The loss of the Park family shook all of Jaia. A few artisans were rescued from the assault, but the massacre was thorough. One young man, only twenty two at the time, held two frightened children underneath the floorboards of their home. He covered their mouths so they were quiet, and when they were he covered their eyes so they wouldn’t see the blood falling from above. He carefully fed the children berries from a bush, but the three did not move from their hiding spot for three days of silence.
Park Man-Shik was a refugee. He was one of the sole survivors of a now-scattered clan. When Man-Shik was a young man, he lived a simple life. Mining, forging, smithing and sleeping. If he could fit in some time for a nice meal, a good drink and a beautiful woman, he would. If he couldn’t, he worked. It made him strong and respected, to live such a fine and simple life. His teachers were masters of craft, like many in the Park family. At that time, before the clan was destroyed, Man-Shik was close to marrying into the main family.
A dream that was not to be.
It was a dangerous time, without an empire and without much rule of law. Another small clan bordered the Park territory. In that clan were jealous and ambitious men and women that eyed the Park lands hungrily.
To them, it was obvious that the Park family’s incredible weapons and armour could only be made due to certain rare materials in the rock. They knew only of taking from the land and others, but nothing of what it means to grow. Yes, they were powerful, their souls heavy with mana stone usage, but they were short-sighted. However their strength was not a special way of making a forge, or strange minerals or anything that could be taken from the Park family.
Their incredible mastery came from years of individual hard work, built upon the back of centuries of tradition.
Traditions which had nearly all been lost. No weapons made now could compare to the weaponry made by a Park, before their fall. Except Man-Shik could come as close as any, despite not being born to the family itself. His own upbringing had many of the same markings as Dan’s, though things were also very different. Children of the Guan family were strong, Park Man-Shik definitely knew that. They just do it differently, training for the hunt of monsters rather than for the mastery of the art. That’s all.
Except here was a Guan family prospect who hadn’t had bad habits forced on him by subpar teachers. One who, like himself, had no easy routes to a comfortable life. No routes, simple or difficult, to a higher station regardless. Except for one.
The blacksmith watched the boy as he slept, his mana now moving calmly again. It had been subtle, even a little anticlimactic when the boy broke the barrier to the triangle stage. Not a trace of impurity in his core, which Man-Shik expected was mostly due to that nosy old pair who had sent Dan to him. Again, the aged blacksmith felt his pulse rise at this child’s potential.
Man-Shik had made many weapons in the past. He had made swords of wood which could cut through stone as long as the wielder was a passable swordsman. He had once forged a breastplate from a collection of dragon scales, so strong that it had taken him weeks to even mould the shapes. Somehow, looking at the barely rising and falling chest of this eight year old, he felt that he was dealing with both at the same time. Sturdy as dragon scales yet brittle as wood.
What a glorious challenge, gift and prize all at once. Man-Shik thanked the Empty God for his place in history and planned the most impressive forging anyone had ever attempted.
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Guan Ah Hana had just become a cross stage. She was immensely proud of herself, making sure to flaunt her soul badge whenever she could. She had chosen to wear it as a medallion, so she could wear it over her clothes more naturally. It was a faint pink colour with a solid X upon it. She was very young to have broken through the barrier to cross from line at her youthful thirteen.
As her importance had jumped, she had begun to have increased responsibility in the orphanage. After the age of 11, the children began carrying out jobs of the lowest rank. These were usually finding lost cats, delivering messages of little importance or things of that level.
Today, making her head even bigger than it had been, Hana had been given actual gold by the Lizard to complete a job for her. She was to go to the boulevard, head east until she saw a noodle shop by the name of Granny Guan’s and then cross the boulevard before finding a specific building. She described it as “a strange hovel with a shell” and Hana couldn’t imagine it would be too difficult to find if it really did have a shell.
When she arrived, she was to say “This is for Park Man-Shik as payment from the Guan family.” The thought of it buzzed her insides like butterflies were fighting with bees. She was delivering an official payment as an official of the Guan family. On official business for the Lizard, sure, but it was a start.
