“Brilliant Lance of Absolution!”

The brilliant beam of condensed spirit leapt from the eleven-year old’s open palm. Shot out with malicious glee, on a one-way trip towards Jun’s unprotected chest.

You see, this is why I hate kids, Jun thought to himself. You give them all they could ever want for, and what do you get in return? A spirit beam straight through the heart, that’s what! I mean, c’mon! Talk about ungrateful…

There was something decidedly hopeful about having nowhere to go but up. When the sky was the limit, and one’s room for improvement was unbelievably vast.

Okay, so, in his stepbrother’s defense, it wasn’t as if things were all bad. Sure, the brat’s technique might’ve been a bit on the… thinner side, but it was still plenty bright and… uh, lance-y? In that way, at least someone got the name right.

Right?

Okay, so absolution seemed like a bit of a stretch, but to each their own Jun supposed. It was only that the thirty or so seconds it’d taken for the little monster to finally unleash his ultimate technique—in which they just sort of… stared at one another? It wasn't exactly what he'd call “intimidating.”

In fact, if it weren’t for his being held in such a loving embrace—if by loving he of course meant rough, and by embrace he’d meant manhandling—it would have been simplicity itself to make his way over there and… well. Do what, he wasn’t entirely sure. But whatever it might’ve been, he’d have had plenty of time in which to decide.

As it stood, he hadn't even had the chance to take a single step before-!

Holy mother of mercy that thing is fast!

The beam hit Jun just below the solar plexus, burrowed a shallow hole there to the sounds of burning flesh, then dispersed, with a bright flash and a harsh snap, into a cloud of blinding white sparks.

Naturally, as one does when placed in such an untenable position, he screamed. He howled. He kicked and he swore. He put words to his agony until his throat was rubbed raw. Until large, fat tears and globules of snot were dribbling down his face to conjoin at his chin.

Now, of course, it wasn’t as if he needed to do any of this.

It was just that he'd found theatrics expedited the process by quite a bit. And, while sure, it did hurt—every heartbeat sending a jolt of agony through the shallow hole in his chest—in all honesty, he was pretty used to this kind of abuse by now. If anything, he disdained the need for all this melodrama.

The thespian in his soul veritably wept.

But, hey, if the cruel smiles and laughter were of any indication, at least his performance wasn’t going under appreciated.

In reality, this back and forth was almost mundane at this point. For better or worse, he thought of it as just another part of his daily routine. One he didn’t particularly enjoy overly much, yet failed to find a way to excise altogether.

A lot like flossing in a way.

Or, for that matter, dealing with those damnable merchant princes without giving into temptation, and tearing his own hair out by the roots.

Seriously, of all the nine hellish realms, he had to imagine there was a special kind of residence reserved for those puffed up, pompous, profligate pontificators. Those insufferable loose pants wearing pricks.

Them, their sycophantic entourages, and the bevy of severely overpaid, wildly under-qualified, chronically incompetent retainers tasked—at some point in the distant distant past—with the ever-elusive concept of “raising” them!

… or… no.

Perhaps that wasn’t being entirely fair. They probably did their best… for whatever that was worth. Most likely it was just the fact that some were merely born rotten. And that nurture could, ultimately, only do so much. Actually, speaking of which…?

Oh yeah. That was right! He was supposed to be being tortured wasn’t he? Tortured. Tormented. Something along those lines. Awkward of him to let something like that slip his mind. Much like that fleeting twig of a lance, his theatrics had petered off somewhat abruptly. Jun’s heart skipped a beat when he noticed the looks of confusion on his stepbrothers’ faces.

While they were usually each as thick and slow as tree sap in winter, even they might start to get suspicious if given enough prompting. It was why he, generally, tried to keep consistent with his pretenses. He had certain appearances to maintain after all. Thinking fast, he decided to fall back on something basic. Something old and reliable.

No need for anything fancy…

Jun slumped bonelessly into his stepbrothers' arms as if suddenly faint. Then, without raising his head, said in the weakest voice he could manage.

