Pike shut the door immediately.
The door flew open again. Elerie looked at their group with smug arrogance. “You don’t close the door on me, comet boy. Has the standard within your sect fallen so low that you parade around drunk?”
Pike snickered. “There is no parading around, Elerie. Look, we are playing War’s Brother! You can admit that testing one’s mind under strenuous conditions is a catalyst to growth.”
“Yes, of course,” Elerie said, dripping with sarcasm. “That is what you were doing.”
Izalia stood up and defended them. “And you’re here strictly on business?”
“That’s right,” Elerie said. “I talked to Head Chef Koi.”
“Ha,” Alistair interjected. “He’ll never join you.”
Elerie snapped her neck to look at Alistair so fast he thought her head might fall off. “Did I ask you, outsider? What do you know of these things?”
“More than plenty,” Pike said. “He has grown accustomed to our ways with remarkable speed. No one can say he isn’t a true Holy Raviner anymore. I too, was once skeptical of this man, but he has proved me wrong.”
“That remains to be seen,” Elerie said. She stormed out of the room, leaving the four of them wondering what the hell that had been.
“Shall we get back to the game?” Pike asked.
Oliver nodded vigorously, stuffing his face with more beef pastries. Too bad they were almost out of food. Alistair made eye contact with Izalia, communicating something along the lines of, “these guys really don’t care about what just happened?” Despite his teasing, he felt they were on a more similar page in terms of personality than he was with Pike. Turned out his gruff exterior was a front for a pretty lackadaisical guy.
Alistair didn’t say anything, though, and they returned to their four-player Go game. Pike came out victorious in the end, and Alistair second, though that was only the simplistic measure of their territories. With Oliver out of contention early on, the two frontrunners in Pike and Izalia duked it out. That let Alistair creep in to second by territory, but he was never in the running to win the game.
They returned to the temple an hour past midnight. He knew that in the morning, he would regret his decision. They still had to get up before the crack of dawn.
Before leaving to sleep, he asked Pike a question as they went inside the entrance hall.
“What do you plan on doing after the Holy Ravine is initiated?”
It was a simple inquiry. Alistair didn’t know for certain if it would come to pass. Maybe the Holy Ravine would never be initiated. Maybe the Devil Kings would emerge victorious and annihilate their little slice of countryside.
“I don’t know,” Pike answered. “I want to explore those stars the outsiders have talked about. I’d also like to see you leap over a mountain too. Not sure if I quite believe it.”
“Mountains might be a tall task, but you’re on for that. You need to help me survive my fight if you want that to happen.”
“What do you think I’m doing? You’re my prized disciple. Go to sleep and don’t let Master Ko Pao hear you. He’ll have my head.”
Alistair heeded his teacher’s words and found his bed in the purple headband dormitory. His thoughts churned, but his body shut down almost instantly, falling into a dreamless sleep.
----------------------------------------
The next day, the Silver Comet Sect added a new element to his training—punching a giant rock.
They shuffled around his schedule to compress the previous weight training blocks into a single two-hour period dedicated to rock punching. Because of this, he no longer only trained with the purple headbands, but had dedicated periods to the black, red, and sometimes orange apostles.
There was little instruction for the rock punching period. Pike guided him to the location of a huge rock in the forest. It was twice as tall as Alistair and three times as wide.
“How did this even get here?” Alistair asked.
“Prehistoric glacial movement,” Pike answered. “There are tons of them in the forest. All you have to do is keep punching this rock until you can shatter it. That’s all. At the end of the two-hour period, I’ll come back to check on your progress. Once you can complete this, you’re ready for the next step.”
Alistair nodded. It was just a rock, after all. How hard could it be?
----------------------------------------
The answer: Extremely difficult.
Two weeks later and Alistair had made almost no progress in breaking the rock. There were slight cracks running over its face, but no major internal damage.
There were two problems—its size and his delicate bones. He had chipped off a fist-sized portion of the stone, but his power barely diffused within the inner portion. In addition, his hands and feet were too weak to withstand constant, full power blows. He had to space out his attacks to give himself time to recover.
It was one of those moments where he missed his Devilsbane Gauntlets. Those trusty clawed gloves let him punch as hard as he wanted. They jangled helplessly off his wrists as crimson bracelets. More of a fashion statement than a deadly weapon at the moment.
Only six more weeks until my bout, Alistair thought to himself as he pummeled the rock with open palm strikes. That was the best idea he had come up with. The palm was less delicate than the knuckles, and only transferred a bit less power. He could continuously wail into the huge rock for much longer. But I’m not ready.
