The nice thing about prodigies, Travis mused, staring down at the unconscious cultivator, was that they weren't used to being punched in the face.

In the beginning, the fight had started slowly, as most such conflicts did. Each of the three sect cultivators had spread out at his return, spouting more insults as they surrounded him.

As if he'd somehow run away after returning to face them. Though it was, perhaps, a sensible strategy for fighting a weaker enemy, ensuring they couldn't get away.

A year ago, when his martial arts were only solid, he would have been in trouble. Back before he'd become a probationary agent; before he'd been trained by Susan Sinclair.

The Sinclair Associate style, the version they were allowed to teach outside the clan, had a simple solution for situations like this: When outnumbered, attack.

It seemed counterintuitive as if you should be bracing yourself to defend with your full ability. Yet defense would only protect you for so long.

You might remain unhurt for a while, but they would whittle you down in the end. The only way to come out on top when facing superior numbers was to make them less superior at the first opportunity.

Which turned out to be the instant the fight started. As the three cultivators glanced at each other to synchronize their timing, Travis lunged for the one on the left.

His target had been the one to speak the least, only throwing a few insults at the end. With cultivator hierarchies, that usually meant he was the weakest.

With the Whipping Branch movement technique propelling him forward, Travis’ right hook whipped around, catching his target right on the jaw.

It struck with a satisfying crack but wasn't nearly enough to take down a cultivator in the second stage of the Energy Gathering realm. The man reeled backward, bleeding off the strike's enery and using it to back peddle.

Travis stuck with him, unloading a brutal flurry of blows. Left, right, left again, then an uppercut. A dozen strikes in two seconds and the man fell, crashing to the ground before his friends had made it halfway over.

Which brought him back to his current situation. Three-on-one would have been an issue, even with his full stage of cultivation advancement.

Two-on-one, he could handle

----------------------------------------

Yep, that was Travis, all right. He’d have recognized those tiny, wire-rimmed glasses anywhere.

What he was doing getting involved in a fistfight all the way out here was another matter. Shouldn’t he have been back in the capital?

Had he mentioned something about checking in next week? Perhaps he’d visited, only to be caught up in some cultivator nonsense.

It seemed plausible, and there was no more time to think as the fight heated up.

As if angered at the fall of their comrade, the other two cultivators blurred into a synchronized attack.

Their style looked odd at first, full of slicing strikes with the outside of their hands and forearms, or inward kicks with the front of their shins.

But it all fell together once he’d seen them mix it up with a few straight punches or front kicks,

When devoid of their famous weapons, the Severing Sword cultivators became blades themselves. Their strange, swinging strikes were the slashing of the blade, the front blows the stab.

With an incredible display of agility, they flowed from motion to motion, building momentum as they whirled into a continuous pattern of strikes.

A whirlwind that Travis was clearly struggling to contain. In contrast to the two attackers, he stood still and solid, using the minimum amount of motion required to block each strike.

Blows were getting through, striking on his sides and back yet never at his vitals. Seeming unconcerned, he weathered the storm.

Until, after thirty seconds of punishment, he struck. As if noticing some unseen opening, he was on the man to the right in an instant, fist driving straight toward his face with blazing speed.

The cultivator danced backward, parrying the blow aside. That, it turned out, was a mistake.

Travis followed, sticking to the man with short bursts of motion as the fight was carried away from the second cultivator.

The first backpedaled even faster, his movements blurring beyond Kevin’s ability to see. For a moment, he looked like he’d escape and leave Travis open to his comrade's attack.

Then Travis crouched and exploded forward, launching with such force he cracked the concrete. A pair of crunches echoed throughout the courtyard; the first from the concrete, the second Travis’s double punch taking the man in the stomach.

With a choked exhale, the man folded over the agent’s fists, straight into a rising knee strike. Something snapped with a disturbing crack, and the man fell to the side, unmoving.

Travis’ face held a feral grin as he turned and stalked toward the other cultivator. Caught partway through a charge, the man stumbled to a stop, shuffling into a defensive stance as doubt flashed across his faintly Asian features.

