I gripped my sword, knuckles tightening on the blade’s handle.

“Do we — ”

Before I could finish asking, Poppy was already sprinting toward the dungeon.

Eros looked at me and shrugged before jogging behind her.

Despite the armor she wore, Poppy was fast, shooting ahead of us. With my cultivation circling, I raced to catch up, my legs carrying me like the wind as we shot into the hallway.

The first hallway we shot into was dark. Rocks crumbled into rubble as we stomped through the dilapidated hall. When we stepped through the next doorway, I faltered.

A stone golem clutched Annabelle’s neck. Expressionless eyes carved of stone stared into Annabelle’s own, tears and spit mixing on her face.

[Beware! You have entered a dungeon.]

Enchanted stones shone white light onto a sterile, undamaged room. In the center, there was an arena, the entire floor spirit sand. Seats surrounded arena, pressed into the edges of the room. Empty weapon racks stoo dat the side.

“Anna!” Poppy screamed as she flew into the arena.

The golem at the center threw Annabelle away, sending her crashing into the wall and sliding down to the floor. Then it, ever so slowly, began to move through a martial arts form to meet Poppy.

“Wait!” I said. There was qi circulating in the air, being pulled into the golem. It was enchanted with a spirit. And I couldn’t sense any killing intent in it.

It was too late to stop Poppy, though. She swung a metal gauntlet into the side of the golem. There was a scraping noise as her metal fist slid harmless off the golem. Then it stopped moving slowly, kicking her away.

The golem locked eyes with me.

Annabelle was rising to her feet, coughing in the side of the room, and Poppy was already up. Eros notched an arrow behind me.

“Everyone STOP!” I said, pulling qi through my throat to enhance my voice. It echoed in the room.

Everyone stopped moving.

I stared at the golem.

[Stone Teacher, Level ???]

It, too, had stopped, though it maintained eye contact with me. It began to repeat the slow motions of its form, as it had for Poppy.

Now this? This I was familiar with. Only by way of rumor and news from more inland the continent; this was the kind of instruction I would expect from an array.

Slowly, I stepped into the sand arena. The spirit-sand acted like a conduit, nearly overwhelming my senses as I stretched out my perception of qi. I could see the patterns the golem used when circulating through its artificial meridians.

I knew exactly what this was. It was a training exercise; one where you were meant to copy the movements of the practice dummy. Forcing myself through the overwhelming perception of all the qi above the spirit-sand, I focused purely on copying the golem’s approach.

It took an intense effort to copy the things qi, but I followed it through the motions, mirroring it as it slowly pushed forward. Our knuckles met in slow motion.

“What… the hell are you doing?” Eros asked me.

I glanced to the side. Poppy was checking on Annabelle, while Eros was still holding an arrow notched in his bow.

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“It’s an instructor. Look at it’s name. It’s supposed to teach us a skill.” I said.

The golem dropped its arms. It’s eyes glowed green for a moment. Then, with a sound of grinding stone, it’s mouth started to open. The only noise that emerged from its distorting mouth was stone grinding on stone. Instead, letters began to appear in midair.

[Feng Sai, you’ve done well to come here.]

The golem smiled. Then the light faded from its eyes and its face returned to neutral.

The golem repeated the form faster. I copied it. Our fists met with a light tap.

“I’m going to shoot it.” Eros said.

“No — don’t — ”

The arrow bounced off the side of the golem’s face. It swung an arm, launching me out of the sand arena and sending me rolling across the floor. Half a second later, Eros grunted as well as the golem swept his legs out from under him before stomping on his bow.

Then it returned to the center of the sand arena, waiting.

I coughed on the ground, then pushed myself up to my feet.

“You can’t attack it.” I said, gritting my teeth and forcing the words out. I could feel the bruise forming over my ribs. “We have to mirror it’s lesson.”

“I got it.” Poppy said, stepping into the arena. She prepared herself, lifting her arms.

“You can’t!” I said. There was no way these people were skilled enough to copy its cultivation technique.

I held back a breath as Poppy began mirroring the motions of the statue. Everything was going well as she repeated the motions. Then their knuckles met.

The golem slapped Poppy, sending her sailing across the arena. She slid across the tile floor.

Before anyone else got another stupid idea, I stepped back into the sandy arena.

“Let me. It’s using a…” What did they think I was? A monk? Their identify skills seemed unable to identify me. But I also didn’t have a title like Rogue. “Only my skills can do this. I can do this.”

The golem moved with me through the form as slow as possible the first time. Then faster, and faster, and faster.

On the fifth demonstration of the form the golem was instructing, it was fast enough to be a real punch, but when our fists met again, there was no physical resistance. Instead, my qi poured out of my meridians like a river. I gasped at the shock of it. My qi was a mix of darkness and wind elements; but it was entirely the darkness that was ripped away, flooding into the statue and spreading black cracks along its length.

The statue smiled again as it crumbled away into dust. What was left in my meridians was ice cold, a howling gale raging inside me.

[New Skill: Anti-Light Martial Art Style(Incomplete, 1/36 forms)] [WIL +1]

[Void Fist, The first Anti-Light form. This technique floods your target with Void Qi until they implode.]

I fell to the sand. It was warm on my hands as I grasped at it, panting. The qi raging inside me was imbalanced, threatening to spill out. When the dust that remained of the statue hit the glowing white spirit-sand, blackness spread through it like a sickness. I recognized it immediately — it was Darkness attributed qi. But the system had called it void qi.

I still didn’t hesitate to draw it in. The now blackened light pouring off the sand began to fade as I drank the power around me, my enhanced Willpower presumably making the process as easy as drinking water. It felt like I was drinking a river of power. Like shining a flashlight into a darkened room, the black aura left the sand and flowed into me, leaving nothing behind.

My meridians still weren’t full. I felt sweat trickle down my face.

Enraptured by the forms and the slowly accelerating movements, I hadn’t realized how far the technique had pushed me. But now wasn’t the time to stay on the ground. I pushed myself up and turned to where poppy had been thrown across the room.

She was standing now, staring at me with a pale face. Annabelle was rubbing her throat, which was red from the golem’s grip.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“What was that?” Eros fired back before I could reply, stomping up to me from behind.

I turned to him then to the sand in the bottom of the arena. It was ordinary now, no longer aglow with the light of the qi that had filled it previously.

“It looks like a legacy someone left behind to teach their… skills.” I said. “I’ve heard of mazes like these but never seen one. I didn’t expect one here.”

“Not that — you — you blew that thing up?” Eros asked. “My arrows didn’t even scratch it, but one punch and it collapsed in on itself.”

I looked at my own hands. My knuckles were bloody from punching into stone. I hadn’t noticed the pain.

“It gave me a new skill.” I said, staring at the semi-transparent prompt hovering before me.

“I… I got it too.” Poppy said.

My head snapped towards her.

“Mine is… Void Fist. Did you get the same?”

“Yes.” She said. “It says its an incomplete martial art? But I don’t have enough mana to cast it.”

“Mine says the same.” I said.

The system had given her a martial art. And to an extent, all martial arts were cultivation techniques. If you simply repeated the same form over and over, even if you couldn’t hold the qi inside of yourself, you would eventually open your meridians and begin to at least partially cultivate. Had the system just handed her cultivation?

Anything could be possible if this was just a projection.

There was just one issue.

“What’s mana?” I asked, stepping over to the wall and sliding down against it. “And also, do you have any water?”