Risk It All: Cashing In (ch. 44) (Patreon)

Every member of the Song family in China was exterminated as far as anyone could tell, and the extermination had been far more expansive than I had ever imagined. Anyone that carried a drop of Song blood was killed -- that included offshoots from the main branch of the family. The branch families. Even random people that just so happened to have a Song ancestor. All murdered in cold blood. There were hundreds dead, near a thousand, but that estimate was tainted due to the fact that China was in the process of collapsing since the Song family, the singular pillar that the nation was built around after the Disaster, had been wiped out.

I sat on a couch, watching the TV, but my brain struggled to really process what I was seeing. It was like the information was bouncing off of my eyes. Distantly, I felt like I should be doing something -- Teleporting to China to quell the chaos. Hunting down Ming-Yue and killing him for good. Something. However, my entire body felt like it was filled with lead and I lacked the strength to so much as reach over to the remote to turn the TV off or change the channel.

Failure weighed heavily on me. Grief did too. My thoughts weren’t tortured with my failures, or what I should have done. Instead, my mind was eerily quiet. Completely blank and near absent of thought, content to stare at the TV and blink every couple of seconds. The rest of the team was out cleaning up the aftermath. I think they felt bad.

And I wasn’t entirely sure if I was angry with them or not. Part of me understood -- Ming-Yue was a tough bastard, and Dad wasn’t the type of guy that would just sit on the sidelines and be protected. It happened. One of the first thing Batman taught me was that you couldn’t save everyone. Another part of me, deep down, a completely irrational part of me, rebelled at the thought -- it was fine to be unable to save everyone, but the difference was that it was my Dad. My family.

“Sorry about your dad,” Jin spoke up, half of her face bandaged. She lost an eye and she would have a long scar down her face. Probably. Cultivation got fucking weird and I’m not sure what was and wasn’t possible anymore. She sat on the couch, staring at the TV with the same disinterested expression that I wore.

I was silent for a long moment, mostly because it took effort to muster up the will to actually speak. “Sorry about yours,” I responded.

Jin grunted. “I didn’t see him die. He could still be alive,” she muttered, holding out hope. I suppose that was true. And I couldn’t even say that he would be confirmed dead if we found a body because that wasn’t exactly true now that I knew that some cultivators came back after death. “I boom tubed out of the compound when I saw who you were fighting. Father would have done the same.”

“Boom tubed?” I questioned, glancing at her.

“Different kind of teleportation,” Jin answered, offering a small indifferent shrug.

“Ah,” I muttered, quickly losing interest in the subject. I turned back to the TV to see my own face and footage of the fight with Ming-Yue. It was a clip of us trading blows so fast that the camera couldn’t capture them, only the sparks that came up when the blades clashed. “Why did you go to Dad?” I asked her after a moment, that just now striking me as odd.

“He’s the only other member of the family that I actually liked. He burnt down the compound and told the Elders to kiss his ass,” Jin said, a slight smile in her voice. “I always wanted to do that. Looks like I won’t get the chance anymore,” she sighed. She turned her head to look at me with a lone eye, “He went down fighting. Your Dad. He died as a warrior should.” I was mildly surprised to see that she was offering condolences, in her own way.

“I would have rathered him be alive,” I told her, earning a small shrug from Jin.

“Do you think he could have lived with himself as a coward that hid behind his sons friends for protection?” Jin asked me, and the words cut through me like a knife. They didn’t just strike a nerve, they pulverized it. “People die. Your Dad died. It sucks, but we encountered a bigger fish and he ate us. Well, most of us. Such is the way of things.” Jin sighed, sounding sad, but there was an odd note of peace in her voice.

I envied it in that moment. Because I don’t think I would be finding peace any time soon.

“Ming-Yue,” I spoke the name, and the empty feeling in me was filled with a flash of anger. Rage. Hate.