“It hurts…! P-please. No more. Aren’t we supposed to be family?”

Aaand hook, line, and sinker. Seriously, had he picked the wrong career?

Because, I mean, that was good, right? Like, really really good.

The cadence. The presence. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions or anything, but was he actually a natural? Like clockwork, the stupid grins reappeared on their stupid faces. No doubt, even now, any misgivings were floating up and away on the winds that rattled around their tiny excuses for brains. One of his stepbrothers chuckled, a nasally, hiccuping sound.

“Not likely,” he snorted. “Cedric hasn’t even gotten to use his striker technique yet. Been looking forward to seeing that all week.”

The tall boy on his left, Cedric, the senior nitwit of their merry little band, threw his head back—shifting the long curtain of golden blond hair out of his eyes. Jun definitely couldn’t see a time in which that might prove a liability.

Seriously, why weren’t all cultivators bald?

Jun sure knew the first thing he’d do when facing off against ‘Honorable Sir. Hair that billow’s gently in the autumn breeze,’ is grab two good fist-fulls of those luscious locks, and swing them around until either their follicles failed, or his arms did.

“Great Aunt Agatha says I'm not allowed to practice on the servants anymore. Not since that little waif had to go and die on us,” the older boy scoffed. “I swear, I wasn’t even giving it my all, she just up and collapsed out of nowhere. Mother says it was a weakness of the mind probably,” he gave a dramatic sigh. “No matter. I suppose you'll just have to do as our sorry little replacement. Let's just hope you last longer than she did.”

The boy grinned maliciously in what Jun supposed was meant to be a threatening manner. It was slightly undermined by the fact that he had to repeatedly flick his hair out of his face in order to maintain eye contact.

Jun’s already poor mood instantly soured.

She’d been a shy girl, from what he recalled. Liked to keep to herself mostly. That being said, they’d spoken polite words on more than one occasion. And the simple fact that she’d deigned to speak to him of all people practically spoke volumes of her character.

“Yeah! And if it killed her, just think what it’ll do to you and your weak, dumb, stupid weakling body? Prolly break you in half, prolly!” the little demon chimed in helpfully.

Ah. How eloquent. The heights of nobility. The future of their branch was in very good hands. The eldest glared balefully at the youngest.

“That was implied, idiot.”

“What? But you didn't say-?“

“Yes, because I didn't have to! Are you an invalid, or are you just that stupid? Uncle Darren explained it to us just this morning. When you want to threaten someone effectively you don't outright tell them what you're going to do. You let them stew. Come up with their own things that are probably way worse, and then you do that. Were you even listening Caspian?”

The one to Jun’s left chuckled.

“Probably too busy stuffing his face full of pastries,” he said, every hiccuping guffaw accompanied by the jiggle of multiple chins.

“But…? But..! You’re still just gonna punch him, right?”

“Well of course I’m just going to fucking punch him! It was implied you-!” he paused, and then sighed—massaging at his temples. “You know what? Never mind, just get over here and hold him steady.”

The young lad, no doubt only trying to imitate his idols, looked positively crestfallen as he slowly trudged towards Jun. As he passed, Cedric gave the boy a hard slap to the back of the head for good measure. And the teary-eyed look of hurt on the boy's face was… absolutely priceless.

But! He was ever the professional.

He’d had plenty of practice over the years of showing none of the elation he felt in moments like these, and so kept his face carefully blank—eyes slightly averted.

That didn't, however, stop the little brat from projecting all his pent up hurt and frustration onto him with a wicked glare. Though, to be fair, he honestly hadn't expected it to. Damage control, that was the name of the game here. Because there was a big difference between years of irrational resentment, and well-earned animosity.

Well, the difference wasn't huge, but it had to be something right? Surely, he wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night, only to find a knife somewhere it shouldn’t be, and that same petulant glare glinting from somewhere in the shadows.

Surely.

As Caspian finally arrived and clamped down on his arm, hard, the one to his right chuckled.

