Gleam [Karma Cultivator Isekai] - Chapter 38: Give and take

Chapter 38: Give and take

Turning down the first alleyway he came across, Chance cast a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure nobody was in the area before he rapped on the stone. “Hey, it’s me. Open up.”

For a moment, it looked like the stone wouldn’t respond. Then it rippled, peeling back to reveal a cracked pathway. Chance strode into it and, this time, the Old City didn’t even try to hide the exit sealing in behind him.

“Okay, we’ve got a problem,” Chance said. “I’m sorry if this is rude or anything, but what the hell was that? I know you could have killed me when I first arrived or whatever, but I’ve already agreed to help you. Why would you try to lure my friends in? You know as well as I do that Yamish will kill them.”

A question mark carved itself into the wall. Chance sighed.

“Yamish literally said that everything in the Old City wanted to kill me, and he was very firm about not sharing anything about you – and him – with anybody. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots. I don’t know how strong he is, but I know it’s strong enough to kill to protect whatever he wants.”

The old city didn’t respond for a moment. Then the stone rippled and an old, cracked sign pushed itself out of the wall. Tiny flickers of essence hissed and popped off of it, but it was mostly unlit.

It wasn’t a word familiar to Chance, so he reached for his dictionary. “Ah, damn it. Didn’t bring the book.”

The ground rippled and a book slipped out from it, coming to a stop at his feet. Chance squinted, then knelt and picked it up. It was a dictionary. A quick glance through a random page revealed it was one written in English, too.

“Seriously? Okay, we’re going to need to have a conversation about just what you’re capable of,” Chance muttered, leafing through the dictionary and trying to match the word on the sign to something in the book. He spotted it after a few moments and rolled his eyes. “Therapist. Seriously? You’re telling me to get a therapist? This is your fault!”

The question mark transformed into a circle. Chance’s eye twitched. The Old City didn’t have an ounce of shame, but it evidently did seem to have a sense of humor. He just wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

“Right, you aren’t getting rid of me that easily,” Chance said, tucking the dictionary into his waistband. “Seriously. If you want me to work with you, I expect a little more of an equal relationship. That might be weird to you, since I’m sure you’re some all powerful living city or whatever and you’ve never had to debase yourself to work with a weakling such as I, but I’m not your slave. If you’ve been listening to literally anything I’ve said, you should know that.”

The question mark returned. Chance sighed.

“You’re going to make me repeat it?”

A circle.

“You are such an asshole,” Chance said, a tiny grin creeping across his face before he could banish it. He was not about to start bantering with a city. Especially not a murderous one. “I’m doing this my way. No more jokes. This is my second life, and I’m not wasting it for a bunch of musty old alleyways with a terrible sense of humor. Deal with me evenly or just try to kill me and move on.”

There was a long pause before the Old City responded. The circle faded away, and a pathway formed. It led up to a large, open town square. Chance didn’t think it was possible, but the square actually looked even more dilapidated than the rest of what he’d seen.

Purple, thorny ivy covered the walls and large patches of the ground. It was withered, just barely clinging onto its last semblances of life. Huge portions of the buildings making up the walls had fallen apart, and debris was strewn throughout the square.

Lining the ground leading up to the square was a series of skulls. The walls of the alley around Chance shifted, forming into an image of a bowlegged, twisted Soothound with several heads.

“There’s a human monster beyond this?” Chance guessed, tightening his grip on the urumi. “Seriously? You’re just going to brush me off and sic me on another monster?”

The image faded, replaced with an ‘x’. That was then washed away as a new symbol took its place – a scale. Chance’s eyes narrowed.

“A trade. You’re saying that if I want respect, I have to earn it, huh?”

The circle returned. Chance spun the urumi in his hand. “Fine. Let’s do this, then.”

He strode into the circle, calling on his Essence. His third eye snapped open and warmth tingled at his fingertips. Adrenaline started to pump through his veins as he stepped out into the square and his eyes scanned the surroundings for any sight of the monster.

Chance never would have admitted it, but a growing portion of him was excited. The chance to prove his convictions in a concrete way wasn’t an opportunity he’d had before arriving in Gleam, and he was starting to relish it more with every fight. His Gate warmed, the bands of heat wrapping around his heart and stretching out through his body.

The ground in the center of the square rumbled and started to rise, pushing tearing through vines and pushing debris out of the way. Chance nearly lost his balance as the quake shook the entire area violently enough to send stones tumbling from the rooftops.

As the earth sloughed away, a statue of a staggeringly large Soothound poked its way out from the ground. It rose until it was nearly twice Chance’s height. The beast had six legs, with the two extra ones protruding from its back at odd angles.

Four heads lined its body, and not a single one of them was in the right place. Two were just behind the front legs, while the other two were placed on its back. The creature’s legs were thin and slender, but its paws were the size of dinner plates and with claws to match.

Heavy stone chains hung from the monster at half a dozen different locations. But the thing that caught Chance’s eye the most was the thick threads of karmic debt connected to the statue.

“Statues don’t have debt,” Chance said, his eyes narrow. One of the stone chains snapped, falling to the ground with a thundering crash. Tremors ran through the statue and dirt cascaded down from it.

Another chain snapped. More dirt fell, and the features of the monster started to grow more defined. As the next chain followed the previous ones to the ground, Chance whipped the urumi.

The weapon expanded, its segmented blades whistling through the air and reaching for the spreading patches of dark flesh appearing beneath the stone. His strike scraped off the edge of some of the stone and rang against the fur harmlessly.

Chance cursed, retracting the blade. “I really need to get a technique before I try to do this again. Aura is completely unfair.”