She carried the pouch which held the gold in the tightest fist she could make, buried deep in a pocket. It made her gait rather unnatural, but that felt irrelevant compared to the value she was protecting. As she made her way to the boulevard from the large administration building, she passed a group of boys and pointedly ignored them. Guan Ah Bo was among them, and he’d recently breached the cross stage himself. Three years her senior, it was almost becoming sad that Guan Ah Bo had not moved on from the orphanage and simply started a life.
She pointedly ignored the group of ruffians and continued with her mission. Her head held high, she strode with faux confidence and a hand unnaturally locked in her pocket. She would receive a payment herself when she took Park Man-Shik’s signature and returned it to the Lizard. As she made her way along the busy walk, scattered with stalls and shops, Hana watched to see if any were paying attention to her soul badge.
Most people it seemed were more focused on their own lives than being surprised at one young cross stage. It was humbling, the anonymity of the crowd, but Hana was not perturbed. She still had an important job, and focused all her attention on seeing it done. She weaved her way through the crowd successfully, though she was sure her toes and face would be bruised from the swarm of uncaring passersby. She passed Granny Guan’s without issue and spent at least four minutes waiting for a way through the traffic to the other side of the road.
Once there, it was time to find the strange shelled hovel that had been described to her. What had the Lizard said about this part? She couldn’t remember for certain, but Hana felt that she had said “Right, left and then right.” Hesitant, she looked around hopefully for a friendly face that she might ask to direct her to Park Man-Shik’s home. Faces she saw, but none of them particularly friendly. It almost felt as though she had crossed the border and was amongst the demons from the south.
Deciding it was safer to just try to remember the head caretaker’s words, Hana started through the alleyways and took a right. She took the next left and then another right before looking for her quarry. It wasn’t here. There definitely wasn’t a “strange hovel with a shell” or anything close to that description. There was a loud drinking hall, and Hana had no desire to wait for people to start leaving. Unwilling to panic, she simply chose a direction - straight ahead - and kept looking for the building.
It was around forty minutes later that she finally started crying. Why was it so hard to find this stupid house? All of the buildings she had seen looked like each other, and none of them had a shell of any kind. To make matters worse, the sky had grown darker and now the hint of rain looked like a promise. It was going to start getting very muddy, and she wanted no part of that. Still, she was thoroughly lost and couldn’t even find her way to the main boulevard at this point.
“Ah Hana!” Hearing her own name called from behind filled her with relief. She turned, hoping to see the man Park Man-Shik waving her to his turtle house that she hadn’t noticed. Except the voice was not the deep rumble of the elderly man she expected, but a more familiar one. “Having fun exploring?” Guan Ah Bo was the speaker and four boys even more pathetic than him were at his heels.
“What do you want, Bo?” Hana didn’t care what their little gang was doing, and she hated that her legs had started shaking with adrenaline at the sight of them. Why was that? She focused on her instincts, letting her mana rotate and cover her core.
“We’re just bored, aren’t we? You went running right out of the Lizard’s office and well, we thought we’d see what the fuss was.” Suddenly the gold in Hana’s pocket seemed to weigh a tonne, still clasped in her hand. It wasn’t worth guessing whether they knew it was worth so much, they had decided that whatever Hana had should be theirs instead.
“Bo, I’m on an official mission. You should leave.” Instead of listening to her words though, the group advanced on her. The small space between buildings was quiet, stifling and humid. It felt as though the walls themselves had jumped closer to make it harder to simply leave. She wanted to scream, and at the same time she hated that she wanted to. More than anything, she wanted to just power through these fools, find her destination and complete her job. Raising her hands to a fighting stance, Hana readied herself. He had been sporting a cocky smile, but her pose removed that casualness from Bo’s posture also.
“Go on then, what are you waiting for?” He asked exasperated. His goons had all looked to him for direction when Hana had raised her hands, and one of them paid for it. A lanky boy that Hana thought was called Bihei, maybe, caught her foot in his jaw and fell backwards unconscious. The other four were just as much of a threat to her, though she did take a kick to the stomach and a scratch along her forehead.
