The thing about the trial that both George and Director Ix had taught Hudson was that while there were rules… There were loopholes. Big ones.
Loopholes that he firmly planned on exploiting.
There was still one big uncertainty though; something that could throw a wrench into his plans: sigils. He didn’t know what they were, only that the trial advanced by unlocking access to them with accumulated maseki. He didn’t need the sigils for his plan to work; he just hoped there wasn’t something there that would sidetrack his progress.
But all of that would come later – one step at a time. And that first step was completing the daily challenge, the same as everyone else.
Cor was busy screaming the other participants into the semblance of a single file line. It seemed like he was going to start them off on the running portion, which was likely a good idea, as it could possibly take them the longest amount of time.
Hudson decided to test his strength out first, and headed over to the assortment of weights. He picked one at random off of the floor, and did a test lift. He almost dropped the weight on his head when one of the walls of the room shifted into a display.
Strength
#1 Hudson Appleseed: 25kg
#2 N/A
#3 N/A
A leaderboard for each element made sense; especially considering that scores could be updated by trying again and repeating the assessment.
Clara grabbed one of the ridiculously large kettlebells, swung it between her legs, and with a loud grunt pulled it above her head. She immediately let go, and it crashed to the floor behind her. The leaderboard updated:
Strength
#1 Clara Baring 150kg
#2 Hudson Appleseed 25kg
#3 N/A
Hudson was mildly impressed – he knew that her cultivation technique had empowered her lift, but still, swinging a few hundred pounds over your head was still impressive. Hudson decided to have a bit of fun with this element of the challenge, and walked over to the kettlebell Clara had lifted.
Engaging his Engine Breath technique, Hudson lifted the 150kg kettlebell smoothly in a single motion up to his chest, then pretended to struggle to get it above his head. It was shockingly easy to lift, but he didn’t want Clara to know that.
Clara watched him drop the 150kg kettlebell to the ground and snorted. “I’m just getting started.”
“Same,” Hudson said, grinning.
Clara went to the next largest kettlebell, 175kg, and threw it up over her head. Hudson followed and did the same, on this one…and then the next, and the next, and the next. Clara was struggling with the 250kg kettlebell; she tried twice before managing to clear it high enough to count.
“You don’t seem to be breathing any heavier – can’t you increase the tempo of your breathing technique to bring in more qi? Increase your strength that way also?”
Clara looked at him as if he had grown another head. “No. That’s not the way my technique works. That’s not the way anyone’s technique works. Only someone from outside S.E.C.T. would think of something like that.”
“True,” Hudson said, and walked over to a boulder on the ground. It didn’t even have any handles, like a kettlebell; it was just a large, dark rock, rough-pitted and scored, reaching up to about Hudson’s waist. It had the number 300 inscribed on the side.
Clara openly scoffed as Hudson bent down and gripped around the bottom of the rock.
“Impossible,” she said. “Know your limits.”
“Watch me.”
Then Hudson pushed his breathing technique hard – not his top speed, but up to about 80% – and heaved upwards. The boulder rose up, past his chest, past his head, and then – at this point, he was just showing off – Hudson shifted his stance to hold it with just a single hand, before dropping it to the floor.
The crash was loud enough to draw the stares of other participants, including George and his group. They had moved over to the dexterity element, and looked as if they were going to challenge that section first.
“Still impossible. How are you doing that? How did I miss this before?” Clara asked, shocked.
“Whoever said ‘seeing is believing’ has never met you,” Hudson retorted. “I don’t know my limits. I don’t know anything about cultivation – I just breathe harder, faster; increase the tempo of my technique. That draws more qi in…”
“And the more qi… the greater the strength,” Clara finished, then shook her head. “That doesn’t work with my technique. Without going into the details, the tempo needed is precise and limited to a narrow band.
“Are there no drawbacks? The technique you have discovered may indeed be truly exceptional…”
Hudson raised his right wrist. “Damaged meridian, remember? So it hasn’t been all roses and sunshine.”
