Body Cultivation Hurts - Chapter 33

Jared wasn’t shy about using his jade to communicate with his contacts at Citadel News who he’d been invited to join this large group of cultivators heading to the Mountain King of the northern gate. He’d only been with them for a few hours and the things he’d seen left him questioning everything he thought he knew about the different Paths. This group wasn’t flashy. There weren’t any fliers, teleporters, impressive magic spells, or rage monsters, but they walked through everything they ran across.

That wasn’t the half of it. His main contact reached out to him about an hour ago with more information about this group. He’d known about Nathanial Kane and the cultivation videos he’d put up. How the man singlehandedly beat the life out of a murderous gang in the first few days of Initiation was especially news worthy. But the man had promised he was bringing a bunch of people into a training camp and would post new videos after. It was confirmed. This group of cultivators had attended the camp. So had many of the people gathering at the other gates. If they were all this powerful, then something massive was happening and their Citadel News startup was right in the middle of it.

He had been so busy making sure his connection to the his contact was working that he hadn’t realized they’d made it. In front of the group was a steep grassy hill that led up to a valley between mountains. The peaks of the two mountains were so perfect it was almost as if someone had designed them, but they were far too large for that to be possible.

The trek would’ve left Jared a heaving mess before Initiation, but he could’ve run up it now without much of a problem. The monsters they’d consistently been running into were suddenly sparse. It was as he’d heard. The closer they got to the valley of the northern region boss, the less creatures they would see.

When they finally reached the top, everyone lined up side by side to look down into the shallow valley. Immediately before them was a crystal clear lake that collected water from the surrounding peaks. But beyond it, as if it were waiting for challengers, the largest creature Jared had ever seen was curled up under a shade tree.

Even from what had to be half a mile away, he knew this was no mere bear. Not even the largest Earth variety. It was an African elephant in the shape of a bear. It was brown with a silver streak down its back.

Two men stepped forward. The two of them were leaders he’d heard called Jun Takao and Ma Mencius. A few others stepped forward, but they stood back as if intending on escorting the two men without interfering.

The young woman, Yuma, who had been answering his questions said, “Excuse me.”

Leaving him in there in the crowd, she was ushered to the front then joined the small group of escorts.

It was so unconscionable that such a small number of people would face the region boss that he didn’t say anything until they were already heading toward the lake. It was then that he asked a woman standing next to him that wasn’t dressing in the same martial arts garb, “Are they really going to fight it with just the twelve of them?”

The woman shook her head. “No, Yuma and the elders are just there for back up. They have a few healers just in case.”

It wasn’t until it was said out loud that Jared dared to believe it. “Are they crazy?” he asked.

The woman gave him a humored look.

Before she could respond, he waved off his remark. Then he placed his communication jade to his mouth and didn’t bother sending a text-based message.

***

Nadine and her father, Lucas, had stuck with the same group since the beginning of the tower. They had a Kite, their flier, and Dustin, their teleporter. Kite wasn’t his real name, but like more and more people, they were adopting nicknames and using them in place of their real names. Kite was handsome enough with his dark hair and afternoon shadow, but he only just turned eighteen. He was rather desperate for attention. Nadine’s attention especially.

She didn’t mind his crush. She was more concerned that he would hurt himself trying to impress her. At least Dustin used his own name, but the twenty-eight-year-old was just as daring as Kite was. She had to heal him almost as much as Kite. The way the two guys fed off each other didn’t hurt.

Her father seemed more humored by the pair than annoyed. After Initiation had restored her old man’s old knee injury to health, he was rather rambunctious himself. It didn’t help that he was an Illusionist. The main way he fought was by deceiving monsters with a spell called Mirrored Image. Just like when someone was crossing their eyes, it created a second image of the enemy’s target. The hardest part about using the spell was that the illusion was visible to everyone. It didn’t take long for their group to get used to it though.

They’d spend almost all of their days hunting outside the western gate. Each day they took the same path, but went a little deeper, looking for new demon variants. The demons were the best part about the western gate. There weren’t as many beasts out here, so it make hunting for demons they could sell to Googee. They’d already sold a few dozen rare variants and made a couple hundred thousand points off their corpses.

It was all thanks to the man who’d look like a walking corpse and had insisted she not heal him. He’d told them about the corpses and Googees. She hoped the man was still alive. His name had been Nathan.