She could have fought them all off, her mana felt calm and powerful. Except amongst the twisting battle, Bo had jumped in. He was around twice Hana’s size, and the same stage on the path, it would have been a tough fight without four nibbling bottom feeders getting involved. As it was, even her status as something of a prodigy didn’t help.
No, help came from somewhere else, somewhere very unexpected.
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Guan Ah Dan could feel the rain’s impending fall. To be more specific, he could feel the raindrops already falling from above. He moved a few of the potted plants he had taken to keeping, placing them under spots where the rain would collect and drip. The roof over his head was not a particularly sturdy one, but everything the young man wanted dry was kept that way.
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Since the day he had been taken in by Park Man-Shik, Dan’s life had been a whirlwind of constant work and training. His own growth had been steady and fruitful, just like the plants he now raised. While his master, as he had been calling Park Man-Shik for the past four years, had not let him forge a single thing yet, the time and efforts that Dan had put in were definitely paying off.
He would soon be thirteen and receive his soul badge. There are varying ages that people begin wearing a soul badge, the youngest being 11. Anyone over the age of 16 not openly showing a soul badge should be considered either cowardly or dangerous and it wasn’t safe to assume just because it was hidden that the person was weak. Dan, for example, knew that he was a capable fighter. His master considered him “passable” when it came to mana control and he was becoming tall.
All in all, Dan was a confident, albeit still quiet, young man with a lot of potential. He was currently waiting for a delivery from his old orphanage, which was quite exciting. Although he technically lived close to the place, Dan had not been back in years. He hadn’t needed to collect anything to move over, simply being given his own room and Dan had never looked back.
Since then though, he had accrued a small collection of important things. On the first name day after he began living with his master, when he turned nine, he had received a weighted ball of an incredibly durable metal. The familiar heft of it sat comfortably in his right pocket, his anchor. A dagger which must have it’s sharpness maintained at all times sat in it’s leather sheath on his left hip.
More recently, Dan had added the potted plants to his list of important things. There was a metaphor in their growth that Dan enjoyed within himself. As they strove for sunlight, so too would he strive for more. The pattering of rain started to make a beat on the roof and Dan was confident that his little green leaves would continue to grow. None of them were quite ready to flower and show their true natures, but neither was Dan.
“We’ll get there one day, little ones.” He said. If Park Man-Shik had been privy to Dan’s thoughts at that moment, he would have bellowed out a laugh that shook the whole forge. He would say that Dan had grown from acorn to sturdy oak, already a sapling when he arrived at his smithy that day four years ago. Dan’s master was not around, nor was he able to read minds, so he did not say these things. Dan heard only the percussion of raindrops.
He held the weighted ball, his orb, and took a deep breath. Dan still hated the rain. Progressing from cross stage to triangle had made it even easier for Dan not to sleep, the benefits of a stronger body. Dan moved his mana, enjoying the tickle of it in his core before unleashing it. This was the main facet of the third stage and was where the truly incredible feats started to become possible.
For others, at least.
Dan was different, according to his master. Park Man-Shik had not lamented like Dan had when the boy had received his soul badge. As it attuned to him, the badge’s colour did not change at all. There is no “best” colour for a person’s soul, but vibrancy tends to imply power. Someone with a pale red would have a “weaker” soul than someone with a rich burgundy. Both would likely be able to control fire or heat in some way, but the person with the more distinct colour would tend to have more control.
Dan’s soul was as white and colourless as snow. He had wept, though it made him feel wretched. They were selfish tears of longing. Dan knew that he was special in some regard, understanding that becoming a triangle ranked soul at his young age was impressive. Yet he had hoped for a clearer path. The main branch of the Guan family had souls that were varying shades of blue and their mastery over water, ice and the very cold was legendary. If Dan had even a tint of baby blue, he could have learned their ways.
With no shade or tinge or glimmer in his white soul badge, he would join the masses. Most had a white soul badge. There was nothing wrong with it, either, Dan knew.
What thirteen year old would have been disappointed to learn they can’t create lightning or throw balls of healing energy or run on the wind, after they had hoped they would? After they had seen others do it during festivals? The mundane prophecy that his white soul badge offered was just… dull.