Alistair had gone through dozens and dozens of sparring matches. The conclusion—he wasn’t ready to face a champion-level fighter. He was comfortably beating surpassing purple headbands, but red headbands were still giving him the work, let alone black headbands. He still never understood why Pike wasn’t a black headband, and he didn’t ask. Some things were better left unsaid.
Both his experience and body were lacking. Those red and black headbands had years and years of hand-to-hand combat under their belts. Breaching that was the gap between heaven and earth. On top of that, all red and black headbands had underwent the so-called “Final Trial of the Steel Body.”
While Alistair wasn’t privy to exactly what that entailed, he knew it over doubled the efficiency of the Steel Body and gave a new technique.
Despite his lack of experience, the complete Steel Body was what he really wanted. Alistair knew that if he had it, he would have a fighting chance against the black headbands. After all, he had his own specialties too. No one in the sect except for possibly Master Ko Pao could match him in arsenal of techniques.
And creativity, or so Alistair like to think. His sparring partners might dispute that one, since it was harder to objectively quantify.
Alistair continued to strike the rock—only five more minutes left. He reminisced about all the training that brought him to that point.
Every day, his foresight deepened, and his awareness expanded. Alistair could see five moves ahead at any given time, which was close to his [Eyes of Truth] precognitive sight. Obviously, it wasn’t nearly as accurate, but he was impressed with his natural perceptions. With his new awareness of the world, he could sense the slightest vibrations in the air. From five meters away and his back turned, he could detect an enemy’s killing intent.
But none of this improvement helped him destroy the task before him. There was no such thing as predicting a rock’s movement. The rock was in front of him, so his perception didn’t matter.
“Having difficulty?” Pike’s voice came from on top of the rock. Alistair jumped back. He had been so focused he hadn’t even realized that his mentor climbed it from the other side.
“This is impossible,” Alistair said. “You’re telling me you could do this before you had the complete Steel Body?”
“I never said that,” Pike countered. He spoke his next works with far more candor than usual. “Alistair, you must understand something. The Final Trial is no laughing matter. The gap between purple and red is the largest for this reason. The qualification process for a purple headband to even attempt the trial is extensive. Even with this intense screening, one in four who attempt it die. You are going far faster than we would ever normally allow. The archivist and Master Ko Pao are calculating the date for your trial that will maximize your recovery.”
Alistair understood that. If he attempted the Final Trial too early, he would have a higher chance of dying. Conversely, if he waited too long, he wouldn’t be recovered in time for the duel against Brutus.
“They’ve determined two weeks and two days to be the appropriate amount of recovery time. Since the Final Trial takes one week, you have two weeks until it begins. Even if you don’t crack this rock, you’ll still undergo the trial. You don’t stand a chance against Brutus without it. But please, I’m begging you, give this your all. I promise, despite not being able to explain the method, this will help you out a lot. I don’t want to see you die.”
Alistair didn’t know what to say. Pike had helped him so much over the past few months. The man who complained about outsiders the day he met him was gone.
Pike patted him on the back. “But I believe in you. So keep at it.”
Those two weeks came and went in the blink of an eye. Despite all of his training, Alistair couldn’t help but feel jittery the day of the Final Trial. The sect members were extremely tight-lipped about their pride and joy, and no one shared any information about what was going to happen, except that it was the most difficult thing they had ever done.
His imagination exceeded his reason as he conjured up all sorts of tortuous nightmares of what the Final Trial of the Steel Body could be. Surprisingly, the one who calmed him down wasn’t Pike, but Oliver.
It was the morning of his appointment. Instead of his normal schedule, the various elders of the Silver Comet Sect would take him through the beginning processes of the trial. Alistair woke up early, his sleep troubled.
“What the hell!” Alistair whispered. Oliver was standing in the doorway to his room, silently pacing. Luckily, Alistair had caught himself, so he wouldn’t wake up the other three apostles who bunked with him.
“Shh!” Oliver hushed, like he wasn’t the one being crazy for infiltrating Alistair’s room. “You’ll wake up them up.”
Shaking his head, Alistair jumped onto the cool stone floor. He had been awake for the past hour anyway, so there wasn’t a point in staying in bed. It wasn’t as if he was capable of going back to sleep.
“Why are you here?” Alistair asked.
“To cheer you on, obviously,” Oliver replied. “I thought I’d give you a pep talk or something.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Alistair rolled his eyes. He didn’t want to wake up his roommates, so they took the discussion outside into the dormitory hallway. “Go for it, coach.”
