The cabin we had been given was at the edge of the base. The Gate with the safe area, the registration office, was in the center, eight hundred meters, one point six li in the other world’s terms, from the room we had been given to stay in so that I had to put in a good bit of effort to protect the ambassador once we started to run. While he had been given a skin tight level three barrier to prevent any of our level two attacks from being able to harm him, all of the damage that he would have received would be tallied up after he got to the safe area, and I would automatically fail if he received a lethal blow or enough cumulative damage for him to have greater than 50% chance of dying. Lesser amounts of damage would lower my score and could mean that I failed even if I finished the test, depending on the specifics of the damage.
As we ran across the open field two other people with crossbows fired at us. While I sensed the bolts coming at us, I could accelerate my perception several times over to give myself time to think, what was commonly called ‘bullet time’ on earth but which was generically called ‘accelerated perception’ in most techniques on both worlds. Neither of the two bolts contained iron, so I couldn’t move them directly. They felt like they were made of bone, except for the feather. That meant that I would have to get creative.
Maybe I could effect them with another metal object? An ink pen flew out of my left pocket directly towards the bolt, but I didn’t carry anything else that was metal. Except my phone. It had a protective case, so as long as it didn’t get shot it should be undamaged. I made it fly at where I thought the second bolt would be.
The ink pen missed the bolt, flying just over it, as both objects were too thin to easily make them collide, but as it did so I sent a bit of Fire qi into the pen. Both the ink and the plastic contained enough hydrogen to make the pen explode, knocking the bolt towards the ground by just enough that it hit the concrete a meter to my left. The phone, however, hit the side of the bolt, redirecting it by enough that it flew in front of the ambassador by over a meter. I had no way to deal with the attackers at this time, but as quickly as we were moving we would likely be out of their line of sight before they reloaded.
Another hundred meters ahead two melee fighters blocked our way, so I simply fired two balls of fire at them. This knocked them down from the explosion, and we were able to enter an area of dense enough housing that ranged weapon users would have a hard time finding a clear shot. Several more groups of melee fighters attacked us, but either through the use of fire or the wooden sword I took from one of them I was able to defeat them. The illusion of an actual assassination attempt was broken once when I swung hard enough for one of the attackers to lose an arm and a barrier flashed over the surface of their skin. After that, they laid down their weapon and walked away, conceding defeat. The Ambassador did have to get involved in one fight, but he was skilled enough in hand to hand, looking like a professional martial artist with his moves, that he easily defeated the man that was a full realm lower than him.
Soon we only had a sprint across the open parking lot that held the Gate building to get to the office. Just as I passed the gate, General Adams landed in front of the building we were heading towards. “General?” I asked. “Are you here to help?” Several of the melee fighters were approaching from different sides, most of them from behind us. His help would make a fight against so many much easier.
Just before we arrived where he was the General opened his eyes and looked at us. His eyes were pitch black, with no irises. “The Order has demanded that he dies, so I must stop you.” It was only then that I noticed that a slight amount of black smoke was leaking from his skin.
“Shit.” said the Ambassador. “The Order of the Crimson Blade are an assassin sect. If they are involved to the point where they are mind controlling people…” Now that I had context, I understood what was happening. The General was playing the role of a mind controlled ally. He and the Ambassador had decided to increase the difficulty while introducing a plot for the scenario.
General Adams released his qi and it washed over me, almost instantly suppressing me. It was everything I could do to stay on my feet against his master level Earth root. I knew that I shouldn’t be able to resist a level five, however. Even a level three would be too much for someone at peak level two like me. From the strength I could tell that he was using approximately early level four levels of qi to suppress me. Furthermore, all of the qi was coming from a jade necklace he was wearing, not himself, further weakening it to an effective lower root. That probably meant that it was an Earth elemental relic or device of some sort. Maybe if I damaged the necklace I might have a chance.
“I’ll have to fight him.” said the Ambassador, turning towards me. “You aren’t strong enough.” Now I understood the point of this drama. They wanted to see if I would rely on my charge to protect me when things got tough.
“Unfortunately, I’m the guard and you are the employer, so I can’t do that, sir.” I said. I really needed to bring my metal sword next time. If I had one I could enhance my blows with my Metal qi. “If you want to fight, there are enough minor assailants between here and the safe area.” We were only thirty meters from the front door.
“And what makes you think I’ll let him make a run for it?” asked the General.