Dan didn’t know why dull wasn’t enough for him, but he knew in his heart that it wasn’t.
Which is why, as his mana reached out and explored the world, he got up and ran. Six on one, Dan thought, wasn’t fair at all. Rounding one corner, sprinting forward at full speed and then sharply turning left, Dan found the commotion and took stock of the situation.
He had sensed two cross level fighters and five line levels. Now he could see six attackers getting whipped with backhands and heel kicks that left Dan almost sorry for them. Almost. Whoever it was fighting back, she was clearly no pushover. Still, numbers and her own mercy meant that she would be overwhelmed. At one point in his life, Dan had been mortified at the thought of hitting someone else, but that had long since been beaten out of him with philosophy and reality. If she had been breaking ankles instead of simply bruising them, she may have won this fight.
Not everyone was as tough as Park Man-Shik could make them though, so Dan didn’t fault her for that. Instead, as the rain made the floor beneath her slick and her footing dropped, Dan simply stepped into the fight and caught her hand. He placed a small amount of force on the other fighters, they were moving slower than snails compared to Dan’s perception now that he was trying. All six, including the cross stage, fell into the mud and the girl’s stumble was halted.
“I’ve always wanted to do that, thank you very much for facilitating.” Dan certainly had pictured the ways he could use his own power, subtle as it was. All he needed was a flower to give to the girl in this scenario, and it would fit perfectly in with his daydreams. Without the rain, of course. It never rained in his daydreams.
“What?” The girl asked.
“Don’t worry, I’m having a bit of a moment to myself. Wait.” Dan couldn’t believe his eyes. The scar on her eyebrow, the small nose. “Hana?”
“...Dan?” came her reply, and Dan couldn’t believe his luck. He’d just rescued Guan Ah Hana? Their footing recovered and anger swelled, the boys surrounding Dan and Hana were also confused but angrier than before. Taking the situation a little more seriously, Dan nodded to Hana in a small bow before turning his back and raising his own hands to fight. Six on two was a lot fairer. Though, Dan thought with a small grin, they would need another twenty to stop me.
Clearly unsure just how angry he was, the cross stage combatant was bug-eyed looking at Dan. He was larger than the other children, the only one who could possibly be called a young adult. He had short hair with the sides shaved, which Dan felt made him look a bit like a mushroom. He also had a sharp bend in his nose and an anger that took Dan another moment to place.
“Bo?” Dan said with a sharp laugh. It was too perfect. “Wow. Imagine that. I guess it’s not a very large city after all.”
Not interested in talking, or maybe not able to from anger, the oaf swung a fist clumsily. Like all cross stage fighters, he would pack a significant punch but unlike cross stage fighters, Dan was just never going to be hit with that. Bo’s fist moved through the air as though deep underwater and Dan easily dodged it. At the same time, Dan lifted his right leg to avoid a sweep by one of the line stagers. Applying a small amount of pressure onto Bo’s arm and then a quick swivel of his own hips, Dan’s motion did the job.
Bo’s fist collided with his ally’s jaw right as Dan spun his right knee into Bo’s gut. Two down, Dan blocked another sloppy punch and mopped up the line stagers as easily as knocking down the pins in Park Man-Shik’s bowling game. The “fight” lasted only around four seconds before only Hana and Dan were the only ones left standing. The rain was still pouring heavily, so Dan took a step to the side and found a dry spot.
“Shall we go?” Dan asked Hana, who was staring at him as though he had two heads. Instead of waiting for an answer, Dan started walking back to the smithy. Standing in the rain was doing his mood no favours, nor his clothes. Hana followed, stepping over the fallen attackers and joining Dan. She gasped as she saw the hut with it’s large stone forge.
“How did you know?” Hana was looking at Dan now like a third head had joined the second.
“How did I know what?”
“How did you know that I was looking for Park Man-Shik?”
“Why are you looking for my master, Hana?” Dan stopped walking. They were just outside the forge, with all it’s warmth and lack of pouring rain.
“Park Man-Shik is your master? Dan, what on Jaia is going on?”
