The half-elf gritted his teeth and turned to see the short teen flanked by his two goons, a pair of towering, bulky human twins who seemed to have traded most of their brains for brawn. The goons hadn’t awakened their cores. Kiru could innately tell from the energy signature coming off their bodies, or in their specific cases, a lack thereof. Still, that didn’t make them any less dangerous to Kiru. The trio had cut off the only way he could leave. He really regretted turning off into this dead-end.
“What do you want, Ambrose?” he asked, forcing his anger back for the moment.
The boy smirked. “I didn’t appreciate what you insinuated earlier. So, I thought to bring the boys here, so we can teach you a lesson.”
“Oh yeah? And what lesson is that?”
“Don’t insult your betters, peasant. How dare you, some common trash, have the audacity to insult me in front of others.”
Kiru almost attacked Ambrose right then and there, but he restrained himself. He had promised his mom several weeks ago he wouldn’t start any more unnecessary fights. He’d caused her enough trouble since he’d awakened his core, which had caused her to lose face within the village. It wasn’t the fact that he awakened his core, it was that the fire mana stoked his temper much more easily which…led to trouble.
Kiru took in a deep breath through his nostrils as he prepared himself. It would be difficult, but he would apologize to Ambrose and try to gain face, for his mother’s sake. He sighed and bowed his head to Ambrose. “I’m sorry, noble heir to the Constantine family. Please forgive my rudeness. I am but a lowly peasant and am not worthy to be in your presence,” he said, feeling disgust as the words passed his lips. He couldn’t believe it had come to this, but a promise to his mother was a promise he intended to try and keep.
“Huh! Haha! I’m surprised, trash. You usually have such a mouth on you. I didn’t expect for you to grovel before me, even without my men’s prompting,” Ambrose said, then sighed. “I’ll forgive your offense, only this once, as long as you never repeat it again,” he said, then turned his back to walk away.
Kiru kept his head bowed and sighed in relief.
But then Ambrose turned to walk away, he said, “Guess that bitch of a mother actually did teach you something.”
Kiru snapped. He would bear the insults. He would deal with the teasing, the bullying, the lack of friends. But what he wouldn’t stand was someone insulting his mother. It was a line he drew which none would cross. A vessel throbbed in his forehead as he looked to the thugs’ backs, his fire mana core now fueling him completely. For the first time ever, he let the mana stored inside flow through his arm unrestrained. “What did you say?” The words passed his lips in an angry growl. His entire arm stung as if from a bad sunburn, but he didn’t care.
Ambrose stopped and turned to face the half-elf, a malicious smile on his face. “Oh, did I hurt your feelings, mongrel? I called your mother what she is, a bitch!” The two thugs beside him chuckled evilly at the insult.
If Kiru openly attacked Ambrose, there would be repercussions. Like it or not, the horse’s ass was still a noble. Just because they couldn’t have an open brawl like Kiru wanted, didn’t mean that he couldn’t make the jerk pay. “I challenge you to a duel,” he said, staring straight at Ambrose, keeping his face stern to show no fear of the noble.
The cocky noble gave a noncommittal shrug, then said, “Fine. I agree.” His lackadaisical attitude immediately turned hostile as he lunged at Kiru.
Kiru was caught off-guard by the sudden attack-he’d assumed there would be more formality to an official duel. He hadn’t researched duels and only knew they were one-on-one fights until someone surrendered or was incapacitated.
Ambrose apparently didn’t share that view, nor did he think to fight fairly, either. The young noble was a storm mana cultivator, similar to the air mana his father cultivated. It was a rare path to follow, and it made Ambrose dangerous. “Lightning Limb,” he said slightly under his breath. Using his stored mana, he activated a technique to fuel his strike. Electricity crackled around Ambrose’s forearm, seeming to accelerate his speed. Kiru had enough time for his eyes to widen in surprise, but not enough to fully guard himself. The noble had activated the technique Lightning Limb to help him punch Kiru square in the face.
Kiru’s vision flashed white as he heard the telltale snap of his nose breaking as he was flung backward from the momentum of the strike. As he was airborne, the pain forced him to stop the flow of mana down his arm as blood poured from his nostrils across his grimacing face. He rolled and bounced on the dirt like a rock skipping on water. Kiru barely had enough time to blink his vision clear and wipe some of the blood off his face before Ambrose’s twin goons began to kick him again and again. He slowly curled into a ball to protect himself, but he still was beaten handily and was bounced around from their blows and kicks.
Kiru groaned and growled as the anger still coursing through him grew, stimulating the mana in his core to rage like wildfire. Acting purely on instinct, Kiru caught a leg from each of the goons and recklessly released some of the fire mana from his core. It traveled wildly through his arms to his hands and to the leg of each brute. While no flames came from his hands, he’d heated them up enough to burn through their pants and char their flesh. His arms burned and sizzled.