Jin knew exactly what I was going to ask because she had an answer ready. “The guy is more of a legend than a person. At least, so we were taught. Bastard is like ten thousand years old, but he was best known during the Golden Age when he was most active -- he fucked with the Heavenly Alliance, back in the day. A lot. He was pretty much enemy number one, more so than a lot of the Demonic Sects because… well, they wanted to be the god king of the universe and stuff, but they didn’t come after the Orthodox Sects like the Vengeful Demon Sect did.”

“How can I kill him?” I asked her, cutting right to the heart of the matter.

“No one ever found a way how,” Jin told me, not surprised by my goal. Sounded like she encouraged it. “His body isn’t really his body. He’s more of a spirit at this point. I don’t know exactly how he does it, but my guess is that he splinters off pieces of his soul to reanimate bodies. Those corpses we were fighting? They were cultivators of his sect -- I know that because in the old stories, you had to destroy the bodies of the Vengeful Demon Sect after beating them, or they would become another puppet for Ming-Yue. The stronger the body, the higher the baseline.”

That didn’t answer my question, but it did confirm what I thought. Ming-Yue was puppeting the corpses in a similar manner to how I used Multi-form. I had no idea how much of his power that he put in that body I fought, but he had enough strength in him to create, at the very least, five corpses that could throw down with Conner.

“Since he’s more of a wraith, I think he harvests strength from Yang Qi by fostering grudges,” Jin continued, and I realized that I wasn’t alone in my goal to kill Ming Yue. She was planning it out as she spoke. “People come to him to settle a grudge and get vengeance, they sacrifice themselves for that vengeance, Ming-Yue harvests the potent Yang Qi. Probably balances it out by using the grudges of women to counter it out with our Yin Qi -- it would explain some of the legends. He extracts vengeance on their behalf and harvests the targets Qi. So, he’s triple dipping on the harvest. What a dick.”

That sounded about right, I thought. Especially the dick part.

“He said that one of our ancestors made a deal with him. It's why he went to sleep and only came back when your side of the family fucked the world up,” I spoke up, making Jin purse her lips.

“Shin Song,” Jin answered, knowing him off of her head. “He’s the only one of our ancestors that managed to ascend to godhood-”

My eyes narrowed at the TV screen, that last part really catching my attention. “He what?” I interrupted, earning a glance from Jin, who cocked an eyebrow.

“He ascended to godhood. It’s pretty much the entire point of cultivation. Do you seriously not know anything? How?” Jin asked me and I offered an indifferent shrug, feeling a pang of regret in my chest. Dad had tried to teach me. And it wasn’t even that I wasn’t willing to learn, but I thought I had better uses for my time. What a stupid thing.

“Spite, mostly,” I answered, gesturing for her to continue.

Jin grunted, “Alright. Look, it boils down to this -- there are two realms in Cultivation. The Earthly Realm and the Spiritual Realm, or Houtain and Xiantian. Those realms have a bunch of smaller divisions, but those are the broad strokes. The Earthly Realm deals with physical stuff -- techniques, strength, and yada yada. The Spiritual Realm deals with spiritual stuff -- enlightenment, embodiment, and enrichment. Mastery of the Earth realm comes first, then when you enter the Spirit realm, it retroactively enhances everything you learned in the Earth realm.”

Sounded simple enough. Physical and spiritual. Yin and Yang. Basically, the same stuff that you’d see if you ever watched a single kung fu movie in your life.

“Ascension is something else. It’s when you leave the physical realm behind entirely and fuck off to the Heavenly realm to become a god. What happens there? Absolutely no clue. But, I imagine you start at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of gods, and you work your way up again. So, Shin Song? He went and became a god. A minor one. Probably. The story that I heard was him and Ming-Yue threw down a couple thousand years ago, Ming-Yue got clapped, and during the fight, Shin achieved the enlightenment necessary to ascend to godhood.”

My lips thinned. It sounded like something my family would believe. “So, when you say that Ming-Yue is at the pinnacle of the Spiritual realm…?”

