It seemed clear to Will that the thing the Sick Freak left in his note about this place being impossible to find without the compass was incredibly untrue. In fact it was about five hundred creatures untrue. Because there were now about five hundred creatures here, and none of them had a compass. He was honestly hoping that the Sick Freak would be right about that one. He really wanted to get the horde of terrifying beasts to go away. Sadly, it seemed that the Sick Freak had a secret identity; the Stupid Sick Freak.

Well, he probably wasn't expecting someone like Will to find his inheritance.

And yet, Will was who he got. Well, Will and five hundred creatures, anyway. He stood at the tacky entrance of the tacky mountain. A tacky entrance that could fit his whole accidental entourage. Almost like the Sick Freak had planned this all out. Except he didn't. Will could tell. The Automatic Universal Linguistic Knowledge Database Accessor allowed him to understand exactly why the entrance was so big. It was because the Sick Freak was also the Tacky Sick Freak.

It took a bit before Will finally got through the entrance fully. While it didn't have a door, it did have a sheet of grey fog that made it impossible to see the inside before going through it. Once Will was past the grey fog, he saw what was inside. A test. A sick test from the Sick Freak. Three doors, a sign saying some stupid crap about what each door symbolized, a stupid fountain made to look like it was full of blood because it was made by a Tacky Sick Freak but wasn't full of blood and didn't even really look much like it was full of blood because the Tacky Sick Freak was also a Lazy Sick Freak. Will really didn't feel like dealing with any of it. His motivation for dealing with the Sick Freak's stupid tests was used up on the twelve hours of walking with no breaks with at least four of those hours being because of the stupid formations.

He thought about how his followers always followed him and never walked ahead of him, and the exhaustion he was feeling made him do something reckless. He did a hard u-turn and walked backwards. A part of his mind told him this was a horrible idea, that he'd die, and he heard it, but the alternative was going through the Tacky Trials in the Tacky Mountain made by a Sick Freak who was also a Stupid Sick Freak so his trials would be stupid and boring and lazy and would probably just end up being full of Tacky Stupid Sick Freak Tacky Stupid Torture and honestly? Dying didn't sound that bad compared to a load of bullshit like that. And so he kept walking backwards.

And five hundred creatures moved to line up behind him. Big as the room was, it wasn't nearly enough to fit all the creatures following him. And so they had to make room. First, the super snake that had joined his entourage after the giant wolf, slithered its way over to the middle door, the “trial of lightning” as the sign called it. It couldn't fit in the door. It didn't care. It slammed through the door making a hole twice its size where it used to be. It turned around to get in line. Similar events continued happening at all three doors. As time went on, and the line got longer, they pushed further and further into the trial halls. They got hit with demonic attacks in the demonic trial, shocked with lightning in the lightning trial, and hit with sharp implements that they were too strong to care about dodging and/or too big to weave through in the arts trial. The trials were meant for a beginner cultivator. When hundreds of powerful monsters came crashing through… well, they didn't work quite as well. It took several minutes for them to finish lining up behind Will. Once they did, the line stretched half of the way through the length of the trial halls.

But that wasn't enough for Will. He wanted the trials gone. And so he turned around again, and all his followers ran out to line up behind him. They smashed traps and broke anything that would be faster traversed broken. Yet Will wasn't satisfied. He walked all the way up to the lightning trial’s wreck of a door, then turned around. Once again, the horde smashed through the trials, and once again, Will turned around. He repeated this process until the line stretched all the way to the door, then did a few more u-turns to make sure all the traps were well and truly destroyed. Once he was sure they were, and he did it one more time after he was sure just out of spite, he finally proceeded down the hallway. Though, he did so in a zigzag to cause a bit more destruction behind him.

The three halls all let out into the same room. At the back wall of that room was a door with three slots to place orbs in. Each of the trials had an orb in the middle, and participants were expected to go down one path, grabbing the orb on the way, go back to the starting room through another one, grabbing the orb on the way, and then come back to the door room through the last path, grabbing the final orb, and then place all three orbs into the slots for the door. Will walked through the large hole in the door, not even bothering to pay enough attention to figure all of that out.

After stepping through the hole in the door, Will found himself in a very pretty room. The left wall was glass, with an aquarium behind it, while the other walls were white. Will assumed it was probably jade. There were two bookshelves on the right wall with an open square arch between them, and there was a table in the middle of the room. Will took off his pillowcase bag, and quickly wrapped the string around the handles of the two cultivation doors after putting them together. He then walked over to the closest bookshelf, touched every book and copied them all as fast as he could, jumping up to be able to reach the top ones, then did the same to the other bookshelf before heading through the archway into the next room.

