Water rushed down a waterfall, splashing into a small lake. In this place there were no cries and calls from the servants and outer-sect members. There were no jeers, challenges, or half-muffled conversations from the inner-sect disciples and sect elders.
The only sounds were the waterfall, a steady drawing of calmed breath, and the scrape of a skysteel blade being drawn from a shadow-iron sheath.
Zuzen Bakar, swordsman of the Radiant Orrichalcum Gardens was training in a remote corner of the sect’s grounds.
Drawing and sheathing his sword repeatedly, as he tried to perfect his radiant blade technique. The meter deep gashes that marked the cliff face that lay behind the waterfall, and stone monolith that stood before it, standing as the only witness of the heroic youth’s diligent efforts.
Tall like a grass reed, his red and white hair catching the first rays of the morning sun, a haughty smile finally graced his face as he drew the blade for the final time. Returning it to the sheath in the next second, as a blinding white explosion of essence and sword force created yet another deep crevice within the cliff, and bisected the stone monolith.
Sending rubble and mist flying everywhere. The grass of the glade he stood in, rippling bending beneath the gale his blade created as it moved.
He drew a breath, holding it and then releasing it as glowing fog, as he allowed his aura to recede. Standing in place as he meditated on what he’d learned from this exercise.
“Un...Guess it’s time to head back.” he said. Speaking aloud to himself.
Though he had still been on sect grounds, he’d been in seclusion removing himself from all distractions for the sake of honing his skills.
Now that he’d done that, it was time to go and show his fellow disciples and his seniors in the Radiant Orrichalcum Gardens what he’d achieved.
First, he returned to his own courtyard in the inner-sect where he had an outer-sect disciple overseeing the work of two dozen or so sect servants that were attending his sect assigned field of flame-essence promoting ginseng.
Zuzen was only there for the span of a single hour, staying just long enough to shower and dress.
Then he left again, flying out from his courtyard on the back of his flying sword.
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His destination was the inner-sect arena, he heard the arena before he saw it. The soft roar of the crowd as they speculated on who’d appear next... The cries and calls of the staff and slaves... The Smell of blood, and sweat and magic. It all washed over him.
Zuzen felt his heart racing, the pace rising with each passing second. He was home, back in his turf, back amongst his people. As a duelist, as a swordsman, as a cultivator, the arena and the battlefield were where he belonged. His two true homes.
Once he finally arrived, he landed, striding into the arena grounds, and bounding up towards the stands.
He’d almost made it to his usual seat where he’d have been able to ask the usual people that he generally consorted with, who was fighting, and what he’d missed while he was gone.
But right then someone called to him, the voice coming from the stage.
“Are you Zuzen Bakar, Radiant Orrichalcum Garden Inner-Sect Disciple of the hundredth rank?”
Zuzen stopped, turning slowly to face the unassuming young jotun on stage. The younger man’s expression and tone seeming free of ill-intention, despite how utterly provocative the words he’d just spoke were, when said in the arena.
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“And if I am?” said Zuzen.
The youth bowed, cupping his hands.
“Then I’ll have to trouble senior to show this junior a thing or two, please.”
Fighting words were meant to be answered with fists and blades. After the surrounding audience momentarily fell quiet in a moment of shock, the entire arena began to buzz with speculations. Though, he wasn’t a narcissist, Zuzen assumed that they were all talking about what he, a famed, rising star of the sect was going to do, after being so challenged.
As for Zuzen himself he simply smiled, taking it as a sign that the heavens were accommodating him today. Thinking that a test for his skills was exactly what he needed. He wasn’t concerned about what others might have perceived as a loss of face, or disrespect from a young upstart. After all, for him to have climbed to where he was by the time he was thirty-five, he’d had to a young upstart as well. Zuzen only saw the opponent in front of him.
He decided he’d be merciful, testing his skills a little, and giving the young jotun a spanking but not going much further than that.
“Ora!....Let’s do this punk!” roared Zuzen as he leapt onto the arena stage.
