Corvayne felt like the walk back to the bar was much shorter then the walk back, possibly because he wasn't as nervous about if Bayou or Little Spur would flip on him. Neo Nashville's larger buildings were visible over the industrial skyline of the district they were in. Buildings and the top of Big Red Brambles huge pickup cut black shapes out of the glowing buildings. It made him a little homesick for Cascadia.

His stomach growled then and his hands were getting cold, so he ran full out until he was a block away then slowed and walked to the front of the bar. The street was still crowded with people hanging around trying to get a cab home or get laid, only a few bar hoppers still arriving to file into places playing slower less boisterous music. He was about to walk into New Kansas when one of the Horsespit boys came flying out the door, back first.

Corvayne was caught flat footed because it wasn't an attack aimed at him, but he managed to catch the man and stumble back. It looked like someone had broken the poor guy's nose. A few teeth missing too. [[Unity]] and [[Understanding]] did a weird thing suggesting the man's ribs were a weak spot.

“Get... help.” The man groaned while spitting up blood.

Corvayne thought about it, then put the Horsespit goon down more gently then he deserved on the sidewalk and cracked his knuckles. Looking into the open door he saw three distinct groups and two half-dead Horsespit brothers on the floor.

The cowtivators and any mortals in the bar were arranged in a semi-circle away from the central fighters, a sort of prey response he intuited. Big Red Bramble looked lost, holding his hat in his hand and trying to stay in front of the two battered Horsespit boys. Then there was the third group. Three monks with red lines painted on bare heads, all of them wearing red robes with enough black to clearly state they were bad boys. No boots, cowboy hats, or jeans. One sneering, one glaring, and one thin looking one at the bar examining a drink.

The music had stopped at some point, the only ambient noise coming from the next bar playing a mopey country tune. There was the faint crunch of glass and a groan as one of the brothers shifted. Corvayne dismissed them and looked at the would-be attackers. All sorts of energy surrounded the trio, and had what books either called killing intent, or a bad attitude. That was what he got without his pact powers stepping in.

The only way Corvayne could describe channeling [[Unity]] on their emotions would be, as Big Red himself had said, doing a belly flop into a pool of liquid cow shit with ones mouth wide open. Malice, lust, greed, jealousy... all surrounded a core of absolute arrogance, the kind that made Nyxion's look positively bashful and tinged with a sadistic streak that marked all three in Corvayne's mind as killers for fun.

Big Red was holding up a hand. "Now listen fellas, we're allies and all-"

Oddly, Bramble was scared of the cultivators despite Corvayne assessing him as able to throw down with them. Maybe he just didn't have a warriors mentality?

Drinker, as Corvayne tagged him, was swirling scotch. He bobbed his head back and forth as if heming and hawing about what Big Red said. "Fine. We will spare them for all the booze and all the women."

Big Red Bramble stood up straighter. "Now wait a minute-"

The barkeeper slammed a hand down on the bar. "Wait a minute indeed, this est-"

A moment later the barkeeper was on the ground, bleeding from a broken nose. None of the cultvators were within striking range aside from Drinker, who hadn't moved. Corvayne did see one punch air, the one with an ugly expression. Disgust projected outwards. That and confidence, of course. No specks of doubt they were doing anything but the order of the world.

The glaring one put his other hand in front of Big Red's face "Silence. Fist Full of Dao still exists because of our sect's whims."

The sneering one smiled, and Corvayne could track his eyes to where two girls were slipping into the restroom. "We have a lot of VIT to survive on the higher floors. Need more booze since it takes longer to get drunk. And more women since it takes us longer to get tired. Ha ha ha."

At that, he saw some of the girls still trapped in the bar go pale. Most of the guys who were shovelers were not fighters, and the one who was... He could feel Big Red's frustration through [[Unity]] radiating like a white hot sun. But there was a deep seated fear, uncertainty? Maybe he was too old, too used to picking on initiates to take on three warriors who seemed in their prime. Corvayne roughly guessed they were level one fifty to two hundred for all three. It felt like... a good match. None of them had the raw power of Blackhand. He suspected that if more of the sect's real fighters were here, these three would have made themselves scarce.

"Hmm, if that's the case, why don't any of you three have a high level woman?" Corvayne asked, stepping up to the bar and leaning on it, keeping them in view of his side eye.

The angry one glared at him, and then recoiled. "Are you serious? A little mortal weakling is talking back to us? The irony that this one shows some spine!"

"I am always serious." He looked each of the three in the eyes, then strolled to the bar and took a random bottle and took a sip. It tasted terrible, but not strong. He felt only a little buzz in himself as he knew he was about to have a real fight. He set it down carefully.

