I walked straight to the table where the revelers were drinking, groping the squealing village women, and entertaining themselves with five fingers, a knife-involving game popular with soldiers and bandits. With each step, my belief in the success of my endeavor melted away like snow on a hot pan. Catching the villagers’ scared, curious, and desperate glances, I realized I’d been too rash when countering the emperor. They, in turn, were struggling to figure out my identity: I didn’t look like a peasant, a bandit, or a guard.

What are you doing here? their eyes whispered. Run away while you’re still alive! their silent faces screamed in the evening twilight. Walking through this ambience of fear, I couldn’t help remembering the little girl desperately clutching a loaf of bread. I felt like I had much in common with her—maybe because I followed the path of hunger, unsuspecting of what awaited me.

As I approached the table, the noise ceased. Smiles disappeared from the bandits’ faces, and the women forcibly seated on their laps stopped squeaking.

“Peace be with you, good people. With you and your feast!” I said, trying to prevent my stomach from betraying my hunger at the sight of food.

“Good people are mowing hay in the fields or toiling in the mines!” someone shouted from the side.

“Ha, ha! What an idiot! Were you often hit on the head?” a drunken laughter came from another end of the table.

Even this scum thinks you’re an idiot, Zer couldn’t resist adding his two words.

Oh, get lost.

“Leave while you’re still alive,” a new voice echoed my earlier thoughts from under the table, followed by a loud burp and a new wave of laughter.

Some of the bandits looked toward a man seated apart, as if awaiting his reaction. His pitch-black hair was diagonally tied with a black band covering his left eye. His hands rested on the hilt of a large knife thrust into the tabletop as he silently observed me.

The gang leader? I guessed and addressed him directly: “You seem very different from your men. I need food. Maybe we can come to an agreement?”

“You’re not of the faint-hearted, huh?” the one-eyed man said, almost in praise. “Or maybe you’re just too stupid—that’s why you dared to approach us?”

And another one, Zer noted again, this time without mockery. I just gave a mental shrug: time will tell.

“Well then,” the leader continued, looking at his smirking bandits, “bravery must be rewarded, and stupidity must be punished. Let’s see if you are brave or stupid.” He stood up, leaning on the crooked short knife stuck in the table. He seemed to exert no effort at all, yet the steel twisted, splitting the table with a deep, long crack that crossed it almost instantly. “Beat me, and you’ll have food.”

“And if not?” I asked, well-aware this was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

“And if not... Well, who knows.”

The bandits roared their approval, their drunken faces breaking into wide smiles of anticipation. “Eye! Eye! Eye!” they chanted, banging mugs and fists on the trembling wood of the split table.

“Let’s start. Or have you lost your appetite?” Eye sneered. “Hit me if you can.”

The situation was turning sour, but it was too late to back away. I took a big step toward the bandit and threw a sweeping side punch. However, my fist only sliced the air. The leader just removed his hands behind his back and easily ducked under my hook.

“Yee-haw!” a loud cheer came from the drunken crowd.

I was about to deliver another blow when I spotted some move out of the corner of my eye. Wheeling around, I faced the grinning opponent. His smile, revealing the sparse, rotten teeth, was ominous. A sense of danger overwhelmed me. Swinging at the bandit, I forgot the inertia and, spinning around, barely managed to regain balance. Eye took a laze step aside, looking down on my futile attempts.

I swung again, feeling like I was just a step away from reaching the overconfident bandit, but my hopes were shattered time after time. As a fighter, he was much more formidable than those thugs in the alley.

Come what may, I thought, resorting to a desperate measure—a kick to his groin. But the bandit merely extended his palm, and my foot seemed to hit a metal structure.

“Dammit!” I exclaimed, recoiling and dragging my leg that felt like it was about to snap in halves, like the previously shattered table.

Eye spread his arms, looking at his bandits. “Look, this boy’s a gambler! And what does a gambler get? All or nothing, that’s it!”

“Knock him into the ground, Eye!” the bandits shouted.

“Do you hear that? That’s all for you! Here’s your food! Eat it!”

