Shashu took me back down the hallway to the room across from the infirmary where I’d spent the night and knocked twice before sliding the door open without waiting to be invited. The Dragon Clan’s “Mother” wasn’t what I was expecting. I’d pictured in my mind a wizened old woman with gray hair maybe pinned up in a tight bun, wrinkles, and a twinkle in her eye: the female version of Chow Bo.

Instead, when Shashu ushered me into her office I was greeted by a much younger woman with jet-black hair pinned up in a tight bun, smooth porcelain skin, and a steely gaze that made me feel like a little boy when she turned it upon me. It was impossible to peg her age, but if I had to guess it would be somewhere in her 40’s, maybe.

She sat perched behind a huge wooden desk that was bare save for a jar of ink and the single notebook open in front of her, into which she was entering neat vertical lines of text in tidy handwriting with a feathered quill. It wasn’t any style of writing or language I recognized, but I realized I could still understand every word. It was some kind of letter to another Clan Master discussing the exchange of students to study each other’s martial art.

Chow Li Dragon Clan Master Powers:

[Hidden]

[Hidden]

[Hidden]

Skills:

Administration - Master

Calligraphy - Master

Cartography - Expert

Kung Fu - Expert

Negotiation - Master

We entered and stood in front of her desk; there were no chairs for visitors. She looked up from her paperwork and examined me over the rim of a pair of small, round glasses perched on the end of her narrow nose. Flakes of white makeup clung to bridge of the glasses where it had been rubbed off her skin.

“No need to be nervous, Daniel,” she said, tucking her notebook into a side drawer of the desk, then putting the quill and ink bottle away into a different one.

“But I’m not...”

Her thin lips stretched into a smile.

“Okay, maybe I’m a little nervous.”

She reached into a different drawer and pulled out a strip of green cloth, the same color as the armband everyone here wore, and presented it to me. “This is for you.”

“Thank you,” I said. I struggled to tie it around my arm while Shashu and Chow Li watched with open amusement. Frustration turned briefly into anger before finally changing into spite, but throughout all three stages I never gave up trying to do it myself.

It would be so easy for either of them to help, but I would be damned if I was going to ask. No way I’d give them the satisfaction.

After a while their smiles drooped, then fell away completely. They continued to watch me wrestling one-handed with the green cloth, Shashu shifting his weight from one foot to the other, then back again while Chow Li brushed away imaginary lint from her impeccable desktop.

“You know,” said Chow Li finally, “most people ask for help after about ten seconds.”

“Do they?” I said.

“Once they’re given the armband, most people quickly figure out it’s too hard to tie it on themselves so they ask for help. It’s kind of a thing.”

“You don’t say.”

“It’s a lesson,” she said. “The final step to becoming a member of the clan.”

“You mean like a ritual?”

“Precisely. We know they will struggle alone, so when they ask for help we have this thing where we tell them...well, it’s just dumb to say it now.”

“Nooo,” moaned Shashu, “come on. It’s my favorite part. Please?”

She shook her head. “It’s too late now. It’s ruined.”

“Aw.” Shashu turned to me. “You would’ve loved it. Still gives me goosebumps every time. You ask for help, see? Then she ties it around your arm and talks about how in the Dragon Clan nobody has to take on burdens alone and how we all work together and that’s the core of our success and all that.”

“I see,” I said.

Shashu chewed his lower lip and turned to Chow Li. “You know what, you were right. It does sound a little dumb when I say it like that.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

“See?” Chow Li said. “It has to happen organically or it just doesn’t have that oomph. Ah well.”

“It’s okay, I get it,” I said.

“Oh sure, you get it,” Chow Li said. “But if it had gone right you would have felt it.”

“Uh huh.”

“There is a difference,” Shashu said, and Chow Li nodded in agreement.

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. An awkward silence followed, then I waved the green armband. “So...can somebody please help me with this?”

“Oh, yeah, right. Sure.” He tied it neatly around my bicep with swift, practiced movements.

> System: You are the first to join a Clan - Reward Tokens: +1 (3)

“Thank you,” I said, although to be honest I probably said it more to System than I did to him. I was looking forward to finding out what was up with those tokens.

“Sure,” Shashu said. “Oh, and, you know: let’s help each other and all that.”

“Definitely,” I said. “All for one and one for all, right?”

“Oh, I like that,” Chow Li said.

“Or is it one for all and all for one?”

“That’s even better!” She dug into her desk drawer and pulled out a different notebook. “I need to write that down or I’ll forget it.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Really, I’ll remember it. If you forget, just ask me.”

She retrieved her quill and ink and started writing in her neat little letters.

Or you could just ignore me and write it down.

“Do you mind if I ask you some questions?” I said.

