Gleam Karma Cultivator Isekai

“Are you okay?” Chance asked as he walked over to Bella.

“I’ve been hit worse,” Bella replied, brushing herself off with a grimace.

“I’m fine too,” Yeo put in, limping slightly as he walked to join them. “By the way, I’ll have it known that I did better than both of you.”

“None of us could even hurt him,” Bella pointed out.

“You weren’t supposed to,” Jorgin said, rising from his spot on the bench and applauding quietly. “If you had, it would have been quite embarrassing for Derren.”

He pulled a pill from a vial at his side and tossed it to Yeo, who ate it without an instant of hesitation. His leg popped as something slid back into place and he let out a relieved sigh.

“Thanks.”

“How did we do?” Bella asked.

“More than acceptable,” Derren replied, yawning again. “I wasn’t expecting any of you to actually be able to move me, and you had some decent ideas for teamwork, even if none of them really worked.”

They all let out a relieved sigh.

“I think you can say more than that,” Jorgin drawled. “When’s the last time you got knocked off your feet, Derren?”

“Been a while,” the proctor said, his lips turning down. He nodded to Chance. “What path do you cultivate, boy?”

“Karma.”

Derren grunted. He pulled a metal disk out of a pocket and pressed his thumb into it. He fiddled with it for a few moments, then returned it to his pocket. “Noted. Well, you all pass. I’ll put in word with the Shikari and you should be all set. Good job. Now, unless you’re going to make me test you for Knight rank–”

“We aren’t,” Chance said hurriedly. He was pretty sure the knight ranked exam would probably involve actually fighting Derren, and they were nowhere near strong enough for that. Not yet. “Out of curiosity, what rank are you?”

“Duke.” Derren ambled back over to his bench and flopped down. Chance winced, expecting the man to crash straight through it, but the Shikari landed so silently that he didn’t even hear it. “I’m taking my nap now. Don’t bother me again, Jorgin.”

Derren closed his eyes and let his head loll back over the edge of the bench. Jorgin snorted.

“Well, congratulations on your promotion. You all actually did a pretty fair job of surprising him. He normally doesn’t show much emotion at all.”

“Are you sure we should be talking? We don’t want to wake him up,” Chance said.

“Don’t worry, he can sleep through anything he wants to. He already sent the information about your rank up to the base, so congratulations. You’re all officially Squires.”

“Awesome!” Yeo exclaimed, pumping a hand in the air. “Let’s go get a job! An expensive one.”

“We’ve still got to wait for them to show up at our house,” Bella pointed out.

Yeo’s face fell. Jorgin rolled his eyes and reached into a pocket, pulling out a slip of paper. “I’ve got a Squire ranked job here, if you want it. I picked it up, but I decided I couldn’t be bothered to actually take care of it.”

“Really? Why do you have something so low level? You’ve got to be around Derren’s rank, right?” Chance asked.

Bella took the paper from Jorgin and unfolded it, scanning through its contents. Jorgin gave them a half-hearted shrug.

“Nah, I’m nowhere near his rank. And sometimes you just want to try doing something easy. Trust me, unless you’re really shooting for the stars, money isn’t going to be an issue for much longer. Especially after you hit Knight rank.”

“I don’t like the implication that we aren’t going for the top,” Yeo said, narrowing his eyes.

“Ah,” Jorgin said, scrunching his nose in distaste. “You’re one of those. I should have known, I guess. Nobody in their right mind would call out their technique names. That’s just telling your opponent what you’re doing, you know. Oh well, no skin off my back. Enjoy being poor, kid.”

Yeo stuck his tongue out and turned to Bella. “Well? What’s the job?”

“Elimination request for an aggressive Ramdent not too far from here,” Bella replied, peeling her eyes from the paper. “It pays five hundred gold.”

Chance and Yeo froze.

“Five hundred gold?” Chance asked in awe. “That’s so much more than the Foundling quests!”

“Where is it? I don’t know what a Ramdent is, but I’m going to kick its teeth in.”

