The assistant referee took a quick look at the entrance of the room before leaning toward Lirzod. “But if you can drop a silver in my pocket, I will let you choose an easy opponent.”
Lirzod’s ear jerked like that of a cat. “You can do that?”
“Not to everyone, but you seem like a good guy,” the assistant referee said in a lively tone, one of his eyes closed, and his lips stretched out into a toothy smile. “It’s only natural that I help you get through this deck’s test.”
“That’s kind of you," Lirzod pursed his lips in thought for a moment, "but I think I can handle it myself.”
“Are you sure?” the assistant referee’s tone emphasized his words, “there are hundreds of people who have rejected my offer before, and then came looking for me after failing to pass the test. But I reject such people, and there are thousands like them on this deck. I don’t want you to end up like one of them.” He leaked out a knowing grin.
“That’s nice of you, but this is just shady money you’re trying to earn...” Lirzod stood straight and wetted his lips before making brief eye contact with the assistant referee, “you have reminded me of Uncle Allda. If he were to be in your shoes, he probably would have taken seeds instead of coins, or maybe he would have taken coins first and would have used them to buy good seeds.”
“Huh?" the assistant referee's forehead wrinkled, "What Allda? What seeds?”
“Any variety of seeds like those of almonds, cashews, and others whose trees have a longer lifespan will do,” Lirzod said, stroking the forearm.
“What for?” the assistant referee let out an impatient huff.
“Coins can’t salivate your mouth, but fruits and nuts can,” he looked enlivened as he spoke. “If only you plant different types of seeds that grow at different times of the year and foster their growth, one day, they will provide you with nuts throughout the year, which you can use for numerous purposes. This way, you’d at least have put all of the shady money to better use, don’t you think?”
“That sounds stupid,” the assistant referee snorted and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t think anyone would want to do that. Besides, I don’t even like dry fruits.”
“You may not like eating them, but you don’t like trading them as well?” Lirzod asked, wiggling his brows.
“To be frank," the assistant referee's neck stiffened a bit, "not just selling seeds or fruits but growing trees is also a tedious process. Who’d waste their time, especially with something that boring?”
“Well, it’s a repetitious profession, but there’s always a new seed to know about to keep your interest going, and your previous experience will count. On the contrary, it’s hard to multiply coins without hurting someone, especially when interest rates are involved during the trade, but you don’t have to worry about such things with seeds.” He paused just a moment before continuing, “A fortune can't be made from a single coin in the same way a forest can be grown from a single seed. One path is overly complicated than the other, to say the least. That’s what makes the path of sowers worthy enough to walk, don’t you think?"
The assistant referee offered a bemused smile.
"To add to that,” Lirzod continued speaking passionately, “we can’t sow coins and expect them to germinate. Once you spend a coin to fill your stomach, it’s gone, but when you spend a seed, it will give us back more seeds and plenty of fruits and herbs. That’s why I think seeds are superior to coins. Coins increase our wealth but not necessarily our worth in the world. Coins may come and go, but a seed doesn’t change as per the need. It gives us exactly what we expect them to. Though finding any quality seed can get immensely harder than we can imagine, it’s not like we will be at a loss if we don’t find a particular one. There are billions to choose from. It requires a decent amount of time for some trees to bear fruit, but in return for our efforts, they will often provide us with at least what is necessary. If we safe keep the seeds, we can keep on using them forever without having to worry about their fluctuating prices.”
“What rubbish,” the assistant referee waved his hand in displeasure and gave a glassy stare, “I can earn a lot more by investing the silver in some business, and with sufficient luck on my side, who knows, I might even earn enough to easily buy off multiple almond trees at once just for the fun of it. This way, I wouldn’t have to do any labor, but I will still be earning more, haha.” He protruded his chest out and lifted his chin as if he won an argument.
“You don’t know that for sure,” Lirzod said and squinted his eyes that glistened with an inner glow. “Can you guarantee that, by the end of the year, your money will be doubled? What if someone cheats you midway? You will lose all of your money, but if it’s an almond tree, you will only have to work and wait for around five years for the tree to bear fruit, but afterward, you will get at least ten copper per tree in a single harvest. And if you own dozens of such trees that bear fruit at the same time, you will be bathing in a silver bathtub, man.”
The assistant referee paused a moment. Until seconds ago, he appeared unbothered by Lirzod's words, but now, he wasn't feeling the same anymore. The image of a silver tub flashed in his mind. He cleared his throat and loosened himself a bit before replying, “But, but this involves risks as well. What if some storm messes up my trees?”