“Won’t have much of a choice if I’m keeping you busy.” I said, then sent most of my qi into my body, with about ten percent in a fire aura around me. “Overdrive!” I screamed as all of the qi I had pushed into my body duplicated the effects of adrenaline. My strength and stamina drastically increased as my perception slowed. I knew that this would seriously injure me, but I hoped that they would be able to heal me after the fight. “Run!” I yelled as I ran as well, aiming at the General instead of the door like the Ambassador.
The General ignored me, starting to move towards the Ambassador, but I concentrated my fire aura on my fist and struck him in the face, ordering the qi to be destroyed upon impact. Qi functioned similar to an electron under normal situations, giving its energy to the target in a specific form, then returning to the environment as neutral qi, where it would absorb energy form the environment, could be reabsorbed by a person or other lifeform by adjusting its signature to match the qi signature of the person. This let a person use a small amount of energy, either chemical or from already absorbed qi, to gather more energy. There were situations, though, where qi particles could be destroyed to release a theoretical average of 546 times the energy they stored. This required far more mental strength to do, though, and so quickly exhausted the user far faster, and so was rarely used.
For greatly increasing the power of an attack with limited qi reserves, though, it was the only way to do so. My ability to do this was limited, as I only knew about the phenomenon from one mention in a class, which covered the theory, and an anime power I learned as a teenager but couldn’t get to work properly, as I didn’t understand it well enough. Only one hundred times the energy was released, as most of the qi didn’t detonate. It was, however, enough to raise my attack’s power to middle third level, which allowed it to knock the General back by five meters. As he was actually a level five fighter, with a peak level four body, level five no longer automatically improving the body, he was around 25 time physically tougher than me, so this wouldn’t do significant damage to him.
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“So I’ll be fighting the guard first?” he asked menacingly. From the quality of his performance I suspected that he had taken acting lessons but didn’t know for sure.
I smiled. “Looks like.”
He smiled as well, then ran at me. I blocked the incoming attack but, unfortunately, the energy trick I used in my attack couldn’t be used here. Once the qi was detonated, its energy couldn’t be controlled, as it was no longer made of qi, so the energy couldn’t be absorbed by a formation until it was used to charge neutral qi. I didn’t have a technique to do something like that, so my defense relied entirely on my physical durability and the barrier I carried, having not received a wearable one which would protect me automatically. A few percent of my qi was burnt with each swing against me, with my forearms still becoming bruised from the impacts, so I had no choice but to dodge as much as possible.
While I wasn’t bad at dodging, the General was much better at hitting, so around half the time he managed to land a blow that was strong enough to injure me. I was pretty sure that one of those kicks actually cracked a rib, because my side was in far more pain than the rest of me.
Knowing that I couldn’t win the fight, and seeing the Ambassador had almost reached the safe area, I let one of the General’s swings glance me and jumped forward, getting as close to him as I could. Once I was in position I sent all of my qi at him in the form of fire qi. “You think this is going to burn me?” he asked mockingly. “Besides, now that you are out of qi, you aren’t much better than a mortal.” He started to laugh maniacally as he was engulfed in the flame.
I concentrated as hard as I could on all of the fire qi, as this would be my last move of the fight. “Detonate”, I said, and the qi obeyed. This time over half my maximum qi was ordered to detonate, releasing around two hundred time the energy as it normally could. The sheer amount of energy was like getting hit by a train, and I was thrown back by thirty meters, where I hit the ground and rolled. Without any qi to help reinforce my body, and therefore only relying on the improvements to my body during cultivation, I couldn’t entirely ignore the impact and lost consciousness.
When I woke up the General was standing beside my bed, instructing the nurse in how to use the healing technique he was teaching her. “Thank you, sir.” she said. “That is much better than the standard one.”
“Yeah, I’m trying to get them to upgrade the standard medic training, but it will take a while before…” He then noticed me looking at him. “Good, you’re awake. Took us a bit of work to heal you after you blew yourself up.”
“So, how did the scenario go?” I asked, wanting to know if it had been worth it.
“Well, after you blew me up I was much in better shape than you, but if I were an actual low level four like I was pretending to be, I probably wouldn’t be much better off than you were. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting you to know qi detonation. It isn’t a very common effect.”
“Read about it in a text book and thought I’d give it a shot. Mass energy equivalence was one of the few things that could let me fight someone more than an entire realm higher.”