The two brutes fell to their asses and howled in pain as Kiru retained his grip and seared their flesh, giving the twins a pair of matching handprint second-degree burns. Kiru’s arms stung with the backlash from the heat, but he bared his teeth and endured it. Kiru heard the crackling of electricity once more in front of him, and he dropped their legs. He managed to roll out of the way and dodged another Lightning Limb attack.
Ambrose scowled as he turned back to face Kiru.
There was no one blocking Kiru from escaping. He could run and avoid this fight, since Ambrose had already broken the rules of the duel. But then again, Kiru wanted to win. He was holding his own, despite being tricked and outnumbered. Kiru didn’t want to miss this chance for Ambrose to truly learn who his betters were.
Kiru gestured for Ambrose to continue.
Ambrose growled at his companions, “Useless!” he spat, then threw an unempowered fist at Kiru. The half-elf raised an arm to block it, then gave the noble a shit-eating grin. The rich kid had training in combat from teachers, Kiru had learned from his previous scuffles. This duel had certifiably been turned into a brawl, and that gave Kiru the advantage.
Kiru dodged the next punch, then kicked Ambrose in the side of the knee. He followed up with a kidney punch.
Ambrose whined in pain and swung wildly in response. Kiru dodged again, using the noble’s angry attack against him. Kiru reactivated his own proto-technique, making his hand extremely hot, and slapped Ambrose on the face, both insulting the noble and placing a hand-shaped burn mark on half of his face! It was a devious idea Kiru’s angered brain had devised in the heat of the moment. He smiled as the fruits of his attack bloomed on Ambrose’s face.
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Ambrose let out a childlike cry, clutching his burned cheek, and turned back to Kiru with his mouth agape.
Kiru took a few confident steps forward and pulled a fist back, ready to finish the fight against the uppity noble. He pulled his fist back before getting promptly tackled from behind. Kiru fought and kicked, against whoever knocked him down. His heart raced when someone else wrapped their arms around his legs. Kiru bucked before quickly realizing that in all his focus and anger on Ambrose, he’d forgotten about the noble’s lackeys. The brute who held Kiru’s upper body slammed his skull violently against the ground.
A warm sensation trickled down Kiru’s head, streaking over his right eye and partially obscuring his vision. He felt his body being moved, but he couldn’t respond. He couldn’t speak or move his limbs, like he was a prisoner within the shell his body had become. Move! he thought to himself, in frustration. Come on Kiru! Move! His desperate internal motivation worked, and he clawed his way to consciousness. He gasped deeply as his eyes reclaimed their focus. Well, one of his eyes. The other was still covered in blood, which flowed freely from his head.
Kiru became keenly aware that whatever head wound he’d suffered, it was bad. Ambrose and his brutes looking down on him, all wearing the same expression of surprise. Their looks confirmed to Kiru that they hadn’t expected him to be awake, but it didn’t explain why they were so much taller than him. That’s when the half-elf realized how dire his situation actually was. He was on his knees, his wrists bound to each other and to his ankles behind him with rope taken from some nearby wooden crates. His enemies stood over him, looking down.
Ambrose laughed. “I’m surprised you didn’t die from that head wound, you trash, but it’s actually better this way.” A sinister, wicked smile spread on the noble’s face. “Now, you get to watch what I’m going to do to you.” He pointed to the hand-shaped burn wound on his cheek. “No one strikes me, and gets away with it, no one! Especially not some mouthy piece of filth who doesn’t know his place.” Ambrose shoved Kiru to the side, and he crashed helplessly to the ground. Kiru glared back up at Ambrose, despite the position he found himself in, hatred coming off the half-elf in waves.
Ambrose scowled at Kiru’s lack of fear. “You know, mongrel, I bet you think you’ve ruined my face. Unfortunately for you, my family has access to the best potions and healers in the whole kingdom, so I’ll be fine. I am a relative of the king, after all. But you, tsk” he said. “You’re not as lucky. For damaging my perfect face, I need to pay you back in kind.”
“What? You gonna hit me with another one of those weak-ass lightning punches?” Kiru spat a glob of coagulated blood onto Ambrose’s shoes.
“No, I have another technique for you.”
That gave Kiru pause. Ambrose had a second technique already?
The noble noticed Kiru’s surprise. “Are you surprised? I am a prodigy among cultivators; why wouldn’t I already have two techniques?” He leaned close to whisper, “I’ll let you in on a little secret. It’s a forbidden technique I stole from my father’s library. It’s called Overload.”
Kiru’s eyes widened. The cultivator killer! He’d heard of this technique beforewas outlawed in all of the countries of the Great Alliance. “You’re lying,” Kiru whispered. He tried to wriggle his wrists out of the rope binding them. He really wished he could reach them with his hands to melt them! A backslap across his cheek paused his efforts.
“Know your place, peasant,” Ambrose gritted his teeth, then a sinister smile grew. “No matter. I’ll let my actions speak louder than my words. You tried to ruin my face. Now, I’ll ruin you… permanently.”
