Book 2. The Grand Gathering. Chapter 9. The Difference in Strength.
The moment white-blue and white-golden spears appeared in Laien’s and Anatis’s hands, quite a few of the forty guards frowned.
Spears weren’t popular weapons in the Sakrcente Kingdom to begin with, so meeting any youngsters wielding them was fairly unusual. What’s more, one of the major events of this Grand Gathering had involved exactly two young spear wielders fighting each other and displaying astonishing power.
However, they couldn’t possibly be so unlucky as to have those two boys prove to be them, or could they…?
“What are you waiting for?! I told you to capture them!” Darthon stomped the ground with his feet. “Fine, the two who capture those two will get a bonus, so get moving damn it!” he yelled, his face turning purple from anger. Why, even after his son had been attacked, his subordinates refused to listen to his orders?! He was being ashamed in front of so many people again!
The eyes of the many of Darthon’s guards began to glitter at the mention of the bonus. Most of them worked for him only for money to begin with, so the promise of a ‘bonus’ which usually meant a generous sum of one hundred gold coins was more than enough to incline them to act.
Since the boys had drawn their weapons, the guards did the same and withdrew a variety of different types of swords from their interspatial rings Those closer to the front approached Laien and Anatis hurriedly, worried that their friends would snatch the prize of one hundred gold coins to themselves.
They weren’t even especially on guard as they approached. Most of them were around the eighth mortal realm; with how tough their bodies were, some kids would be unlikely to do much more than cut them lightly even if they slashed at their bare bodies without holding back.
They all thought disarming and restraining the two boys would be all they would need to do, but the moment they entered the range of the spears and saw them striking through the air at a speed they could barely follow with their eyes, they realized how wrong they had been in their assumptions.
The two men who were closest to Laien and Anatis proved to be the comparatively luckiest ones as both of them received a solid blow to the temple and were immediately knocked out of cold.
Their comrades, however, were faced with actual attacks and despite trying their best to defend, were either outmaneuvered or simply overpowered, ending up with many serious, but not quite lethal wounds. The spear techniques displayed by Laien and Anatis… they were something those guards were utterly incapable of dealing with.
In but a few seconds, nine of the forty of them had been disabled by the two youths. The frightening efficiency of the boys’ attacks stunned the remaining men to the point of robbing them of any confidence or desire to fight. They perhaps would have had a chance if they surrounded the boys and attacked all at once… but they weren’t disciplined or trained well enough to have the guts or willpower necessary to attempt such an attack.
“Tch, so boring,” Laien complained quietly, having hoped for an interesting, exciting fight and instead having gotten to face a bunch of spineless weaklings. He and Anatis only needed to swipe with their spears a few times, without even using their Qi or spiritual energy, and it proved to be enough to scare these men out of their wits! Quite a disappointment it was.
“These two boys really are those spear wielders from a week ago!” Kanan swallowed heavily, backing off by another few steps just in case. Thankfully, he had prioritized caution over his desire for gold and had chosen not to force himself into the first line. Had he done otherwise, he would now be amongst those of his friends who were unconscious or kneeling on the ground, grabbing at the wounds the two spears inflicted upon their bodies.
“This time both son and his father screwed up royally, to think they picked a fight with those two monsters who have Great Martial Schools of their own behind their backs,” Kanan smirked at the thought. With the circumstances being such, their failure to protect Rishard would be overlooked without question; Darthon would have much bigger problems to worry about to have time to be dealing with them.
“You…! You…!” Darthon closed and opened his mouth repeatedly as he breathed heavily, staring at the two boys with nothing but hatred. “How dare you attack and wound the guards of a Grand Viscar! That’s a heavy crime!” he bellowed, having completely lost his ability to reason due to the humiliation the two boys were putting him through.
He was a Grand Viscar! His job was to control and regulate the country’s finances! He had gotten to his position through nothing but sheer work! His family was neither prosperous or well-connected before he took over!
Yet, repeatedly everyone around him refused to acknowledge his efforts and recognize his value!
Even random brats were brash enough to beat his son up and resist him when he wanted to deliver the justice!
Unacceptable! It was utterly unacceptable!
“I’d say that you trying to capture us without a valid reason is more of a crime, you know, old fatass?” Laien said provokingly, beginning to feel somewhat amazed that Darthon still failed to realize who he was dealing with.
Apart from himself and Anatis, Laien hadn’t heard of any other powerful spear wielders of the young generation; one would have thought Darthon would connect the dots and recognize them… but alas, people tended to do forget how to think and do stupid things when they got too emotional.