Her group wasn’t the only one that traveled this deep to the west. Omid and his family often traveled with them. Technically, they didn’t hunt together, but they were always close by in case the other needed help. More than once the number of demons had gotten out of hand. They’d joined forces at those times and everything had worked out.

So when she saw the first group of three moving through the ruins at a jog, she didn’t think much of it. Only, she could’ve swore she recognized one of the men who was wearing MMA shorts and little else. The others at least had clothes on.

The ruins were sparse in this area. They’d set up on a hill with a building that had fallen over on its side at their backs. This gave them a place to retreat to. It also gave them a good view of their surroundings. The group of three ran headlong into the first group of demons they saw. They were outnumbered. There wasn’t just one of the bigger ones. There were six of them.

The half-naked guy led the way. She’d thought they’d been moving too fast for their small group, but then the man surged forward. It was difficult to see his movements. One moment he was a good ten feet from the closest large demon, the next his knee slammed into the seven-foot creature’s chest, launching it back. Several other demons fell with it.

The man landed with his fists at his sides as if just waiting for one of the monsters to counter. The moment it did, the man kicked out. His front kick jutted into a demon’s gut. It too was sent to its rear.

Then she saw the other two act. One wielded a katana. The other a spear. For an instant, she thought she saw a faint aura covering the swordman’s blade. It flashed as he rushed through the flank of the demons. His target? The demons’ limbs.

Nadine group had a melee tank and a damage dealer. Both of them were level six. Their strength was undeniable. She’d seen their Naginata wielder cleave one of the smaller demons almost in two. The large ones were just too thickly muscled, and their bone thickness and density were on another level. Yet this man cleaved through them with little effort. Limbs flew.

The spear wielder took the exact opposite approach. The man had stayed in the back the longest, but when he lunged forward, his spear pierced straight through a large demon’s chest and out the back. Perhaps more impressive was how smoothly the spear exited the same way it had come.

Then she saw one of the larger demons run up to the barehanded man as if to give him the last embrace he’d ever have, when the man shot to the monster’s legs and drove it to its back. The next instant, he was mounted on the things stomach and pounding its head into the ground.

It was an impressive display. They were one of the better groups she’d seen even if she preferred their approach to hunting.

However, before the group was even done with the demons, another arrived in her peripherals. Turning, she saw not one, but half a dozen groups spread out amongst the ruins. It only took her a moment to see that they had a similar level of competence as the first. And most of them were fighting with melee weapons. A few others were also fighting bare-fisted.

She and her father shared a look. They hurriedly walked over to corner of the fallen over building to get a peek only to see dozens of groups and hundreds of people all spread out and moving westward as if they were some army.

“This…” her father muttered.

Then Nadine saw her. At the head of a group of ten, the blond, supermodel thin popstar was ascending the hill. Nessa was a childhood singing competition winner with incredible talent. She could hit whistle notes as easy as she could breathe. Nadine forgot which show she’d been on, but Nessa, or Vanessa Montgomery, was best known for staying true to her roots. So often, childhood starts made raunchy coming out as adult albums where they tried to out-slut all the other popstars that had come before them. Not Nessa.

Nadine hand found her hair and felt how matted down it was with sweat. The singer wasn’t wearing designer clothing or her typical summer dress but wore jogging pants and a long sleeve shirt. She looked really good in something so simple. Nadine clammed up.

Thankfully, her father didn’t.

“Hello, are you guys with them,” Lucas asked, motioning to the army of groups advancing.

The sunglasses wearing popstar smiled as she replied, “Yes, we are. Sorry if we’re stealing your kills. We’re looking for something.”

“You’re an American?”

She nodded as another woman in a business dress stepped up to stand beside her. “Only about half of us are. But you don’t have to worry. We’re just passing through.”

“Might I aske what you’re looking for?”

“I’ll tell you, but please don’t spread it around. We’re looking for the demons’ spawn.”

“As in where they’re coming from?”

The woman grinned.

Nadine finally built up the courage to ask, “You’re Nessa?”

The popstar laughed before taking off her sunglasses.

She’d already known, but her eyes went wide anyway. Turning to her dad, she asked, “Can you contact Uncle Omid? Mariam is the biggest fan.”

Turning to Nessa, she asked as sweetly as possible, “Do you mind waiting for just a minute. My friend is nearby, and she loves your music.”

Her manager, Ms. Jennings, gave her an insistent look, but Nessa dismissed the woman’s worry with the wave of her hand.

