62. We'll See (Patreon)

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Shen's martial arts improved scaringly fast after connecting to the Concept of Zephyr.

However, he wasn't a recently healed mortal any longer. He was now a cultivator with battle experience. At some point, his advancement slowed down considerably.

Part of the reason was how easy it was to kill the regulars. There were a lot of them, granted, but they were weak. He could deal with anything they threw against him thanks to his infinite qi, innate soul defense, superior stats, and better techniques. To improve faster, he needed worthy adversaries.

Fortunately, he found volunteers.

"Are you threatening me?" Shen asked.

"No, no," a thin blond guy in plate armor said with a fake smile. "Just a warning! A warning!"

He was the spokesperson of twenty elites who had blocked his way. They told Shen to stop killing regulars. They wanted AP and claimed it was unfair of him to get it all for himself.

They weren't the first to try something like that.

"I appreciate the warning," he said and turned to move away.

A leather-armored woman barred his way.

"Now, now—" the blond started, but Shen had had enough.

He was no stranger to reports of weaker clans trying to guilty-trap the Feng Clan. They had no power, so they attempted to make it look like the Feng Clan's strength was a sin. They believed cleverly put words could hide their greed.

Fools, the lot of them.

The rules of the Eternal Empire were absolute, and honor governed even what wasn't in the letter of the law. But power never ceased to be a factor in cultivator culture. The weak owed the strong respect due to the latter's strength; the strong were courteous to the weak due to the former's honor. Within clans, the powerful ruled, and the weak obeyed more often than not.

Here, the rules said nothing about leaving AP for others. Shen might have considered slowing down if they had come with humbleness and requested it as a favor. Instead, they dared to threaten him.

Sharpness Qi filled his spear, and Combat Qi filled his body as he jumped back.

"You have taken enough of my time already," he said. "Leave or die."

As the strong party, he was honor-bound to give them a choice before attacking even if both sides knew what was coming.

"Now, now—" the blond tried talking again.

"You have five seconds," Shen interrupted. "Four. Three."

"Fuck this!" another guy in plate armor yelled. "He's just one!" He rushed at Shen.

Shen's spear first took the head of the leather-armored woman closer to him. Then he rushed at the others.

To improve faster, he needed worthy adversaries.

Fortunately, he found volunteers.

Unfortunately, they weren't enough.

Their attacks were more potent and faster than the regulars', but he could still dodge them. Their armor was better, but he could still exploit their weak spots. Their techniques were better but not even close to his.

Shen had the best stats possible at this stage and could draw wisdom from five Concepts. Three of them were foundational, always affecting him and guiding his actions, all three related to battle and the Spear. Qi filled his body, pushing his physical abilities to even higher heights, and sharpened his blade. His techniques had been taught to him by the Third Seat of the Eternal Empire; the weakest ability, his footwork, had been at the D tier even before he upgraded it to D+. Even his upbringing as a mortal had been surrounded by excellent cultivators training, sometimes even sparring, giving him perspective.

Shen wasn't so arrogant to think he was wiser than the people in this place. He had believed that when he had woken up, seeing mortals as lesser. Now he knew better. If anything, his constant mistakes with his Path were proof of how much he lacked in wisdom.

But he was better than everyone here in martial ability.

His spear found hearts and throats with ease. It cut projectiles from the air as a second thought. His footwork made it way too simple to dodge attacks.

One by one, the twenty elites fell until they all died.

A waste of time. The rules stated only opponents gave AP, even if he couldn't see how many he had killed already.

And he had killed a lot already.

Shen checked his surroundings. The regulars were split into a main army of twenty thousand and fifteen groups of a few hundred each. The elites were around four thousand and organized in much smaller groups.

Most elites seemed content in just sitting on the group to chat while others killed. The groups of regulars were inconsequential and easily disposed of. It was the army that worried him a little.

Instead of packing themselves on the stands, they had deployed rows of fights spaced enough among each other to actually fight if needed. Even if Shen got to their midst, they would have the space to maneuver and try to isolate him. He could see their leader screaming others, and his E-rank vision even let him identify who it was despite the distance: Mark Williams.

