Leo was in pain. He had no clue what was going on, but all he could feel was excruciating pain in every cell of his body. From time to time it did seem he heard female voices, but it only proved the fact that he was in hell. The rule number one, women are dangerous, echoed in his mind over and over again and he kept having hallucinations of the scary sect master coming at him with her humongous sword and breaking his every bone, letting them heal and then breaking again.
But he could not figure out what had he done to deserve it. He had always been polite to the elders, treated women with respect and never harmed anyone, except for few instances in Dreadlands, but those didn’t count otherwise Lana would’ve killed him. Right, Lana … and Anna … daaaamn, how he missed Anna! And Izel, his former wife – he would love to hug her one more time. In fact, he would love to hug Elsa and Etessa as well! And Alice …
‘Wait!’ Leo was suddenly startled during hallucinations, ‘Why Alice?’
… the girl who scammed him into receiving the spacial amulet as a present. It was incredibly valuable, but at the time he was so clueless … and why was he seeing her how … and why was she holding his amulet?
“Leo … Leo …” He heard her repeating over and over again, but considered the voice a part of hallucination even though she kept pinching his cheek. His whole body was aching so badly, it was hard to notice the gentle pinch.
“He is awake, but it appears his brain was damaged during the fall.” Leo heard another familiar voice, although he couldn’t place where he had heard it before.
“Ok, then fix it!” Alice seriously said.
“If those were bones, I might, but there is no way for me to fix inner organs … maybe he’ll get better, maybe he won’t become a vegetable …” Leo heard the second voice say and finally realized he was awake and since he was directly staring in Alice’s face, they were in the Golden city again. He had no clue how he got here, since he couldn’t set the proper coordinates before teleporting, but it didn’t matter.
“You’re the vegetable.” He weakly retorted and tried to sit up only to notice how under the weight of his own body several bones in his arms and a bunch of ribs broke at the same time.
He fell back to the ground with a painful whimper and Alice immediately began to scold him, pointing out that with a careless move he erased several days worth of Fan Yun’s efforts and that now he’ll have to lie down even longer.
‘Right … Fan Yun … Fan Lia’s younger cousin ...’ Leo remembered whom the second voice belonged to.
“What is he mumbling about this time?” Alice asked.
“Something about women being dangerous.” Fan Yun said.
“He probably means – ‘women are in danger’ … sigh … what a hero!” Alice said and sat back next to Leo again.
Earlier she got exited when the realized Leo finally was waking up, but Fan Yun only shook her head – during the past days she had heard the same phrase too many times. There was no need to correct her friend though – the main thing was that Leo was a live and his head worked, at least for a brief moment.
For the past eighteen days she was doing her best to ‘fix’ Leo like Alice requested.
At first it went horrible. The guy actually had transformed into a pile of meat and if was unclear how he was still alive. She did her best to put everything back in place, but his body was a mess and while she could recognize inner organs, the ones who were more or less in tact, it was basically impossible to tell which small bone came from which part of the body.
After a struggle that lasted for a day, Fan Yun decided to approach the exercise as if it was solving a puzzle – she started from a corner, in Leo’s case – from feet, and proceeded further up. The problem arose when at the third day when she was almost done setting back his thighs, the two girls noticed Leo’s bones had began to mend at alarming rate. While technically those would be good news, the problem was she had not began to ‘fix’ the important parts of his body like his spine and skull.
At first she intended to figure out the best way of solving this human puzzle and leave the most important parts last, but as it turned out this was a great mistake. His spine, rib cage and skull began to heal without setting the bones in place and if it continued like this the guy would become nothing but a cripple … well … remain cripple that is.
Thus she was forced to break his bones apart again in order to set them properly. And after few more days she noticed a multitude mistakes she had made and broke some ‘parts’ again. Fortunately Leo was unconscious and oblivious to the torture, or so she thought, and that allowed Fan Yun to get used to the uncomfortable feeling that overtook her every time she had to break Leo’s spine, skull or any other spot.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Oftentimes she considered if it would’ve been better for him to have actually died from the fall, but two days ago she was finally finished and passed out to sleep almost for a whole night and day. The only word that came to her mind was ‘monster’, because at least half the credit, if not the largest part, went to Leo’s regenerative abilities. She did her best though and could sleep with a proud smile on her face – if the guy survived this would be a tale she could tell her grandchildren.
When Leo woke up later in the day, to his great disappointment he realized they were not in the Golden city, but in some kind of a cave in wilderness. Alice explained that they were taking part in a special survival training and Leo saved their lives by showing up from no where. In return, they saved his life, but it was mostly Fan Yun’s work.
When asked, he couldn’t really tell how he got here. The explanation of the incorrect coordinates was dismissed by the young runemaster’s apprentice as an impossible coincidence, but since Leo was still weak, the two girls didn’t pry.
