"As strength begets hubris, so hubris begets folly. Yet it takes both the strength and hubris of one to prove the folly of another. And thus are we all made fools."
- Saa'færuun the Enlightened
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Eden Floor 1 | The road to Weir:
As we headed back to Weir, we saw something interesting, or rather the lack of something.
"Huh, where's Grumpy Tiger?" Ars asks, stopping to look around for any sight of the man who'd stood like a monument on the road to Weir this past week.
"Maybe he had to pee," Lexi offers with a shrug, also glancing around for any sign of the big man.
Amelia pushes past the two, "frankly I don't care where he went, I just want a bath. I feel gross after being out in the woods all day."
I look around for a moment before also shrugging and following after Amelia and Kuro. Maybe the girl who captured the other two kidnappers had been the person Grumpy Tiger had been waiting for? Maybe unlikely, but you never know.
We all continued on the rest of the way to Weir without anything of note happening, until upon our arrival a man called out to us.
"I'll take those off your hands," a professional looking man I don't recognize steps in front of us as we enter Weir. From his directed gaze it's clear that he's referring to the captives that Kuro had been dragging along up to this point.
"And who are you?" Amelia crosses her arms and gives the man a glare for impeding our path.
"I am an attendant to the Floor Ascendant. I've been tasked with retrieving these Seekers, the other two have already been placed in my care by the one who came ahead of you," the man patiently responds, looking unimpressed at Amelia.
Amelia seems like she wants to argue with the man on principle, but after a few moments of hesitation I guess she decides she doesn't actually care what happens to the kidnappers. She gestures to Kuro, "Kuro, release them."
Kuro drags the four incapacitated men forwards, then unceremoniously drops them in front of the waiting attendant. The man gives us a small bow before taking up the rope binding the kidnappers together and dragging them off across the courtyard. My companions and I turn to one another, sharing looks and a few shrugs before we continue on our way.
"Well I guess that's that then," Ars says with one last glance over his shoulder at the retreating man.
We hop into a nearby lift that leads up towards one of the higher platforms and also in the direction of the housing platforms. As the ambient light dims with the rapidly setting sun, the town is set aglow with soothing light that emits from multitudes of crystals set into the various paths and walkways traversing Weir. We all bask in silence for a moment as we look down upon the town while the lift carries us upwards, letting the trials of the day fade away until the lift comes to a stop at it's destination.
"Do you guys wanna grab dinner?" Lexi turns and asks as we step off the lift.
"I'm game," Ars cheerily replies, stretching his arms above him as he comes to a stop behind Lexi.
"I think I'll pass. As I said, I want a bath more than anything else after hiking through the woods all day," Amelia turns the invite down, leaving Lexi to look imploringly at me.
"Sure, I could eat. Just something simple though," I turn back to Amelia, "want us to bring you anything afterwards?"
She shakes her head in response, "I'll just send Kuro to pick me up something once I've washed up."
"Well in that case, I guess we'll see you tomorrow. Have a goodnight Amelia," I wave goodbye to her.
"Enjoy your evening," she waves back and Kuro gives a wave as well. After Ars and Lexi both say their farewells, they turn and continue on in the direction towards the housing platforms.
"So did you have something in mind?" I ask Lexi once Amelia and Kuro round the bend.
Ars perks up at the question, "I could go for some pasta, or just anything with a lot of meat honestly!"
"U-um, I was thinking about going to this sandwich place if that's alright with you Sola?" Lexi answers my question with a question.
I nod my agreement at the idea, and Ars begrudgingly agrees to the idea as well after Lexi lists off some of the menu.
With our minds made up, Lexi leads us to one of the lower platforms which stands out over the edge of the lake, we pass a handful of Seekers going about their business on the way but no one tries to challenge us thankfully. Not that it's a huge inconvenience to be challenged, but being interrupted while you're going about your business gets annoying.
As we arrive at the sandwich shop our gazes are drawn to a lone girl out on the lake, she stands like a work of art atop the moon's reflection, surrounded by the stars, her gaze is locked upwards on the rising moon.
"Have either of you seen her before?" I lean over and ask my two companions.
Lexi shakes her head, "no, I think she's new?"
"She stands out too much to be someone who isn't new. I may not pay attention to every new Seeker, but I've still kept note of the ones that stood out," Ars answers confidently.
"You mean the pretty ones?" I tease him with a nudge of my elbow causing him to yelp.
"H-hey! It's not my fault, strength and beauty often go hand in hand in Eden."