Inside the next room was a pedestal, with a single book on it. The book was titled “Demonic Lightning Arts”. Will ran over, hopped up to reach it, and copied it. Once he did, he immediately embedded it into his memory. This one didn't have nearly as much torture in it. It also didn't have the female-specific rituals that got the last one age restricted, which was nice. Even though it was a cultivation manual like he had been wishing he'd had this whole time, it wasn't very useful to him.

The Demonic Lightning Arts, in essence, was less a manual on how to cultivate, and more a manual on how to not cultivate. For every step of cultivation that wasn't just gathering spiritual energy, it had a way to torture someone to skip it. The only thing that was even remotely useful that it mentioned was something called the Demonic Lightning Dagger. Will added Unoriginal to his name for the Sick Freak. That was four things now that were just a thing with Demonic Lightning before it. Either way, this Demonic Lightning Dagger seemed like what he was here to find. He looked behind him to see how destroyed the room was, but found that it wasn't actually destroyed at all.

He walked back into the first room and looked out the hole in the door. He met face to face with a wolf, with its nose pressed up against an imaginary glass pane. It seemed like there was some barrier keeping it out. Well, it was certainly convenient.

Will went back to the pedestal room. There were three doorless doorways. The back one seemed to lead to some hot spring-like area, the left one seemed to lead to a staircase leading down to the left of the door and up to the right. When he looked at the last room doorless doorway, he heard a woman's voice echoing in his head.

“Hey, kid, look, it's a shiny thing, you should pick it up, hey, pick up the pretty red thing.”

Will stopped for a moment after hearing it. He saw the “pretty red thing” that was mentioned, it looked to be a dagger stabbed partway into the middle of some stone circle on the ground. He had planned to pick it up, since it seemed like the treasure that he had come here for in the first place, but he was starting to feel like maybe he shouldn't. He took a step back, and the voice echoed in his head again.

“Hey, there's no need to step away, I promise you won't be stealing anything. It's, um, a gift. It's a gift for you. So come pick it up, okay?”

Will got the feeling that this voice was coming from the “pretty red thing”. Said pretty red thing likely being the Demonic Lightning Dagger from the Demonic Lightning Arts manual. The only weird part was that the manual didn't seem to mention that the dagger could talk. There were multiple instances where the dagger being able to talk should definitely come up, and yet it never did. Will decided to just ask the dagger.

“Awe yu the demonic wightning daggew?”

It didn't come out quite right, but he felt he got the point across. The voice responded.

“Huh?”

Will responded back.

“Fwom the book. The demonic wightning daggew fwom the book.”

The voice responded again.

“Don't worry about that. Just come over and pick me up, I mean pick it up. It's a gift. I'll be really sad if you don't take it.”

At least now he knew that the voice belonged to the dagger he was looking at. Whether it was the dagger from the book, he didn't know.

“Wisten, I'm not stupid, stop twying to use baby tawk. Just teww me what you awe and why you wan me to pick yu up.”

The dagger responded.

“Please just hurry and pick me up before that sick freak comes back. I'm begging you.”

Will was surprised that it had used the name he had been calling the Demonic Lightning Sick Freak. He couldn't remember what the third part of the title was supposed to be but Sick Freak fit better anyway. He asked the dagger a question.

“Yu meen the Demonic Wightning Sick Fweak?”

The dagger showed a hint of surprise before answering.

“Yeah, him, now stop talking and pick me up before he comes down here. Hurry!”

Will was starting to get a bit worried with this talk of the Sick Freak coming back.

“Isn't he dead? How wouwd he come down hewe?”

The dagger scoffed.

“How could he be dead? He's cultivating upstairs. And if you don't pick me up and go quick, he's going to stop cultivating and kill you. So let's hurry it up and get going.”

Will didn't know whether he believed that the Sick Freak was still alive or not. It seemed like the basement was old. Really old. But then again, there was also a sacrificial ritual in the Demonic Lightning Arts manual that said it could increase lifespan, so maybe he had been able to survive using that. Either way, Will didn't feel like sticking around to find out. He let go of his cultivation doors, rushing over to grab the dagger.