The world went dark. Time slowed down. Eye’s fist, shrouded in a misty haze, seemed to be piercing me through, coiling my intestines around its dirty knuckles. Getting suspended in mid-air, I heard a snap inside my belly, followed by a hundred tiny bells ringing. Enveloped in a cloud of dust, I sensed my body tumble to the ground like a wooden doll.

“Give me the body! Now!” Zer’s loud voice demanded in my head. “He’s about to finish you off, and I can’t put up the Golden Chainmail anymore!”

Eye slowly approached me amid the booming cries of his henchmen. “Are you still alive, vagabond?” he asked.

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Propping myself up on my fours and struggling to focus my eyes, I watched my opponent prepare to deliver another blow that could indeed become my last. Blood dripped from my mouth to the ground as I struggled to figure out my next step.

“Body! Give me the body!”

“Fuck off!” I snapped. “I’d rather die than become a ghost in my own head.”

Another blow came at my head. Once again, despite what Zer had told me, I heard the chiming bells.

…and got lost in the dark.

***

Light seeped in slowly, accompanied by some flowing, cold, and quite refreshing substance. Opening my eyes, I saw Blik pouring water over me and gave a loud sigh to let him know I was coming to.

My back was leaning against something hard, the left side of my head splitting with pain. Sunbeams were falling to the ground; it was either morning or noon.

“Oh, what a fool,” the jester’s girlish voice drawled. “You were told to give your body to the emperor, weren’t you?”

“So he could try to take over again?” I rasped, my entire body hurting badly.

Blik sighed. “His Majesty saved your life twice. He even used the Golden Chainmail. And all you keep saying is ‘try to take over’. You have no gratitude.”

“I don’t trust you or your emperor, and that’s his fault,” I snapped and took a closer look around. “Where are we? Where’s Zer?”

“His Majesty is sleeping. He spent all his energy on you, fool!”

“And the bandits?”

“What harm could’ve come to them? You showed no signs of life, so they had the peasants drag that piece of shit away from the table,” Blik smiled. “That piece of shit was you.”

“Enough!” I barked, cutting off the jester’s taunts. “What happened next?”

“What do you mean? They threw you in a ditch, and that was the end of it.” Blik continued smiling, apparently unconcerned about my fate. “There I found you. By the way, you did it!”

“Did what?”

“Isn’t that clear? You got us food. As the peasants dragged you, they noticed me and told me to hide. But I was like, ‘Daddy! They killed Daddy! What will I eat now?’” As I watched the little girl play her part, I felt the corners of my mouth twitch. “So, they brought me food to compensate for breadwinner loss. Anyway, I think we can earn our bread with your fighting. Half your face is still there. If you learn to use it carefully, it will last a long time.”

I had a terrible headache and felt sick. Thinking it couldn’t get any worse, I suddenly heard the tired, angry voice of the emperor.

“You piece of an ass! You could’ve died if it weren’t for me! Is there even a drop of brain in your head? You’ve almost fed the grave worms three times, you thick-headed soldier! Bastard offspring of ogre shit and troll burp! If you were in my army, I wouldn’t mind your death, but now we’re sharing this body!”

“Well, things went a bit wrong. But I almost won,” I replied weakly, reluctant to argue.

“All moron!” the jester mimicked me, giggling thinly over his pun.

“His blow, the one that nearly sent us to the shadow halls,” the emperor’s shadow continued, ignoring his servant, “is called a Dew Breeze. You almost died, and it wouldn’t have been that much of a shame had been a Heavenly Swing, a Dragon Bite, or even a Bull Roar. But it wasn’t. You nearly died by a fucking dew breeze!”

Something in Zer’s words struck a chord in me.

“Teach me,” I asked.

“What? I can’t hear you. Speak up.”

“Teach me!”

“Well, well. The man in you is awake? If you keep charging in like a scalded cat, you’ll be killed before you learn the system of Life Spheres.”

“The system? What’s that?” I asked, and a new wave of pain wracked my battered body.