“He’s basically a step away from becoming a god. A baby step,” Jin answered. “He can’t ascend for some reason.”

That didn’t seem right. “Or he doesn’t want to,” I offered instead. I really wasn’t feeling like one of my ancestors had been looking out for me and my family. Not enough to stop them from doing what they did, or protecting an innocent man from being murdered simply because of the blood that flowed in his veins. So, either the gods were indifferent or they were impotent. Ming-Yue’s focus was on this world. Getting vengeance and retribution for those that he deemed worthy of it.

Jin shrugged, “Same difference. Point being, he’s not someone you can just stick a knife into and be done with him. Like I said. He’s the big fish in the pond and we couldn’t do anything to stop him. As much as it sucks, it's our fault for being weaker than him.”

I swallowed a sigh, “At least you're consistent,” I remarked. I heard the same speech before, only it had applied to other people.

“He failed to kill us. Maybe my Dad, but the rest of the Song family is gone. I don’t think he’s going to just give up after failing once. So, what are you going to do, Ren?” Jin asked me as I turned my attention back to the TV. I did see members of the Justice League settling things in China. It wasn’t imploding exactly. However, the Sects that the Song family had kept in check by subjugation had the boot removed from their throats. And it looked like China was going back to the warring states period because it broke again.

It was almost difficult to be concerned about it. About China and Ming-Yue taking another shot at me. The concern felt distant, almost as if someone else was feeling it. Mostly because I really didn’t know. My Dad was dead. Murdered. The guy that murdered him was in the wind and apparently the closest thing to a god that I had ever seen. My Mom… did she even know yet? It had only been twelve hours. We were being kept separate in case of another attack, but…

There wasn’t a clear answer. Or a clear path. No neon signs pointing me where I should go or what I should do.

I brought up my status window as I stared at the TV.

Ren Song

Rank: Baby, I'm Famous

Prestige: 33,000,000

Strength: 10,000

Perception: 10,000

Endurance: 10,000

Charisma: 1000

Intelligence: 10,000

Agility: 10,000

Luck: 1000

The prestige was slowing down at the moment, likely because we were running out of people on the planet that didn't know about me in some capacity. I had no idea how much it took to purchase all of my skills and stats because I ended up with more Prestige than what I spent. I narrowed my eyes at the Prestige counter, almost… angry with it.

I then looked to a message that was stacked over the status screen. One that appeared once I was out of combat.

You have made it through the tutorial! Congratulations!

You will have noticed some changes to your system as of Rank: Baby, I'm Famous, the following changes have been made.

1. Stats can no longer be invested in beyond the cap of 10,000. Increasing your rank will enable a higher investment cap. All further increases in stats will be regulated to: physical exercise, technique, and chemical stimulation!
2. Rank determined by total current Prestige rather than accumulative due to tracking reasons!
3. Higher skills have been unlocked while intermediate abilities will henceforth be regulated by game systems, therefore unavailable for purchase. Don't despair -- lower skills are still available!
4. Prestige is no longer treated as a currency! Skills, items, and techniques are! To make a bet on a roll, you must wager something of the listed categories.
5. Legendary rolls have been unlocked! As the name implies, it is a roll to gain a legendary item, summon, or technique!

It wasn't exactly a long list of changes, but all of them had a rather large impact on how my system felt. The biggest impact I had already noticed was the cap on my stats. I couldn't continuously jack them up as needed any longer. However, I already had a solution and the system offered more. Including telling me to do drugs.

The second change had a lesser pact, but I still felt it. I would need 50 million Prestige to achieve the next rank. When combined with change number four, however, it was a rather big change because I couldn't gamble for more Prestige. Meaning, at the moment, it was currently impossible for me to advance in rank. The only way I could reach it would be to bring back the other half of humanity. Or I could try becoming famous on Mars.

The fifth change seemed like the only real benefit of reaching what amounted to max rank at the moment. Legendary rolls sounded nice.

Changes three and four? Those, I decided to test out to see how much things had changed.