"Okay, Mister Level 30." Drinker put his cup down. "Outside?" The man was clearly secretly giddy, bubbly hostility refrained from a desire to be cool.

"As fitting for civilized men having a... little friendly disagreement." Corvayne nodded and lead the way out, moving over to the center of the extra wide road and stretching a little.

Of course, one of them tried to throw a mug at the back of his head with enough speed to make a small shockwave. Corvayne just dodged it by moving his head, [[Unity]] giving him plenty of information that an attack was coming and that it's owner expected that to kill him.

He turned and saw the first two coming at him fast out the door, and the drinker following behind, hands behind his back as if content to just watc. The two started with a aimed at his gut and a foot aimed at his face, so Corvayne grabbed the leg and gave it a push into his other assailant, causing them to stumble, and he felt they were shocked he could track them. Corvayne took a few steps back, and they came again, this time circling then darting in to pepper him with sharp jabs. Corvayne took a grazing hit to the chin while swapping to [[Vitality]] so he could grab the mans fist and hurl him into the other sect member punching his back. Again, complete shock that someone was manhandling them.

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They rolled and hopped back to their feet, so Corvayne switched to [[Agility]], aiming to wear them down. He threw a weak [[Unity]] link on the third one, just so he was ready when intent went hostile. The one who had been sneering wiped his mouth then formed a claw, and Corvayne could see essence mingling with some other energy on it. Probably some sort of custom weapon skill?

He dodged when the man punched nowhere near him with a grunt, and of course it summoned a blade of air that gouged the concrete and rattled a fence when it shredded the steel links, as well as chop a parked car in half. The other man had electricity gathered on a leg and tried to kick him, the attack missing but causing a searing arc of lighting to hit him... it stung but he strangely felt ambivilent about the attack.

He turned to the man making his fingers into a claw and rolled out of the way as more blades of pink light flew out, shredding the road. Corvayne snapped his fingers to start his own counter attack, then worked on dancing away from air blades and pink slashes, which kept going to cause a lot of damage to a factory behind them. He let himself fall into a trance, just moving and keeping distance from the two.

Corvayne slowly moved towards the air-blade fighter, who instantly guessed he was trying to create a cross fire with his ally and leapt back. Corvayne danced away, letting a few spots he could get closer pass. A few blades managed to graze him because he had to pay attention to NOT closing.

His feint paid off as two black clouds formed and slowly drifting to follow his enemies. They didn't even sense the black discs until twin hammers made of shadow energy blasted them from above, knocking them off their feet a moment. They stood up and the shadow clouds attacked again, hitting one and causing the other to dodge awkwardly, recovering only because high stats let him catch himself.

With red robes flapping they came to an unspoken consensus and closed in, assuming that Corvayne wouldn't blast himself as they once more started trying to melt him with lava fists and lightning headbutts.

Corvayne used [Cross Skill: Flows-Like-Water] and simply left them behind to deal with two blasts on the ground, doing less then a direct hit but still blasting them with punishing shadow energy and leaving behind oily shadows on the ground. His own shadow limbs struck out too, having been boosted by essence to let him pummel the two with eight limbs. Most of the damage from his shadows was superficial, but their attempts to evade meant the attacks focused on body shots.

Of course, that was when the third member did something and dispelled most of the effects in the area, banishing his arms and shadow clouds. Corvayne pretended to be slack-jawed and then rolled with a punch to get down the street and away from the people gawking. They knew he was hitting way above what a level 30 could do, but he didn't want them to know all his tricks just yet (Nor get decapitated by a stray air blade), so he rolled to his feet and sprinted, using a gravity assisted jump to simply glide over one of the florescent lit empty lots. Behind him he heard the sounds of vegetation being shredded and a car alarm going off.

He slowed a little to keep them chasing, choosing a path down by the river he had crossed earlier in the evening. Besides the occasional half-hearted ranged slash, they had to keep using something like movement weapon skills with their feet to keep up with Corvayne's speed. He swapped to [[Vitality]] so they could catch up and he could recover stamina. By the time they arrived at the parking lot for a run down building, Corvayne was sure he had lost everyone else.

"Finally he's done running." The surly one said, face bruised from where shadow energy had hammered him.

"We're going to tear you limb from limb for the disrespect you showed us." The one who had been sneering had disheveled clothes and was panting a little.

"Blast him from afar, don't give him time to cast. He's not even with the sect, just some prisoner who snuck out with a work crew. We don't have to hold back at all." Drinker seemed the most composed, the boss of the group.

