“It’s not too late to stop this,” Nate told the other boy, somewhat distractedly, as he sent the blades to his storage. From there, they were able to be taken out at a moment’s notice. It wasn’t something he really wanted to do, as it would be eye-catching, to say the least.

However, his life and protecting Angie and Lindsay were more important. He would deal with any potential questions their appearance generated later on if it came to that.

Of course, none of that would matter if he didn’t survive the coming fight. What Jace had said was, unfortunately, true. He had forgotten all of his body’s prior training. The little he had managed recently could hardly compare to a properly trained cultivator.

The one thing he had going for him was that he had experienced death multiple times. He knew what his body could handle and what it couldn’t. There were very few people who knew what their true limits were, and he was one of them.

Jace straightened with a final grimace, his legs farther apart than they normally would have been. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pair of brass knuckles that he slipped onto his dominant hand.

“Hey!” Lindsay cried out. “That’s not fair. How come you get to be armed, and he doesn’t?”

“That sounds like his problem, not mine.” The other boy responded nastily. “If he wanted a weapon, then he should have made sure to always have one on him.”

Nate chuckled darkly at that, the last of his concerns about what he was about to do vanishing. “Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

The bully in front of him hesitated at that. The confidence in his voice sent clear warning bells through the reptilian part of his brain. Unfortunately, he couldn’t recognize what it was trying to tell him and continued on, regardless.

The four older cultivators pulled the two girls away, leaving the young men with plenty of room to fight. No one seemed worried about the call Angie had made, which Nate found curious, but he didn’t have the time to properly think about it.

Jace bent his legs and smirked as he bounded forward with his arm pulled back.

It was only because of his experience with the much faster beasts inside the dungeon that he was able to avoid the other boy. It was true that his cultivation level or realm was higher than his, along with his core grade being higher. Both items would normally give any competent cultivator enough of an advantage that they could wail on any lesser annoyance.

That was what everyone had been expecting to see.

In their minds, it was a near given that Jace would prevail and that Nate would end up in a bloody, broken heap. Except, they all forgot one key thing. While Jace had made fun of Nate for forgetting his training, the playboy hardly ever practiced himself. He depended on the strength and speed that the cultivating naturally gave him.

That meant against anyone skilled, he would lose. Even when he was forced to go outside the city on expeditions, he did as little as possible or only fought the weakest of beasts. He was your typical annoying rich kid who had let money become his entire identity. He had never had to work for anything more than getting someone into his bed.

Now it was all coming back to bite him in the butt as Nate danced around him, always evading his blows by just a hair.

It was a show that none of them had been expecting and was morally degrading to the rich boy who should have been better. Nate hadn’t even made a move to strike him or pull out the kukri blades from his storage yet.

There hadn’t been a need.

“This is the power you were so proud of?” Nate mocked, bending over backward and slipping under a sloppy haymaker punch. “It means nothing if you can’t even fight properly. Either Angie or Lindsay would have destroyed you already. That duel you wanted would have meant nothing after they beat you into the ground.”

Jace snarled at him, his face going red as he focused even more on what he was doing.

Nate met Angie’s eyes for a split second, who discreetly held up an uncertain three to four fingers. Even she wasn’t sure how much time they needed to take up before a rescue team arrived.

He was already fairly certain he could beat the other boy. Now he just needed to make sure he did it after enough time had passed. Extending any fight like that also made it exponentially more dangerous. The chances for random things to happen increased as a person grew more tired.

For a cultivator with an enhanced body, that was less of an issue. Which in this case meant it was mainly less of an issue for Jace, who had a high cultivation realm than Nate’s newly formed low-quality core.

It was going to be an endurance fight, where the main thing Nate had going for him was that he was only dodging and not fighting. It typically took more energy to punch and kick than it did to dodge. At least it did up until you got hit. One good hit could suck all the breath and associated energy from your body.

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Which is exactly what he was counting on to carry him through.

Jace snapped a kick at his head and Nate finally reacted by punching the side of the boy’s kneecap. While the leg was in the air, the punch had limited power against the moving leg. Still, the hasty punch was enough to keep him from putting any weight on it when he brought it back.

After that, he used a move that he had seen Anna use on someone else the other day. While Jace was distracted by the pain in his leg, he grabbed his head and slammed it into his knee. The big baby cried out in pain as blood blossomed from his face, gushing from his freshly broken nose.

The cultivators guarding the girls were less than impressed with their charge’s performance thus far. Jace had been giving a shameful showing in what should have been a fight that was overwhelmingly in his favor. He risked a glance at them as Nate stepped back and witnessed them unwilling to even meet his eyes.

It was the final straw that broke whatever fragile sense of self-importance he had built up within himself. In seconds, he went from considering himself above everyone to not even knowing where he belonged.