I laugh as he defends himself, maybe he had a point though. The Seekers that felt stronger to me did tend to be more eye catching, though it was kind of a pedantic argument on whether it was their strength that made them more attractive or if they were strong because they were more attractive.
We continued making small talk over little things and just winding down and enjoying ourselves over dinner before we headed back to our rooms for the night. The sandwiches were pretty good and we all agreed to go again with Amelia sometime.
-o-o-o-
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
The next morning, Lexi decided to tag along with Ars and I to complete the daily Striking Dummy challenge, then as usual we'd meet up with Amelia before setting out for the day.
As we arrived at the challenge location however, we were surprised to see who was currently standing in the glass room with the Striking Dummy.
"It's Grumpy Tiger!" Ars shouts enthusiastically at seeing the man again.
"It's also that girl we saw last night on the lake," I motion towards the beautiful girl standing gracefully off to the side.
"Do you think she's the person he'd been waiting for this whole time?" Lexi ponders as we walk up towards the room.
There's a small crowd gathered to witness Grumpy Tiger, his appearance in Weir drawing plenty of attention since everyone had seen him keeping vigil out on the road this past week. I'm sure many can't help but be curious about the mans strength, myself included. I had a feeling he wouldn't do what most of us had been doing up until this point and just beating the previous score by a small margin though. He didn't seem the type to show much restraint.
"You may begin Zhou," the eye-catching girl suddenly says, confirming Lexi's suspicions that they knew each other.
Grumpy Tiger, who I guess is actually called Zhou, turns and bows to her, "Yes Lady Xingkong."
Several sharp intakes of breath follow his statement as the surrounding Seekers look warily at the girl and whisper amongst themselves about the girls identity.
"Xingkong, didn't you say that was-?" I start to ask Ars.
"-the family whose patriarch is the standard for how much damage has been dealt to the striking dummy? Yeah. Grumpy Tiger is probably a servant to the family, and she's probably a Scion of the family." Ars explains, then points at the girls distinct hanfu before continuing in a lower voice, "see how they both have the matching golden flowers on the black parts of their clothes, like little stars? Those are kind of like an unofficial symbol of the Xingkong family, I just hadn't connected the dots from seeing him out on the road before."
I nod, looking at the girl. She's striking to say the least, straight black hair, pale unblemished skin, and vivid red eyes, she stands several inches taller than I am, with an aloof expression like some sort of beautiful fox spirit. A beautiful red flower is pinned in her hair by a sword shaped piece of jade, her flowing hanfu matches the red of the flower around her shoulders before it trails down to a midnight black, patterned with the same golden flowers that mark Zhou's pants. Long flowing sleeves trail along in the faint morning breeze blowing through Weir, giving her an almost ethereal quality.
A sudden stirring of power from within the striking dummy room draws my attention back onto Zhou where he's taken a simple horse stance in front of the dummy and is coalescing power into his left fist. After a few more moments of condensing his energy and controlling his breathing, he lets out a yell as he throws a simple innocuous looking punch at the striking dummy. The impact looks neither heavy nor light, it causes no loud sound from his fist colliding with the dummy, the dummy barely trembles from the impact, but I swear I can see the glass walls of the room bulge ever so slightly as if from some great force detonating within the room. And a moment later when Zhou relaxes his stance, bringing both hands down in front of his chest and exhaling, the Seekers watching outside let out cries of shock and disbelief. The number floating above the striking dummy shows 1587.
"Not bad Zhou-" the Xingkong girl tells him as he exits the room.
"Thank you Lady Xingkong," Zhou bows back at her praise before stiffening at the criticizing look in her eyes.
"-But too much of the energy from your blow is leaking out into the surroundings. You should've been able to break 2000 if you properly controlled the force of your blow," she finishes, chastising him and causing even more exclamations from the surrounding Seekers.
"2000?!"
"How is that possible in just one hit??"
"C'mon we'd been keeping the score low all this time and you just had to go and ruin it!"
"I barely beat it when it was below 200, what am I supposed to do now?"
Various cries of shock and dismay and anger come from all around, but neither Zhou nor the Xingkong girl pay them any heed, and no one is willing to do more than voice their complaints.
"I know that it comes harder to you with your weaker bloodline but watch me and I will show you the proper way of using the Dispersal Fist," the girl steps into the Striking Dummy room.
Zhou once again bows and thanks the girl before she continues speaking.