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Will was a bit surprised to find that the dagger's handle felt completely normal. Actually, it felt particularly comfortable. The notable part was the lack of any demonic lightning attacking his hand like he expected. He ignored it for now. He rushed back and grabbed his cultivation doors, the dagger calling him a “stupid kid” under its breath as he did, and ran to the door. He lifted his cultivation doors in front of him and ducked under the wolf's head. Instantly, the beast horde parted before him, many of them slamming into the wall behind them in an attempt to break through to line up better to no avail.

The dagger made a sound of confusion, but Will ignored it and ran. But he didn't even make it past the trial halls before he was noticed by a sick freak.

—

In a cultivation chamber sat a man. He was an old looking man, with a wispy beard and greying hair, but his body was toned and muscular. This man was the Demonic Lightning Sovereign, and he was in a good mood today. A seed he had planted a long time ago had finally borne fruit. And like any good fruit, he was going to use it as sustenance.

It was a new sacrifice his genius mind had come up with, one where he tortured and killed his own successor. And the fruit would fall right on his doorstep soon enough. He found that he was too excited to cultivate, so he headed downstairs to clear his head. What he found was shocking. His Demonic Lightning Dagger was nowhere to be found. Even weirder was the mark on the floor that looked like someone had been dragging around furniture. None of his furniture had been moved, he had arrays set up to prevent that, and the marks looked like they came from wood furniture, and he didn't have any wood furniture that would leave a mark even close to that. As he followed along the mark, he found it led straight to his front door. His front door with a large hole in it.

When he went outside, he became even more shocked. It looked like the whole forest had decided to come to his house. There was everything from a lightning squirrel to a damn lightning spirit to a walking flower. One person came to mind.

Beast King. This was something that only he could do. And ever since he used his nephew in a sacrifice, they had been sworn enemies. But he didn't feel the man's presence with his spiritual senses. The only presence he felt was… his Demonic Lightning Dagger? And someone holding it…

The Demonic Lightning Sovereign felt he understood. This must've been the Beast King's disciple. He should've known that killing all the kids suitable for his arts from the major families wouldn't be enough to stop him, that old dog had never been one to care about lineage. And looking at how a kid this young had managed to control this many monstrous beasts, he was starting to feel like letting the Beast King pick one of them would've been a lot better.

Talented as they were, there wasn't a chance in hell that they could've controlled an army like this at that age. But either way, this was an opportunity. The Beast King's disciple had just shown up at his doorstep. He could just kill the brat!

The brat was Will of course. Though oblivious to the fact that he had just been labeled the Beast King's disciple, he did see the Sick Freak come out of his house. And he kept running.

The Demonic Lightning Sovereign was waiting. He was going to follow after the kid and kill him, but if he did so now he'd run into the middle of this terrifying stampede. No, he'd wait until all the beast army was fully outside. There, he could fly above them. The large majority of the beasts here weren't able to fly, and he'd be able to take on the ones that could. Then, all he needed to do was pelt the kid with attacks from above and take his dagger back when the beasts clear out.

But Will didn't know what the Sick Freak was planning, he just saw him patiently waiting when he looked back. It was pretty creepy, but he kept running anyway. He ran around the stupid fountain, out the stupid entranceway and into the forest outside. He ran, checking behind him every few steps.

It was only when the whole horde behind him was out of the building that the Sick Freak moved. He was fast. It only took him a few moments to appear in the air above the horde, a streak of red lightning following behind him. Will saw him look down at him, and smirk, as he held up his arm and a red lightning bolt appeared in his hand.

Will was terrified. He wasn't surviving that if it hit him. But he had an idea. He ran in a circle. He hoped that one of the things following him would block him from the Sick Freak's attack.

Will's wish was granted. As soon as he started turning, chaos broke loose as the whole horde tried to line up behind him as fast as they could. The super snake slithered above him to get to the other side faster. Just as it did so, the red lightning bolt was let loose hitting the snake on its back. The only damage it did was to some dirt on the snake's back. Will was relieved, but he didn't stop. He kept running in circles, biding his time until he could think of something.

Will thought hard. His heart was pounding in his ears. He heard the dagger speak to him again.

“Kid, are you the Beast King's son or something?”

Beast King. Who was that? Will didn't know who that was, but it seemed important.

“Who is the Beast King?”

He asked the dagger and the dagger responded.

“You don't know the Beast King? How are you controlling all these monstrous beasts then?”

Will snorted in his mind. Control? Like hell he could control them! They were just following his cultivation doors. Because of the arrays on them? That gave him an idea. If the dagger thinks he's related to the Beast King, the Sick Freak probably would too. So if he can get these “monstrous beasts” as it called them to follow the Sick Freak, then maybe he could buy time to get away.

