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

a massive swing from the ghost ape. “The Bailiff’s that way!”

I ignored him and clamped Dead Man’s Hand around the blue candle flickering inside the shark.

“Where’s Kest?” I demanded.

Ripper didn’t answer me. I ratcheted up the pressure, and he howled.

“Hake, stop!” Rali yelled.

Across the cage, he stomped one foot forward, then shoved a hand toward me. Warm Heart Spirit slammed me flat on my back to the ground. The air woofed out of my lungs. Dead Man’s Hand dropped, and I heard Ripper sob with relief.

A soft hand squeezed my shoulder. “I’m okay, Hake. I’m here.”

Black blood dripped onto the dirt beside me.

“Kest?”

“The hairpins,” she said. “I’ve got Ripper. You help Warcry.”

“Got it.” I flipped onto my stomach and pushed up.

Warcry’s burning red flames streaked through the air at the gray ghost ape. With a roar, the ape tried to tackle the redhead down. On the opposite side of their battle, the Bailiff sent Air Spirit attacks flying at Warcry.

One spinning ball of gray engulfed the redhead. Every kick immediately slowed to nothing, like he was trying to kick in a swimming pool full of cold sorghum.

The ape went nuts, tearing into Warcry while he could hardly fight back. The Bailiff rocked on his heels, grinning with those yellowed brush teeth.

I hit Hungry Ghost again, then sprinted toward them. Three Corpse Sickness exploded off me, barreling toward the Bailiff’s Martial Devil.

Kill it, I thought.

They crashed into the ghost ape and, almost like they could feel how serious I was, started whaling on it. They were doing legit damage. With every punch they landed, a fist-sized hole opened up in the gray image. They were erasing it, one strike at a time. The Martial Devil roared and spun around to fight my corpses, leaving Warcry alone.

The Bailiff wasn’t laughing anymore.

“Bailiff!” I yelled, raising my hand toward him so he would know it was me when he felt the Dead Man’s Hand.

His life point was an easy find. A ton of what I’d cultivated had been transferred to the Bailiff over the past month, and my Death Spirit just traced what used to be mine through his channels. His life flickered like a cold gray fire at the back of his throat.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Rali move. A wall of Warm Heart Spirit shot toward me, but this time I ducked it.

Dead Man’s Hand grabbed onto the Bailiff’s flickering gray flame.

“Call them off!” I ordered him.

Instead of panicking, the Bailiff let out a cackle and raised both of his huge ghost hands in surrender.

“Hell and high water, Smart Boy, you could’ve been so useful to the OSS. Maybe even made Shogun someday.” His eyes glimmered as he pulled his webbed hands out of his pockets. One of them held a revolver. He pointed it at me and cocked back the hammer. “Well, we’ll never know now, will we?”

Instinctively, I dropped Dead Man’s Hand and threw everything into my Death Metal shields, staggering them in front of me and praying they could stop bullets.

He squeezed off all six shots.

But instead of tearing through my shields, the bullets took a sudden corner.

Kest reappeared and snatched them out of the air with her one remaining hand. Blue-white Metal Spirit crackled, then melted slag ran through her fingers.

Warcry and I barreled at the Bailiff from opposite directions. Fiery kicks and punches blurred toward the Bailiff from one side and my turquoise Death Metal shields from the other, but he just laughed and dodged.

“You damn fools,” he said in that cheerful voice. “Try all you want, I whooped your tailfeathers fair and—”

Rali shot in out of nowhere and nailed him in the temple with his walking stick.

The Bailiff’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he dropped.

The kokugikon erupted. In the stands, people were going nuts. Seating cushions and food and drinks showered down on the cage, and I winced as something cold and carbonated splashed down my back.

Kest listed over to her brother, looking crazy pale, and leaned on him. A metal band was clamped over the end of her stump to stop the bleeding. Rali handed her his walking stick, then grabbed a piece of pita bread off the dirt, dusted it off, and dropped into the lotus position to start infusing it with Healing Restoration.

Next to me, Warcry yelled something I couldn’t make out and tried to launch a handful of something sticky and squiggly back through the wire at whoever had hit him with it. I stayed by the Bailiff, ready in case he got back up.

“Silence!” an amplified voice boomed over everything.

No one listened. The crowd was having a big time throwing and yelling and making a fuss. Fights broke out in the stands, and I wondered if that was what it was like at big city sporting events when celebrations turned into rioting.

Sudden overwhelming pressure smashed me flat into the dirt. The strength behind it made Shogun Takiru’s pressure trick look like a joke. I thought my lungs were going to pop.

From my spot on the floor of the cage, I could see the people in the stands flatten out like an inverted version of The Wave. Kest and Warcry dropped, too, and so did the staffers outside the cage. Rali was already sitting in meditation, so he wasn’t flattened, but he did set the food he was infusing aside and politely turn his attention to the Shogun box.

The two-way glass in the Shoguns’ box slid away. Five figures in fancy tailored suits stepped into the light. The real attention-getter was a huge bipedal white tiger, but there was also a tall blond Ylef, a hunched guy wearing a dark hood, some kind of demonic-looking thing, and a shark with a scarred-up dorsal fin. The leaders of the Big Five.

Silence filled the kokugikon.

“Someone will be held responsible for this violation of tournament rules.” The amplified voice was coming from the Ylef at the center of the Shoguns.

As he spoke, huge robots on treads rolled onto the arena