She finished writing and closed the book. “Not at all.” Back into the drawers went the book, quill, and ink, leaving the desk surface pristine once more.

“Terrific,” I said. “Because I’ve got lots. For starters, what is the Dragon Clan?”

She sat up straight and folded her hands together on the desk. “The Dragon Clan is one of six martial arts groups in the city. We are all similar, with two notable exceptions: each clan studies a different fighting style, and each clan represents and protects a different street. For example, the Wolf Clan studies karate whereas we train in kung fu, and they protect the interests of Bow Street whereas we manage Dagger Street.”

“So they’re rivals,” I said.

She considered it for a moment. “You could call them that, I suppose, though the relationship is more complicated than simple rivalry.”

“You forgot another difference,” Shashu grumbled. “They’re all a bunch of asshats.”

Chow Li looked about to admonish him but then they stopped and made a sort of ‘You know what? That’s fair’ kind of face. “Fine. Three differences.”

“Okay, I think I get it” I said, though I didn’t get it.

She reached into the credenza behind her and pulled out a large, rolled-up sheet of paper, which she unfurled onto the desktop in front of us. It was a map, unmistakably one of the city. The central courtyard with the arena along and the other two large buildings on its perimeter, and the six main streets stretching away from it, all interconnected by smaller lanes and alleys.

An outer wall that ran around the entire edge of the city, which was perfectly hexagonal in shape, with two gates on the West and East sides. She delicately touched the emblem of a dragon about halfway down the street that stretched directly to the left of the city center and ended in the Western gate. It was the same as the dragon that adorned the clothes Sifu and I wore.

“Dragon Clan.” Her finger traced up the street to the central courtyard. “Dagger Street.”

She continued tracing her finger across the courtyard and down the street on the opposite side, the one with the Eastern Gate. “Bow Street.” She stopped on the icon of a dog roughly halfway down it. “Wolf Clan.”

I looked at the other streets. Each one had a different animal around the same spot, each one named after a weapon. I pointed at each one in turn.

“Monkey, tiger, eagle, I think, and either a mouse or a rat,” I said. “Probably a rat. Each of these is another dojo like this one?”

“Correct,” she said. “We each look after our respective streets, although different clans have different ways of doing that. Not all are as benign as we Dragons.”

Shashu laughed. “What she is trying to say is that we treat this as a neighborhood where neighbors look after each other. Unlike, say, the Tiger or Wolf Clans, where they rely mostly on bullying to maintain order in their area.”

“Fear and intimidation can be effective tools,” I said. Unwanted memories of my unhappy grade school days flashed before me. Far too effective, I’d say.

“Mmmm,” Chow Li grunted. “We get along well enough, although sometimes minor issues lead to inconsequential flare ups. We try to avoid letting anything escalate into a bigger confrontation, but it happens.”

Shashu grimaced and touched his scar. “The streets can get pretty ugly when full Clans go to war against one another.”

I guessed he had some unwanted memories of his own.

“In addition to taking care of our neighborhoods, the six clans also act collectively as a sort of militia,” Chow Li said. “In olden times, things were better. Monsters were rare, and the city was much more cosmopolitan. We had peaceful relations with many races and settlements, but in the aftermath of the great war things have become much more insular. Now, you won’t find non-humans here anymore, travel is dangerous, and monsters run free in the wild. It has fallen upon the clans to defend the city, but that has been getting harder and harder lately as more and more monsters seek to prey upon us.”

Shashu looked at me with hopeful eyes. “Yesterday so many new people arrived in the city with you. Perhaps there will be heroes among them who will help with our many troubles.”

Ah yes, the age-old isekai story: heroes from another world. Is that part of this world's mythology? I wonder why the NPC’s think we’re here?

“Is it unusual for so many people to come?” I said.

“I suppose it’s not normal,” Chow Li said.

Not much of an answer.

I supposed that said it all. Sweep it under the carpet and treat it as though it’s perfectly normal for a large group of people to suddenly appear, none of whom know anything about the place and are all dressed completely differently. Unless, maybe we weren’t the first Players to come?

Let’s try again. Be more specific.

“Has it ever happened before?” I said.

“Not that I can remember,” Chow Li said.

So we were the first. Made sense. I think I would’ve seen it in the news if a bunch of people from the same city all suddenly disappeared at once if it had happened before.

Hurm. I wonder if we made the news? Probably. I bet everyone I ever met saw that I was one of them and said either, “he looks like this guy I knew” or “I’d wondered what happened to him...figures.”

Well alrighty then. Back to reality. Guess we’d best just go along with the this-is-all-perfectly-normal thread the NPCs were spinning about us Players stumbling en masse out of the arena one day. I could play that game.

Let’s see what else I could learn from this strangely knowledgeable and helpful woman.