But how would he do that!? The bastard was flying in the air! The amount of points it would cost to write an array on someone so far away would be crazy! And even if he could draw an array on him, what was he gonna do next, ask the Sick Freak to stand still while he blew on his chest!?

Now that he thought about it, maybe he could copy an activated array? He copied an active array from his cultivation doors and exported it onto the ground. It worked! He had to use the pure spiritual energy in his middle dantian for it to not cost a ridiculous amount, but he could do it!

It was then that he noticed how many points he had. Holy shit! That was a ridiculous amount! He had seen a few actual cultivation manuals that he could afford with that much! He may actually have enough to put arrays onto the Sick Freak!

When he tried it, though, the cost for even one wasn't something he could afford. He needed a physical medium to do that. He felt that the issue was the range. If he had something that could hit him from long range… maybe the dagger?

“Do yu do wong wange attacks?”

The dagger replied.

“I can, but we'd need to form a contract for that, and my qi would probably rupture every meridian in your body.”

Rupture his meridians? With qi? Like… qi deviation? He felt hopeful.

“Wike qi deviation?”

The dagger sounded exasperated.

“Yes, qi deviation! Obviously!”

Will asked again.

“Just qi deviation? Nothing ewse?”

The dagger sounded even more exasperated.

“What do you mean ‘just’ qi deviation!? It's qi deviation! You'll get qi deviation and die!”

Will felt his heart fill with joy. Just qi deviation was fine! He was immune to that! He could form a contract with a talking dagger! That's awesome! He almost forgot that he was about to be killed by a torture maniac. He focused.

“Fowm a contwact wih me!”

The dagger mocked him.

“So you can die faster? Are you stupid?”

Will yelled at the dagger.

“Jus do it aweady!”

The dagger got mad.

“Fine then! Put a drop of blood on the blade and I'll take it from there. Just don't go cursing me when you die.”

Will went to bite his finger like they did in the stories he read. His skin was really tough but after biting really hard he managed to do it. He ran his thumb along the side of the blade, wiping the blood on it. The dagger finished the contract in moments.

And then he felt it. Earlier, his theory was that the demonic part of the forest’s demonic lightning spiritual energy came from the Sick Freak's treasure, while the aggressiveness came from the forest itself. He was so, so wrong about that. What flowed into his hand from the dagger's handle was way more aggressive than the demonic lightning spiritual energy of the forest. It didn't even feel like demonic lightning, it felt like the handle of the dagger had turned into a portal, and on the other side was a raging storm from the deepest layers of hell.

Immediately after the change, he felt something else. It felt like a phone that was held up to his ear had finally stopped ringing, and the person on the other side was the same storm from the pits of hell that the handle had turned into a portal to. Except in this case, the phone was in his mind.

Will immediately focused on his hand holding the dagger. As the first bit of that storm’s power touched his hand, he furiously directed it all into the meridians in his hand. He felt a piercing pain as the rampant power tore through his flesh to reach it, leaving a thin hole in his hand, but he kept going through the pain and just sent all the energy through that hole so it didn't make more of them. The whole process was instant. Will had prepared himself before the contract to send all of the energy into a meridian as fast as possible, so the damage to his hand only ended up being the one hole.

It still hurt like hell, though. Or like a storm from hell. After another instant passed, the dagger finally finished turning its attention away from making a contract and back to the child. It wasn't that surprised the first instant. It had expected that he would last for a few moments. He seemed decently strong. But after the few moments it had expected him to last passed, it was a bit impressed. It was only after a full second had passed that it started to be a bit confused. Surely a toddler couldn't be that powerful, right? But it wasn't completely outside the realm of possibility.

When two seconds had passed, it was shocked. The kid, who should definitely be dying was… saying ow?

“Ow ow owie owie ow owowow!”

Will wasn't doing too good. He had a hole in his hand and some really painful stuff was traveling through it, but it didn't travel through it smoothly and kept nicking the sides a little which hurt a lot. Other than that, he was pretty okay, but it really hurt a good deal. It was worse than most of the times in the hospital were.

But he could handle it. He had work to do. He split his consciousness, leaving a bit to deal with the ouchy tunnel while the rest prepared for the next step of his plan. Then he realized he didn't know how to do a long range attack. As he realized that he heard the dagger's voice again.

“Kid, how the hell are you still alive?”

Where before the voice felt directionless, now it felt like it was coming from the connection in his mind. He tried sending his response to that connection.

