Gleam Karma Cultivator Isekai

Soft footsteps on the second floor caused them to both glance toward the stairs as Bella walked down. A smile crossed her face when she spotted Chance, and he couldn’t help but marvel at the stark difference just a few days had made in her attitude.

On the other end of the coin, faint anger toward Vex and what he had made Bella do to try and protect others from him bubbled in Chance’s heart.

“You woke up!” Bella exclaimed. “How did it go?”

“I know my Essence,” Chance replied. “It’s Karma.”

“Huh. That’s interesting,” Bella mused.

“Pete said the same thing.”

“We’ll have to look into the records and see if there’s anything we can get for Chance to reference,” Pete said.

Yeo poked his head out from the second floor. “Chance is a Karma cultivator?”

“Yeah,” Chance said. “I hope we didn’t interrupt your cultivation or anything.”

“Nah. It was boring,” Yeo replied, sliding down the banister and forcing Bella to step out of the way to avoid getting bowled over. “So, now that you’re all meditated and bored, you ready to do something more interesting?”

“Right to it?” Chance asked. “I mean, I just finished cultivating. Shouldn’t I pause or rest or something first?”

“Why? Cultivation is rest if you do it correctly,” Yeo said. “It’s combat practice that tires you out.”

Chance looked to Bella, who gave him a one-shouldered shrug. “He’s not wrong. Did you have something else you wanted to do instead?”

“I mean, I’d love to see more of the city, but given what has happened every single time I’ve gone out, I think some more training might not be a bad idea,” Chance admitted. “One second. I’ll go grab my urumi.”

He jogged upstairs, grabbing the blade and the bottle of healing pills, then headed back down to his team.

“Right,” Yeo said, studying Chance. “This will be difficult to practice with, won’t it? You need a lot of space to use it properly. Not as much as my kusarigama, but more than most close range weapons. I guess we’ll just work in the front of the Whiteheart house.”

“Where everyone can see,” Bella added, her lips turning down. “We need to get better private training areas as soon as we can.”

“Once Chance is a little more comfortable with his abilities, we can take the ranking exam,” Yeo said. “Come on. I want to get started.”

They all headed outside. Luckily, Shikari Lane was fairly empty, as it usually seemed to be. It was far from private, but at least there wasn’t an enormous crowd watching.

“Before we get to sparring, you should just swing that thing around – carefully,” Yeo said. “Get a feel for it, you know? It’s been a few days since you last got to test it. Maybe just start with seeing how long it is when extended?”

Chance nearly mentioned he’d already gotten some use out of it in the alleys before he stopped himself. He cleared his throat and nodded, flicking his wrist. With a series of clicks, the urumi expanded to its full length.

It was roughly three of his bodylengths when fully released, from Chance’s estimate. He flicked his wrist again, causing it to whistle back together.

“You’re getting pretty comfortable with that,” Yeo observed.

“Uh – I guess it’s just a bit natural to me,” Chance said. “It feels right.”

Can’t really say an upside-down dude made me kill a bunch of monsters for a few hours while I was trying to sleep. I have to give it to Yamish, though. Hunting monsters is a really effective way of training. And I think I’m starting to understand why this is the weapon for me. Karma isn’t luck, but luck is part of karma. I can’t think of many things that can use luck more than an urumi.

He released the blade once more, giving it a twist above his head before lashing out and striking at a point in the grass. The urumi whistled through the air and whipped down into the dirt with a thunk. It was considerably easier to wield it in the open than it had been in the alleys.

“Damn. That looks cool,” Yeo said. “Don’t you try to go stealing any of my thunder.”

Chance laughed and retracted the urumi by flicking his wrist. He released it several more times, slowly getting a little fancier with the movements and allowing it to spin in the air for longer with every attempt.

In the open, when he was using it for longer periods of time, it became apparent that the hard part of the urumi wasn’t swinging it around – it was keeping track of where the end of the sword-whip was.

Chance got a little too ambitious with a spin and the end of the blade whipped past him, cutting a thin line across his shoulder. He flinched, reflexively snapping the weapon back together before he could lose any more control.

“Close one,” Yeo observed, squinting at the cut. “Not a bad one, though. Probably not worth wasting any of your healing pills on this.”

“Yeah,” Chance said, ignoring the slight sting from the cut. He spun the blade again, pushing down the tiny tendril of apprehension that reared its head. For the next few hours, that was all he did. Yeo insisted that he needed to get to know how the urumi felt, and Chance was in agreement with him.

The day came and went, and two weeks followed in a similar manner. Chance spent most of his time practicing with the urumi during the day and meditating at night. Yamish dragged him into the Old City nearly every other day, having him mow through ranks of Soothounds.