I brought up a free roll and before me, a familiar game appeared. A timing game. It looked like a slot machine with a marker that would go over a number of colors -- only this time, the marker was spinning so quickly that it was like it was trying to take off. Far more difficult than the initial game that won me my first skill. However, I could keep track of it with just about the same amount of ease as I near effortlessly slipped into the Black Earth and Heaven technique.

However, that wasn’t the only thing that changed. Where the Prestige used to be displayed to allow me to make my bets, there was instead a list of all of my skills. I didn’t have to wager the entire skill. I could wager Tiers and Ranks as well. The higher the wager, the higher the Rank and Tier the skill would be if I won. Meaning, in theory, I could dump Prestige into cheap disposable skills to then gamble them on skills to upgrade better skills. In doing so, it would mean sacrificing the Prestige needed to reach my next Rank -- Something that I’m not sure I should be doing.

As a hand mimed pressing the button on the couch, I made a bet. Driver was a Tier 1 Rank 1 skill that I literally never used. Well, not in the real world. That illusion that I was put in didn’t count. Not to mention that it was pretty redundant given that I had Flash Step, which let me nearly instantly travel several miles. Making the bet on a Tier 5 skill, the highest one available on the screen.

Nearly as soon as the bet was made, I pressed the button and the marker came to an abrupt stop. Directly on the tier 5 skill, which was just a sliver of the ones available.

Observation Haki

T6R2

By listening to the sound of another being’s soul, you can predict their next movements even before they make them. It requires intense concentration, and only a select few have the capacity to use it during the heat of combat. A select few, however, are said to even be able to see into the future with mastery of this ability.

Well, that was neat. Actually, that was really good. Incredibly good. Expensive to rank up, though. Like I expected, the Tier and Rank of Driver got added onto the reward, proving me right. However, when I looked to my Store, I saw that it had been pretty much gutted.

I could still buy items, I quickly noticed. At my current rank, I almost had too many options. Skills, however, were a mixed bag. I could still purchase basic skills -- like Driving, I saw as it was readded to the list, showing me that I could purchase skills and abilities again. Only there were a lot of ‘Intermediate’ abilities that I could no longer purchase. The same for the advanced abilities. The other versions of Haki, I noticed, were considered intermediate.

Advanced skills were wild. Step into different dimensions like they were another room level of wild. I would have to go through them at a later date, but for now, it was enough to give me a feel for what I would be dealing with going forward. The changes weren’t exactly terrible, but it did hamper me that I couldn’t buy an ability on the fly like I had with Dispel, which I had needed in a pinch.

Worse, if there was an ability to bring the dead back to life, then it was fucking gatelocked.

It was a consequence of blasting through the rankings. I skipped like a dozen of them all at once. I hadn’t even realized that I was in the tutorial, much less that increasing my Rank would impact the system beyond giving me more options.

Jin took my lengthy silence as an answer in itself, “Well, that's depressing. Can I borrow a computer real quick?” She asked, getting up, and sluggishly, I looked at her. She produced a thumbdrive from her cleavage like it was a pocket. She should really get a Gluttony demon. Gluttony was an ugly little fucker, but he grew on me. Now he was ugly in the same way a pug was -- downright fucking hideous, but kinda cute at the same time.

With a lazy gesture, I pointed to a port on the monitor. “Don’t try hacking anything or I’ll kick your ass,” I told her, wondering if I really had it in me to get off the couch.

“Not what I had in mind. I’m uploading something,” Jin informed, sliding the USB stick into the port. First try. Impressive. The news changed to a file that Jin downloaded into the computer -- the Firewall automatically searched it for any malware or rootkits, but found that the eight gigabytes of data were clean. She brought up a bunch of martial art sites, social media, and so on, before she uploaded the file to a pastebin site, then started pasting the URL.

I watched her do it, not really even having it in me to be concerned. Still, I did find myself curious when she started actually posting the links. “Theres a bot that can post the URL so you don’t have to do it manually,” I told her, making Jin glance back at me. Wait. That's not what I should be doing right now. “What are you posting?”

