Death Cultivator 2 by eden Hudson (books to read in your 20s .TXT) 📗

“When did you say you were leaving?”

“I haven’t signed anything yet,” she said, “but once the paperwork’s done, they’re going to send a transport to pick me up. Probably tomorrow afternoon.”

“That’s awesome,” I said, hoping I sounded like I really thought so. “Just what you were hoping for.”

“As close as I’m going to get, anyway,” she said.

The sloshing of marshy ground got my attention through the rain. A lone bog feral straggled up the hill.

“Just a sec,” I told Kest.

I turned around and jogged a couple steps to meet it, breathing out as I tried to recapture Last Light, Last Breath.

Nothing happened, which didn’t make any sense. I’d had the cloaking down before Kest showed up.

What am I doing wrong? I asked Hungry Ghost as the feral staggered closer.

Death cultivator’s focus has changed. Oblivion is out of Death cultivator’s reach.

I tried again, pushing thoughts of Kest and Rali out of my head and focusing on that nothingness.

It was slippery because—at least right then—I didn’t need it. Kest didn’t hate me. She thought I’d done the practical thing, the only thing I could do.

Perhaps Death cultivator cares more for what Metal cultivator thinks than for what his father’s father thinks, Hungry Ghost said.

Kest knows what I did. Gramps doesn’t, I said like that made it okay, but the fact that I was glad Gramps would never find out sent me into another spiral. All the good stuff the old man had expected from me, all the effort he’d put into teaching me right from wrong, and in a split second I’d thrown that all away like it didn’t even matter. And for what? I hadn’t been protecting him this time, I’d just been trying not to die again.

The bog feral lunged at me, and I breathed out Last Light, Last Breath. Relieving oblivion surrounded me, cloaking my Spirit in nothingness, and I tore out the feral’s oozing brown life point.

The lightning flashed again as the body hit the ground. It was a Ylef. For a second, I saw Sedryk Nameless’s face. Biggerstaff’s voice rang in my head, talking about dumping bodies in the bogs, and I lost my grip on oblivion, heart pounding as I broke out in a cold sweat.

Rain dripped into my eyes, and I scrubbed at them. When I could see again, the Ylef feral was still on the ground dead, but it wasn’t Sedryk Nameless. This Ylef was bald, had its hands chewed off, and was the same muddy brown as the rest of the bog ferals, as if it had been stained by years underneath the muck instead of just a few hours.

“Hake?” Kest said. “Are you all right?”

Her question made me realize my chest was heaving like I’d run a marathon. I scrubbed my hands down my face, trying to get back to normal.

“Yeah.” I got down on one knee and started going through the bog feral’s pockets, mostly to buy time. “Just gonna loot this guy, then I’ll be back up.”

This isn’t going to work, I told Hungry Ghost. I can’t deal with these mood swings just for a Spirit cloak. I’ll go crazy.

Hungry Ghost never felt shame after discovering the most powerful Mortal technique. Death cultivator should embrace the power and shed the shame. Such is the only path to supremacy.

Yeah, I’m not really in this for power or supremacy. I just want to protect my friends.

Hungry Ghost will find another way.

There was nothing in the Ylef bog feral’s pockets, but he had an amber pendant on a silver chain around his neck, a mosquito-like bug frozen in the stone. With Ki-sight, I could see a bloodred halo surrounding it.

I brought the necklace back up the hill and tossed it to Kest, relieved to have something to distract us both with.

“What do you think that’s about?”

She dangled the necklace out at arm’s length, inspecting it.

“The script says it’s some kind of Organic construct.” She cocked her head. “Maybe it’s a healing charm.”

Without even washing off the mud and body juice, she put it around her neck. Her cinnabar stick hand melted into a thin knife blade, and she stabbed herself in the flesh of her real palm. Black Selken blood welled up.

The necklace didn’t do anything.

“Huh,” she said, frowning down at it. Then, “Come here, Hake.”

When I got close enough, she stabbed me in the back of the hand. My blood, which Kest should’ve been familiar with by now from all the times she’d tested healing scripts and practiced skin-toughening techniques with me, made a red bead on my skin.

Red light crept out of the wound and filtered through the chunk of amber, into Kest’s chest.

“Ha!” She stuck her palm in my face so I could see the puncture wound. As I watched, the black blood sucked back inside and the skin closed. “The blood of whoever you’re attacking triggers the script, then it steals their Health and transfers it to you. That Spirit construct is most likely from one of the Parasitic affinities.”

“That explains the mosquito theme,” I said.

She unhooked the necklace from around her throat and handed it back to me.

“You should keep it,” I said. “You use a lot more skin-puncturing techniques than I do.”

She shook her head. “You need to be wearing this in your next fight. It’ll give you a huge advantage if you do draw blood.”

I looked down at the bug stuck in the amber. Now that I was thinking about it, it was probably pretty weird to try to give someone a necklace covered in corpse juice.

“I’ll give it a shot first thing tomorrow.” I went over to the downspout and rinsed the pendant off.

“You’re fighting tomorrow? Are you well enough for that?” Kest asked, eyeing my side like she could see the scars through my shirt. “Your movements are slightly impeded, which makes sense with what Warcry said about your injuries. Didn’t Biggerstaff say you could take up to