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

work light sputtered out, leaving us blind. My ears rang without the constant noise of the generator.

“Sounds like it’s down at the saloon,” Rali said.

Kest’s shadow crept back over to us. “Gonna have to scavenge down in the Shut-In closest to town tomorrow.”

When what they were saying sank in, I took off from my crouch like an Olympic sprinter. I heard the twins yelling behind me, but I didn’t slow down. I didn’t like Warcry or the Bailiff or Muta’i or any of those guys, but I didn’t want any of them to get killed, either.

Everything was nuts when I got to the main street. The front of the saloon had been blown off. Embers in the debris smoked and glowed bright red. People were everywhere, fighting like this was the Royal Rumble, except with swords and Spirit.

Luckily, there weren’t that many actual guns. From the sound of the shooting, I’d expected an army. One guy was flashing a pair of sawed-off pistol grip shotguns, and another guy had a rifle built into his arm, but that was it. Every round they shot glowed with blue-white Metal Spirit like Kest’s. For about half a second, I wondered whether she had an ability that could disrupt the shots. Then another stunner bomb rattled my brains, and I snapped back to reality. Hopefully, she and Rali stayed hunkered down where they were.

Muta’i charged past me and gored the guy with the shotguns. He bawled like an enraged bull and shook his massive head, slinging the shotgun dude into the crowd.

Across the street, I saw the Bailiff’s ghost ape, a Martial Devil, rampaging on some dudes who were packing katanas and throwing fireballs and lightning. The Bailiff grinned when he spotted me. His yellow brush teeth looked bone white in the light from his ghost ape.

“Right nice of you to join the gang war, Smart Boy! Kill whatever doesn’t look familiar!”

Then a bright green ghost bear charged bellowing through the melee and slammed into the Bailiff’s Martial Devil, and he didn’t have time for talking to me anymore.

I grabbed Hungry Ghost out of my pocket and filled my empty Spirit tank, looking around.

Nearby, Proboscis was shooting massive ice shards at a wizard lobbing sparkling yellow spheres the size of softballs. Wherever the spheres hit, they detonated in a smaller version of that stunner bomb’s thunder. Proboscis dodged one blast, then a dude with a sword sliced him across the back of the legs from behind. The wizard gathered Spirit between his hands to throw another one of those exploding softballs.

I ran at the wizard’s back, jumping and cracking him in the back of the neck with a reinforced elbow. He turned his head all the way around on his shoulders and screamed at me like a screech owl. I threw a punch, but suddenly the air was full of spinning yellow fireworks everywhere, blinding me.

Going on instinct, I sent out a wall of Dead Reckoning. According to it, the spinning lights were harmless, just a distraction for something else.

Behind me, someone broke Dead Reckoning, sounding the alarm in my Spirit. I turned into my punch, crunching the nose of a wispy figure with a dagger. The wisp staggered back a step and turned solid. Before it could recover, I hacked a kick into its shin. As the now-solid wisp fell, I slammed an elbow down on the top of its head. It dropped into the dirt, and I kicked the dagger into the forest of legs surrounding us.

Dead Reckoning freaked out. I ducked as a burning two-by-four whiffed over my head, then shot a back kick into my attacker’s knee. The joint wasn’t forward like a human’s, though, so all it did was fold his leg up. I spun and caught him in the jaw with my heel. His head whipped around, but he didn’t drop that two-by-four.

“Down the street!” Ripper yelled. “They’re getting away with him!”

Without Ki-sight active, I wouldn’t have been able to see that far in the almost-darkness of the night sun. Even with it, the figures jogging away looked shadowy and hunched. All except for a tall, limping one.

Warcry?

Dead Reckoning warned me that another swing from the backward-jointed guy’s two-by-four was rocketing toward my head. I jumped out of the way, but instead of counterattacking, I sprinted off to help Warcry.

He saw me coming. “Piss off, grav! This ain’t your fight!”

I frowned and skidded to a stop. That idiot had given away my position.

The shadowy figures spun and dropped into fighting stances like a bunch of kung fu heroes posing for a movie poster. I couldn’t take all of them by myself, but together Warcry and I might be able to knock enough of them out of the fight to make a run for it.

I circled around, trying to draw one of his kidnappers out.

A guy in leg wrappings stepped toward me. He had a sword, and I had nothing, but the split second of distraction should’ve been enough for Warcry to make a move.

Warcry missed the opportunity. He was busy yelling at the shadowy figures.

“Forget him! He’s just an indenture! He ain’t part of this!”

One of the figures slammed a backfist into Warcry’s face, making blood explode from his mouth and sending him stumbling backward a step.

I feinted at the sword guy, then leapt out of the way as Dead Reckoning lit up to my right. Sword guy was so fast that I hadn’t seen him move around to come at me from the side. The sword missed, but I felt the air from the slice.

Then a second later, I felt hot wetness running down my bicep.

Somehow, the sword guy had hidden his Spirit attack, sending it flying at me like an extension of his blade. My OSS tattoo immediately started burning, eating through the last of the Spirit I’d borrowed from Hungry Ghost as it scrambled to heal me.

As the sword guy advanced, I backpedaled, giving myself the space to dig out the grinning skull again. I