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

anywhere near as fast as the ferals. After a minute, the speed boost from Rali wore off.

A fist nailed me in the side of the neck. Sparks flashed and my vision went dark.

Rali appeared from basically nowhere, ducking under a volley of punches from the bruiser who’d stunned me, but not countering them. He slapped me on the shoulder, hitting me with another boost just in time. My vision sharpened and our opponents seemed to slow down to slow-motion again.

In front of me, the bruiser I had staggered was pulling back what looked like the slowest haymaker in history. I shot inside his reach and jumped into a huge kick-elbow combo armed with Death Metal. The guy was still falling when I hit the dirt and shot toward the puncher chasing after Rali.

A beam of green light sizzled through the air at Rali’s back. The techie guy had managed to get a shot past Kest.

I darted in behind Rali, bracing both shields one behind the other and pumping tons of Spirit into them. The beam tore through the first shield like a can opener. That took some of the sting off the attack, but even at half-force, it penetrated the second shield. It felt like a hole saw drilled through my collarbone, and I stumbled back a step, bumping into someone.

I assumed I’d bumped into Rali’s back until huge roided-out arms grabbed me around the throat and chest and squeezed like a python. Spots danced in front of my eyes, and I could actually feel my heart struggling to beat. I couldn’t breathe.

“Duck your head, Hake!” Kest yelled.

I tried to turtle down into the roid-rager’s arm as far as I could.

Chain links jangled, then the arms jerked me backward. The rager slammed into the wall of the fight cage, gagging. His grip loosened just enough that I could breathe. I jacked a reinforced elbow back into the rager’s solar plexus. He dropped me.

Across the cage, Kest jerked the chain free of her gauntlet, leaving the rager shackled by the throat to the cage wire. Behind her, the techie guy was tangled in ropes of rolling silver.

I jumped up and KO’d the rager. Kest threw out her hand, shooting a weighted chain at the bruiser trying desperately to attack her brother. This chain came loose on its own, flying like a bolas, and tripped the gangster up.

Nearby, the guy I’d knocked down first was taking another run at me. I threw out a blast of concentrated Dead Reckoning. The second his fist touched the edge of the Miasma, my muscles reacted, nailing him with a reinforced elbow-backfist-elbow set. He stuck both hands up, but they were a weaksauce last-ditch effort. The backfist crashed right through it into his temple, knocking his head to the side and leaving him open for that big second elbow. When it landed, his eyes rolled up, and he dropped like his bones had drained out his feet.

“Match!” the official yelled, running into the cage. “Hungry Ghosts!”

I relaxed my high guard and looked around. Rali was leaning on his walking stick, grinning, while Kest stood over the guy she’d covered from ankle to shoulder in that rolling silver rope.

There was some clapping and whistling from the crowd as the official had us bow to the Shoguns. It wasn’t the championship match they’d come to see, but as long as they were there, they might as well cheer.

Beside me, Kest unwound her chains and pulled her rolling silver ropes back into her cinnabar gauntlet.

“So, I’m guessing you didn’t hear anything I said about letting me be the obstacle they trip over and you running cleanup?” she asked.

I grimaced. “Sorry. My brain wasn’t in the game. It is now, though. What’s your plan for the next match?”

Because so few small gangs had entered the riot bracket, the loser of the next round would be in third place, and the round after that would decide the overall winner.

Our second fight went by in a blur.

Kest led with her bolas attack, knocking one guy out of the fight right away and tangling up their support guy after he’d only boosted one fighter, a shark lady with a huge ring through her dorsal fin.

While Rali bounced around the cage, laughingly drawing the shark’s attacks, Kest went invisible with the hairpin array. I KO’d their tangled support guy, then went after their other two fighters. I didn’t see what happened, but I saw the shark hit the ground a step away from Rali. Kest must’ve gotten her. One of the fighters I was shield bashing peeled off me to take a run at Rali, assuming it was the heavy guy with the stick who’d taken out the shark. I staggered his buddy, then hit the runner with a roundhouse to the back of the head that Warcry would’ve been jealous of. The guy whipped around and dropped to the dirt, unconscious.

Then all of a sudden, Kest, Rali, and I were standing in the cage, facing down our opponents for the riot championship. A bulky slug dude, a cat lady with a pair of sabers, an eight-foot-tall greenish humanoid with ridiculously long arms...

...and the Ylef with the glass hammers who was supposed to be fighting for the individual championship that afternoon.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said, flashing me a toothy grin.

Cornered

“THERE’S SUPPOSED TO be five of them,” Kest hissed, just loud enough for me and Rali to hear. “It said so in the bracket. Quintuple Threat, five members.”

“Does that matter right now?” I bowed to the Ylef’s gang like the official instructed.

“They registered with a support fighter,” she insisted.

“Invisible maybe?” Rali suggested, searching the cage.

Kest’s brows crinkled together. “The rules require participating members to be visible at the beginning of each match. If you pop visible later, your team’s dis—”

“Fight!” the official bellowed.

Quintuple Threat charged across the cage toward us, heads down and ready to kill. Rali tagged me with a Spirit boost. I took off and pumped a huge amount