Kiru didn’t want to test whether Ambrose was telling the truth and flailed in a desperate attempt to break free.
“Grab him,” Ambrose ordered. One of his goons limped over to Kiru, picked him up by the hair, and forced him back on his knees. “Now gag him and keep him there,” he said, then placed a palm on Kiru’s chest, right where the half-elf’s core was.
The goon holding him tied a scrap of fabric into Kiru’s mouth, then looked askance at Ambrose, as if wondering if he, too, would be a recipient of this technique.
A spark shot from Ambrose’s palm. Kiru shook as it made contact with his core, crackling like constant static. After ten seconds, the shock made a more permanent connection with his core, seeming to wrap around and invade into it, running amok. Kiru hyperventilated, terrified of what was happening and what it might mean. He tried to move once more, but one of the goons sending a kick to his ribs followed by a punch to his already-injured temple stilled him again.
After thirty seconds, beads of sweat formed on Ambrose’s temples. Kiru could feel the increase in the amount of electricity flowing into him, almost like it grew from static to a true bolt of electricity. The half-elf’s body went rigid.
The pain lanced through Kiru, despite him being knocked into semi-consciousness. If anything, it launched him back to being fully aware once more, but it was too late. Ambrose was committed, and he wasn’t going to stop until Kiru was finished.
Kiru gritted his teeth and tried to yell, despite the gag. The noble flooded Kiru’s core with three times the mana it could handle all at once, like a sudden tidal wave.
This time, Kiru didn’t yell. He screamed!
His core was flooded with so much violent lightning mana, it shattered completely. The wave from the destruction was even worse than the actual technique, as a flood of mana surged out of his body in all directions, tearing the ropes binding him, forcing the three humans to fly back, and obliterating a section of Kiru’s spine with a sharp crack, then nothing. His body collapsed to the ground.
Ambrose and his brutes slowly forced themselves up. They were in a more secluded street alley, but the noise from that and Kiru’s screaming had started to draw attention from others.
Kiru tried to move, to run toward the crowd, to get help, but he couldn’t. His body felt extremely weak, and he could barely shift himself. Ambrose tried to kill me! I need to get the city guard! Why can’t I move? He shifted his head to see Ambrose looking at him in surprise.
“How…how are you alive?” the noble asked, shock etched across his youthful features as his gaze fixed on Kiru’s mangled body.
Kiru no longer felt the power or anger flowing through him like it had been earlier. It was as if he had lost some part of himself, like he was hollowed out.
“What? What are you talking about?” Kiru asked, not sure what he meant.
More people started to gather at the edge of the alley, murmuring and jostling to get a better look. Someone even let out a loud gasp.
“Shit!” Ambrose spat, then put a hood over his head. “Come on boys! He’s as good as dead, anyway,” Ambrose ordered. The three ran off into the crowd, shoving a number of concerned citizens out of their way.
“Get back here,” Kiru groaned as he lay on his belly. At the edges of his awareness, he could tell people were still at the alley entrance but didn’t want to come any closer. He finally mustered up enough strength, and crawled toward them, every movement eliciting the grating sound of bone on bone from his body. Kiru did his best to look back at the source. The sight made his blood run cold. It forced him to push away the comfort that his mind had built up as a defensive measure and address the reality he saw.
His back, his spine, was snapped in two. The two jagged ends lay spread far apart, only hanging on by a few pieces of flesh! It was at a convex angle, with one of the sections breaking through his skin! Before Kiru could do anything, his back let out another loud crack, and he lost all sensation below his neck.
The half-elf’s face went white as it hit the ground. His jaw shook uncontrollably, but it wasn’t from the impact. It was from the shock. Tears rolled down his cheeks and hit the dirt as he now fully understood his predicament. It wasn’t his imagination; Ambrose had truly and utterly crippled him. The half-elf’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he screamed in despair. He didn’t know how long he was there, but eventually a presence stood before him, casting a shadow over the lad.
Kiru’s incessant screeching stuttered to a halt as the person exuded a sort of strange calming presence. As his screams subsided, an elf with long, blonde hair and thick blue robes knelt into view. Kiru blinked in disbelief. This new pure elf didn’t look either disturbed or concerned.
“My, what a tough one you are, boy. To have survived the trauma to your body and to your core? Quite impressive indeed,” he said rather whimsically, not seeming to fully understand the gravity of Kiru’s wounds.
“Help… me,” Kiru begged weakly.
The elf looked surprised. “Oh! Of course! My apologies, I was so intrigued by your grievous wounds that I forgot you’re still experiencing them.”
“Eh…what?” Kiru asked.
A bright purple powder fell from the elf’s palm, “Rest,” he said smoothly, as the powder fell over Kiru’s eyes.
Instantly, the teen’s eyes went heavy, and he fell into unconsciousness.
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