Then the doubt vanished, shifting to grim determination as the cultivator readied himself to fight.

After that, both cultivators flared with visible energy auras and the battle grew too swift for Kevin to track,

He could only imagine that the sect cultivator had been holding back to keep pace with his comrade, given the speed he was moving at now.

However, even that paled to how Travis was moving. The agent was stronger and faster than his opponent, if perhaps a little less agile. Was this a difference in cultivation levels he was seeing?

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Once again, Kevin cursed his complete lack of any spiritual senses.

Impeccable skill met superior physical ability, and, for a while at least, held its ground. While the sect cultivator moved back with every exchange, he held off Travis’ more straightforward strikes with a dazzling array of blocks, parries, and dodges.

For several minutes, the battle continued until Travis began to get the upper hand, his opponent slowing. Blows began to get through; at first, blocked by flashes of gray energy then striking against flesh.

Even then, the third cultivator did better than his fellows, taking almost a dozen strikes before a brutal right took him down.

Leaving Travis standing tall above his fallen enemies, a smirk on his face. With glasses askew and bloody fists, the man looked nothing like the fussy bureaucrat Kevin was familiar with.

Then the moment passed as the agent pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve, wiped the blood away, and righted his glasses. The last thing to go was the smirk, but eventually even that returned to the man’s usual smile.

Despite that, Kevin couldn’t relax. Looking past the site of the battle, it looked like half the town had shown up to witness it. The edges of the landing area were packed with people.

While none of them could be considered true cultivators, from what he'd learned, the town's average advancement was well into the Body Cleansing realm. That might not be impressive for someone in their thirties or forties, but it would be a hell of a horde attack if they rioted.

Somehow, Kevin doubted the agent would be as effective against thirty people as he had been against three. Even if their strength would be a lot lower.

If that happened, there would be nothing he could do to help, despite how much he owed the other man.

As if to defy his expectations, the onlookers swarmed forward in a wave, roaring not in anger, but in excitement. Within moments, they’d surrounded the agent, cheering and praising in turn.

He’d never understand this place.

----------------------------------------

In a doze, Kevin walked forward, trying to make sense of the situation. He was tall enough to see above much of the crowd, but even then nothing made sense.

The inner circle around Travis seemed to be made of younger men patting him on the back and young women hanging off him. Kevin even thought he heard someone praising the agent for defeating the ‘evil sect cultivators.’

Didn’t the Severing Sword sect have a lot of respect around here? Either that wasn’t nearly as universal as he’d been told, or something else was going on here.

As he grew closer, he put together what felt so odd. The entire display was massively overdone as if everyone was intentionally hamming it up.

The vibe was more like a big game than anything else. Or perhaps a play about the heroic wandering cultivator solving the downtrodden town’s problems.

Even the women flirting with Travis were overdoing it, making it a game of one-upping each other. Vanessa was among them, seeming just as into it as the rest.

She was on the other side of Travis, looking in Kevin’s direction, so he did his best to get her attention. After a few moments of waving, he saw recognition cross her face.

Another gesture towards himself brought a pout, but she eventually pushed through the crowd. “Hey Kevin, what’s up?” Vanessa said, her voice distracted.

“What the hell is going on here?” Kevin asked. It was the kind of question he wanted to whisper, yet the noise level forced him to almost shout.

“Just a bit of fun,” Vanessa responded with a shrug. “We don’t often get city hunks out here. I’d better get back to it,” she finished, turning away.

Travis was a ‘hunk’ now? “Wait. Wait,” Kevin said, an idea flashing into his head. “I know that guy, he’s almost certainly here to see me. I’ll introduce you if you just explain what’s going on.”

“Shouldn’t you all be annoyed he took out the Severing Sword?”

“Right,” Vanessa responded, dragging her attention back toward him. “Well, it’s like this. The Severing Sword’s our sect, and they do have a lot of respect, but sometimes their disciples come down and cause trouble.”

“Now that’s normal, and even draws quite a bit of tourism, but it still gets annoying. So a lot of people like seeing some of the troublemakers take a bit of beating.”

