Street Cultivation 3 Read online

  Street Cultivation #3

  Version 1.0

  © 2020 Sarah Lin

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The story so far...

  Street Cultivation 1

  In the modern world, qi is money. Problem is, Rick doesn't have much of either to spare. Between his dead-end job taking punches at the local lucrim combat gym and paying for his sick sister Melissa's school fees, it's a struggle to make ends meet. On top of that, Melissa suffers from a condition that drains her lucrim and threatens her life.

  When a group of rich young men with powerful Birthright Cores decide to cause trouble at the gym, Rick knows he should just accept the inevitable beating, but his pride gets the better of him and he stubbornly fights back as best he can. Eventually, Rick’s boss steps in to call off the fight, and Rick manages to stay on his feet long enough to watch Mike leave before passing out.

  He wakes up to find his injuries healed by his favorite client, Lisa, but soon has to rush off to help his sister survive a serious lucrim seizure. His bad day then gets worse when he checks his mail and discovers that his absentee parents have both been killed. Though he hasn’t heard from them in years, as the next of kin it falls to him to settle their affairs.

  At the lawyers’ offices, Rick discovers his pit-fighting Uncle Alan waiting to claim his parents’ inheritable lucrim cores, and is forced to fight him in a ritual challenge. Rick barely wins the challenge, only to discover that in addition to the meager cores, he is saddled with three Aura Leeches to pay off his parents’ debts. To stave off the extra drain on his income, Rick asks his coworker Henry to help him join the local underground fighting ring called the Underground.

  At first, Rick outperforms his own expectations and manages to earn some valuable prize money. That changes when the arena’s eccentric owner, Alger, surprises the novice fighters by throwing them into a melee against a savage, overwhelmingly-powerful fighter named the Slayer. Rick survives against the odds, but his left arm is shattered. Worse, the Slayer then hunts him down in the infirmary and tries to murder him. Rick seeks refuge with Granny Whitney, a kindly-seeming old lady who had offered to heal his arm… and then promptly murders the Slayer and blackmails Rick into fighting for her in the arena.

  With his arm healed, Rick resumes his training, but is surprised to receive a legal summons from a company called Maguire Incorporated. It turns out that an experimental lucrim core had passed into Rick’s lucrima soul during his fight with the Birthrighter, Mike, and his father’s company wants it back. Rick surrenders the core without incident, but runs into a furious Mike on the way out and finds himself the subject of a vicious grudge.

  Rick keeps his head down and carries on fighting at the underground arena, aided by his unscrupulous new mentor and her brutally effective medications. He escapes an encounter with one of Mike’s cronies unscathed, but his luck runs out when his sister’s health takes a sharp turn for the worse. Aided by Lisa and - reluctantly - by Granny Whitney, Rick teaches Melissa to build a shell around the lucrim-consuming flame at the core of her soul.

  Back at the Underground, an exhibition match turns out to be instigated by Mike and his cronies, who try to ambush Rick. The ensuing brawl quickly spirals out of control and Rick finds himself helping Emily, a strong middleweight fighter, to defend another fighter from a hitman trying to take advantage of the chaos.

  Rick discovers that Emily will be fighting alongside him in an upcoming multi-tier tournament at the underground arena, so Rick trains hard with her and Lisa to make sure he can qualify. Shortly before the tournament, however, Rick runs into Mike, who challenges him to a formal duel. Rick tries to decline, but is forced to accept when he receives a panicked phone call from Melissa about a stranger breaking down their door.

  With a massively one-sided duel to prepare for in addition to a grueling arena tournament, Rick throws himself into training, learns a new speed technique, and purchases a dangerous medication called Deathbane. Just before the tournament, Rick uses the Deathbane to rebuild his lucrima soul by inciting the team’s heavyweight fighter to beat him within an inch of his life. Granny Whitney is thoroughly unimpressed, but grudgingly heals him in time for the tournament.