“The White Tiger Fist martial art secrets,” Jin answered without a care. “How do I do the bot thing? I used to have servants do this stuff for me.”

I blinked owlishly before my eyes narrowed into a squint. Should I be concerned about that? It felt like I should be concerned about that. “By secrets, you mean…?”

“Everything. The manuals for our martial arts, and everything else in our library. All of our secret tonics and recipes for Qi pills and so on and so on,” Jin answered, “Seriously, show me how to do the bot thing. Copying and pasting is a pain in my ass.” Jin demanded, narrowing her eye at me.

My lips thinned, “And you just had a thumb drive filled with the White Tiger Fist’s martial arts on you?”

“I photocopied everything in the library ages ago. Never did anything with it because of the Elders and their shitty grand plan. You’re lucky you grew up with your parents and just your parents. Hierarchies are a thing- well, they used to be. Now, with the old shits all dead, I can do this.” Jin continued, sounding genuinely excited as the downloads started to pour in from the main download point. “The elders hoarded knowledge to make themselves feel important, but I never really cared about that. I always thought it would be better to have it all out in the wind. So anyone could pick up what they could.”

Hm. I’m starting to think I should have stopped her… but… meh. Oh well. Wasn’t like she wouldn’t have found a way to do it anyway. “Is this another one of those ‘the strong will thrive while the weak falter’ thing? Because I want to remind you, most of our bloodline was exterminated because of that mentality.”

The expression on Jin’s face was absolutely unrepentant. “I’m course correcting the human race here. The Elders wanted people to beg for the chance to learn. People died begging for days on end, and they just basked in it. Me and Father never wanted this to happen. That was their choice. All of those secrets belong to everyone -- everyone has the right to gain strength and power with their own hands, and they shouldn’t have to beg at the feet of those old fossils for the possibility of learning. So, I’m putting it all out there. Now, the only gatekeeping is their own merits and ability to learn.”

Yeah, I probably should have stopped her. That was going to be an absolute disaster. Seemed like she went to the opposite extreme. Jin was trying to get rid of Sects all together, in a way. By putting all that information out on the internet, every secret and step by step instructions, random ass people were going to start learning how to cultivate. Random assholes too. Probably the military too. And, apparently, the White Tiger Fist was the pinnacle of martial arts, so…

It was going to lead to chaos. I’m not entirely sure it was a bad thing overall -- especially after the Disaster. But, there would be chaos. People abusing what they learned because suddenly they had power and others didn’t. It was that same reason why there were more villains than heroes. A lot of villains had a power and they wanted to use it for their own benefit. It took a special kind of idiot to decide to use that power solely for the sake of helping others.

And, as I sat on the couch, idly considering the ramifications of what Jin did and my own inaction… I found that I didn’t care. I just didn’t have it in me. My emotional well was completely tapped out, bone dry, and utterly spent. I was sure that I would care in the future. That I would lament that I did nothing right now. However, that was a future me’s problem.

My dad was dead. Murdered. I couldn’t save him. For all of my power and all of my potential, I couldn’t save him. My team couldn’t save him either. He was dead and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.

That hurt. His loss ached. I would compare it to missing a limb, but I grew those back now, so his death was far greater. Something permanent. Worse, I think, was that I couldn’t do anything about it. I had gotten cocky. Arrogant, even. With a bit of Prestige and a purchase, I could do anything and I could beat anyone -- from escaping the Mountain with the team on my trail, to defusing a bomb, to throwing down with a Lord of Order. In this, I was as helpless as anyone else.

So, maybe it was a good thing what Jin did. Maybe it was a disaster in the making. I guess I would find out eventually. At the moment, though? I couldn’t care less and I wanted nothing more than to melt into the couch and watch the world pass me right by.

“I guess that should be enough,” Jin decided. “You’re American, right? I thought you’d be all for power to the people,” Jin remarked, throwing herself into the couch and propping her feet up on the coffee table she leapt over.