“Rose district, apparently. Again,” Bella replied. “Not too far.”

“Let’s go, then!”

Yeo snatched the paper from Bella’s hands and darted for the exit. Chance waved to Jorgin as he and Bella rushed to follow after Yeo.

“Thanks for the help and the job!”

“Any time,” Jorgin replied, raising a hand in farewell and giving them a sly smile. “I wish you the best of luck.”

***

Jorgin watched the three rush out of the training area, waiting several seconds before rising to his feet. Derren’s hand shot out, grabbing him by the wrist before he could take more than one step away.

Jorgin turned, looking down at Derren. The man’s round face was red and he trembled with exertion. Cocking his head to the side, Jorgin reached into a pouch at his waist. He pulled a Ward out and activated it.

A small blue dome bloomed just above the two of them, not much larger than the bench Derren sat on. Energy rippled through the air and their surrounds changed, dirt turning to cold black marble.

The bench warped, wood melting away as jagged obsidian forked out to replace it, jutting at odd angles as if it were in italics.

“I did not expect you to be able to move,” Jorgin said.

“I’ve got strong aura,” Derren growled, spitting each word through clenched teeth as he laboriously rose from the bench. His shoulders shook, but he managed to keep his feet out under him.

“So you do,” Jorgin said. “Your part is done. You have performed admirably. It would have been wiser to pretend to still be asleep.”

“D-don’t make fun of me. You knew. As soon as I broke your control over my body, you knew.”

“Also true. I had just hoped we might take this up at a more opportune location.”

“Who are you? What do those kids have to do with this?” Derren ground out. “Why force me to give them a test like that?”

“Everything must be perfect,” Jorgin replied in a lilting tone. “It is important that he sees the true strength of the world. The normal test would have given him false belief of his strength.”

Derren lunged, but it was like he was moving underwater. Jorgin shifted to the side and the Shikari’s sluggish attack passed by him harmlessly.

“You forced me to fight with that much power just to make the test more difficult? You’re insane.”

“You speak as if it was a troublesome task for me to do such,” Jorgin said, raising a hand. “Fear not. You will still be of use.”

Several seconds later, the Ward faded. Jorgin reappeared in the training grounds. Of Derren, there was no trace.

***

“That is the ugliest thing I have ever seen in my entire life,” Yeo said, his kusarigama at the ready.

Chance couldn’t help but agree. It had taken them about an hour of searching around the alleyways in the Rose district to locate the Ramdent. Luckily, the Old City hadn’t given him any trouble. But, now that the creature stood in front of them, he almost wished it had.

The Ramdent was some idiot’s idea of a joke. It was a little shorter than him, with a large, bulbous body and a scab-covered tail that was twice as long as it was tall. It looked like how he pictured a rat from New York, except for one grotesque difference. Its head was that of a ram – if someone had beaten it black and blue and slapped it on without bothering to clean anything up.

Horns stuck out of the monster’s head at odd angles, and one of its eyes was swollen shut. The other, square pupiled and dilated with blood, darted between the three of them at a breakneck speed.

“Gods, we need to put this thing out of its misery,” Bella said, ice covering her body. The Ramdent let out a baritone squeak and backed up against the wall of the alley, pulling its bloody lips back to reveal rows of sharp rodent fangs. Blood dripped from its mouth and splattered to the ground.

“Agreed,” Yeo said. “This alley isn’t the best for me, though. Can we get it out into the street?”

“Not until we get a Ward up,” Bella replied, an axe forming in her hands. “We can’t let it injure anyone, and this thing looks like it snapped three years ago.”

The Ramdent let out a chittering screech. Evidently tired of waiting, it blurred at Yeo, who let out a mixture of a yelp and a curse before vaulting backward, narrowly avoiding getting bit.

Chance slipped forward, his third eye already open, and cut a karmic thread connected to the frothing monster. He elected to cut one connected to a Soothound, largely because he was already familiar with the benefits it would give. There were several other monsters tied to the Ramdent, but he didn’t want to risk anything new in the middle of a fight.

