthest reading room. Sunlight flooded the space.

“Oh, finally, there you are.”

Bernard is dressed in a mage’s mantle this time, though it has the same picture of the sun. Rather than sitting with a book, he’s polishing his staff with a cloth.

“So you didn’t pay the librarian to let me in?”

“Of course, I did. That’s your second lesson. The first is to never do anything without getting the quest and checking all the terms and conditions.”

Suddenly, it hit me.

“Ah, so you’re thinking back to our conversation and remembering that I didn’t give you a quest,” the mage says with a loud, obnoxious laugh. “How does it feel to be powerless? I even took your winnings.”

“I thought you could trust mages to keep their word.”

You can’t let your opponents push their advantage.

“No, today I’m kind, so I’ll go through with my part of the deal. You won eight battles and showed me a fantastic time. I made two bets: one on you winning and the other on the outcome of each battle, where I bet on you at the last moment every time. Everything I won, I dumped back into the next bet, so I won a fortune in local terms.”

“Nice!”

“Absolutely. Now listen up. There are officially nine magical primary elements, or nine paths of magic. There are the elementals—Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. Life is generally used by healers and elves, though the latter is