The General nodded. “Well, the good news is that you passed. The Ambassador was able to get to safety. Though in a real fight you would have died. Not many people, especially assassins, are going to keep someone as dangerous as you alive.”
“Might recruit me instead.” I responded. “Suicide bombers have a strong history as assassins.”
Adams nodded. “Fair enough. In that case, once you are done healing, come by my office. It’s already 10:00, and we’ll need to go over a few things before you take the job.”
An hour later, when the nurse released me, I went to his office. The Ambassador was there, so we worked out a deal. I would be allowed to pass through the gate without any surveillance equipment, allowing me to pass as a native independent cultivator which was merely escorting the ambassador from a merchant house, seeking out new trade routes. It was a good enough story that it would allow the Ambassador and I to not raise suspicion. While I wasn’t needed I could conduct my own mission to find the stranded people.
This meant that I would be given outfits that they had designed to wear while there. If I wanted to take anything else, I would need to have it cleared by them to verify that it fit with the world. Thankfully they would be giving me spirit stones that fit with the local currency and were fully charged, having been extracted from large-crystal quartz, then polished, much like how the locals made their currency.
They mentioned that the Ambassador would like to set off in three days, and I nodded. “That works out perfectly. My thirty second birthday is on Friday, the day before you want to set out, and I know my girlfriend is planning something big, so I can have a farewell party and not ruin her plans.”
The Ambassador nodded and pulled out a jade slip. “Do you know the Jade memory transference technique?” he asked.
“Yes, I got a copy when I bought one of those devices that connects to a computer to transfer data to and from a jade slip. I assume you want me to copy the technique from that slip?” The Ambassador nodded and I did so. When I first experienced it with the device I felt like ants were crawling in my brain, but with this slip it felt like I was remembering an old dream. This was most likely a technique slip from the other world, as Earth had only possessed the technique for a few months.
“We want you to learn and use that technique so that you pass for one of the locals better.” said Adams. “The first night you are on the other side the two of you will be staying in an inn in the outer city to see if you can pass as locals. If you can, then I will have a way for you to leave the barrier.”
I nodded, thanked them for the opportunity to look for the others, then left. While the technique wasn’t that complicated, actually using it well enough would take some time.
---
Deborah Fuller stood outside the elementary school. A few seconds later a little girl screamed and ran over to her, hugging her leg. “Mommy, mommy, guess what we learned today?”
“What’s that, Mary?” she asked, “What did you learn?” She picked the little girl up and lifted off into the air. Gabriel had bought her one of the better flight bracelets, so she now had no need to drive while in the city.
“We started learning to move mana.” she said proudly, then rubbed the bracelet on her right wrist. The school loaned low end qi gathering bracelets to all of the children if they didn’t have one, so that they could get used to it. When Mary had started first grade they had given her one, as they would start learning to use mana as part of the standard education program. Most countries had implemented this policy in the last twenty years, as qi had grown to be something that society relied on.
“Really? That’s neat. Did you do anything fun with it?”
“No, not yet.” she said, a bit disappointed. The kids would have been loaned glasses which gave them qi sight, so she could see it move, but the more complex things would be too advanced for someone just starting off.
They continued the conversation until they entered the apartment. After they had put down some of their things and grabbed a few more things they would need, they left again, only to walk next door. Deb knocked on the door and an elderly black woman answered the door. “Hello, Mrs. Maggy.” said Mary before pushing past her and going inside.
Deb sighed. “I’m sorry about that.” she said. “I haven’t quite taught her manners yet.”
“It’s fine.” said Maggie. “Bobby doesn’t do much better and he’s older than she is.”
“Well, I hate to bother you like this, but a friend is about to travel for a bit and we don’t know when he’ll be back, so we wanted to go to his birthday party.”
Maggie shrugged. “A better reason than any of my grandkids or great grandkids gave when dropping off their kids, and you at least pay.”
Deb nodded and sent twenty dollars to Maggie over her phone. “In that case, we shouldn’t be any later than ten, but if we’re late picking her up, I’ll give you another twenty.” Deb waved at Mary. “Bye darling. Mommy loves you.”
Mary didn’t answer as she was already fighting with an eight year old boy, Bobby, over a game controller. “Don’t make me take the game away.” said Maggie in a scolding voice, and they stopped fighting. “Now, say goodbye to your mom.” she said, and Mary ran over to hug Deb.
“Bye Mommy.” she said, and Deb hugged her before sending her back inside.