Boiling with anger, Darthon grit his teeth so hard that they were about to start cracking up. “I don’t care who…!” he shouted in a low voice, sweeping the nearby bars and restaurants with his gaze. “Whoever captures those two criminals will receive ten crystal coins for each!” he declared, no longer caring about his face or anything else.
If his money was the only thing that could motivate people to act for his sake, then so be it! He would use it shamelessly and without reservation!
Ten crystal coins… it might not have been much at all to immensely wealthy people like Great Masters or their pupils, but to almost anyone else such a sum represented many dozens of years of hard work. To ordinary guards, ten crystal coins were something they wouldn’t be able to earn even if they worked their whole lifetime.
So much money posed quite an incentive even to most martial masters, of which a few were in the area and had heard Darthon’s yell… but, how could those martial masters be idiotic enough to let themselves be blinded by gold? All of them either ignored Darthon and paid him no heed or snickered to themselves, wondering how the Grand Viscar was going to react when he understood for whom exactly had he named a prize for.
“Oh, some are actually coming,” Laien said with a quiet laugh, then waved his hand and blasted three men away with a surge of water.
“That has really gotten ridiculous,” Anatis complained as he swept with his spear, sending two guards flying right into the group of men approaching from some restaurant.
“It’s not a challenge at all, so how about we get it over with?” Laien suggested, having lost any interest in fighting those below-average practitioners.
“Finally,” Anatis chuckled helplessly. He had been holding back their whole time not only to avoid killing his opponents but also not to spoil Laien’s fun. Now, however, he could finally put end to this whole freak show. “Careful,” he warned Laien before using his Scorching Flames Art and releasing the golden Phoenix flames.
“Yup, yup,” Laien chuckled, releasing his spiritual energy and covering himself in a layer of freezing cold, misty air.
The next second, the few dozen of men who were readying themselves to launch en-masse attack on Laien and Anatis halted in terror and began crying out in shock. Those unlucky ones who were closer began jumping backward and stumbling over their companions in pain as the immense heat began scorching their skin and setting their hair and clothes aflame.
“And you say I’m the one overdoing things,” Laien chuckled and glanced at Anatis through the fizzing, steaming air between the two of them.
“My bad, I’m not used to releasing my Qi without the Aspects,” Anatis grumbled, withdrawing his golden flames and allowing the temperature in the area to fall to normal levels.
“Y-you two…” Darthon stuttered. “Who in the world are you?” he asked helplessly, praying in his heart that what now became fairly obvious to him would somehow turn out to be all a lie; or perhaps just a very, very bad dream he was having.
“Duh, let’s go back,” Laien shrugged his shoulders, turned around and started walking back to the open bar.
Anatis gave Darthon a brief look, then sighed and followed Laien. As long as today’s events had no long-term consequences, he would be content enough.
“That’s what you get for being an idiot,” amidst the silence, the voice of an old, grey-haired man reverberated. Apparently, one of the martial masters decided to make his opinion of the matter clear… but he didn’t try to elaborate, so no one paid him much attention either.
After the two youths ignored him and showed zero intent of talking everything out, Darthon went through many emotional states, which all showed on his face.
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Confusion, shame, anger, regret and finally, relief. Darthon laughed bitterly, in the end shaking it all off his mind like he always did.
He had kicked into a steep plate and broken all the fingers of his foot, but so what? His face had been covered in mud since long ago; adding one more splash really wouldn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. What mattered was those two kids didn’t seem intent on making things hard for him, of what they would more than definitely be capable of had they so desired.
“I might have spoiled Rishard too much,” Darthon thought to himself and sighed heavily. He didn’t want his precious son to experience the same grieves which he had and still was, so he went to great length to ensure the boy would lead a happy, carefree life.
He would make sure his son was surrounded only by those who were going to be nice to him, he would handpick the girls and women to accompany him and would sometimes set up their meetings as accidental, just so Rishard wouldn’t suspect anything.
He had done all of that… but now, he began wondering if he hadn’t been harming his son by sheltering him from reality for so long.
“I will need to talk with him after he recovers,” Darthon decided, today’s events reminding him that no matter how hard he tried, he wouldn’t be able to protect his son from everything and anything and even if he could… then how would Rishard live after he would be gone?
In a gesture which true meaning no one but him could understand, Darthon clasped his hands and bowed towards the bar the two youths returned to.
“Take all the wounded to my mansion,” Darthon ordered briefly. “Also, everyone who participated will receive twenty additional gold coins to this month’s pay,” he declared to his subordinates’ surprise.
Darthon was a rich man and he paid his people well, but that was only because he was forced to; he wasn’t a generous person and in fact, was quite stingy! Thus their surprise by his strange decision to waste a few hundred gold coins for nothing.
Either way, they did as Darthon told them and after a few minutes, the crimson district returned to its usual alcohol and wine-intoxicated atmosphere.
