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

hot, running water was luxury to me. The tub looked toxic after my first pass, so I let that water out, rinsed off again, and refilled the tub, then leaned back to cook like a lobster.

I should’ve brought some more of that pizza in with me so I could’ve eaten it while I chilled in the tub.

Then someone was hammering on the door. I lurched awake, sloshing water all over the floor.

“You done in there, grav? I gotta use the jacks.”

I swiped some of the now lukewarm water off my face.

“Sometime before the tourney starts would be good for me,” he sneered.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m getting out.” It kind of sucked to get dressed in dirty clothes, but at least I didn’t feel like I was ninety percent grime, ten percent human anymore.

Luckily, they’d ordered a few more pizzas while I was in the bathtub. I ate a couple dozen slices and looked over the competitors list with Kest out on the balcony. Rali buried himself under pillows and blankets in the twins’ bed and was snoring in no time.

“I don’t know how he can sleep with everything tomorrow,” I said. The more competitors I read up on, the more this weird electric nervousness pulsed in the pit of my stomach.

“You better figure it out quick like, grav,” Warcry said, coming out of the bathroom and tossing a towel over the coatrack. “You’re gonna need all the rest you can get. If you win your first fight, you’ll have as many as you can handle tomorrow.”

“It’s not the number I’m worried about,” I said. “I’ve fought you twenty times in one day, and I was fine. Sometimes in one training session.”

Warcry hopped onto the far bed. “First thing to go in a tourney is your stamina. The adrenaline sucks it right out of you.” He turned over to face the far wall and let out a long, loud yawn. “When that happens, you better hope you’ve got some piss and grit to fall back on, grav, or you’re proper bled.”

I thumbed the scars on my knuckles.

It’d been a long time since I thought about kung fu movies. Literally, a whole other life. But this was just like them. The hero had to win—to return a village treasure, to restore his family’s honor, to save the people he loved—so he did.

I glanced sidelong at Kest, then the big lump of covers that was Rali.

I had to win tomorrow.

Dead Man’s Hand

I SLEPT LIKE CRAP THAT night. The softness of the pullout couch was a million miles away from the ripped cot in the servants’ stable—I even had blankets—but I kept waking up, convinced I’d overslept and missed my first fight. In the one dream I had, I made it to the fight on time, but then everybody else knew the rules and I kept doing stuff wrong.

In spite of the lack of sleep, as soon as my HUD’s alarm buzzed, I was ten kinds of awake and ready to go. And I wasn’t the only one. Rali and Kest were on the balcony, him meditating facing the blue sunrise and her tweaking her cinnabar gauntlet. One of them had shut the door so the crackle of Kest welding wouldn’t wake me and Warcry up.

Warcry was just coming out of the bathroom as I folded up the pullout.

His eyes narrowed. “You live or die today, grav.”

I took a long breath. It didn’t matter whether he was talking metaphorically or he meant that if I didn’t get an affiliation, the OSS would kill me and everybody I cared about. He was right either way.

“Better hope you don’t see me in the cage, hadn’t ya,” he said, heading for the door.

Nothing smart came to mind. No snappy comeback. I watched him stalk out, feeling like every muscle in my body was hooked up to some low-level electrical current. Live or die. It was all on the line today.

When the door slammed behind him, I shook my arms out, then scrubbed my hands across my face. Maybe some taiji would help.

I went through the exercises, centering my Spirit and body, trying not to run into the furniture.

The balcony door slid open.

“The individual brackets are out,” Kest said.

The nerves amped up to all-out jitters. I pulled up the Wilderness Territorial page and pored over the bracket until I found my name. Surprisingly, I wasn’t the lowest-ranked seed. I was third lowest. Which meant the guy I was fighting was third highest. He had a record from the previous tournament—three wins before a loss knocked him out of the running—and he’d finished in the top six hundred, which was apparently pretty good.

“Chlorophyll Spirit?” I read from his profile.

Out on the balcony, Rali stood up and stretched.

“That’s good,” Kest said, nodding. “He won’t have a lot to draw on out here in the Territories.”

“I’m not sure he’s going to need to draw much,” I said. “He’s got almost half a million Spirit in his reserve.”

Rali came in from the balcony, a slice of cold pizza in hand.

“Quality, Hake, not quantity,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder. “Spirit doesn’t necessarily equal skill. Eat this.”

“Thanks, man, but I’m pretty sure if I eat anything, I’ll barf.”

“Just try one bite,” Rali said. “I infused it with Calming the Sea. It’ll center your Spirit, and that, my friend, will help keep you from barfing.”

I forced myself to take a bite as we left the room. It actually did help settle my nerves down a lot. That weird, wired electricity was still just a serious thought away, but with Rali’s Spirit-infused pizza in my stomach, I didn’t feel as sick anymore.

People were already flooding the kokugikon when we got there. Rali and Kest weren’t allowed on the arena floor during the individual bouts, so we had to split up at the entrance.

“You’re going to do great,” Rali said. “Let your Spirit guide you, Death cultivator. Unless it suggests you kill someone for real. Then maybe let something else guide you for a