Damn these cultivators. Even this brat is stronger than me! How does that even make sense?

“Dumbass,” he muttered.

“Stuff it, Robert! What do you know, anyway? Bet you still can't even count past ten!”

“What!? This again!? I told you a million times. Uncle Edmund let me take a sip of his wine. I got confused, that’s all! Besides, it's not like I'll need to know my numbers once I join the emperor’s army.”

His Highest on High’s Imperial Legion.

“It’s the emperor’s legion dummy.”

“Who cares what it’s called? I-!”

“Silence!” Cedric broke in, beginning to massage the bridge of his nose now.

“Idiots... I'm surrounded by idiots,”

I like where this guy’s head is at. He makes some excellent points.

“Just hold him still, will you? I'm assuming you're capable of that much?”

The two brothers nodded along meekly.

“Good, because if he slips loose and one of you falls within my range, I can promise you, I will not be halting my attack due to your own incompetence. I'm finding out just how much damage I can do with two unblocked nodes one way or another this day.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Both boys audibly gulped at the prospect, and then, with eyes that’d gone wide, redoubled their efforts to hold him in place. It would’ve been comical if it didn’t hurt so much. Meanwhile, as Cedric assumed a low stance and prepared his technique—muttering to himself and shifting his hair out of his eyes all the while—Jun took the opportunity to once more appreciate their surroundings.

They were standing in a quiet grove of ashen trees, populated by pockets of dense thickets. A light breeze tugged at the sparse canopy above—plucking free the last vestiges of autumn with an inquisitor’s ease, scattering multihued leaves like celebratory petals at the feet of winters victorious army.

They were within the bounds of the kings royal hunting grounds. An isolated expanse of forest that went on for several hundred kilometers in every direction.

Maintained and regularly patrolled by the kings very own royal huntsman—in hopes of keeping it relatively tame and free of criminals—it was the primary training ground most young and ambitious frontier cultivators graduated onto upon reaching a high enough stage in their development.

Did that mean it was anywhere near safe for them to be there?

No. Of course not!

In fact, the risk of encountering something explicitly unsafe was astronomically high. It was still meant to be a hunting ground for experienced cultivators, after all. A resource they were in regretfully short supply.

Were they breaking kings' law by trespassing on his lands?

Absolutely they were!

The penalty for entering the kings wood unauthorized was either death—in the case of a vassal, bondsman, or just plain old commoner—or a fine far too steep for their small branch to possibly pay.

And in the end, did this band of nitwits care even a smidgen about any of this? Were they even aware?

Who cares!? They were here now, weren’t they?

“Some place no one will hear you scream.”

Apparently, it didn’t matter that they were now so far from civilization that it was doubtful any of their screams would be heard regardless.

“Fist of the Broken Mountain!” Cedric exclaimed.

The faintly glowing fist took Jun just below the sternum, suspiciously close to where the first technique had struck. Impacting with enough force to tear him from his brothers’ hold and throw him for what had to have been several entire meters.

He felt himself flip through the air once, then twice, before his momentum was ultimately arrested by an unforgiving forest floor. Landing hard, it was several more seconds of tumbling and rolling before he at last came to a halt in an explosion of dry leaves.

The wind having been thoroughly knocked out of him; it was several precious seconds before his seizing chest allowed for even the shallowest intakes of breath. The jolt of agony that in turn caused making him wince. The natural response of which only further exacerbated the issue.

And so, it was with a shaking hand that he discretely palmed something from his jacket pocket, then carefully brought it to his lips.

Swallowing the bitter pill with some effort, he immediately sagged in relief, as the blessed medicinal herbs began the process of realigning bones, stitching torn flesh, and regrowing burned tissue.

A peak grade mortal mending pill. It was an expensive solution, to be sure, but, where his continued health and wellbeing was concerned, only the best would do. Well, the best within reason anyway.

Ok. So. Jun had to admit, that had hurt.