  Rick and Emily perform well in their tiers of the tournament, but their welterweight and cruiserweight teammates are knocked out and the heavyweight matches are a dead heat. The tournament is on a knife-edge between the teams led by Granny Whitney, Alger, and a local mobster known as the American Basilisk, when Rick is called up for one last round. He struggles through and is the last man standing, but passes out once he leaves the arena. When he awakes, he discovers that Granny’s team has been victorious and his debt is now fulfilled.

  Freed of his obligations at the underground arena, Rick turns to preparing for his grudge match with Mike. Together with Melissa, he hatches a plan to use a wisp of her ether void as a secret weapon to disrupt his opponent's defenses, but Mike has a trick of his own: as the fight begins, he uses a technique to bind Rick’s voice so that he can’t surrender. Mike launches into an all-out assault, aiming to take advantage of his vastly-superior strength, but Rick uses his fighting experience and Melissa’s void flame to force Mike into burning away his lucrim without landing any critical blows. Once Mike burns through all his energy, his defenses fail and Rick breaks his leg, forcing Mike into a humiliating - and legally binding - surrender.

  After the duel, life returns to normal. Back at the gym, Henry dramatically announces his resignation, buoyed by the promise of bigger rewards at the Arena and a loan from an Advanced Lucrim station, a new technology from Maguire Incorporated which sounds suspiciously familiar. Rick shakes his head and turns to his boss to ask for a raise...

  Street Cultivation 2

  As he tries to build on his success in the multi-tier tournament, Rick encounters an even trickier foe: the intractable world of job interviews. Though his new-found strength breaks down some barriers, he finds himself running into new ones he can’t easily resolve: most office jobs require college degrees or a combat sect membership, and Rick doesn’t have either. Finding something better than manual labour or cage-fighting will be a challenge.

  Prompted by his newly-graduated sister, Rick finds something that could play to his strengths: a vague posting from the Global Lucrim Authority where the only listed requirement is fighting ability. He lucks out when he gains credit for his early arrival at the initial trial, but his fortunes quickly reverse when a flamboyant rival candidate, Damian, uses it as a pretext to pick a bizarrely-feigned fight with him while they wait for the trial to start.

  Rick plays along until the GLA representatives cut their fight short by issuing a challenge to the assembled candidates: to learn and demonstrate a proprietary lucrim-surveying technique within the next two weeks. During a chastening attempt to find a better apartment the next day, Rick discovers that most landlords will require a huge “fighter’s deposit” to cover potential damage: 100,000 lucrim, more than twice his generation rate. With that in mind, Rick resolves to pass the GLA trial and earn the promised lucrative contract.

  Rick manages to pass the first test, and the trial moves on to a demonstration of the lucrim anomalies the candidates will be searching for... and the dangerous entities that can spawn from them. After points are awarded for each fighter’s performance in the ensuing fight, the final challenge is issued: to use the surveying technique to find a lucrim anomaly within a month.

  Initially, Rick exhausts himself in the search, but armed with technique improvements from Emily and custom serum from Lisa, his eff
orts bear fruit. He discovers an anomaly near the site of the first GLA trial by following up a lead on some feral dragons, one of which promptly attacks him. He calls it in despite his misgivings about removing the dragon’s food source, and is rewarded with a well-paid but limited-time contract to find more anomalies.

  Buoyed by his success, Rick hands in his notice at the House of the Cosmic Fist, but he runs into trouble when he finds his next anomaly: some of his rival surveyors have already found it. Worse, one of them turns out to bear a grudge from the multi-tier tournament, and Rick is only saved from a severe beating by an unexpected intervention from Damian. He learns that the thug’s name is Jack, but Damian declines to offer any more information, leaving Rick to return home, lick his wounds, and mourn his ruined jacket.

  While he recovers, Rick remembers the starved feral dragon and decides to visit a local wildlife refuge to see if anything could be done to help it. When he arrives, he finds signs of an anomaly, but before he can find it, a powerful lucrim user confronts him at gunpoint and tells him to leave. Rick manages to persuade him of his good intentions and discovers the man is a Native American named Delsin whose family runs the refuge. They strike a deal to allow Rick to find anomalies nearby without disrupting the ecosystem within the reserve itself.