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Thirty seconds later, the arena was silenced yet again. Zuzen lay on the ground, confused, dazed, hurting all over.
He wasn’t quite sure exactly what happened. He’d been winning. He could, and would have sworn that he’d been winning, then suddenly he was lying on his back, in more pain than he’d ever been before.
He could recall flawlessly performing the radiant sword technique, drawing his blade and having his essence flow into it becoming a sword of light.
But then he looked down and saw that the strange youth had his own sword of light as well. Multiple swords of light….Hundreds of swords of light. Each of them shining so brightly it made his own blade technique look like a damp candle in a dark cave.
Each of them a star of lethal luminance.
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Up in a cordoned off area of the stands, sat a group of seniors, all of them with faces that were at least some shade of red and purple or the other, even though most of them possessed lighter or less bright skin tones.
Leon Skinner sat amongst them, the only pale face in the group. His natural golden skin tone having turned to some closer to alabaster.
Cold sweat beaded on his brow, as he felt the eyes of his seniors all turning towards him. All full of unspoken blame. He suspected that anytime now, the unspoken part would become a thing of the past.
Finally one of the seniors, a dark haired bear-woman by the name of Matija Gulbahar, broke the silence, and smacked side just hard enough, that she suspected she’d been tempted to kill him.
He didn’t loose a sound of pain, nor did he voice a complaint. He just waited, waiting for the seniors to say, whatever it was they were going to say.
Another senior by the name Boro Alvah, a wolf-eared old man with graying hair, spoke up.
“You know….When we asked you to put a little chicken blood in the boy, and get him to stop standing in the way of his juniors...None of us expected you to kill an entire farm of chickens, and set the boy on a rampage, trampling all his seniors...I’m not really sure what else to say...Is this talent? Are you an idiot? What do I even call this? Ah...” said Boro.
Leon just shrugged, rubbing his aching side, not sure whether to laugh or to cry.
“Old sir...I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what to say as well...Perhaps we should just thank the gods, that we’ve taken in such a talented youth…” said Leon. Trying to play his words off a joke. Earning another blow to the side.
He hadn’t expected this either, no one had expected this.
In truth, he felt quite wronged here. This was like being yelled for bringing the family cow out to pasture, on a day that the sky is falling. Skies weren’t supposed to fall, so how could he blamed for it crushing the family cow. This was just bad luck.
It would seem that young Mrs.Oedheim had told her honorable husband what Elder Skinner had said. This much was clear to everyone.
What no one expected was that he’d take it so much to heart that he wouldn’t just begin slowly progressing up the ranks, to get out of the way of the juniors below, but would instead rocket up the ranks.
Exploiting the sect's rules for challenging others within the same circle of the sect to the fullest, and climbing up the rankings in bounds of ten and fifteen.
In just a few month’s time the youth had gone from being the three-thousandth out of three thousand inner-sect disciples, and as of poor, Zuzen, he’d become the hundredth ranked.
Which was amazing for the youth, and perhaps spoke well for what he could do for the sect as well, but for the seniors of the sects, and the various factions within the sect it was something of a nightmare.
He’d gone from becoming a stumbling block in the way of many influential seniors’ future plans, to a wrecking ball, that was smashing through all their current ones.
He’d won around two hundred or three hundred duels, and had done so in the most devastating of fashions.
Cleanly dispatching his opponents in an instant and making use of techniques that were like the ones his opposition were making use of, except higher grade, and profound to an extent that several amongst the seniors would have to begrudgingly admit to having drawn some semblance of insight from it.
The only mercy was that no one had been seriously hurt, and the young man’s winning streak was setting the boy apart, to the extent that was no being taken as something beyond the realm of monsters. Only a few stubborn seniors like the one’s around Skinner were taking still taking offense.
The rest seemed to have taken to consoling their young followers and apprentices, categorizing the unicorn horned youth, as a humanoid disaster. An unpredictable, unstoppable calamity, that must simply be weathered, and survived.
With a few sly souls amongst them considering how such a harsh blowing wind could be harnessed. Refusing to believe that they couldn’t turn this in their favor somehow.