It was impressive in a way. Shen found Mark way too obsessed with power to be a good leader. His rallying skills were clearly on another level, however.

Twenty-thousand F-ranks meant two hundred thousand AP. Shen wanted to go there right away, but he would not risk it. First, he would kill the remaining isolated regulars. Then he would try to join Evelyn's group.

She seemed to be one of the few who still cared about this "middle boss." She had around fifty people under her and went from elite team to elite team to talk to them.

There was another like her, a half-naked man Shen hadn't seen before. He was uniting elites, too, and already had two hundred under him.

Shen preferred Evelyn's team because Bob had joined her, and Shen appreciated the guy.

For now, Shen turned and rushed at one of the groups. Most elites were relaxing, but ten out of the fifteen groups were already under attack from more active elites.

Well, that still left five for him. Good enough.

= - = - =

Alicia's group had joined Mark's growing army when he had come for them. They had also presented her as the friend of the strongest elite, as some kind of hostage, and his answer had surprised her.

"We're allies, not opponents," Mark had said. "This is an important game in the tutorial, but a game all the same. Don't let the system divide humanity for petty points."

He had screamed a lot of similar things as he organized his army. Some people had been given the role of criers to repeat his words so the tens of thousands could hear. He had also hand-picked captains to command everyone.

All that had happened a long while ago.

Now, the grasslands were divided into three main groups: their army of twenty thousand regulars—and there were no regulars elsewhere—an elite team with three hundred people, and another with two thousand. Hundreds of elite stragglers didn't seem interested in joining either.

They all seemed to be waiting for Shen to reach them after killing the last "independent" group of regulars.

Mark's army was given a lot of orders. They had positioned themselves in a half-circle around the bleachers. The system made it impossible to get behind them; there was an invisible wall. The first row was of defenders standing shoulder by shoulder. Then everyone else was supposed to stand at least a few feet apart to let them move without trampling each other if something happened.

The first and fifth of the ten bleachers' rows were filled with more defenders. Mark had said the "hero" was known for getting to the back lines, so they had to have protectors close at hand there. There were similar lines among the ground forces too.

The best archers occupied the second and third rows. Their job was to deal with incoming spells if they could and distract the elites when there were no spells, especially whoever looked like they were having a hard time. Mark had also said the best way to deal with the elites was to make it harder for them to focus.

The best mages filled the remaining rows, Alicia among them at the topmost row. Their job was also crucial: make it impossible for the elites to see. Causing continuous damage was nice, but no one could fight what they couldn't see. It should also help the elites' focus falter.

The bulk of the damage was supposed to be caused by close-range fighters.

"They are human like us!" Mark yelled, and his criers repeated it. "They feel pain, they feel fear, they panic! Don't fight their super strength; fight their humanity!"

Alicia was in a privileged position to hear. He was standing right beside her in the center-most point of the highest bleacher of the half-circle.

It was awkward, to say the least. Even more so because she had said she wanted to talk to him, and he had dismissed her with a mere "Later."

People had been divided into ground and stand groups, then been numbered. She was part of Stand Fifteen.

She tuned Mark down and was about to watch Shen finally reach the other elites when a group of regulars started climbing the bleachers.

Mark stopped talking, sighed, and whispered, "Not again."

Alicia said, "Huh?" before she could stop herself.

"Betrayed again," Mark explained. He turned to her. "Why, Alicia? Why are you all so stupid? I did this." He waved his hand to the army. "Me, alone. I united the people, organized them, gave them a shot at greatness. But they don't like me. Too delusional, they say. Too obsessed. Too narcissistic. Is it so wrong to do your best to achieve grander goals?"

The twenty regulars that came were all people with a lot of influence, all captains. Alicia noticed for the first time they were carrying a notebook, certainly bought from the Guardian Store as G equipment. They opened and flipped it slowly for Mark to see, revealing a lot of signatures besides names. Most names belonged to Dakota.

"Sorry, Mark," Dakota, a boy of Native American descent in plate armor, said. "We took a vote. The officers would rather I lead them."

"No," Mark replied. "This army is mine. I did this. This was never a democracy. Go back to your posts!"