Cold energy slipped into his veins and a strand of gold mist leapt from his palm. It struck the Ramdent, sinking into its matted fur without any resistance.

“It doesn’t have much of an aura,” Chance said, flicking his urumi to keep the monster at bay. It hissed at him, trying to bite at the sword but failing miserably.

Bella reared back and lobbed her axe. It spun once before embedding itself square in the Ramdent’s head, splattering blood across the alleyway. Staggering, the creature crashed to the ground and went still.

“Wait, seriously?” Yeo asked, lowering his kusarigama. “That’s it? I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but…”

Chance started to nod in agreement, but he paused. There were still karmic threads connected to the Ramdent. His eyes narrowed. “I don’t think it’s dead. It’s doing something.”

Neither of them questioned him. Bella reached into her bag and pulled her Ward out, activating it without a second of hesitation. With a thrum of energy, a blue dome bloomed in the air above them. It lowered, sealing off a large portion of the alley.

Bella suddenly doubled over, groaning in pain. She staggered, leaning a hand against the wall.

“Bella?” Chance asked, rushing to her side. “Are you okay?”

Vines erupted around the Ramdent, rapidly blanketing the walls and floor of the alley around it. Thick foliage erupted from the grass, and the walls fell away as they quickly spread throughout the alley.

“It’s taking control of the Ward.” Yeo warned. “Bella, snap out of it!”

Bella gritted her teeth, leaning on Chance as she straightened back up. The rapid growth slowed. Bricks started to appear once more, but at a slow rate. The shimmering walls of the Ward descended around them, making contact with the ground.

The Ramdent staggered back to its feet, the axe still sprouted from its head. It shook itself off, then let out a low growl and slipped into the twisting vines, vanishing from view.

“Shit. I wasn’t prepared for that level of mental assault,” Bella said. “It managed to modify the Ward.”

“Whatever,” Yeo replied, spinning his sickle and grinning. “It widened our fighting area. This is good for me. Now we just need to find it.”

Chance scanned the thick foliage covering roughly half of the Ward, searching for any signs of the Ramdent. The heavy vines were large and loose enough that it was impossible to tell exactly where it had gone. He grimaced.

“That might be a bit hard. Can it wait us out?”

“No. The Ward won’t drop until it’s dead or we are,” Bella replied. “And it’s on more of a timer than we are. I can’t imagine it can sit around bleeding forever.”

“I don’t suppose you can detect your axe?” Yeo asked.

“Nope. It’s just ice. No clue what happened to it.”

“Figures,” Yeo grumbled. “Chance?”

Chance’s third eye wasn’t doing much either. Evidently, there was only so much he could look through before he lost sight of the karmic threads. “I can’t see it either. It had a pretty weak aura, though, so I might be able to find it in a different way. Hold on.”

Chance gathered golden mist in his free hand while he raised his urumi with the other. He was already lucky – whether that was good or bad luck, he wasn’t entirely sure. But he still had luck – and it was time to share a little bit of it with their opponent.

The golden mist poured from his palm, slithering across the stone and slipping into the vines. Several seconds passed. A small patch of vines to their right rustled. As one, Yeo and Chance both sent attacks in its direction.

Yeo’s sickle sliced through several of the vines but failed to penetrate deep enough – but Chance’s urumi bit into flesh.

“I’ve got it!” Chance yelled, yanking the blade back. Blood splattered across the ground and a furious roar echoed through the Ward. A large, battered monster staggered out from within the vines. It was the Ramdent, but there wasn’t much left of the latter half of its name.

The monster had completely turned into a ram that stood nearly twice the height of what it had before. Thick, ropey muscles covered its body and two new jagged horns sprouted from either side of its head. A large, gaping wound seeped blood right between its eyes. There was no sight of Bella’s axe.

“Well, now I wish you hadn’t,” Bella muttered, forming a new axe in her hands. “Be careful. It looks more dangerous now.”

“We attack as one when it makes its move,” Yeo said, the Ramdent approaching them with bared teeth. They all nodded.

It attacked, and they leapt into action.