"First we condense our internal energy, into our fist, or palm-" She pauses and I feel the energy beginning to coalesce into her palm, though instead of taking Zhou's horse stance, she instead stands casually in front of the Striking Dummy.
"When mastered, the movement of the strike itself does not matter, all of the force has already been gathered so there's no need to perform any heavy strikes. All that's needed is contact with the target." She places a delicate palm onto the chest of the striking dummy, much like how I'd been completing the challenge up til now, though I could tell from Zhou's strike earlier that their "Dispersal Fist" as she called it is much different than what I'd been doing. This was a proper technique, unlike my actions of simply releasing my internal energy and using to to pressure the Striking Dummy, this was something more refined.
"Last, we must control the gathered energy to disperse only as far as we desire it before letting it go, in this case no further than the Striking Dummy itself." With a small yell she releases the gathered energy in her hand and nothing else seems to happen, there's no indication at all that she's just attacked the target, but looking to the floating numbers above tells a different story. Now, instead of the previous 1587 sits a 2966.
While all the Seekers stand shocked to silence, I turn to Ars and whisper a question, "so is that not considered an Authority? What she just did was way more complex than what I've been doing."
Ars is startled from where he'd been staring on in awe, "Yeah but you're able to push your power out and then still control it, she's controlling it and then pushing it out. Authorities actively affect the world around us, which is different than her technique. Her Dispersal Fist may seem more difficult or complex from your perspective, but to her, what you're doing would be impossible."
"Hmm-" I wondered if I could mimic her attack somehow, but first, "-so are you two still gonna attempt the challenge?"
"I may not be able to do that much damage in a single attack, but in sixty seconds? Her score is easily beatable," Ars answers confidently and Lexi nods her agreement as well.
I smile behind my mask at the two of them, "good! then I'll go after the two of you if that's alright, I want to try something."
Ars looks at me as if wondering what I'm up to before he leaves our side to go up to the entryway, stopping cheekily in front of the two Xingkong family members, "mind if I go next Grumpy Tiger, Miss Xingkong?"
Zhou refuses to even acknowledge Ars, and for a moment the girl seems almost amused at the nickname but then her face hardens, "I hope you're not insulting our Xingkong family."
"Ahaha, I would never," Ars awkwardly tries to laugh off the girls insinuation.
She turns up her nose and walks past Ars, "I thought not. Lets go Zhou! I'm tired of wasting my time amongst fools."
"Yes Lady Xingkong," Zhou promptly responds and follows after his lady, turning and giving a glare at Ars, leaving him to stand there awkwardly.
I wasn't sure if I liked these two, obviously they had some strength to back up their egos but even Amelia hadn't been so haughty. I'm not the type to just stand by when I see something I dislike so I step in front of the two as they move to leave, earning a glare from Zhou as I block their path.
"I'd like to challenge you," I say with a pleasant tone while looking at the Xingkong girl.
"You dare!" Zhou exclaims, his face twisting in anger at the idea that someone would dare challenge his lady.
"Hahaha, and why wouldn't I dare?" I laugh as he bristles in anger, "your lady only just arrived, there's likely no one here who lacks the stats to beat her."
Zhou glares around imperiously at the surrounding Seekers, "you would make enemies of our Xingkong family?"
Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the Seekers refuse to meet his gaze, clearly not willing to offend them. But then with a smile the Xingkong girl places her hand on Zhou's arm, stopping him from speaking further.
She then speaks up elegantly, "how about this, if you beat this young miss's score on the striking dummy in less than thirty seconds, I will accept your challenge without complaint. Naturally this goes for everyone else as well, our Xingkong family respects strength above all else after all-"
She takes a breath and looks coldly back to me before continuing, "-those who don't have strength however, should be careful lest they bite off more than they can chew."
She was clearly trying to threaten me, not that I really cared, but I was open to playing along with her game and shattering some of that confidence of hers. "Haha, respects strength above all else, yet you hide behind the name of your family-" I mock her, and to my surprise she actually looks chagrined, clearly she recognizes their hypocrisy and isn't proud of it. So why this act then? Something to think about later I supposed.
"-but fine then. Go ahead Ars," I gesture Ars forward, who looks a little nervous for a moment but in the end he gives in to his natural competitiveness and heads into the challenge room. I was confident that he could beat her score in thirty seconds or less, his Byun gave him a pretty huge advantage in this challenge. I wasn't as sure about Lexi, but looking over and seeing the determined look on her face, I decided to believe in her as well.