Dan was just as confused as she was. It seemed too much a coincidence for the situation to have unfolded as it did, but here they were. “My master is not here right now, but if you’d like to come inside you can wait in the warm.” Dan was suddenly very disinterested in Hana and the gold he had sensed in her pocket and intensely interested in whatever his master was up to.
The pair went inside and Dan saw the common reaction to the heat. He barely felt it now, but that was more a function of his triangle stage than it was his exposure to it. Still, after a moment Hana seemed to see the value in the heat, her hair already starting to dry. “My room is through there, do you want some spare clothes?”
“Spare clothes? You have spares? We all thought the Lizard had eaten you.”
Dan was shocked as well. He hadn’t noticed the gradual change in his own life, granted by Park Man-Shik. He had a warm room, spare clothes, usually some food and often a small amount of money. He hadn’t really thought about how different life would look if he wasn’t here. It wasn’t lavish by any means, but it was more than others had. He smiled a happy smile for himself and told Hana to wait a moment. He went into his room, changed from his own slightly sodden clothes and then set out some for her. An older robe, shirt and trousers that he hadn’t worn in about two years.
“I left some clothes on the bed, they should fit you.” Dan had gone into something of his “shopkeeper” mode. Sometimes his master would leave him for days on end, and it would be his job to make sure that there was no money left on the table, so to speak. He had grown used to being accommodating. Hana thanked Dan and went to change. As she entered his room and closed the door, the front door opened. Half expecting Guan Ah Bo to have followed him, Dan turned around with a dismissal on his lips.
Instead he found someone very unlike Guan Ah Bo.
Two men had walked into the room, and the symbols on their clothes said that they were from the main branch family guard. They approached Dan without saying a word, and Dan silently raised his hands, palms facing forward, in submission. He lowered them as the men stopped and then faced each other before stepping back. That piece of theatre done, a man with casual yet tidy hair entered behind them. Again the symbolism of the main family, but this time not the guard. Dan knew enough to bow before that iconography and wasted no time in doing so.
“Oh wow, that was a quick bow. You’ll do nicely, I’m sure. You can lift your head, Guan Ah Dan.” He did as he was told, mind racing as the man said his name.
“Ah, oh, um…” Dan eloquently effused. “Wha- I mean,” Dan cleared his throat and started over. “How can this one assist you, Honoured Elder?” The man stood before Dan was not much older than himself, but Dan had no clue how to talk to what was essentially royalty.
“Ouch,” The man said with a smile, “Elder? Really? You can call me Shen if you like. Guan Yo Shen, if you’re writing a love letter.” He held out his hand and winked, Dan was unsure what exactly was going on but he shook the young prince’s hand all the same. This was Guan Yo Shen, the son of the current Patriarch of Guan. “Don’t do that, by the way.”
“Do… what, sorry?”
“Write me a love letter. I get far too many and we’ve literally just met.”
“... I’m sorry, what?” Dan had not expected any excitement today and now he was talking to the heir of the entire Guan household and he wasn’t making any sense.
“He’s as easy to mess with as you said, Man-Shik.” At Shen’s words, Dan’s Master stepped into the smithy. He looked apologetic. As if on cue, the door to Dan’s room opened and Hana stepped out. Her hair was a mess. She was wearing Dan’s clothes. Even Dan, as innocent as he was, could guess how that looked. Her eyes widened at the room full of people, must have had the same thoughts as Dan, blushed and ran back into the room. Shen whooped with laughter and told Park Man-Shik that Dan would be “worth every coin.”
“What does that mean?” Dan asked. The word had sent an icy cold spike of paranoia into him. “Worth every coin?”
“Oh,” Shen seemed surprised, but the smile stayed in his eyes as he said to Dan’s master, “you haven’t told him yet?”
“Told me what?” Dan was staring straight at Park Man-Shik as he spoke. The blacksmith’s normally permanently smiling face was faltering. Another spike of paranoia jumped down Dan’s throat. “What?”
“You’re…” Park Man-Shik swallowed, as though the words tasted bad. “You’re being adopted by the main family. Collect your things, you’re leaving now.”