“You weren’t supposed to take that seriously.” Oliver threw up his hands. “I don’t have anything prepared.”
Alistair saw more than he let on. The little shakes in his friend’s hands, the clenching of his jaw, the slightly higher pitch to his voice. “I’ll survive, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ve faced tougher things than this before. You scared, ye of little faith? When have I let you down before?”
“That’s back when you had powers,” Oliver counted. “Pretty overpowered ones too, I might add.”
“Hey, I still have Dev’rox,” Alistair said. “He could probably beat everyone here with his eyes closed.”
“Of course I could,” Dev’rox said, though only to Alistair, since he couldn’t manifest outside of his host’s body.
Oliver didn’t look amused. “I’m serious, Alistair. It doesn’t look good. They’re rushing you so fast because you don’t stand a chance without the complete Steel Body, but you’re not ready yet. I heard the white headbands talking about it, and they heard it from Ko Min, and she heard it from Jo Ran. They give it a 50/50 of you living or dying in the trial, and if you survive, maybe one in three of defeating Brutus. I was never that good at math, but that’s a one in six chance. How are you going to do this, seriously?”
Alistair took a deep breath. Yeah, when you put it like that, it didn’t sound good. Instead of responding to Oliver’s concern directly, he asked a question. “When you get back, what do you want to do first? How about we visit the Hall of Math? I’m sure by then, my money will have gone to the moon and we can purchase some higher tier information on necromancy.”
“You’re not fucking answering my question!” Oliver raised his voice. Teardrops formed around the corner of his eyes. “This could be it, and you’re not taking it fucking serio—”
Oliver’s voice became muffled as Alistair brought the younger man in for a hug. Their height difference and Oliver’s poor posture meant that the teenager’s head cradled against Alistair’s chest. At that point, he let it all out, sobbing uncontrollably as Alistair comforted him.
“I-I’m s-scared, Alistair,” Oliver finally managed. “What’s going to happen out there?”
The implication was left unspoken, but Alistair understood. Without him as a counterbalance, the Devil Kings would surely win in the end. It was only a matter of time. Even if somehow they did make it out in a few months rather than when they were scheduled to, they might come home to a ruined planet ruled by George Moulin, all of their loved ones long dead.
Alistair patted Oliver on the back. “Believe in me like I believed in you all those months ago. Let me tell you, you’re almost unrecognizable compared to the man I saved from that corrupt politician. You’re brave and intelligent and I’m sure that thousands of people owe their lives to the work you’ve done. I’m not sure if I ever would have thought of using the portals to store triggered weapons to fire at enemies.”
Oliver wiped away his tears and chuckled, freeing himself from Alistair’s embrace. “I can’t claim to be the creator of that one. I got the idea from an ani—”
“Gilgamesh from Fate, right?” Alistair answered. “Guess I am cool enough for that, after all.”
Oliver laughed like a madman. Alistair joined in. They laughed until he physically couldn’t anymore, his diaphragm too sore to continue.
“You two done with this laughing fit?”
With his awareness at maximum levels, Alistair already knew who it was. Pike Zenbatty, the prized apostle of the Silver Comet Sect, and his teacher.
Oliver bowed. “Brother Pike. Alistair, you’re right. I do believe in you.”
“I have to take this one to the elders now,” Pike said. “Goodbye, Oliver. Your progress with the white headbands is less than I would have hoped, but you’ve done well to make do with what minuscule amount of talent you have.”
“Yeah, yeah, no need to rub it in,” Oliver said as he waved goodbye and headed back to his dormitory.
Once he was gone, Alistair gave Pike a pointed look. “You didn’t have to be that harsh. He’s trying hard, you know.”
“Trying hard means nothing when an Undead Prince sends his legions to kill everyone you’ve known. Enough dallying. The elders are waiting.”
In the halls of the Silver Comet temple before the morning light, Alistair walked. The crack of dawn was still an hour away. The only light came from piles of the glowing blue moss attached to stone walls.
The aged stones beneath him were cool to the touch. Pike brought him deeper into the temple than he had ever gone before.
“The ancient parts of the temple are mysterious, even to us,” Pike whispered. “They seem to have existed even before the Silver Comet. It seems that we repurposed an older building and renovated it over time. Now, we enter the original temple.”
They crawled through a cramped tunnel built into the lower part of one of the walls close to Master Ko Pao’s office. There was a marked shift in the color of the stones as Pike and Alistair crossed into the old section. The grays of the stone turned into a bronze-colored metal that shined with unnatural brightness despite the meagre amount of light.