Everything that had been happening lately with Angie and Nate had led up to this one moment.

Jace slowly dropped his free hand, the other was keeping his nose from bleeding. “Let’s stop here.” He said softly in an oddly defeated and slightly nasally voice.

“Why? We’ve only just begun.”

“Because you’re right. I would have lost to Angie and Lindsay if I had dueled them, just like I’ll lose to you if this continues. I’m done. You three are free to go.” He sank to his knees and then simply sat on the cold ground with dull, near lifeless eyes.

The brief fight with Nate had managed to thoroughly break all his confidence.

Nate backed slowly away from him as the girls jerked their arms free from their captors. The group of cultivators wasn’t necessarily happy about it, but they had been trained to follow orders.

The three shared a look, and after Nate grabbed the duffel full of energy cores -their phones and wallets were stored in the front pocket- they made a beeline for the doors.

“What just happened?” Lindsay asked in a whisper as they ran away. “Is he thinking we’re just going to forgive him for forcing us to form our cores under such dangerous circumstances?”

“Well, I’m certainly not!” Nate snarled. “It may have turned out fine for the two of you, but my core is a piece of junk.” There was no way he was going to forget the boy ruining his second chance anytime soon. It was both this body’s second chance at forming a proper core, and his second chance at living a good life. Both of which looked as though they had been taken from him on a whim.

While Angie and Lindsay were distracted talking over the matter, he took the chance to remove their personal items and then store the duffel bag inside the wrist computer’s storage area.

“All I know is we need to get out of the area in case he changes his mind and comes after us,” Nate heard Angie say as he refocused on their conversation.

“Do you know how far out the rescue group is?”

She shook her head. “I was guessing earlier. I would have thought they would have been here by now, but I don’t hear anything.”

“This entire affair has been a mess. Why would our rescue be any different?” Lindsay pointed out as they ran down the street away from the warehouse.

“Well, since none of us know this part of the city, we need to remain on the main road, otherwise we’ll get lost,” Nate said from behind them.

“Urgh,” Angie shouted at the sky. “Explaining everything that happened is going to be such a headache.”

Lindsay nodded and quickly glanced back at Nate. “Yeah, we might not want to mention that he was the one who chose our cores. Getting lucky once is well, lucky. Three times though, is an ability that people would love to exploit. Creating your core in this manner does make it, and as a result, you stronger.”

He nodded; he was perfectly alright with them hiding his involvement in choosing the energy cores they had used.

“What did you do with the bag?” Lindsay asked, noticing his hands were empty.

“Is that them?” He pointed to several speeding cars that had just appeared in the distance, purposely avoiding her question.

Angie squinted and slowly nodded, her face paling as she turned to Lindsay. “They brought your family along.”

“Fudge.”

It was the closest Nate had heard the other girl come to actually cursing.

“They are not going to be happy! This is going to just be one more thing they can blame you for,” Lindsay continued sadly.

“Hopefully that isn’t the case. You were his target as well, not just her. He was always going to go after you, in other words.”

The faces of both girls brightened at his words.

“That’s right! They should be thankful that we were taken together instead of when we were alone. At least together we stood a chance of escaping. If I had been alone, there would have been almost no chance of that happening.”

Five large SUVs screeched to a stop in front of their group. Each of the doors was thrown open and armed people poured out to quickly create a perimeter around them.

Aden and Trissa, Angelica’s parents, were only a step behind them in exiting the closest SUV. Two other people that Nate had never met before came out directly behind them. He guessed they were Lindsay’s parents, which was mostly confirmed when they rushed directly to her.

In everyone’s rush, no one had thought to notify his parents that he was involved as well. He wasn’t even sure if they had their contact info, not that it was that hard for people like them to get. It was mainly a sign of the different circles they ran in.

Aden pulled his daughter into a hug before being shoved aside by his wife so she could inspect Angie to make sure she was fine. Angie rolled her eyes and put up with being manhandled by her mother. Nearby, Lindsay was getting the same treatment from her mother.

Aden turned to Nate. “What happened?”

He swallowed, nervous at having the man’s focus on him so completely. “It was Jace and four cultivators he had hired to capture us. He had apparently heard that Lindsay and Angie were going to create their cores next week. He forced us to create our cores inside a warehouse using energy cores, and then he was going to duel the girls while they were still relatively weak.”

“But?” Lindsay’s dad interjected, sensing there was more to the story.

“He was weak himself. He fought me first and lost so completely that it destroyed his confidence.” Nate finished simply, leaving out pretty much everything that had happened in between.

The two men stared at him and blinked in unison. “Righhttt. So, what really happened?”

“That is what happened, daddy,” Lindsay said in exasperation.