Vanessa paused, staring away with a considering look. “But it’s more than that too, I guess. It’s a good story, right? The wandering hero comes in and takes out the bad guys. Shouldn’t he be rewarded then?”

“I mean, if he’d lost, we’d been cheering on the sect cultivators for taking out the evil outsider, so it all balances out,” she finished with a shrug. “So you’ll introduce me then?”

“Yeah, just let me try to get his attention,” Kevin responded, new ideas whirling through his mind.

If he thought of this as some kind of impromptu cultural festival celebrating cultivator archetypes, then it made a lot more sense. As Vanessa said, it was a great story, not something personal.

In that way, it wasn’t so different from the energy at a sports game, or perhaps a boxing match. The strange part was seeing it applied to a random street fight rather than something official.

But given what he'd learned about this world so far, that might not be so unusual here. With cultivators getting into duels or battles all over the place, people might well take excitement wherever they could get it.

Or perhaps they just liked competition that much.

Vanessa opened her mouth to respond, but closed it, glancing towards the group with a calculating eye. When she spoke, it was in a rush.

“No, do it later at Giano’s. I’ve got so much more time to get ready with a guaranteed introduction. See you later, Kevin, don’t forget,” she finished, hurrying off before he could respond, or even say goodbye.

“Yeah,” Kevin said weakly, shaking his head. She seemed really into it, they all did. Even the older members of the town present, who he'd have expected to disapprovingly at a street fight, were cheering and making merry with the rest.

He heard more than a few, “good riddance,” and, “got what was coming to them,” comments going around as well. Yet all of them were spoken with an undertone of amusement as if they didn’t really mean it.

Perhaps the sect cultivators would be back to being the heroes of the town next week, once all this had died down. It was strange, but it was something he could learn and adapt to.

Such knowledge would be important if he ended up joining a sect. If nothing else, the sect cultivators had shown the most important lesson: don’t go losing fights in front of a bunch of people.

And speaking of lessons, it seemed the agent was a far better cultivator than Kevin had ever given him credit for. Perhaps the man would have some advice for his current predicament.

He just needed to get Travis away from his temporary fans first.

----------------------------------------

In the end, getting through the crowd hadn’t been that difficult. The outermost, less enthusiastic, people had been happy to let him through, and as he got closer, Travis called out a greeting.

That got him through quickly once people realized he was a friend of the ‘hero.’

“Kevin, excellent, I was on my way to look for you,” Travis said, not even having the decency to look embarrassed as he stood there with a woman hanging off each arm.

“I’m here for the checkup I mentioned,” the agent finished.

“I remembered that part,” Kevin laughed, shaking his head at the man. “But not the bit about you punching out a bunch of sect disciples.”

That, at least, got a flush out of the man, though it led to a fresh round of cheering. “Well, that just kind of happened,” Travis said with a weak shrug. “They were being obnoxious, and in the end, I couldn’t stand it.”

Another round of cheering; they needed to get out of this crowd if they were going to have a decent talk. “Well we’d better get to it then,” Kevin said, jerking his head towards his apartment.

“Don’t worry everyone, I’ll have him back for the celebration at Giano’s,” he continued in a raised voice. Wasn’t Giano’s the restaurant that had the cultivator fight on Sunday?

Well, if those three had been part of the trouble then he could see the owner wanting to celebrate their downfall.

It seemed he’d picked up the right thing to say from Vanessa, as the crowd began to disperse. Though not without many promises from Travis to retell the story later, and to see several women again.

Vanessa would have her work cut out for her if she was serious.

“Sorry about that,” Travis sighed as they escaped down a side street. “These country towns are more enthusiastic than I’m used to in the city.”

“Tell me about it,” Kevin laughed in response. “And what about poor Susan? What’s she going to think about all these women falling all over for you.”

Travis flushed, shaking his head. “It’s not like they. Their just after a bit of excitement and fun. I wasn’t even planning on staying the night.”

Forcing himself to not tease the man about the implicit implication he was planning on staying the night now, Kevin turned serious.

“I need your advice on a little cultivation issue.”