It made little sense. Even if the older structure was much smaller, who would use this much metal for a building? Looking at the construction, Alistair was astounded by how complex it looked. The walls looked like they were composed of millions of piece of interlocking parts, almost like a jigsaw puzzle, but the intersections were only orthogonal.
“Wondrous, isn’t it?” Pike asked. “To this day, we do not know how this section was constructed, who did it, or what the purpose it. These types of ancient ruins exist all over the Holy Ravine, and even across the Martial League in general. Madmen claimed that it was evidence of the existence of a magical civilization in the past that could rend cities to ash with a thought. Maybe those madmen weren’t as mad as we thought.”
The tunnel led to a cavernous hall that almost looked like the inside of a church. There was a stained glass image of a flaming sword high on the ceiling, and five balconies that housed rows of seats. They overlooked a dais at the center where a chunk of silver metal sat illuminated by light filtering from the stained glass above. It was small, only a little larger than a softball.
The room was mostly dark, but that metal shone bright from a single beam of light. Alistair felt drawn to the metal the moment he laid eyes on it. Now that he thought about it, the silvery-black piece reminded him of when he went on a trip to the museum. What was that again?
It was a piece of an asteroid, Alistair realized. This must be the ‘silver comet’ the sect is named after.
In the shadowed terraces above the dais, there were cloaked figures. The elders of the Silver Comet Sect. This was it. There was no turning back. Not that he would have in any circumstance. Would he have to fight someone? Fast for a week while standing on coals?
“Approach,” announced one of the figures above. Based on the voice, it sounded like Master Ko Pao, but he was speaking funny, so Alistair wasn’t entirely sure. “Brother Pike, thank you for your services. You are dismissed.”
Pike bowed. He gave Alistair a slap on the back. “You will do this as I did before you. No doubt within my mind.”
When Pike put it like that, Alistair couldn’t let his mentor down, could he?
A different figure spoke. “Today, you face the Final Trial of the Steel Body. You pass the point of no return. Do you wish to continue?”
“Yes.” Alistair spoke loud and with conviction. There was no doubt within his heart.
“Very well,” another said. “Approach the dais.”
At the same time that Alistair walked up to the mysterious pedestal containing the lit chunk, one of the cloaked figures walked down from the stairs leading to the upper section. He could tell by the shape under her clothes that she was a woman.
Ko Min? Alistair wondered. She was the only woman that lived in the Silver Comet temple, as far as he could tell. Master Ko Pao’s daughter—Ko Min’s mother died in childbirth, and her father died in a skirmish with the Wasted Realm.
She gingerly carried a huge ceremonial knife almost as large as her forearm with both her palms. It was silver, similar to the silver of the metal on the pedestal, except more polished. There were intricate carvings along the blade of the edge in mesmerizing spiral patterns.
Ko Min and Alistair arrived at the center at the same time. From this spot, he could see the source of the light when he looked up. At first glance, one might think that the flaming stained glass sword on the ceiling was etched that way, but when Alistair examined it closer, he realized that it was an effect of something above it.
The flames’ light was filtering through the glass and focused onto the pedestal, where it illuminated the silvery metal. His heart pounded as he looked at the piece. There was no way it was an ordinary rock. Something ancient pulsed through its core, something that Alistair had no words to describe.
Ko Min drew closer to him, closer than Alistair was comfortable with. She whispered into his ear, “you must etch this symbol into your chest.”
“What symbol?” he asked, leaning back awkwardly.
She moved quick as a rabbit to the rock. From within her robes, she drew out a glass bottle of a teal liquid and poured it over the metal chunk. Within seconds of the liquid coating the rock, a glowing symbol of the same teal appeared on the surface.
The writing was unlike anything Alistair had ever seen. It was not English writing, or Chinese characters, or even Old Moi. It was something that he knew in his soul to be older, more profound. The symbol flickered with new meaning every second.
“Impossible…” Dev’rox stirred within him for the first time in a while. He had been speaking less and less to conserve his soul’s energy, constantly being diminished under the dampening field despite the protection of Alistair’s body. “The Language of the Pure Dao. The First Script of the Heavens and the Earth.”
Alistair started sweating the moment he heard Dev’rox’s words. “How is that even possible? Should this world not be crumbling in the might of the ‘First Script?’ That sounds like something of unimaginable power.”