Two days later, even though he was still aching all over, Leo was already capable of sitting and the first thing he did was he took out the two remaining snake-headed beast eggs. One of which he ate by himself, but the other one was split between Alice and Fan Yun who finally got a reasonably nutritious food. To the girls from the Golden city without garnish and sauces, and whatnot it didn’t seem as tasty as Leo found it, but they were almost as starved as him and were not picky.
The trio didn’t meet any other participant during the next days. They stayed in the cave to avoid any confrontation since their combat power was currently rather limited and simply waited for the third part of the exam to end. All three guessed Leo would be in trouble the moment they were recalled, but there was nothing they could do – just hope the immortals of the War Academy would be lenient.
“Leo?!!!” Kevin’s eyes almost turned square, recognizing the country bumpkin from the Aurora mortal realm.
The moment the pocket dimension was forcibly closed, all participants were teleported back to the War Academy, a special plaza covered in formations, operated by elder Roon. Kevin, of course, immediately looked for his friends from the Golden city in the crowd of participants and, while he was certain Claude and Harold would be fine, he was worried about the girls. One could only imagine his shock to see Leo casually standing next to them as if nothing happened.
“What? Did you think I’ll die while taking a stroll in the woods?” Leo laughed back in a careless manner as if he was one of the participants from the beginning.
Kevin, just like Claude and Harold who noticed Kevin’s shout earlier, was not stupid at all. He immediately guessed Leo’s idea and played along.
All six youths met up and went to the side of the plaza to ‘catch up’, purposefully avoiding the topic of Leo appearing from nowhere. They clearly knew there was no way to fool the elders majority of which were true immortals, thus the play was meant just for the eyes and ears of the other participants.
“Interesting.” The headmaster, the true immortal named Richard Harris, smiled.
He was dressed in an elegant, black robe and didn’t look much older than fifty, maybe even forty five, but one could never be sure about the age of an immortal. He, along with the rest of the elders had gathered on a large balcony overlooking the plaza, in order to observe the person whom elder Roon kept calling ‘alien’ in his reports. The group of more than two dozen elders was hidden from the eyes of the participants by few runic formations and Leo’s appearance actually caused quite a commotion which no one below noticed.
Just like always, from the moment Leo showed up on elder Roon’s stone slate almost a month ago, the bored teachers made tens of bets, trying to figure out or just guess what or who the person was. And as always there were some winners and losers, but most bets ended in a ‘draw’ since it was almost impossible to guess the newcomer would be a person from the Golden city.
“What the hell is going on?” Elder Roon furrowed brows in confusion.
“No idea, but the little Shaw clearly knows him. Just like the rest of their group.” Headmaster said, stroking his chin, “Elder Stan, would you do the honors? Please check him!”
Every participant was at the Core formation stage and it was impossible for them to notice a true immortal frisking one of them. Even Leo had no clue that within moments he had been touched all over by a middle aged looking gentleman and continued to chat with the rest.
“He has basically nothing on him, apart from a strange looking amulet.” Elder Stan reported after returning.
“Anything interesting inside?” Headmaster Harris asked.
“Just a weapon and some provisions.” Elder Stan replied.
The two had known each other for several millennia and it was easy for headmaster to guess elder had something in mind.
“Tell me about the amulet.” He asked, not letting the elder down.
“You see, it’s half-palm sized, dark and round, with a peculiar bird engraved on it … that … that somehow closely resembles elder Li’s family crest.” Elder Stan politely said and, despite being a true immortal himself, suddenly felt a stinging pain in the back of his head. Obviously it indicated that the old monster that pretended to not care about anything was following their conversation and now radiated a killing intent that could easily knock out or even straight up kill a Nascent soul stage cultivator.
“What a strange coincidence … and it happens right when the thousand years passed …” Headmaster said pretending to be either deep in thoughts or baffled, “Let’s leave this for now. Let me make a speech and afterwards you’ll all take the students to the respective divisions … we have ninety one left, right? Ignoring the fact that many didn’t return, you made your picks during the first two stages so there should be no holdups.”
A moment later the formations hiding the group of elders were switched off. The crowd below immediately fell silent and closely listened to headmaster’s every word. He spoke about the young heroes who’ll become the future pillars of the Immortal Alliance and a bunch of other formal nonsense. Leo was the only one who couldn’t take him seriously since he had heard his former sect master blab similar nonsense multiple times, but obviously there was no way he would show it on his face.
When the headmaster was done, elders from different divisions came forth and called out students who happily joined their new teachers. The guys from the Golden city were called away as well, with Kevin and Harold as first in the largest batch that was led to the Combat division, afterwards Claude and Alice joined a bit smaller group of alchemists and as the last one Fan Yun left Leo standing alone and joined the few runemaster apprentices.
Even though the guys tried to hide it, elders easily picked up the worried glances they threw towards Leo, but the fun was about to start and it had very little to do with the last youth remaining at the plaza.