“Isn’t there a certain level of risk in everything that we do? Just choose a region that suits the seed and where violent storms are rare guests, and that should do, for starters,” Lirzod's voice sounded light-hearted yet held some weight—enough of it for his opinions to be considered. “I’m not speaking this groundlessly. There’s this guy named Allda in my clan. He climbed the ranks in the clan with a similar strategy. Many years ago, he somewhat mimicked what my clan heads did in the past. He took dozens of wasted acres for lease, planted quality seeds in those lands, and now, he’s not only stinking rich, but he also gets respected for his works. He now owns all those lands he previously took for lease, and he always has enough nuts to spare on his stupid squirrels. He’s ventured into other businesses as well, and many outsiders have their eyes on him, wanting to grab him to their side. Just imagine yourself in his place—you get to eat enough almonds until your farts smell like them.”
“Eat?” the assistant referee raised his brow, “I thought we were talking about selling.”
“U-Uh, yeah,” Lirzod was taken by surprise, and he ended up awkwardly laughing, somewhat puzzling the assistant referee. “You can do both. You will have that luxury.”
“Hm, true. All this sounds quite tempting,” the assistant referee just realized that Lirzod’s words had long salivated his mouth. “I guess I’ll spend these extra silver I earn for that long term plan. And also, I should thank you for telling me about this method of working.”
“You can thank Uncle Allda and my clan heads when you’ve become rich,” Lirzod said, and his heartbeat then slowed down a bit, “but let me warn you with my father’s words, ‘the blades of the rich are sharper and more double-edged than those of the poor, and so are their lives. Mind the blade you forge and the life you lead.’ So basically, it’s also important how one becomes rich, and how one handles themselves after becoming rich. Otherwise, they’ll doom themselves.”
“What? A rich life is more dangerous? Are you out of your mind? It gives us comfort and safety!”
“I just told you what my father said. I don’t think we have time to argue about it, but if you insist, then I don’t have a problem.”
“No, no. We are already late.”
“Wait, can you sell this cat to me?” he glanced at the cat that had two of its front legs broken.
“That—I can't do. The only cats we give away are the unruly or gravely injured ones.”
“You mean this isn’t gravely injured?” Lirzod had an overall weighted feeling.
“Not really. These sorts of injuries are common for cats. With extra meat, this cat should get going just fine in a month or so.”
Though the assistant referee had said that, Lirzod didn’t want to believe his words, for he had already perceived how the guy was lying through his teeth. Lirzod's brows pulled down in concentration. “Who brought the cat to this state?”
“Uh, not long ago, a crazy dude, Seswatt, if I remember his name right, has gone wild here. That bastard burned half of the cats to death and broke the limbs of many more.” Hurt and disappointment saturated the assistant referee’s words, “We were forced to do salary-less jobs for weeks because of that. We hired healers to heal those that have simple injuries, but cats with grave wounds died in miserable ways right in front of our eyes, and there was little that we could do. Healers take a lot of money even if it’s for the life of a cat.” He looked at the cat. “To its luck, this cat is just one among the victims that somehow made it.”
A surge of bitterness rose in Lirzod's belly, causing him to bite his lower lip, for it was hard to swallow a breath, “I wish I were here when that happened. I would have broken his teeth for good.”
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“Heh, if it were that easy, I would have done it myself, but that’s just us dreaming for the dead and buried,” the assistant referee’s shoulders slumped a little, for he was unable to shake off the guilt and defeat. He took a breath before continuing, “Even if you were here, you would have, at best, gotten stained by the smoke and at worse gotten roasted together with the cats. That’s all that would have happened.” He sighed and then suddenly stumbled, “Wait, I almost forgot about the test! We are wasting time here!” His eyes enlarged, and his heartbeat rang in his ears as he quickly looked outside the room only to find out that Jehez was arguing with Gonn and also a girl. “Whew…” he breathed a sigh of relief and quickly turned to Lirzod. “Choose the cat! Quick!”
“You are right,” Lirzod nodded and looked around to survey the cats. Moments later, he ambled toward a small clowder of cats.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere,” soon after getting closer to the group of cats chilling on the ground, Lirzod leaned forward and yelled, ‘Bow!” All the cats bounced off their bellies in startlement and scampered away.
“What the heck are you doing?” the assistant referee couldn’t help but query in a stressed tone.