He supposed advancement to the foundation establishment realm wasn't as negligible a jump in strength as he’d once believed it to be. It was just so hard to parse at times—what with the heaps of unearned praise the branch lord’s sons were showered in on an almost daily basis—when an actual, genuine achievement somehow slipped its way into the mix.

Reaching up to his chest, he slipped his fingers through the neat hole in his tunic—idly tracing over the brand-new patch of skin. Feeling too the raised lines of his birthmark, stark and undeniably there—almost as if they’d never been burned away in the first place.

He’d long since ceased to wonder why, no matter what his body was put through, those same aged lines just had a way of popping back up out of nowhere. The same rough lines aligned in the same strange patterns. He didn’t even think it was a product of the, admittedly potent, medicine he took.

I mean, they’re good, sure, but I’m not sure anything should be that good. Least of all a mortal pill.

Jun flinched as the vibrations from someone’s approach reached his sore ribs. Seeing no real reason to rise, he stayed right where he was. It wouldn't do to have them think he was capable of such a thing so soon after that striker technique had laid him low after all. Idly he noted that the tread of footsteps felt awfully heavy.

So, Cedric then?

But, no, the boy was tall, sure, but slim as a reed. He didn’t weigh that much.

Robert maybe? But no, that didn’t seem right either.

Definitely not Caspian. Maybe all three? But then why were their steps so erratic...? And so… heavy. Very distantly he caught the sounds of wholesale destruction—the crack of shattered timber and creak of toppling giants. Like the tumult of a raging frontier storm or else…?

Something is very wrong.

He could feel it in his bones now, rattling his teeth and numbing his hands. Turning his head to the side, he felt his stomach sink all the way down to his boot soles. The carpet of leaves were supposed to be doing that, right…? Jumping in time with every distant reverberation. With every increasingly frequent boom.

A soft hand grabbed him by the upper arm and hauled him to his feet. Looking down on him with a gleeful expression, Cedric opened his mouth to say something trite. Jun never gave him that chance.

“Wait! Shut up a moment. Do you hear that?” he asked, forgoing all pretense or chicanery.

Cedric only sneered. Ignoring the question entirely, he leaned in closer—applying further pressure to his grip. No doubt to better make his dissatisfaction with Jun’s apparent impertinence clear.

“Insolent-! Listen here, you insignificant little-!”

But before he could finish, a piercing cry cut through the quiet atmosphere of the glade. And on its tail came a great cacophony of sound that seemed to portend the end of the world. To the west, two waves of earth and uprooted forest rose high above the swaying crowns of the King’s Wood, like the earthen wake of an enormous vessel.

And seeing as the near seismic vibrations only appeared to be increasing in intensity, it was easy enough to surmise that, whatever was at the forefront of that massive wake, was headed in their general direction. Meaning it was fairly self-explanatory where they should be when it inevitably arrived.

Or at least that had been the reasonable, sane, non-suicidal thought process Jun’s mind had immediately gone through. Looking up at his step sibling, he was forced to come to terms with the fact that his opinion was not as universally shared as he might’ve hoped.

In all his panic he’d forgotten for a second that he was not looking to a sane, rational person.

No, instead he was looking to a cultivator for prudence. A worse lapse in judgement, he could not currently bring to mind. The dimwit was smiling. Smiling by all the gods! And could he see a glint of avarice in the boy's eyes?

That was it! The idiot was going to die. He was going to go die a fool's death, and then have the audacity to take Jun along with him.

Well, fuck that. He’d never agreed to that.

Carefully, as not to interrupt the deadman's morbid fascination with the object of his demise, Jun ever so slowly attempted to extricate his arm from the slackened grip, only for it to tighten painfully in response.

Jun winced.

The jig was up. He was done for. Finished!

His evil stepbrother looked down on him and smiled even wider.

“Hey, cousin? How would you like to do me a small favor?”

And for the briefest of moments, he was actually grateful for the support, because, just then, Jun felt his legs go weak.

image [https://i.ibb.co/rw6tMBB/IMG-2711.png]

BOOM!

