James’s next match pitted him against another from the Soaring Celestial Sect. The man swaggered forward, golden tassels swaying as they hung from his sword, sleeves, and anywhere else James could look. While his first opponent from the sect had a starry look, this man had chosen to become a swarm of falling meteors.

“Well met, tower trash!” the man laughed with a voice similar to the strength and abruptness of a slammed door. “It seems heaven smiles on me! For I get to defeat you and prove my authority!”

He looked older than James, which was surprising considering the abundance of youthful appearances throughout the entirety of Cyber Crane. Perhaps it was the tough but short beard across his face, also tied with gold tassels, or maybe it was the man’s build. He looked almost as large as a construction servitor, and almost as blocky. Two swords rested on each side of the belt cinching his robes shut.

James clasped his hands and bowed. “A pleasure.”

He caught the other cultivator’s eye twitch in displeasure. No doubt he wanted James to rise in anger. And in the past, he might have.

The hologram appeared above. “James of Blue Mountain Sect and Clifton of Soaring Celestial Sect, are you ready?”

James nodded while Clifton shouted a snappy “I am!”

The countdown began.

Clifton unsheathed his swords, brandishing them in a flourish of practiced display. They shone with lines of circuitry, revealing to James that they were more than normal swords. He in turn removed a staff, slamming it into the ground and thumbing the latch and securing it.

James could tell this fight would be hard. He needed to win while taking some blows, which was something that he hadn’t been focusing on in any capacity. His martial art focused on avoidance. Learning to take a hit was a waste if you never got hit.

Well, nothing to do but to try. James settled into his stance as the countdown reached one, instantly entering the Metastate. Clifton did the same as he bolted forward, both swords held in an X as he moved.

For a moment, James almost thought this fight was going to play out the same way as the first, but he noticed the differences in Clifton’s assault as he came. The man was doing what James did, blasting his intent outward in various patterns. Each one held a promise of danger.

He responded by grabbing the top of his secured staff and leaning back. The weapon bent with him as he sunk to the ground, storing energy for a counter assault. Clifton threw one of his swords in answer, forcing James to release the staff and dodge.

The sword sliced into the ground only a second after James moved. A piece of the cultivator’s robe fell away, revealing the sword’s sharpness. James grabbed another staff from his pouch, turning to respond to Clifton, but by the time his staff was out the man was already too close.

James saw the intent from his sword and quickly backpedaled, narrowly avoiding the slicing blow. Clifton huffed and continued his assault, digging his heel into the ground for more leverage. James reacted by stabbing down at the foot with his staff.

Clifton brought his sword up to block, the edge shearing off a piece of the staff. James grunted in annoyance but abandoned the weapon, but not before he secured it into the ground. Clifton made a face, halting his dash by placing another foot in front to sidestep. James noticed the indent in the floor, the more recent sidestep sinking deeper.

He reacted by throwing his staff at the swordsman, using the man’s previous move against him. Clifton brought his sword up to block but James was already on the move. He leaped forward with a front kick toward Clifton’s hand. The awkward angle prevented the cultivator from slicing James’s leg off but he was still skilled enough to retreat.

James tried to rush forward, only to be repelled by a stab from Clifton. He tried to turn the stab into a myriad of slashes, each one intent on going different directions, but James just retreated again. Clifton growled in annoyance as James pulled out another staff, ready to try again from the stalemate position.

A plan started to form in his head, built off his previous experience. Clifton’s art worked wonders in straight lines but it didn’t seem all that grand when turning. It took Clifton more energy to change directions than it did going in a straight line, and while he could cut through James’s staff, enough of them in the ground would keep the swordsman from advancing quickly.

That could give James time to think of an offensive that roughed him up a bit.

It was that or lose an arm in the fight, and James wasn’t confident about his chances if that happened. Most of his grappling techniques required two arms.

Clifton’s motions revealed he knew this as well. Suddenly the man sliced through the bottom of the secured staff, again opening up the space. James retreated, placing another staff in between them before reaching for another. Clifton, instead of moving forward to slice the new staff in two, moved toward his thrown sword.

“Beasts,” James cursed under his breath. He hadn’t forgotten about the discarded weapon, not wholly, but he did ignore it in favor of planning his own strategy. Now Clifton had his weapons back, and James could have done something to stop it.

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Clifton smirked, his tasseled beard jingling as he pointed one sword at James. “I have the measure of you now! Prepare to fall to my blade!”

If James wasn’t focusing in the Metastate, he would have rolled his eyes. How in the world did Nadia avoid talking like these cultivators? Though, come to think of it, she did have a tendency to use more sophisticated language.

Clifton’s eyebrows twitched again when James refused to answer in kind. “Be lucky you get to experience my Eighty-one Blade Arts and live! If we met on the battlefield I would now proceed to cut you to pieces!”

The swordsman ran one of his swords along the other, striking the various circuitry along the side. James saw sparks of energy dive into the sword, activating the programming inside. He answered by pulling out as many staffs as he could, securing them to the ground while Clifton prepared.