“We don’t have a lot of time, but if she’s nearby…” Nessa replied. “It’s the least we can do for stealing your kills.”

Her father chuckled and took out his communication jade.

She bounced up and down where she stood. As they waited, Nadine had to ask, “Why are so many of your people using melee weapons? Are there no mages?”

“Oh, we have some,” Nessa replied. “Most of us just got back from a training camp. We’re primarily made up of cultivators.”

“Do you know Nathan?” She cringed the moment she asked. How could the woman possibly know every cultivator. There had to be millions of them.

“Nathan? As in Nathanial Kane?”

Nadine narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know his full name.” She proceeded to explain how she’d met this man carrying the corpse of a demon variant who’d looked like a corpse himself. The man had insisted she not heal him.

“That sounds like him,” Nessa said. “He was probably carrying the region boss. We’d be hunting it now, but he needed its poison sacks for his cultivation.”

“Region boss?” Her face lost all color. “I thought they were supposed to be the strongest monsters on the first floor?”

“They are. This one might have been a little weaker, except it exhaled poison. So what would’ve probably killed most people, Nathanial wouldn’t have much problem with.”

Then her father rejoined them. “They’re on their way. So that Nathan guy is still alive?”

Nessa laughed heartily while her manager rolled her eyes.

Ms. Jennings said, “He’s probably the hardest to kill idiot in the entire tower.”

That sent Nessa into a laughing fit. “Too true,” she agreed. “Since you know him, why don’t you travel with us? Once we find the spawn points, you guys are welcome to hunt there. Our goal is to clear much of the monsters by the western gate and take control of the spawn points. Not to control who hunts there, but to create a safer hunting environment. From what I hear, the spawn points are supposed to be crawling with monsters while new ones are added all the time.”

Glancing at her father, Nadine blurted out, “Really?”

“We’ll have to ask the others,” her father reminded her.

It was then that they saw Omid walking toward them with his family. His wife was close by with his daughter, Mariam, at her side. The man’s three boys were following at the rear. They’d sold their rifles and were now making full use of their Paths. Omid had taken Persian Immortal with strength and speed enhancements. Two of his sons had been drawn to the same Path but had varying Superhuman enhancements. Mariam and her mother were both healers. Only one of their boys had gone against what his parents and most people that held to similar ideologies objected to. Magic was not viewed as a good thing, yet he’d become an elementalist.

Omid had a warm smile on his face as he greeted all of the groups they passed by thrusting his spear up and shaking it as if waving. He wore a white keffiyeh, or scarf, on his head that had black patterns. Like his sons, he had a scale mail breastplate over his tunic and trousers. His wife and daughter also wore scale mail. His wife wore a more traditional Hijab while Mariam wore a Eşarp, or silk scarf covering her hair. Miriam’s was pale pink with a floral pattern.

Since their group didn’t have any monsters to face, they joined Nadine and her father when they saw Omid coming to welcome him.

As the family trudged up the small hill, Mariam suddenly saw Nessa and froze in place. Then she screamed.

Her father looked back to see his daughter shaking in giddy delight. She met his eyes. He nodded her on.

Her father looked back to see his daughter shaking in giddy delight. She met his eyes. He nodded her on.

Mariam darted passed them, joining up with Nadine. Holding hands, they giggled together. Nadine introduced her.

Omid glanced at his wife who just shrugged. They didn’t know who Nessa was.

Lucas and Omid grasped hands, and her father proceeded to ask if they wanted to join them. It didn’t take a lot of persuasion.

As soon as Kite and Dustin recognized Nessa, they ran forward and fanboyed as much as Mariam did.

Nadine watched how the young man that had a crush on her forget about her entirely. She understood it to a degree, but he was drooling. It wasn’t exactly attractive behavior. She may have also be a tad jealous.

Ms. Jennings got them back on track with help from Nessa. The popstart added one more thing that stopped any objections. “We’re also looking for the pillar that will allow us to go home.”

The popstar quickly explained that there was a pillar outside each gate. They were located deep into each territory. All they had to do was reach it. They had people looking for them at the other gates too. Except, their region bosses would have to be defeated first before they’d light up. Once all the pillars were lit, anyone could exit the tower through their Personal Chambers to arrive at any of the portals that were still active worldwide.

And so, what would’ve been another day hunting demons turned into something much more exciting for Nadine and her group. A chance to return home.