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

something about killing before. If Chlorophyll Spirit could grow living plants super fast, then didn’t it stand to reason that Death Spirit could kill them? I grabbed the grinning skull out of my pocket, took a huge hit of Spirit, then sent Miasma creeping into the vines. I could feel the thing that egged them on to keep growing, see it like a flickering green flame down in their roots.

I surrounded the flame with Miasma and crushed it, easy as licking your fingers and putting out a birthday candle. It hardly took any effort. Once the flame was gone, the vines withered up and crumbled.

I jumped back to my feet, ducking under a whip aimed at one of my Three Corpses, and sprinted top-speed at Shrike.

His gold eyes got huge when he saw me coming. He pumped Chlorophyll Spirit into his whip, and it hulked out. The lashes got as thick as garden hoses, and the thorns grew into Jesus tree spikes with hooked barbs. Beads of clear poison welled up on the points.

I did not want to get hit with that. I let the Three Corpses drop, and in their place, I threw out a super concentrated Dead Reckoning, pumping it full of Spirit.

The hulk whip shot toward me faster than Ki-sight could focus on, but Dead Reckoning told me when and where to dodge. With the Miasma I should’ve been using to regulate my internal alchemy, I traced the whip to the flickering green flame hidden down in its handle in Shrike’s fist.

For such a hulk, the life in the whip was just as young and small as the rooted vines had been. I closed my Spirit around the little green birthday candle.

As if he could feel it, Shrike snapped his beak in surprise, then fed more Chlorophyll Spirit into the whip. The flame was too small to hold much Spirit at a time, but compared to my reserve, Shrike had a pretty much endless supply. He could keep the whip just barely alive and wait until I ran out.

Instead of waiting to be worn down that way, I charged in head-on. Shrike backpedaled, trying to keep me out at optimal whip distance, but I poured on the speed. The cage was round, so I couldn’t corner him, but I cut his retreat off and slammed a kick into the side of his knee and hit him with an uppercut elbow to the face. His beak tore my forearm open. I threw a hook at his head, but it scraped off his feathers as he ducked and backpedaled.

The whip cracked across my cheek, ripping out some skin. Right away, blisters welled up around the wound, and throbbing pain spread across my face and head. That clear poison.

I wasn’t fast enough to match him while some of my Miasma was focused on strangling the life in his thorn whip. I pulled that back and used everything I had for speed and strength.

Shrike lashed out again. I ducked into the swing. The whip tore across my back and around my right ribs and left lines of blistering pain, but I was already within arm’s reach.

I blasted him in the face and neck with a jab-cross-elbow combo, then chopped his shin out from under him with mine. He went down to a knee, choking and clutching his feathered throat.

Wanting to get this over with before he could recover, I sent Miasma in to crush the green flame in the handle of his whip and smothered it. Then I traced the path the Chlorophyll Spirit had taken back into Shrike’s Spirit sea.

There was a life point there, just like there had been in the vines. Finding it was a lot easier than I would’ve thought. Like my Death Spirit already knew the way.

I closed the Miasma around Shrike’s life point, getting ready to strangle that, too. The owl’s eyes went wide, and he took one hand off his throat, slashing it through the air frantically. I squeezed the flame.

The cage door slammed open.

I let go of Shrike’s life point and spun around to meet the new threat.

“Match!” the official hollered, grabbing my arm and shoving it into the air. “Winner by submission!”

I stared at him, not comprehending. It felt like I’d been cut off mid-sneeze or interrupted halfway through remembering something important and now it was gone. My chest heaved as I tried to catch my breath, and my OSS tattoo burned under the bracer, working on the poisoned lash marks. I turned back to Shrike, ready to finish the fight, but the owl was leaving the cage, massaging his feathered throat and shooting scared looks over his shoulder at me.

The noise from the crowd suddenly flooded in. They were screaming. Not really at me, but at all the fights going on at once.

“Bow to your official,” the official said, bending at the waist to me.

I was too confused not to follow the instructions. Sweat dripped off my face and the ends of my hair and splattered against the dirt. I was soaked.

“Bow to the Shoguns.” He pointed to a box near the middle of the ceiling that looked like it was made out of that two-way mirror glass.

It was a little awkward figuring out how to bow up. I ended up putting my hands together like Rali always did and bend-nodding at the box.

“Info for your next fight will be on the updated bracket,” the official said. “Now clear out.”

I stumbled out of the cage, feeling like I was missing something. I leaned against the cinderblock wall surrounding the arena floor and used the damp hem of my shirt to wipe my face. I couldn’t tell whether I was exhausted or ready to go another ten rounds. The fight was over, but it felt unfinished.

Would it feel finished if I had snuffed out Shrike’s life point like I had the vines? In the moment, that had seemed like the only possible next move.

Dead Man’s Hand. The words popped into my head