“I am. But people are stupid,” I remarked, a sigh heaving out of me as the news came back on. “I think it could be a good thing. Eventually. The whole ‘if everyone is special, then no one is’ kind of thing. The thing is, a lot of people are going to suffer until everyone becomes special.”

“Meh,” Jin dismissed easily. I almost had to admire that about her. I still thought she was fucking bonkers, but she knew exactly what she wanted and had a vision for the world. A crazy vision, sure, but a vision. I’m not sure I had that. Or, if I did, then I lost it when I decided to laze on the couch and feel sorry about myself. “People always suffer. And they always will so long as there are people. Can’t be bothered to deal with that. But, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Sure,” I grunted.

“What’s going to happen to your Dad’s Sect?” Jin asked, making me pause. “I found out about it when I popped up near him. He has some decent students. More than a few of them had potential. Are you going to let it fall apart?”

“I thought you were against Sects,” I remarked, finding that I didn’t have an answer to the question.

Jin shrugged, “I’m against people using knowledge that they inherited to become self-important blowhards. Our ancestors hadn’t made any advancements in our martial arts in a thousand years. And the last advancements came from creating weaker versions of our more powerful techniques that we couldn’t use. If people use what I put out to create their own Sects? That’s their choice. They can do what they want with it.”

“That’s wildly irresponsible of you,” I stated. That was like putting the blueprints for a nuke out on the internet and just shrugging your shoulders at the prospect of the world blowing up. However, my attention was caught on the question she asked. I didn’t know much about my Dad’s Sect. I only found out about it shortly before he died. Part of the reason I went public was so I could participate in his Sect.

The news story changed while I considered what she asked. Ming-Yue revealed that the Song family was behind the Disaster. Those cameras had been rolling during our fight, catching glimpses of it, but more importantly, what we spoke about. Naturally speaking, the reaction to Ming-Yue’s slaughter of my family was met with the response of ‘Good.’ I got that.

My hands still clenched into fists when people were calling him a hero.

“Dad wanted his Sect to help people,” I muttered, speaking mostly to myself. That was the plan. It's what he was working with the Justice League to establish. What would happen to it now? Would it just dissolve? Would someone else pick up the slack? I… my heart clenched in my chest at the prospect of it going away or collapsing or someone else getting their hands on it. Dad had been proud of it. He was proud of his work.

He openly admitted that he didn’t possess much talent for martial arts, but he enjoyed using what he knew to help other people learn.

“I’m…” I started, leaning forward for a moment. And of all things, it's what pushed me to my feet. An action that felt like it required Herculean effort to achieve. “I’m going to take it over,” I decided. I wasn’t really sure what that would entail, but it was the last thing that my Dad did. It was something he invested himself into. I don’t care about rights or what was best -- I wouldn’t let someone else get their hands on his work, and I wouldn’t let it go to ruin because I didn’t feel like doing anything but moping in self pity.

Jin considered me for a moment, “Are you sure about that? Sect Leader Ren Song? It’s asking for Ming-Yue to take another shot at you.”

“Good,” I half snarled the word in response. I didn’t know what I would need to do first, but I would do something. I had to do something.

And, almost as if she were summoned, the Zeta Tube activated, revealing Zatanna and… my Mom. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair was disorganized, and as soon as the flash faded, her eyes darted around the room. “Ren,” Mom uttered, a heartbroken sob in her voice. I flash-stepped in front of her, wrapping my arms around her as she buried her face in my chest.

“It’s going to be okay, Mom,” I told her, not sure if the words were a lie or not. No… even if they were a lie now, I would make them true.

“Everything is going to be okay. I promise.”

...

Now, before anyone starts crying nerf -- Ren just went from pretty strong to 'Give me your lunch money, Superman' kind of strong. So, its not exactly a nerf. I'm looking to bring back more of the gambling aspect when it comes to skills and this felt like a good time to do it.