Chance couldn’t help but notice that the monsters his strange teacher put him against were growing larger with every visit. Yamish was definitely scaling up the difficulty, but he always seemed to know exactly how much Chance could deal with.

At the end of every visit, the strange man forced Chance to eat the Old City’s ‘gift’. It tasted just as awful each time around, but the training was so effective that he couldn’t complain too much.

His progress with the urumi accelerated greatly. Unfortunately, as Pete had predicted, his cultivation advancements were considerably slower. After his initial burst of inspiration and the discovery of his Essence, he found his meditation sessions to do little more than relax him.

But, in the end, he was getting stronger, and that was what mattered. Chance spent every waking moment he had training, either in meditation or in the Old City. Despite all the help that Yamish was giving him, Chance was determined to take control of his new life. As wonderous as it was – as long as Yamish could summon him to the Old City at any point, he wasn’t truly living for himself.

On top of that, Chance was more eager to advance his magic than anything else. He still hadn’t gotten over the incredible feeling of bending the forces of the universe to his will, and he didn’t think he ever would.

In between his meditation sessions and when Yamish wasn’t kidnapping him, he spent his time training with Bella and Yeo. He wasn’t surprised to find that they were both incredibly far ahead of him, but he was catching up – and rather quickly.

“You sure you’re from Earth?” Yeo asked, wiping the sweat from his forehead as Chance’s urumi snapped back to its resting position.

“Yeah,” Chance said between gasps for air. The brief sparring session had barely made Yeo start to sweat, but he was completely winded. “I’m pretty sure I’d remember if I wasn’t.”

If I can even call that a sparring session. I just spent five minutes trying to hit Yeo while he dodged literally everything. I feel like I’m playing a game against the impossible difficulty AI.

“That was a good performance,” Bella said from the sidelines, as if reading his thoughts. “Considering you only just started learning how to use the urumi, you’re doing great. Are you practicing without us or something?”

Chance laughed awkwardly. “When I would I get time to do that?”

“And I hear you snoring at night when you stop meditating,” Yeo added with a grin. “And you snore a lot.”

Is Yamish causing that somehow? I don’t think I snore. I’m pretty sure I don’t. I hope.

Chance blushed. “Whoops. I had no idea.”

“It’s fine,” Yeo replied. “Reminds me a bit of my old man. He snores a lot too.”

“You know, it might not be a bad idea to take the test pretty soon,” Bella said. “We don’t need to get ranked super high to start off, but I’d really like to start getting some real jobs and making money.”

“Not to mention we need to learn how to fight together. That’s an entire skill on its own,” Yeo said. “What do you think, Chance? Feeling comfortable?”

Chance rubbed his chin. “I guess. Tests were always really stressful for me, but if you think I’m ready, I’ll give it a shot.”

“What did your test involve?” Yeo asked Bella. “You did take one, right?”

“Mine was a bit special, since I was just working on my own. Gibson gave it to me directly.” Bella cocked her head to the side in thought. “It was mostly a demonstration of how well I could fight. We sparred for a little, then he asked me to do several things with my Essence.”

“I still can’t do much other than make the gold mist,” Chance said. “You think he’ll be okay with that?”

“Considering it seems to give terrible luck to anyone that isn’t using their aura? I think he should be fine,” Yeo said. “Lots of people become Shikari by focusing on techniques over their cultivation.”

“Then let’s let Pete know we’re ready to try to take the test,” Chance said, steeling himself. If he was already fighting monsters with Yamish, he was pretty sure he could deal with an introductory exam.

“It’s in two days,” Pete said, poking his head out of the door. “Sorry, I was eavesdropping. I usually am. And, for what it’s worth, I believe you’re all ready as well. The exam is just meant to ensure that you’re capable enough to defend yourself from the lowest level threats in the city.”

“Great!” Yeo exclaimed. “Sounds like we need to get a celebratory dinner.”

“Shouldn’t those wait until after we’ve actually accomplished something?” Bella asked.

“Bah. We’ve had gramp’s cooking for the past two weeks. We need to go out and get something fancy,” Yeo said. “No offense to his cooking. It’s good, but going out just feels different, you know?”

“Nothing wrong with a little bit of a pep up,” Pete said with a chuckle. “You might as well go have some fun.”

“I’m not opposed to it,” Chance said. “But, I will say that we’re two for two in running into trouble every time we go into the city.”

“You’re two for two,” Yeo corrected. “It’s only happened to me once.”

“I’ve gone into the city many times without running into difficulty,” Bella added. “It was just the day we ran into each other, really.”

“Great,” Chance grumbled. “I’m a bad luck charm.”

“More like a luck charm.” Yeo clapped him on the shoulder and grinned. “Excitement is fun, and you’re still alive. That means you’re good luck!”

“Luck or not,” Bella said, “I’m getting hungry. Shall we?”