“Choosing the cat,” Lirzod made his way to another clowder and shouted again, “Bow!” All the cats bolted away from him this time, too, but he repeated this process, and after a few attempts, he found a healthy-looking black cat that didn’t run away, for it was sound asleep, resting in a strange position that exposed its belly. It was the first time that Lirzod saw a cat snore in such a manner. The cat also had a tiny bit of white hair at the end of its long and thick tail. The long whiskers at its mouth stuck out sideways and waved with each breath it took, and even the whiskers by its eyes stood upright as if they were ready to detect even the slightest changes in a breeze. The feline was, without a doubt, a full-grown adult, probably in its peak stage of life. All of these impressions made the cat appear mighty in Lirzod’s eyes, mightier enough that it could make all the approaching dogs beat a hasty retreat, to say the least. “Hehe, I found one.” Lirzod gave out a neat nod.
The assistant referee's skin tingled, and he voiced denial right away, “Wait, you don’t want that cat.”
“Hm? What’s wrong with it?”
“There’s nothing wrong with him, and that’s the problem,” the assistant referee strode toward Lirzod, and maybe it was the sound of his footsteps, or maybe it was his voice, the snoring of the cat stopped, and it opened its eyes, rolled its body so that it got back to a proper position before stretching its legs. Its prolonged yawn exposed its sharp and threatening teeth. “With fifty-four straight victories, he has recently entered the top ten list of cats of all time in terms of consecutive wins. He is Bruiser, the current Lord of Cats of Cat Home. He is the only cat who can take more than just a catnap even when all the other cats are duking it out in a deadly brawl. He’s somewhat used to me being around, but you should avoid looking him in the eye for too long, or he’ll claw at you.” As the assistant referee was saying, Bruiser clawed at another cat that simply stood nearby. “See, I told you. All the contestants who chose him in the past suffered more than just simple scratches. That's why no one likes him. I suggest that you choose another—”
“I like him,” Lirzod's voice contained strength and excitement.
“What?” the assistant referee was surprised. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“I did,” Lirzod said and smiled. “That’s why I choose this cat. He's the one I want to compete with.”
“Compete?" the assistant referee looked at Lirozd in a daze. "Are you serious? You can’t trick Bruiser with food. He’s the kind who’d look for food on his own and vent the itching in his claws by clashing with other cats. You just saw him do that. Trust me when I say this—you don’t want to wrestle with him.”
“Well," Lirzod glanced at him in a weightless gaze, "I’ll take my chances and see if I can bring out a gesture or two from this fellow.”
“Hmph, that’s not even a joke. You are not a son of the night to think you can control a cat with simple gestures,” the assistant referee’s tone hardened as he folded his arms across the chest. “Let me tell you this... Bruiser has never shown any gesture till now other than hostility. And whenever he gets aggressive, the contestants get gifted with a loss and what’s more the bruises that’ll bother for ages.”
“It's fine. I still choose Bruiser,” Lirzod turned back and began to walk. "We’ll see who bothers who."
“If you are that itching to lose, then so be it,” the assistant referee involuntarily lifted his shoulders a bit, “but don’t blame me afterward for your bruises. You are bringing this trouble on yourself.”
“Roger, man,” Lirzod gave the thumbs up without looking back.
Meanwhile, not too far away from the hall.
Booboo and three of his escorts just stopped nearby a bread booth where there was another man—in similar clothing as the three fellows—who now tossed swords into the hands of his buddies.
Booboo looked around, and the street was pretty much desolate, and by this time, the four men stationed themselves in four spots and blocked the donkey’s path. “Why did we, hic, stop here?” Booboo asked, fixing the fish pole along the donkey’s neck.
“Because this is where we'll strip everything off you, including your underwear!” one of the four men swung the sword straight at Booboo from his right side. A two-handed grip would likely result in a swing that could cleave through the skin and flesh and some part of the bone in the arm as well, for a grown-up man was in action. Still, with but a swift yet uncomplicated leg movement, Booboo booted the sword from underneath, hurling the weapon out of the man’s hands and into the air.
Though surprised, the other three men immediately rushed in, thrusting their swords from three directions—the front, left, and behind. “Die!” they roared as their weapons drove through the air.
The sound of approaching doom converged on Booboo from three different directions. “Duck, Heehaw!” he bent forward while seated atop his ride, forcing the baby crow to employ its wings, and subsequently, the donkey abruptly crumpled to its knees against its will, startling the incoming men, and hence their swords ended up missing Booboo by a thin margin.
The points of the three swords met in a clinking noise and deflected onto each other’s bodies. The points gleamed as the swords swished sharply through the air and penetrated the upper chest regions of the three men before they could even get a proper footing on the ground.
At that instant, the fourth sword that had bounced off the ceiling now fell straight in Booboo's hand. He gyrated on his buttocks and cut through the wrists of the three men without warning. The already bleeding men got terror-struck by his actions, fell to their backsides, howled in horror as little fountains of blood poured out of their wrists. The fourth guy, who was witnessing all that, shook in his sandals as Booboo now tottered toward him.