“What do roses have to do with the topic at hand?” Clara asked, confused.
“Figure it out,” Hudson replied with a wry shake of his head.
He felt he had more in him. He walked over to a thick column of smooth, black metal or stone lying on the ground. It was approximately ten feet long, and had the number “350” engraved on the side. It looked like a fossilized or metallicized tree log.
Hudson wasn’t sure how he could actually grab this one, and then lift it over his head. He walked around it a few times, then decided to start on one end. He surged his Engine Breath technique again, and lifted the end of the metallic log onto his shoulder. He walked forward until the weight behind him balanced with the weight of the log in front of him, and the front end of the column lifted off the ground.
This was the tricky part. He carefully balanced the log on his shoulder, took a slightly wider stance with his legs, and then pushed upwards with his arms while flexing his knees. He didn’t quite manage to get the log high enough in the air to count before it unbalanced and fell crashing to the ground.
He needed to be careful not to be crushed under these massive weights, either. It was a surreal experience, lifting these massive objects, and he had a weird feeling pass over him. It was as if his body wasn’t his own; as if he was trapped in someone else’s body. The strange feeling came and went quickly, though, and he shrugged it off.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
He had been close to lifting the massive log, so he decided to try the same technique again. After his second try, he looked up, and saw the number after his name light up on the leaderboard.
Strength
#1 Hudson Appleseed 350kg
#2 Clara Baring 250kg
#3 Vince Delacroix 50kg
He also noticed that another leaderboard had begun populating.
Dexterity
#1 Eustace Sachs 0’ 57”
#2 Kenji Abe 1’ 00”
#3 Beatrice Caron 1’ 05”
Hudson was very interested in seeing what the dexterity trial was, and how it would function. Maybe get some tips from watching others go first.
So when he turned around and looked over at the section of the room where the dexterity trial was set up, he was highly perplexed when he saw an amorphous, white cloud blocking his view.
“What the heck is that?” Hudson asked.
“Oh, that technique,” Clara said as she turned around and saw what could only be described as a miniature cloud in the middle of the room. “Makes sense that George would use that here.”
“George did that?”
“I assume it was George. It would have to be, really. None of the other people are advanced enough in their cultivation to launch cultivation techniques, unless they were hiding their true strength.
“The technique is a standard concealment technique called ‘Breath of Mist.’ I’ve seen it many times; it’s often used when training younger S.E.C.T. members to fight with their senses impaired. It reduces sound inside of it as well.
“It’s a fairly easy qigong technique to master, or so I’ve been told. The downsides are it takes some time for lower cultivation ranks to gather enough qi to launch it, and the mist itself is not very large. But he can control to a certain degree where the mist spreads.”
Hudson sighed. He supposed he should feel flattered, that George would go to such lengths to prevent any advantage.
On the running track, Cor was running back and forth up a single-file line of the other participants, yelling “encouragement” at any that slowed down or slacked off. While he was watching, one of them turned and vomited purple bile all over the track. He didn’t stop running though; he knew better.
He needed a name for this group. There were the cheaters – George’s sycophants. There was his own group, if you could call it a group. But he didn’t need a name for his own group of friends though. He needed a name for the other participants that had come into the trial with false hope of opportunity and had been destined for failure.
He tossed a few ideas around in his head: Cor’s cadets? The failures? He looked back at the purplish vomit on the track before a flicker of black portals from the director mopped it up.
Grasshoppers. These people were grasshoppers: squeeze them a little and purple stuff comes out.
“Up for a run?” he asked. “We can always come back to the strength portion if we need too, and there should be enough room on the track, even with all of the grasshoppers. We might be able to get a glance at the dexterity trial from of the other side of the track as well.”
“Grasshoppers? What do you – no, never mind, I do not need to know your strange idioms. I’ve had enough of those from Cor.” Clara crossed her arms and lifted her chin out. “You may have bested me in strength, but your strange, variable tempo breathing technique won’t sustain you for a hundred laps.