“The Language of the Pure Dao is the true tongue of the divine progeny and demons. Its power comes as much from its speaker as its inherent nature. Though, this is not an original carving. It has clearly been copied dozens of times, losing some of its meaning each time. An unadulterated character of the First Script would be far too much for this planet to handle.”
“Can you understand what it says?” Alistair asked.
“Spirit’s Fists Overcoming Struggle,” Dev’rox said.
Upon hearing the translation, everything made sense. The symbol had already resonated with him before, but now it became obvious. So obvious. He was coming home. There was no reason to fear anything going forward.
Alistair took the knife from Ko Min’s hands and stripped his robes. The symbol pulsed with unblemished meaning. Even if it was a copy of a copy of a copy, something like this had been used by the first beings in the multiverse, if Dev’rox knew what he was talking about.
What a strange planet, Alistair thought. One day I’ll have to visit it myself. By the time he could get there, it would most likely be years and years later, since it sounded like Lisorte was in an adjacent universe.
Alistair placed the tip of the knife against his chest while he started at the beauty of the First Script. Slowly, he pierced his skin. Warm blood dripped down his stomach as he replicated the symbol as best he could.
Ko Min nodded once she saw that he had finished. She approached the pedestal containing the silver comet chunk with all the reverence in the world. With the rub of her fingers, she collected both the liquid she poured on the rock. Alistair saw that the surface of the metal slightly deformed with her touch, and she collected some liquidized metal on her fingers.
Alistair stood rapt in attention, unsure of what would happen next. The cut into his chest began to hurt, the pain taken away by his adrenaline earlier. His heart pounded.
Ko Min whispered into the hand she grazed the metal chunk with. Too low to hear, at the same time she stepped in front of Alistair and then outstretched her arm underneath the blue light.
All the cloaked figures began chanting, quiet as a whisper. The acoustics of the chamber carried their sound farther than it should have gone, but Alistair did not understand the words. This was probably Old Moi and not the verbal form of the First Script, as Dev’rox did not interfere.
After a minute of the woman holding up her arm, with no warning, she swiftly dug her fingers into Alistair’s wound.
It took all his mental strength to stop himself from screaming in pain, compounded by the sudden nature of the move. Alistair gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.
Ko Min continued to brush her fingers with his cut. Alistair realized she was putting the metal stuff in his body. Was this the secret of the Steel Body? Strange elements infused within the system?
After a painful minute, she ceased transferring the substance into his bloodstream. Alistair didn’t feel any different, besides the added pain. Nothing like the sturdiness that he knew the Steel Body to grant its users, though surely the trial was only beginning.
Master Ko Pao spoke once more. “Long ago, before humans were granted the gift of reason by the gods, a star fell from the skies. What stands before you is a small piece of that fallen star. Since the beginning of the Silver Comet Sect, we have used the power from this metal to strengthen our bodies. The archivists say that a thousand years ago, it was as large as a person. This small chunk is all that remains.”
The shadowed figure of his master moved right up to the edge of the balcony. He held up his hands almost as in prayer.
“You must cherish this gift, Alistair. If all else remains the same, the generation to come will be the last of the Steel Body. Prepare yourself. You must remain standing.”
All the apostles in the room began a deep hum. Alistair had never heard anything quite like it. Almost religious in feeling, the low baritone vibrations shook everything in sight. Not a substantial amount, but enough to make everything look slightly blurry.
Alistair got that tickling feeling in his chest that accompanied low frequency vibrations like a monk version of ASMR. The symbol on the comet metal glowed more vibrantly and pulsed.
The ceiling collapsed.
Though he heard no sound of glass breaking, a column of blue fire came down upon him. It was as if the flaming sword above had fallen like an executioner’s blade, slicing off his head.
The entire dais became engulfed in a pillar of fire extending from the ceiling twenty meters in the air to the floor. All Alistair knew was pain.
It wasn’t the most excruciating pain he had ever felt. He could still think and move. The problem was that it was unceasing. Pain usually came in ebbs and flows, even serious injuries. This gave absolutely no respite, no waves. Each and every second was torture.
Alistair was completely trapped. There were no more sounds and no more sights, only flames.
If he was being honest, he almost failed in the first five seconds. His knees wobbled, and he came close to falling. But with a gargantuan effort, he forced himself still.
These were no ordinary flames. While the pain was intense, it wasn’t like his skin was melting off. They were hot, but not unbearably so, more like the heat of a potentially illegal sauna.
But Alistair was more worried about something else—Master Ko Pao hadn’t given him a time limit. Just how long was he supposed to stay in the fire?