“Any unmastered weapon considers its master a potential feast of flesh, hic, just like how an untamed pet can turn against its master any time,” Booboo, with his eyes still half-open, stopped in front of the fourth man, a bent-legged man, and pointed the sword toward him. “I took some pleasure in swinging the sword around, but it's yours, right? You can have it.”
Booboo's words wet his underwear, for he thought that Booboo would let him attack only to get his wrist cut as well. “Please, don’t kill me!” the bent-legged man made a crying expression and resembled a rat cornered by a cat. His eyes weren’t even on the sword. “K-Killing is wrong on this ship. Please don’t kill me.” He pleaded.
“Murdering is indeed forbidden on this vessel in this day and age. I know. It’s a pain in the ass. There are thousands of sects in the world, and every one of them believes they are the only sect with the right set of rules. So, you can’t help but hate some of the dogmas they push on us. I mean, there’s no hard line between lawful killing and unlawful killing, right? So, why don’t they just let ‘might’ make the law? Things would get a lot plainer that way,” Booboo let go of the sword and pulled out the dice hanging by an ear. “Choose a number. If you get it right, you will suffer punishment for your wrongs.”
The bent-legged man shivered in his shoes. “Please, sir.” Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he leaked down his underwear in full flow.
“If you choose, you get to choose the one that grants you a loss,” Booboo said, “but if I choose, I’ll choose the one that grants you a win. The pleasure is mine, but the choice is yours.”
While still crying and shivering, the bent-legged man uttered a word, “one.”
Wearing a poker face, Booboo placed the dice between his thumb and index finger and moved those fingers as if he was snapping them. The dice landed on top of his forefinger and continued to spin at a great speed. He dropped it on the flat side of the sword, the tip of which was almost touching the bent-legged man’s belly.
As the speed of the dice slowed down, the bent-legged man bent his legs so much that his knees were touching, and bones were rubbing against each other, where the skin reddened. His face turned paler by the second.
The dice then stopped on two, but the bent-legged was still frozen. Booboo took the dice and fixed it to the earring before flipping the sword so that the hilt faced that man. After that bent-legged man hesitantly grabbed the hilt of the sword, Booboo curled his arm around the bent-legged man’s shoulders, “Luck is on your side today, buddy. I’m not drunk enough to forget myself, but more importantly, do you know of a man on this deck who owns a star-like frog?”
“U-Uh,” the man’s voice was still quite shaky as Booboo made him walk together, “you mean the star-shaped frog—yeah, yeah, we know him… sir.”
“Can you lead me to him?” Booboo asked, and the baby crow landed back on top of his hat.
“Yes, sure, sir,” the man was too afraid to start a conversation, but he wanted to gain a good impression in Booboo’s eyes and escape with his wrists intact, so he forced himself and asked, “Do you want to watch the circus of the star-shaped frog as well?”
“Maybe, hic, I’ll buy the frog if it is up to the mark of my imagination.”
“T-That circus man got a bad reputation for the way he treats his fans. If you make deals with him, some of his negative fame might transfer to you, sir,” Though he could hear the screams of his friends from behind, he leaked out a forced smile as he conversed.
“Well, negative fame is nothing to worry about,” Booboo took a sip of Naive Wine before continuing, “he makes money with the frog, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, he does fill his pockets with silver, sir, but he also faces a great amount of criticism for his ways of doing things.”
“Doesn’t matter. If it makes you rich, it is right. Lead me to the circus.”
“Y-Yes, sir.”
“By the way, do you know anything about this ‘song of the ship’ thing?”
“T-That’s just a fable, sir. Made to entertain those who board the ship, I believe.”
“Mm, who cares about some stupid song without lyrics or colors anyway.” A second of silence passed. “Why don’t you sing a song for me?”
“Uh, sir, that’s…”
“You don’t want to?” Booboo’s tone shifted.
“T-There used to be a frog in the well,” he started singing in a shaky voice, “that thought it was the king of everything, for it knew not of the world outside. And…”
As the two of them left the spot, the donkey didn’t string along with them but went off in the opposite direction, walking strangely, for it couldn’t freely move its neck around as the fishing pole was in the way.
The three wounded men, on the other hand, suffered from different kinds of pain that burned through their chests and wrists better than any boiling liquid, and especially the one at their wrists controlled all of their thoughts and actions. Their minds spun in a blizzard of blackness, and no matter how hard they clenched their jaws, the spinning won't stop, and eventually, their minds blanked out, unable to withstand the tribulation.