Corvaye fired a bouncing shadow bolt at them, the stringy black lightning doing enough damage to disrupt whatever attacks they were charging up and forcing them to move. It only bought him a half second, but it was enough that he was able to leap straight up and avoid an attack that summoned a hundred swords to obliterate where had been was standing. A second attack was a huge spear that missed his feet by a few inches, and another fired waves of fire snakes, and the thinker put down a nullification area where he would have to land. He could see the smart one tracking him, smile on the cultivators face growing as he no doubt was assuming Corvayne had made a rookie mistake by taking his feet off the ground.

Corvayne pulled his spear from somewhere. Not the storage ring he had slipped around one of his lower ribs to funnel all the black crystals into. No, just... somewhere. The fluke in the prison wasn't a fluke. He had been fine with having a shovel, but it didn't beat the real thing.

He could see one of them creating a phoenix as he kept flying up, gravity letting him reach the low clouds and for a moment break up through them to see there were three moons tonight as well as a mess of bright stars. Was that a good omen or bad one, given what happened with Diamond? He shrugged as fairy fire tagged him, from the one he had linked. He could tell through the link the man was literally rubbing his hands together at the imagined joy of blasting him out of the sky. Corvayne kept his game face on as he pointed his spear downwards and called forth his second Advanced Weapon Skill.

Where to aim? The glowing phoenix one of them was creating could be seen even through the clouds like a giant bullseye. He could also feel the link to the third one pointing him that way, which he decided was a better guide for what he was about to do to them.

It was a very, very picky weapon skill. It required very specific conditions to learn and only slightly less annoying ones be usable. It also had a fundamental problem, being you couldn't practice it without absolutely destroying whatever it was used on. He thought about the three men below him, what things they might have done in their lives, what they might go onto do, the kind of people that considered them friends.

Corvayne felt a small tinge of regret for whomever owned the parking lot.

He oriented himself to his link, and focused energy into his spear, the image being of a meteor gathering energy and intent for millions and millions of years, millions and millions and millions of miles across the stars. He felt his black spear get heavier, much like how [Leap Attack] worked. It was, after all, the evolved form of that skill, in the same way a thrown rock might claim some distant linage to a nuclear weapon.

His weapon took on tremendous weight, turning his stamina into potential energy, but rather then simply falling or throwing his spear, instead Corvayne shaped and focused on the feeling again and again, looping back around galaxies in his mind as he pushed stamina into his weapon until he felt it align, then pointed.

[Orbital Bombardment] was a spear skill that threw a single bolt of energy downwards. It wasn't a flashy colored bolt like those three goofballs used. The moment before it launched was the only time he could see it, and Corvayne would guess was a dull gray wedge. The only tell that someone had before it landed was that if they were looking very carefully they could see clouds distort around the projectile. Perhaps if they have emergency teleports or the ability to phase out, they'd be able to save themselves.

The first wedge formed and flew down almost instantaneously, and landed on the cultivators. Maybe it killed them all in one shot, probably not. From up in the sky, Corvayne heard a neat crack. Then in the blink of an eye thirty more fell as the skill rained a wall of hell through the clouds. Below he could see what looked like a cloud of dust where the lot was, some of it glowing as the attack had turned some of the metal caught in the radius into liquids and gas. Corvayne had felt his [[Unity]] link snap after the second bolt landed and didn't feel any hostility, so he allowed himself to float down with the warm wind pushing him to land on a street corner near where Little Spur and Bayou were walking back towards the bar.

"Excuse me." He said, politely, then slammed his face into the wall a few times then shredded his work clothes by rolling on his spear.

Bayou stepped back. "What madness has come over you?!"

"If anyone asks, could say there was a out of level spawn a few blocks over, an Evolved Kinetic Bomb Cactus, and that three heroes died saving the city?" None of it was a lie. She could say whatever she wished.

"Why did you fall from the sky?"

"Please tell them I was knocked away by the blast after they stopped beating me up to combat the real menace."

Little Spur understood, on some level. Corvayne could almost hear the man's eyes gleaming form how he spoke. "One mans madness is another's genius. Martial Uncle Corvayne, are you near passing out from your wounds? Let this small disciple help you."

Corvayne pretended to stumble over to the young man. "I lasted long enough to bear witness to the glory of our Red Stripe benefactors. I hope many others follow their footsteps."

"Fistful of Dao sect will let their allies know we owe them a debt that cannot be repaid. Yet."

Corvayne couldn't help but smirk. Bayou lifted up his other arm. "You two are going to tell me what this nonsense is about and you will spill every detail, or so help me I'll make sure Bessie shits all over both of you for a week!"

Corvayne felt a real stab of cold fear in his gut, imagining that cow-printed monster's backside, it's baleful center following him like a burning eye of Sauron from those movies. He'd gotten clipped by the monster cow going what he thought was all out. What if it had been holding back? He looked Bayou in the eye.

“I won't hold anything back.”