Death Cultivator by eden Hudson (knowledgeable books to read .txt) 📗

luck then to happen upon you two strapping young lads trying to settle a dispute whilst we’re looking for a new member, having just lost Nel. Here’s what I’ll do for you, boys—I’ll take care of the both of you. The winner of this fight will become the newest member of the OSS, with all the privileges that brings. The loser will be indentured to us for one local year, with the option to join the OSS once his servitude’s over, providing he shows the merit. How does that strike you boys?”

The giant ghost hands lowered us back to the red dirt, and the one covering Warcry’s mouth peeled back.

“I say it’s a load of space trash,” the sunburnt redhead growled. “When I get an affiliation, it’ll be with the best of the Big Five, not some dinky backwater gang trying to pretend like they’re something.”

“Well, I suppose I could just kill you now,” the Bailiff said. One of his ghost hands brought out a knife big enough to make a bowie knife feel stupid and pressed it to Warcry’s throat. “Then you won’t have to worry about it.”

That shut Warcry up pretty fast, but it didn’t stop him from glaring holes through the Bailiff’s bowler hat.

“That’s what I thought.” The Bailiff showed those brush-teeth again in a wide grin. “See, pal, the OSS isn’t just something. Out here in the Shut-Ins, we’re everything. If you want proof, yell for your favorite Big Five gang. Give it a shot. See if they come running to save you.”

Warcry sawed his jaw, but didn’t say anything. The Bailiff pressed the blade a little harder into his throat. A trickle of blood ran down his neck.

“What’s that you said? I couldn’t hear you. Speak up.”

Warcry’s face twisted into a snarl, and I gritted my teeth because I knew what came next. He was going to say something else to escalate things even further. I’d been backed into corners by jerks often enough to know you can’t back down once you start. I’d never had a deadly weapon to my throat when it happened, but the principle was the same. If no one stepped in, he was going to get himself killed just to be a dick.

“We’ll fight.” I stepped forward. “Let him go and we’ll be your next fight.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rali’s head fall back on his shoulders, and Kest scowled.

The knife came away from Warcry’s throat.

“Smart boy,” the Bailiff said, patting me on the back with his free ghost hand. He hooked one ghost arm over my and Warcry’s shoulders and turned us toward the far end of the cage. “Right this way. We’ll get you gents into the chutes and get you announced.”

“Just a second!” Kest ran up beside us. “I need to talk to my employee.” When the Bailiff raised an eyebrow at her, she added, “With the honored Bailiff’s permission.”

“Go on, then.”

She dragged me a few steps away.

“Sorry,” I said. I started unstrapping the Winchester from my arm, figuring she’d want it back since I was about to become either a criminal or someone who served criminals, basically the thing she and Rali had been avoiding their whole life. “I know this is a crappy way to repay everything you guys have done for me, but he was just being such a dick, and—”

“Go for the knee and don’t get kicked,” she said in a low voice. “The PR-168-L isn’t a top-quality prosthetic even when it’s functioning correctly, but it is mostly metal. If he’s had it for any amount of time, he’s probably developed a fighting style around kicking with it. It’ll be heavy and have a huge amount of momentum behind it. If you intercept him with a kick to his left knee, though, the real one, it’ll force him to put all his weight on the prosthetic.” She checked something on her HUD. “He’s got buckets of Spirit, so he’s probably used to fighting other cultivators, but if you force him onto his fake leg early, you should have a chance.”

I stared at her.

“Got it?” she asked.

“That was a lot of information, and I’m kind of about to fight somebody to the death right now. I need the short version. A summary.”

Kest blinked. “Right. Summary. Kick his left knee and don’t get kicked back.”

“Okay, got it.” I held out the Winchester. “Here.”

“What are you doing?” She grabbed it and strapped it back onto my wrist. “Keep that on. It’s not much, but it’ll at least give you something to take the sting off a block.”

She took a breath like she wanted to drop another huge amount of information on me, but then she let it out.

“Don’t die,” was all she said.

The Bailiff came up beside us. “Don’t you worry, little miss Selken,” he said, patting her on the shoulder with one ghost hand. “This here is a join-serve fight. The OSS isn’t going to let either of its investments get ruined or killed.”

The ghost hand grabbed my arm and slapped a piece of what looked like plastic wrap onto my forearm, smoothing it out. The thin plastic sank into my arm and disappeared, and a black tattoo appeared on the skin there. It was similar to the script that powered the Winchester, all lines, but these were clustered into three separate characters instead of two.

“There you go,” the Bailiff said. “Safe and sound from most anything but decapitation and giant holes through vital organs.” He held up his HUD, a fancy one that made Kest’s SignalSong look like junk, and tapped the screen. “And we’ll always know right where you are. See?”

He turned his wrist to show me a satellite map of the Shut-Ins and surrounding land, with a pair of blinking red dots in Ghost Town. He tapped one of the dots.

Warcry Thompson, planetary Spirit rank #12,578, preliminary OSS affiliation

Then he tapped the other.

Grady Hake, planetary Spirit rank #2,191,987, preliminary OSS affiliation

“In case you get any funny ideas about