Dakota scratched his head. "That's the thing. Everyone in the tutorial is from the US. We're still a free country, and we like it that way. Some of the things you did are a little too forceful. Like, absolute obedience to hierarchy? Expelling everyone who disobeys? And kneeling when the hero arrives? Too much."

It was Alicia's first time hearing about kneeling for Shen. Maybe only officers had known about that.

"It serves a higher purpose!" Mark yelled. His criers didn't repeat his words. "Feng Shen will save us! He will fight the Void for us all!"

"Sorry, Mark," Dakota repeated. "We really appreciate what you did." He gestured, and two captains stood up to grab Mark by the arms.

"This is mutiny!" Mark yelled as he was carried down. "Help me! I'm being betrayed! I built this! This is mine! All mine! Mine!"

People twitched nervously, but no one helped.

Dakota watched until Mark was some distance away, then stepped up to the place the latter had been. He sighed and looked at Alicia. "Guy's kind of a genius but a little too cuckoo for comfort." He made a rotating gesturing on his ear.

Speaking of comfort, Alicia felt positively uncomfortable. She saw too much of herself in what Dakota did. And it allowed her to realize, more clearly than ever, how big of an ungrateful asshole she had been.

"He was right," she said. "He did all of this."

Dakota and his remaining people looked at her with renewed interest. "We couldn't trust him. He told us to kneel for an enemy."

"You could've just ignored that specific order," she insisted. "Instead, you deposed him. This was just a power grab, nothing else." Suddenly, she realized what this was. "You want the glory for this victory."

The boy squinted his eyes. "That will be enough. Do you want to follow my men on your own, or should we grab you too?"

She stepped down one level. Regulars couldn't hit each other, and their projectiles overlapped, but physical contact still happened.

But she stopped in that bleacher for a moment, turned, and looked Dakota in the eyes. "Mark was right, you know? You can't win against Shen. No one can."

She resumed her climb down, accompanied by two officers.

"We'll see," Dakota said behind her.

= - = - =

Evelyn and Scott walked away from their respective groups to meet the approaching Feng Shen.

"You can still join us," Scott suggested when they got closer.

"You can still give up on the tutorial," she suggested back.

Scott was a large guy with short black hair, dark eyes, and a trimmed beard. His jaw was almost perfectly squared, and his body was packed with muscles.

He was totally naked except for his boxers. Evelyn had seen him kill regulars before and had to admit he was strong. That made his absence in the AP Arena confusing.

Or maybe not. Scott had got a large group under him than she had. Maybe he had been networking all the while.

Evelyn would even have an overall favorable impression of him—despite his obvious narcissism—weren't for the first words that came from his mouth when they met: "You look weak, but you can join me."

Negotiations for one to join the other hadn't worked out after that.

Sandra had said he wanted Evelyn to get angry at him. He had hoped for her to lose her calm so those under her would get unsure of her ability to lead them. Even pointing out her apparent weakness aloud had been for that purpose.

Evelyn wondered how many people under him had been manipulated to join his team.

Alas, those were not concerns for now. Feng Shen was upon them.

He had bought new clothes at some point, but they did little to hide his big build. She looked like a child close to those two, who looked more like wardrobes rather than teenagers.

She opened her mouth to speak, but Scott beat her to her. "Good fight, pal. Join us or get the fuck out of the way. We have the first claim."

Evelyn expected a fight, but Shen Feng showed no emotion on his face or posture. Not that she was great at reading any of it, of course. That was Sandra's thing.

"I won't join, but I recognize your claim," Shen said.

Scott humphed, said, "At least you know your place," and left without further word.

Evelyn wanted to talk about a great many things with Feng Shen, but one question came before all others: "Why?"

"Mainly because I'm looking for trustworthy allies," he said. "I think Bob Timothy Junior might have these characteristics, and he's in your group. I would like to talk to him."

She frowned. "Bob told me you two barely interacted."

"He forewarned me about danger and left my side to protect his people despite how powerful I am. Those are good signs of his character." He nodded to Scott. "That man, however, threatened me."

Evelyn tried to keep quiet. She really did. But there was a reason she was known for letting her temper get the best of herself. "I didn't know you were such a pushover."

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