“You look dissatisfied, big brother,” Siana brought up, though she was pretty much aware of the reasons Laien appeared to be so dispirited.
“Obviously,” Laien sighed resignedly. “I didn’t think normal practitioners were going to be so weak. I expected something fun, but it was all a huge waste of time,” he explained, feeling thoroughly displeased by this discovery.
“It’s only natural,” Anna spoke up and smiled slightly. “Let’s say there was a man who spent his entire life fighting on the frontlines and reached the level of a martial master. Let’s also say there was another man who joined a top-tier martial school and trained his way up to the Realm of Heroes there. Additionally, let us imagine a man who committed his whole life to honing his body through physical training and a man who was extremely talented, but never really fought or trained much…” she brought up a simple example, intent on making the case out of it.
“Let’s say the four of them have the exact same physical strength and their Qi is on the same level. Who do you think will be the strongest?” she questioned, curious as to what Laien’s answer would be.
“The one who was on the battlefields,” Laien replied instantly, having understood what kind of example Anna was making long before she actually concluded setting up the story for its sake. “The second strongest would be the one who was in a martial school and had a chance to spar and duel other powerful practitioners. The third would be the one who honed his body and the last one who got to his level without any effort,” he added, guessing that would be the next thing Anna would want him to answer to.
“Mm, and what kind of differences in power do you think are between those four men? If you were to rank them on a scale of one to hundred, how would you do it?” Anna questioned again, without giving away whether she agreed with Laien’s assessment or not.
“Hm,” Laien thought for a few seconds, then raised his gaze and replied. “One hundred, eighty-five, fifty, thirty?”
Anna chuckled in response and gave Laien an amused look. “Reasonable enough, but not quite,” she said with a smile. “From my experience, it would be: one hundred for the man who battled, seventy for the one from a martial school, fifty for the one who has a great talent and twenty for the one who only trained his body,” she revealed, surprising not only Laien, but all the juniors in their group.
“There’s this much difference between first and the second?” Laien asked, honestly surprised by Anna’s opinion. “Also, the talented but lazy one won’t be the weakest?” he noted, somewhat confused about this point.
“It would be fair for him to be the weakest, right?” Anna asked with an amiable, teacher-like expression on her face. “However, consider that he forced himself up to the strength of a genius solely by physical training. He did that… but since the two are on equal footing, it will be the genius with his superior fighting sense who proves to be stronger if they were to face off against each other,” she explained and nodded to herself, happy to see that Laien seemed to understand her point.
“And yes, the difference between those who experienced battle with their lives at the stake and those who hadn’t isn’t a small one,” she continued, her gaze becoming a bit hazy for a brief moment as she recalled the time she herself had been made painfully aware of this fact.
“I don’t know much about your friend since the Twin Phoenix School had been suppressing the information about him until recently…” Anna glanced at Anatis, then returned her gaze to Laien. “But I do know quite a bit about you and your past,” she said with an honest smile, meaning to communicate that she had had no ill will when investigating his past.
It looked like she had been needlessly considerate, as Laien didn’t care about other people knowing about his life. Seeing that, Anna spoke on with calm.
“Even though I wouldn’t quite give you one hundred on my little scale… I wouldn’t say you are far from it either,” she said while looking at Laien. “Given how fiercely the two of you are said to have fought, I’m inclined to believe your friend had similar experiences to you and deserves a similarly high score,” she mentioned, not omitting to send some praise in Anatis’s direction.
“Now, do you understand why you found those guards lacking?” she asked, to what Laien and Anatis nodded. Indeed, looking at the matter from this perspective made quite a few things clear to them.
“I would qualify both of you to be in the early nineties if I were to be a bit generous, while those men you fought against were around twenty, thirty points at best. Your foundations were also immensely superior to theirs, so there was no way they could prove to be any kind of challenge to you given this set of circumstances,” Anna elaborated briefly, but towards the end noticed how the look in Laien’s eyes became fairly intrigued and a bit suspicious.
“Uh, have I praised them too much? This kid’s instincts are on an entirely different level,” she thought to herself, choosing to stop the conversation there, at least for the time being.
“Twin Phoenix School, Red Dragon School,” Alisia spoke up of the sudden and shook her head helplessly. She looked at Alex, then at Laien and smirked. “You know, why don’t you keep my little sister after all? I will even give you my blessing if you want to marry her,” she said teasingly.
She had been fairly skeptic of Laien at first, but now that she looked at it, it could be quite a good thing if Alex got together with him.
“Big sis!” Alex nearly shouted, her cheeks burning red as she got caught totally off-guard by her older sister’s change in attitude.