  After a brief encounter with an aura-using bear, Rick and Delsin find more anomalies, but one is in a region infested by jackalopes – savage rabbit-like creatures created by a twisted lucrim experiment. Rick enlists Emily’s help and they clear out the jackalopes, only to be ambushed by a rabid dragon which they are forced to kill. On the way back, he gets an even bigger surprise when Emily asks him out on a date.

  For a time, Rick enjoys life as he builds up his savings, strikes up a relationship with Emily, and overjoys Melissa with a gift of a stuffed jackalope. Just as he decides to set aside some time to help Melissa with her upcoming CLAT exam, he receives an urgent call to help with a major anomaly the following day. When he arrives, he finds that the anomaly has grown into a rupture between the human and demonic realms… and that Jack intends to main him in the midst of the chaos. Rick manages to evade him, but gets too close to the rupture and is sucked in along with Damian. When he comes to, he discovers that they’ve been trapped in the demon realm.

  Rick confronts Damian, who admits that he’d intended to travel through the rupture and that Rick was accidentally stranded along with him. He teaches Rick how to survive in the demon realm, but then leaves to carry out his own plans while they wait for a rescue to be arranged. Rick briefly visits the demonic counterpart to his home town, but grows wary of the attention from succubi and other predatory demons and soon wanders out to explore a mine on the edge of the city. There, he meets and befriends Bftgage and Ythsil, two weak frog-like demons who are struggling to survive in the mine’s harsh working conditions. Rick and the demon brothers help each other out until Damian returns with news of their imminent rescue.

  After returning to the human realm, Rick is given full back pay and a week to recover, and spends it recuperating with Melissa and Emily. He also meets with Damian, who explains that he wants to infiltrate the Global Lucrim Authority and tear down the systems of exploitation between humans and demons. Rick tells him he’s crazy, but agrees to cooperate with him for the remainder of their contract. In return, Damian tells Rick that Jack is a mercenary working for the American Basilisk, the mobster from the multi-tier tournament.

  Rick decides to focus on training, so while Melissa searches the public library for a new technique to add to her portfolio, he meets up with Tom, an old contact from the Underground Arena. Their sparring goes well, but just as Rick begins to detect something amiss in Tom’s behaviour, the reason becomes clear: Granny Whitney arrives.

  Rick’s malevolent former mentor makes him an offer: deal with a lucrim anomaly without drawing attention to her nearby illicit operations, and she will deal with Jack. Rick reluctantly agrees, on the conditions that Jack is not murdered and Rick doesn’t have to do anything illegal. He makes his way to the location, but finds he has to clear a shotgun-brandishing junkie and an endangered cloud wolf out of the area. Afterwards, Rick calls in the anomaly, but then is ambushed almost immediately by Jack.

  In the ensuing fight, Jack uses his oversized ability cores to exhaust Rick and knocks him to the ground, but is held back by a senior mafiosi who imposes the terms of a limited vendetta, as punishment for the attention being drawn to the Basilisk’s operations. Rick learns that Jack will be allowed one attempt to finish the vendetta within the next three months, and is unsurprised to find Granny Whitney waiting for him on the road afterwards. She amiably explains that placing conditions on her generous offers can lead to unexpected consequences.

  After Rick recovers from the fight with Lisa’s help, he works with Emily and Delsin on an accelerated training plan to build up his combat skills and develop a secondary lucrima foundation, while Melissa shows off a new technique to manifest her ether void as a destructive aura. Next, Rick calls in his debt with Tom, training his Bunyan’s Step core against the other man’s lightning abilities, but he is interrupted by a call from Damian: the lucrim-surveying contract is going to wrap up with a final contest, and he has only a few days to prepare.

  Damian tries to recruit Rick to fight in his team, but Rick decides against it. Instead, he asks Emily to help, Melissa volunteers to support them using her new technique, and Lisa arrives with a gift of a new combat jacket to replace Rick’s ruined one. A couple of days before the contest, though, disaster strikes: Rick realises that his relationship with Emily won’t work out, and they suddenly break up.