A tangled ball of twisting fur and bloodstained feathers exploded onto the scene with earth shattering momentum. Breaking entire swaths of woodland into mere kindling and kicking up enormous waves of earth into the air. Waves which soon dwarfed the crowns of the surrounding forest, which themselves loomed impossibly high above.

At one point, the tsunami of torn up soil rose so high that it managed to blot out the very sun itself, before that terrible wave finally crested, and it all came down in a great calamitous crash—half burying nearly everything in sight.

Deep reverberating growls were answered by the sharp clack of an enormous beak. These overpowering reports punctuating the otherwise chaotic squall of savagery—sounds of ripping, gouging, and tearing galore—as the two titanic spirit beasts tore into one another with reckless abandon.

The two so impressive, in both strength and sheer scale, that it was as if the entire forest shuddered every time their terrific clash slammed one or the other back to what was left of the forest floor.

At least twenty meters in height and more than double that in length, one of the Goliaths, a fearsome looking wolf beast—whose coat glistened a polished black like chipped obsidian—straddled the winged form of the second: a titanic bird of prey of comparable size.

The winged beast thrashed, flapped, and kicked in its attempts to extricate itself from the wolf, though ultimately, all of its struggles were to no avail.

A thunderous crack was followed by yet another piercing cry as the wolf's jaws found purchase on bone and bit down hard. Suddenly, with what had to have been the very last of its strength, the Roc flexed its mighty talons and launched the Blackstone Direwolf back through the air.

The Direwolf, first sent careening by the unexpected display of strength, swiftly righted itself midair to land gracefully several dozen meters away—whereupon it began snacking on the morsel of bird flesh it’d managed to hold onto.

At once, the massive bird attempted to rise from its slumped over position, but it only managed to get so far before its injuries proved too much. Brought crashing back down to the ground by its own weight, the Roc let out another heart stopping cry. Although, unlike before, now there were definite notes of sorrow and desperation in its tone.

The Direwolf, sensing that the hunt was nearly over, loped forward unhurriedly, bright blood contrasting the obsidian sheen of its muzzle.

“Fist of the Broken Mountain!”

With a great leap, Cedric flung himself up and over the hill of upturned soil. Another bound, and he’d sent himself careening through the air, long hair streaming and jacket billowing in the wind.

He hurtled headlong towards the unsuspecting Direwolf, a savage grin splitting his face from ear to ear. With his left hand held before him, his right fist cocked back, it was simplicity itself to quickly recite his high mantra, and so wreath his knuckles in an etherial silver aura.

One so radiant, in both the physical and spiritual sense, that it actually hurt his eyes to look upon too directly. It permeated the space around his knuckles with a palpable weight.

Cedric’s concept being applied to the utmost of his understanding. Empowering his strike with part of an ideal—not only multiplying his techniques effectiveness severalfold, but also imbuing it with nothing less than an enlightened truth about the universe itself.

|Concept of Crushing| (1st Aspect)

[Aspect of Hardness]

My will is to crush anyone that does not bow before me.

With a resonant crack that echoed throughout the ravaged landscape—frightening off what few birds remained in the area—the young cultivator’s concept imbued, technique empowered fist met the midnight flank of the Blackstone Direwolf.

And promptly folded in on itself like a crumpled paper doll—every bone in his hand having been shattered simultaneously.

Then, to add more injury to injury, the backlash from his fist being unable to leave even a mark on the beast’s wicked hide was enough to shatter every other bone in his arm for good measure.

It was as if the universal concept were rebuking the foolish child for using it on something he had no business trying to crush in the first place.

Which, as it so happened, it technically was.

Trying to crush something that wasn't crushable, to the concept of crushing, was a crushable offense after all. The wolf casually glanced down at the now crippled human, then snorted in contempt.

Momentarily stunned, by both shock and by pain, Cedric Divan Beckonfrost was in no position to evade the several ton obsidian tail that caught him squarely in the midsection. The very same that sent him spinning like a limp sack of meat.