“What, do you not like him enough?” Alisia asked while smiling in a very amused manner.
“That not…” Alex began saying but swallowed her words. Really, what kind of embarrassing thing was her big sister trying to make her say…?!
Seeing how frustrated Alex was acting, Laien, Anatis and everyone else couldn’t help but laugh or chuckle. They were happy to see the two sisters make up and sure enough, they all intended to spend at least a few more hours chatting, drinking and having fun.
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The next day, late in the morning.
“Can you repeat what you just said?” Sinra asked, looking at Injar with disbelief painted all over his face.
“Eleonora agreed to cooperate with us on our terms,” Injar repeated with a laugh. “I received confirmation from a messenger just now, so it’s certain,” he added, just as pleased by this unexpected outcome as Sinra appeared to be.
“How come she suddenly changed her mind?” Sinra wondered aloud. “She wasn’t too happy with the idea of giving up on the crown and supporting me instead, but now she agreed out of the blue. Has something happened?” he asked and gave Injar a suspicious glance. Had this guardian of his acted outside the permissible boundaries again in order to help him?
“Nothing I’m aware of, though I’ve heard our guests had gotten into a fight with a Grand Viscar the last night,” Injar replied casually, knowing no more than Sinra about the possible reasons Eleonora could have changed her mind.
“Which one?” Sinra asked just to be sure, though Injar told him about it in such a ‘by the way’ manner that he could guess easily enough which of the three Grand Viscars he was talking about.
“Darthon,” Injar said calmly. He pretty much shared Sinra’s opinion on the matter. Although Darthon was fairly rich, he had barely any influence in the Kingdom; they didn’t need to worry about him. Also, from what he heard the kids hadn’t offended him that badly, so the incident wasn’t worth much attention anyway.
“Then there’s nothing to worry about,” Sinra said with a smile. “Just out of curiosity, how come they got into a fight with him?” he inquired while wondering if there was anything else he could do before the Grand Tournament began.
“No idea, you should try asking them yourself,” Injar suggested. He really had had more pressing matters to deal with than to babysit those four rowdy youths.
“I guess I will,” Sinra said with a sigh. “Do you know where they are at the moment?” he asked as he stood up from the sofa.
“Still sleeping,” Injar replied shortly, repeating what he learned from the main butler of the mansion a few moments ago.
“It’s nearly noon and they are still sleeping?” Sinra raised his eyebrows. The past week, those four had been regularly waking up early in the morning; it was quite surprising to find them sleeping in so late.
“They must be tired after returning from the crimson district,” Injar explained in a bored tone, seeing nothing too strange in the line he just said.
“Makes sense… wait, what?” Sinra frowned, realizing from exactly where the four had returned only after a good few seconds. “What were they doing in the crimson district…?” he murmured, not too pleased with this choice of theirs. Was this Laien’s idea to go to such a place…?
“Crimson district, not red district,” Injar said with a slight chortle. “They didn’t go to tour the local brothels, they went to some bar or restaurant to let off some steam,” he explained, somewhat amused to find out that Sinra was still so innocent about these things despite acting like a grown-up most of the time.
“Uh, okay. Makes sense then, I guess,” Sinra said awkwardly, then quickly changed the subject. “Whatever, if they sleep through the whole day, they won’t be properly awake for the banquet tomorrow evening. We should wake them up soon,” he stated and gave Injar a meaningful look, telling him to lead the way.
“Your choice,” Injar smirked a little. If what that butler told him was correct, then as Laien would call it, he was about to see something interesting happen. “Come,” he gestured Sinra to follow him and headed towards the guest’s quarters.
Without suspecting anything, Sinra followed Injar and after three or four minutes, the two of them arrived at the guest’s quarters.
Injar opened the door to one of the rooms and looked inside, then smirked again. He backed off to the side and encouraged Sinra to enter, all the while looking at the expression on Sinra’s face.
Sinra approached the open door, but after seeing the scene awaiting him inside the room, he instantly and completely gave up on the idea of waking the four up.
Without getting into too much detail, the two pairs were sleeping on the same bed and snuggling in a very embarrassing, indecent positions. Were they to be woken up right now and were Laien to see how ashamed Sinra was feeling as he looked at them, then he definitely wouldn’t miss the chance to tease him about it; what Sinra very much preferred to avoid.
“Are we going back?” Injar asked, unable to prevent himself from grinning.
“Yeah,” Sinra said with a sigh and closed the door quietly. In truth, he was pretty jealous of Laien’s carefree lifestyle and attitude, but he hoped that Laien won’t come up with any of his crazy ideas during the banquet and the Grand Tournament itself.
Yet, he somehow had the feeling that Laien would cause some trouble regardless of what he wished to happen.