The swords glowed an electric blue before separating along the lines of circuitry. The two swords burst apart in a brilliant display resembling a supernova, forming a myriad of tiny suspended blades around Clifton. The cultivator stood triumphant as the blades circled around him like planets around a sun.

“Eighty one blades! Each controlled by my power! Surrender now if you wish to keep your body healthy!”

James shook his head, pulling out one more staff.

“So be it!” Clifton shouted. He idly waved a hand and a line of blades shot out toward James. The man in question backpedaled, watching the energy coming from the man and his cybernetically enhanced sword.

The blades flowed around the staffs he’d put in place, but James caught a few of them bouncing off the sides of the staffs. He also noticed as the blades came at him that the ones still by Clifton’s side moved in a regular pattern. Their lines of energy stayed constant.

That meant there was only so many blades the man could currently focus on while the rest moved in preset patterns. As long as James could find the pattern, he could avoid the crowd of blades while focusing on the ones Clifton controlled. Another point in his favor was that controlling these individual blades seemed to have removed Clifton’s ability to spread intent. All his focus went to controlling the blades, telegraphing the ones James needed to watch out for.

The new pieces of swords were also no longer able to slice through a staff in one go from the look of it. Clifton could still snap one of the cheap staffs, sure, but not in a single stroke like he’d done earlier. That meant James’s jungle still stood, and that was where a monkey thrived.

With a smile, James pulled more staffs from his storage and set them in the ground even as he used others as springboards to hop around the arena. Clifton concentrated, sending blades to intercept, but James continually redirected himself with the staffs. All the while, he studied the preset patterns from the blades, committing them to memory as best he could. It wouldn’t be perfect, James knew he didn’t yet have the memorization skills for such a feat, but he could remember most of them.

Clifton in turn attempted to cut James off at every corner, even coming close a couple of times. James barely stayed a step ahead as he bounced from staff to staff.

Finally, James felt he’d learned enough. He threw the staff in his hand at Clifton, breaking the man’s current concentration and forcing him to change from offense to defense. The blades around his head converged, deflecting the strike to the side.

James used the moment of time to lean back on a staff and release, his mind calculating the timing with the precision of one in the Metastate. The weapon sproinged forward, swinging back and forth in an arc between James and the swords. The blades, no longer controlled by Clifton but still on their attack preset, dashed through the staff toward James. But without their commander, the blades could not see the ambush James had prepared.

The staff swung back on its arc, smacking straight into the blades. The ones struck flew off course, going on to strike others as they flew in erratic arcs.

James spent no time celebrating, instead using the success to set up a number of other traps. He bent a few staffs around each other, securing them into the ground to return to later as he continued to grow his jungle.

Clifton, now recovered, tried again to force James into a corner, but now he had less attackers than before. Frustrated, the man moved inside James’s thicket of staffs. The first mistake of many in James’s eyes.

Clifton’s aggression put him right in James’s territory. While outside, James had a harder time calculating what would happen in his mind. Clifton had the option to retreat further, pull his sword together, and break all the staffs. Or he could start trying to chip away at James with nicks from his blades while dodging anything James threw back. Inside the forest, James could see exactly where he could throw one staff to cut off movement.

But in his anger, Clifton missed James’s intentions, thinking James’s moves cowardly. “Figures that a towerborn would hide like an animal!”

He slashed at the staffs next to him, accidentally releasing one of the traps James prepared earlier. The staff swung free toward Clifton, forcing the man to take a step back. James took advantage, leaping forward from another staff toward Clifton in a jump kick.

Stuck between an incoming staff and a foot, Clifton decided to bite the bullet and take a hit. He turned and directed his hovering blades toward James. James grabbed one of the nearby staffs, altering his course at the last moment as he swung to the side. The blades nicked him on the shoulder, but that was nothing compared to an eviscerated leg.

Clifton felt the staff smack him in the middle of his back, causing him to flinch momentarily. He lost concentration on his blades, giving James more time to press the attack.

Another staff came Clifton’s way, forcing the man to block with his blade again. James followed up with a tackle, leading with his legs to scissor kick his opponent and bring him down. James felt more blades stab into his legs, but he held on. Clifton’s world spun for a second before his head struck one of the nearby staffs, rattling him.

His concentration fell, putting the blades back on their preset path. James wasted no time, grabbing Clifton’s hand and dislocating it with an armbar. The cultivator cried out in pain, but the pain brought clarity back to him. He sent the blades straight at James once more.

This time, James avoided the blow by putting himself under his opponent. Clifton was forced to stop the blades so he didn’t hit himself. James used the moment to scramble around and get Clifton’s other arm in a wristlock and quickly forced it to dislocate as well.

At that point, someone called the match. James’s name appeared in the hologram above even as Clifton tried to argue that he could still fight. The servitors cared nothing for his arguments, pushing him out of the ring toward the medical area. Another servitor moved next to James and directed him the same way. He nodded to the robot, following along stoically.

He hoped the few cuts and scrapes would be enough to convince people he’d barely scraped by.