It felt a lot better to be able to talk without having to do it through the mouth of a two year old.

“You figured out sword telepathy already!? What the fuck are you!?”

Will didn't really get why it was so surprised, it felt about the same as using a phone. He was more surprised it called it sword telepathy when it was a dagger.

The sword? seemed annoyed.

“Is that what the sick freak wrote? I'm sure he didn't write that I could talk either, yet I'm talking to you now aren't I? He’s stupid, and I'm a sword. Got it?”

Looking at the sword in his hand, he noticed that it looked different than it used to. It actually looked like a sword now, though it was toddler-sized. The handle could finally fit in his hand properly now. It had also changed color. But that wasn't important now. He needed to figure out how to do a long range attack with this thing right now, and he needed to cover the sick freak with arrays so he could escape.

The sword simply said “Like this.” before sending something like a video into his mind. It wasn't as good as the videos from the tutorial, it wasn't able to convey the how of it like those did, but it was able to display the what of it like them. What it showed was aligning one's mind with the sword, and thrusting it forward.

Will didn't quite know how to do that. But he still tried. He moved backwards so all the beasts were in front of him. He split a piece of his consciousness to be ready to export the arrays.

Then Will thrusted the sword at the Sick Freak. He didn't really know what aligning one's mind was, and he certainly couldn't do it like a swordsman would.

But he didn't need to. Though Will wasn't ‘one with the sword’, far from it, Will and the sword were perfectly aligned on one thing. They both had the same opinion on the Demonic Lightning Sovereign.

They both thought he was a Stupid Sick Freak, too dumb to figure out how to actually cultivate. They both thought he was a Tacky Sick Freak, who lived in a Tacky Mountain. They both thought he was a Lazy Sick Freak, who just sacrificed people instead of putting in real work. They both thought he was an Unoriginal Sick Freak, who just put Demonic Lightning in front of a word every time he had to name something. And they both thought he was a Sick Freak, who tortured people in disgusting ways for his own gain. They both thought he was a Stupid Tacky Lazy Unoriginal Sick Freak and they both hated his guts.

And that was enough. Not for anything else, but for this? It was more than enough.

What shot out from the sword towards the Sick Freak looked like a storm straight from hell, forced into the shape of a beam. It was so much more than just lightning alone. It was the hail that tore through buildings and heads alike. It was the snow that buried men alive and left corpses when it melted. It was the bone-chilling cold. It was the winds that uprooted trees and threw them around like twigs. It was ringing left behind by the roar of thunder. It was the flood that swept men under the crashing waters to drown. And yes, it was the lightning. The lightning that lit up the dark skies like day as it struck.

And it was cruel. Not just in its indifference, but with an active malice. It felt sinister.

Before the beam even fully made contact, Will was already exporting the arrays. It was expensive, exorbitantly so, but Will had changed a lot of things since he left the hut. It turned out walking in a line throughout a good portion of the forest while bringing almost every creature nearby into a giant conga line had consequences. So Will started exporting. It turned out the bastard had a good few layers on today. They made a good canvas. Will exported as many arrays as he could, as thin as he could. By the time he was done, there were over a thousand arrays on the Sick Freak's clothes. Once the arrays were set, he used the Export function to scratch out the arrays in his cultivation doors.

Then the beam struck the Sick Freak in the chest. Will had made sure to leave that spot array-free, so he didn't waste points on an array that would get destroyed. That proved to be a good decision.

The beam tore through his clothes and left a dent in his chest where it hit. The Sick Freak's expression was one of confusion as the impact knocked him out of the sky before he could get his bearings. He only lost control of his flight for a moment before he stopped himself midair. But the horde saw him.

A new, even better cultivation spot has appeared. And it had just stopped moving. Their instincts told them that it was fair game now. And the fight broke out.

The Sick Freak had been staying in the air just above the horde’s reach. Now that he fell, he was within it.

In just a few moments, he found himself encased in a bubble of beasts. Forget killing the brat, he didn't know if he could even move. Creatures of all shapes and sizes were fighting to the death all around him. He didn't know why they were fighting when they should all be in the same army, but they certainly were.

With the Sick Freak now preoccupied, Will ran. He ran as fast as he could. He didn't run in the direction he had been going before, he turned 45° left and ran that way. He copied his surroundings into his map while he ran. Once the fight was over and the Sick Freak was gone, he was definitely going to go collect some beast corpses to eat.

Because Will was very hungry right now.