  During the contest, Melissa’s technique works to fend off the lucrim entities from the anomalies, but as expected, Jack uses the cover of the contest to attack Rick. Melissa is nearly drawn into their fight, but Emily unexpectedly arrives and helps Rick to defeat Jack. Between the fight and the side effects of his new foundation, Rick is left exhausted, so he surrenders the contest to Damian’s team. As the GLA representative explains that the terms of surrender mean that Rick will lose his final paycheck, Rick trades in his information about Jack and the American Basilisk to secure a personal reward from the Vice President instead.

  In the aftermath, Rick finds some part-time work at the Peakless Wildlife Refuge and Melissa is recruited to join the Young Lucrim Artists of America. As he relaxes with his sister for their last cheesy movie night for a while, he considers what to do next...

  Chapter 1: Brutal Dreams

  Rain battered the top of the skyscraper and Rick wasn't himself. He could feel the rain stinging against his bare back and the aura pulsing through his body, but something was wrong. A moment ago he had been somewhere else, the memory already dissipating, yet now he felt rage cascading down over him, as undeniable as the rain.

  A city glimmered around him, the lights strangely muted and blue in the rain. They extended in all directions, obscured only by swaths of darkness from other skyscrapers blotting out the world below. He didn't recognize anything about where he was, but he could barely even look around him, instead drawn to look across the roof, where he knew someone would be standing.

  The man was about his height, with dyed blue hair that seemed to glow with the lights of the city. He wore a dark combat suit that clung to his body, even where it had been ripped in several places. As Rick stared at him, the man grinned and raised a fist.

  He gripped a ribbon of torn red cloth.

  Instantly Rick knew that it was a piece of Melissa's robes. It was simply red cloth, and in the pouring rain it could have been anything, yet he knew. He began to run forward, letting out a wordless cry. His opponent's lips moved and Rick heard nothing, the world blurring around him...

  Rick Hunter woke up in the bed of his lodge and stared at the ceiling. His heart was still pounding and he could feel his lucrima soul surging within him, seeking an opponent who didn't exist.

  He hoped. Rick swatted aside the covers and swung his legs out of bed, just sit
ting on the edge for a while and trying to breathe. The cold wood against his bare feet helped him come back to reality, reassuring him that it had only been a dream.

  Obviously it was just a dream. He dreamed every night and often woke with fragments of imaginary battles in his head. It had been nearly a year since he fought Jack, yet he still occasionally had dreams where the man's burning tattoos tore him apart. Occasionally he even dreamt of fighting Mike, including one horrifying dream where Melissa had been forced to fight him. Inventing an imaginary opponent was nothing new.

  Still, it left him thrown off his rhythm. Usually his dreams faded quickly, but this one stuck with him, and it had made his lucrima soul activate even while he was unconscious. Recognizing that he wasn't going to get back to sleep, Rick strained to his feet. Early sunlight cast his cabin in subtle shades anyway.

  He ran his hands through his hair, decided he didn't need to shave, and ate some cereal straight out of the box. There had been milk at some point, but his tiny fridge had run out. By the time he was finished, he felt normal again, despite the lingering dream and the early hour. When he pulled on his jacket and slipped into his tennis shoes, he was ready to start the day.

  Out this early, there was a chance that he could find Delsin. The older man had been avoiding him for some time, though it was probably due to cantankerousness more than anything else. They'd spoken briefly about the Dark Blood Kettle, confirming that there was nothing sinister about its psychological effect, but otherwise the old man didn't want to be used as a source of information.

  If anyone knew about dreams, it would be him. Rick had mostly put the dream behind him, but decided that he would ask anyway, just to round out his knowledge.

  Meanwhile, he would begin work by scouting the edges of the Peakless Wildlife Refuge. It had formerly been exclusively Delsin's job, and joining him helped justify Rick's continued employment. That route would also be most likely to bring him into contact with the old man.