“We were heading there when you decided to play the forager.”

“I was hungry, damn you! In case you haven’t noticed, our bodies need food.”

“Yell louder. Maybe they’ll come over and knock out the other half of your brain, which I’m starting to doubt you even have.”

I realized the emperor’s voice wasn’t coming from everywhere, as it seemed to me before, but from one place. Glancing there, I indeed saw Zer. The emperor was leaning against the same tree as I, looking like he’d had a much harder time than me.

The ensuing silence was again broken by Zer: “Tell me honestly, Rhys: did you have a concussion at war?”

I didn’t respond to another jibe of his, just made myself more comfortable next to the tree that now seemed softer than any bed and fell asleep.

I didn’t know how long I slept, but I’d become accustomed to lack of sleep during my journey with Zer. And now, I was being woken up earlier than I’d prefer.

“Come on, come on!” Blik was tugging at my shoulder.

To avoid confusion, I now referred to the girl by the jester’s name. Blik seemed a nice guy, but the fact that he and Zer took over people’s bodies troubled me.

I opened my eyes and saw the emperor’s imposing figure rise from behind the girl, squinting at me as if I were a piece of an ass, as he often put it. In his eyes, I was not even a whole animal, just a piece.

A piece of an ass that beat the champion of champions, huh, I smiled, fully waking up at the thought.

The emperor’s face and posture seemed to say, What are you smiling about? But he restrained himself (probably for the first time ever) and simply said: “Come on, Rays. It’s time to take you to your first place of power. Otherwise, you’ll keep getting beaten by any riffraff.”

Leaning on the tree trunk, I stood up, yawned, and immediately winced in pain. “Alright,” I agreed and followed Zer’s shadow.

Blik, the jester girl, hopped along by my side, squandering the abundant energy of childhood.

“A place of power,” the emperor explained on the go, “is where Life Spheres can be accessed. Our minds perceive the Spheres as a system bestowing upon us the challenges that make us stronger and develop our combat skills. The man who beat you has somehow acquired only about one hundredth of its power, but that was enough to become the leader of those dickheads.”

“Dickheads, my lord?” Blik asked.

“Shut up!” Zer snapped and continued: “But this place in the mountains has something stronger than any Dew Breeze.”

The mountains grew steeper. I climbed and climbed, doubting the value of emperor’s plan. Blik was struggling behind. Zer glided through the air silently, apparently at a fraction of his speed to match ours. A whirling wind accompanied our ascent, yet it seemed to be bounced away by an invisible barrier.

Finally, the mountains gave way to a plateau with green, small, and dense grass that looked like a manicured lawn. I reached the top first and, extending a hand to Blik, pulled his light body up.

“Here,” Zer whispered. “Let’s begin so we don’t waste more time.”

Blik nodded at me and stood next to the emperor.

“What should I do?” I asked, inhaling deeply, surprised that the air was dense, not rarefied as it could be expected at such an altitude. How was that even possible?

“Sit down. Cross your legs. Close your eyes,” Zer instructed sharply.

“And open your mouth!” Blik added.

“Shut up. We’ve already lost too much time because of you.”

“When, my lord?” Blik asked with puppy dog eyes, pretending to be deeply hurt.

“When you supported one ape’s ridiculous plan to go beg for food.”

“But... food...”

Blik’s plaintive voice went ignored, and he fell silent, realizing it was not the time for dubious jokes.

Sitting down in the center of the plateau, I felt a strange serenity descend upon me. All my worries and troubles seemed to lose their significance, no longer affecting my mind.

“Close your eyes, I said,” Zer frowned. “Good. Now lower your hands, palms down. Here, the Life Spheres reveal the secrets of the Earth Style. Take a deep, slow breath. Try to open up to them. Once you do, you will be included in the system.”

I sat with closed eyes, listening to the instructions given by the powerful ancient warrior, but strangely, I saw not the darkness as I should have, but a meadow where each stalk of grass was glowing. The air sparkled as it was lifted by currents, and even the sky emitted a shine, filling me with euphoric bliss.