“Rooster!” she called over to Vince, who was struggling with a 75kg weight.
“Stop playing with that pebble. Go run,” she ordered. Vince dropped the weight and jogged over to the track.
“Let’s make this interesting,” she continued. “Whoever laps the Rooster the most times, wins.”
“Oh, ok. A bet,” Hudson said, grinning. “What are the stakes for the bet?”
“Leadership of our group, of course,” she scoffed. “We need a name as well. Something to strike fear in the hearts of our enemies–”
“If I win, you tell me everything you know about sigils,” Hudson interrupted.
Clara frowned. “Those are S.E.C.T. secrets.”
Her way of thinking was so rigid. Hudson shook his head wryly, but he didn’t try to convince her that she shouldn’t be so loyal to S.E.C.T., nor did he point out that him being in this trial itself should qualify him as a member (or future member) of S.E.C.T. There was a much easier way to convince her.
“So you’re scared of losing,” Hudson said.
“Never,” she declared haughtily. “My path to ascension begins now; there is no looking back. I accept your terms.”
Hudson chuckled before spinning up his Engine Breath and shooting off for the track at a sprint.
…..
Meanwhile… on Earth
…..
“I’m Scruggs and this is Park,” the S.E.C.T. agent said to the simpering middle manager sitting down across from him in the windowless conference room. He flashed a badge at the man, then discreetly took a look himself before putting it back in his pocket. He had forgotten which three letter agency he was with at the moment. It had been a long day.
“We’re with the FBI. We appreciate your time answering a few questions for us.”
“Of course, whatever I can do to help,” the man said, a fake smile oozing across his face. Scruggs could literally smell the fear and nervousness wafting off of the man, and wished for not the first time that he could turn down his cultivation-enhanced senses.
“You are…” Scruggs began.
“Noah. Noah Anderson,” the man replied.
“So Noah, what you can you tell me about… Hudson Appleseed?”
His partner, Park, leaned forward slightly. He was an intimidating presence: six and a half feet tall, well over 250lbs, all of it muscle. And while Noah couldn’t know this, Park was also an accomplished S.E.C.T. cultivator and the Foundation Building stage, and pushing his qi out to smother Noah in an imposing aura.
Noah swallowed slightly and glanced at Park before turning back to Scruggs.
“Not much,” he started to say.
Park grunted. It could have been a gunshot, seeing how how high Noah jumped in his chair.
Scruggs sighed internally. He couldn’t begrudge his partner his fun. He just wished he had pulled bad cop duty this time. It was a lot more fun than being the good cop.
“Are you sure? Anything you know, however small, might be helpful to our investigation,” Scruggs said in his best soothing voice. It came out like tires on a gravel road. He wasn’t very good at being the good cop, if he was being honest with himself.
Noah’s eyes were starting to bulge. His leg was tapping up and down under the table at a furious tempo.
“I was his team leader. I was busy training him up, but he was a poor performer. Still learning the ropes, only with us for 6 months before…,” Noah managed to choke out.
Scruggs gave a pointed look over at his partner. He didn’t need this guy to implode. At least not yet.
“Did he do anything outside of work? Any hobbies that you know of?”
“I-I don’t know…” Noah said. “He was a weird kid. Never went out after work with the team for happy hour. I don’t even think he drank at all. A bit of a loner, anti-social even.
“He’d do this thing at his desk, sometimes. He wasn’t in the office often, but when he was, I’d catch him, like, closing his eyes and doing weird meditation stuff sometimes, you know? Told him to knock it off with that yoga crap while at work, but he didn’t listen.”
“Oh? Tell me more,” Scruggs said. Now they might be getting somewhere – meditation and visualization were important for some cultivation techniques. He needed to dig up something to report back to the Adams’ family.
“Quickly!” Park growled and Noah jumped in his seat again.