--- Professor Greenwater ---

"You are courting death!" The young man declared.

"Excuse me?" Professor Greenwater responded. "That seems a bit excessive. All I asked was that you move out of the way. You are blocking the street."

"You dare talk back to me, mortal? Apologize now, and perhaps I will be merciful and grant you a swift death."

Professor Greenwater raised a single eyebrow at that threat. "Now, now. That is no way to treat people. Do your parents know that you talk like that?"

Suddenly the young man's face looked very serious and a palpable aura of dread started emanating from him.

Professor Greenwater had seen and felt such things many times before. The young man was projecting his Killing Intent. He didn't know that humanoids could do that! In fact, he was pretty sure they normally couldn't, but the people around here were all dressed very strangely. It looked like the Wild Hunt had dragged him much further away than normal, and the locals had some unusual abilities.

The young man's Killing Intent was quite interesting, academically speaking, and Professor Greenwater regarded him critically to learn more. He mentally compared it to the auras of dread of different types of demons he had encountered before.

Then he noticed that the crowd around the two of them had a much more extreme reaction. Half of them had fallen unconscious on the spot, and the other half was running away, screaming in terror.

That seemed a bit excessive to Professor Greenwater. That Killing Intent wasn't that scary, was it? Frankly he thought the young man looked a bit constipated, staring at him like that.

And suddenly, Vellandor the Swift was there, standing next to him. "Oh, wow. Look at that! It's so cute! He is trying to be scary! I want to pinch his cheeks!"

The young man reacted in shock: "Hidden Master!" He blurted out.

But Vellandor ignored him and turned to Professor Greenwater: "Can I pinch his cheeks? Is it ok if I do that? And can I keep him?"

--- Aranea ---

"Your actions here will reflect on your sect. Bring honor and glory to the venerable Green Tiger Sect!" The Inner Disciple addressed the Outer Disciples, who were standing in a line before him without moving a muscle.

Aranea had always thought this sort of thing was unnecessarily strict. Her own address to her students was much nicer:

"Many of you will be nervous because this is your first tournament. But don't worry! The most important thing to remember is to be yourselves and to have fun!"

Compared to all the other sects, her students were a motley bunch.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

She had founded the Friendly Spider Sect together with Pebble. They had made it their mission to take on students that would otherwise be ignored.

Like the young wolf in front of her. He was a spirit beast, but he trained just as hard as anyone else, and he was surprisingly good at swinging a sword with his mouth!

They even had a few spider students, and Aranea was so happy to see that they integrated well into the group.

She was positively surprised by everyone's tolerance of spiders in this universe. There was barely any arachnophobia to be found. Unfortunately, she had to agree with Pebble: The main reason people did not fear and hate sapient spiders was that they liked hunting them and other spirit beasts as prey. They would then consume their spiritual cores, and turn the corpses into pills, which they could eat to get more powerful.

Aranea thought that was terrible, but at least the universe made a lot of sense this way. Killing someone to get stronger and smarter was how she achieved sapience after all. This universe was just a lot more formal about the whole process than her old universe was.

The only thing that didn't make sense to her, was that napping also made you more powerful. But she didn't mind that it didn't make much sense, because it was kind of awesome. She wished that had been the case in her home universe as well. For some reason the locals didn't call it 'napping', though. They called it 'cultivation' and acted like there was some big secret to it.

She should take the opportunity while she was here to discuss this further with the elders of other sects.

She didn't relish the thought. Talking to these people hadn't gone well before. The cultural divide was just too large.

It started with her name, of all things. She was quite proud to call herself "Aranea Mortal", but it led to a lot of confusion, and people did not take her seriously. Apparently the cultivators thought that they weren't mortal?

So she told them all about her Big Sister, and how cool she was, and how she was called Mortal, because a sufficiently powerful force could in fact still kill her, at least in theory. The elders hadn't looked very impressed. But then Pebble came to the rescue: He gave a little speech about the meaning of power and humility. It all went over Aranea's head, but many of the elders nodded sagely, and afterwards they talked very respectfully about her sister. The fact that they had never seen a talking rock before may have been a factor, too.

Aranea had tried to capitalize on this by trying to convince them to join the Open Cultivation License. She had invented the Open Cultivation License herself because she was very annoyed that everyone else kept their napping-techniques a secret. Didn't they know that sharing was caring?

She thought the Open Cultivation License was a great idea, and both Pebble and all of their students agreed.

But the elders of the other sects did not! Not one of them wanted to join!

At least one good thing came out of it: While they did not want to publish their own napping-techniques, they did spend the time to read hers. She counted that as a partial win: After all, giving other people access to knowledge was the whole point. And the elders who read her texts did end up treating her much more politely afterwards. She hadn't heard a single death threat from them, which was very unusual for the local culture.

Instead of death threats and demands to move elsewhere, the Friendly Spider Sect now received envoys, who were very polite.

It was progress, although she still found the cultural norms of this world to be horribly confusing.

She worried for her students. Many other sects hunted spirit beasts for their spirit cores, and the Friendly Spider Sect followed very different cultural norms in many ways. A tournament like this should be a great chance to socialize and make friends, but she was worried that her students might get ostracized by the other sects.

As the students prepared to leave, she gave them one last friendly reminder: "Remember what we talked about earlier: Bullying other people is not ok. If you see any bullying going on, you should defend the victim. And if the bully looks too scary for you to stand up to them, there is no shame in admitting that: Don't hesitate to ask me or Pebble for help."