He sent it whistling out once more, but this time aimed for one of the threads of Karma connected to the twisted Soothound. He inspected it briefly as his blade cut through it – the debt belonged to another large Soothound, but not one that had been formed from a human. The blade carved through the light and energy coursed back down it, flooding into his body like a river of ice.

To his surprise, a faint outline of the karmic strand remained, even though he’d drawn the power from it. That wasn’t the first time it had happened to him, but this wasn’t the time to look more into it.

Hair stood on end all over Chance’s body and he involuntarily bared his teeth in a snarl as the power poured through his system. The last of the chains thundered down and the four heads of the Soothound reared back in a haunting, synchronized howl.

Eight glowing red eyes focused on Chance and the monster took a shaky step forward, finding its footing on the ground after its imprisonment. Then it charged.

If Chance hadn’t drawn power from the karmic thread, he would have died there. Instead, he bounded out of the way, flying through the air and catching onto the lip of the first story of a building.

The wall behind where he’d been standing vanished in a plume of dust and stone as an explosion rocked the town square. Snarling, the Soothound pulled itself from the huge hole it had just formed in the wall and charged toward him with blinding speed.

Chance spun, his urumi whipping out and ringing against his opponent’s fur. He leaned back, avoiding a snarling head as it snapped at him, and continued the flip, driving a knee into the monster’s nose.

A massive paw nearly caught Chance in the head, but he dropped to the ground instants before it connected. Wind rustled his hair and he vaulted upright, thrusting his blade into the monster’s stomach.

Again, it rang against hard fur and failed to penetrate. Chance leapt, grabbing a fistful of the Soothound’s fur and using it to swing himself to safety. As he released it, he let his fingers brush across another one of the karmic strands connected to the creature.

His jump carried him through the air and across the square. He slammed into a two-story building, digging his fingers in and catching himself on a windowsill with inhumane grace and strength. He glanced over his shoulder as golden light materialized into a large, armored creature.

It roughly resembled an armadillo that had been mashed with a porcupine. Jagged spikes stuck out of the hunched creature’s back, interspersed between plates of thick, shimmering chitin.

He couldn’t see the monster’s face from where he stood, but it leapt at the Soothound, curling into a ball and literally rolling into the other monster. The spikes on the creature’s back ripped through the hard fur.

Blood splashed across Chance’s glowing monster and the ground, sizzling as it melted through both. The mist dissipated and he dropped back to the ground, spinning the urumi in his hand. The landing sent a slight jolt through his legs. The energy he’d drawn from the karmic thread was starting to fade.

The Soothound loped toward him and lunged, snapping at his neck with several salivating, jagged toothed maws. He used the last of his borrowed ability to drop to the ground in a slide.

As he slipped beneath the monster, he raised a hand toward another strand of karmic debt. An instant before his hands brushed the glowing energy, he saw several images flicker through it at the speed of thought.

A woman, only a few years older than him smiling at an alter. The same woman, sitting at a table as someone handed her a plate of steaming soup. Then she was standing in the doorway of a house, her hand raised in farewell and the smile on her face failing to hide the fear in her eyes.

Chance yanked his hand back at the last second, electing to grab a smaller strand of Karma. One that belonged to another Soothound. His fingers wrapped around it and a clear chime rang out as he rose back to his feet behind the monster, his urumi darting out even as the monster turned toward him.

Sickness built in Chance’s chest as the sword-whip bit into the wound his previous misty summon had inflicted. The Soothound screamed in pain and he ripped the blade free, severing another karmic thread on the way back and filling himself with energy once more.

A golden paw swiped through the air, jagged claws ripping deep into the Soothound and widening the growing wound on its back. One of the monster’s heads lolled to the side, nearly completely severed from the rest of its body. Blood sizzled against its fur and its guts sloshed around with every movement.

But, even with the power coursing through his veins once more, the excitement for the fight was gone. All that was left was sadness and disgust.

This isn’t a monster. This is a man. Who was that woman? His wife? His daughter? He had hopes and goals, just like me. And now… he’s this thing.

The Soothound didn’t sit around aimlessly while Chance went through his inner conflict. Its many heads screamed and it leapt at him, blood spraying from its wounds and melting through the ground as it lunged at him.

Chance was saved by the second time by his stolen abilities, vaulting backward with inhumane agility. Instinctively, he sent the urumi whistling out once more. The blade struck home, digging deep into the open wound on the monster’s back.

He leapt into the air, clearing a powerful blow that smashed the front of the building behind him, and retracted the urumi. Chance’s feet slammed down on either side of the wound and he drove the blade deeper, pushing it through the back of the monster’s main neck.

The Soothound pitched forward and Chance leapt, snagging a protruding signpost that hung at an angle and swinging himself to safety. A claw scraped across his back as he landed, screeching as it met bone. The monster crashed to the ground behind him, a plume of dust rising up around it as its blood seeped into the cracked stone.

Chance staggered, drawing in a sharp breath as pain flooded through his body. He grabbed the bottle of healing pills from his waist and popped one into his mouth before the agony could cripple him.

The burning faded away and he let out a sigh as the wound pulled itself shut. A sizzling pop from his urumi drew Chance’s attention. He grimaced. The blade was covered with severe pockmarks and the thin metal ropes that allowed it to expand and contract hung open, partially eaten away by the monster’s acid. The weapon was completely ruined.

Foul smelling matter poured out of the massive wound in the monster’s back. Constrictions racked its body and it bucked, bones popping and twisting as it started to change. Fur receded as more and more of the foul matter poured onto the ground, surrounding it in a pool of black liquid.

For an instant, a man’s body appeared suspended within the muck. He had a strong jawline and thin blonde hair. He was probably in his mid-forties, with several scars across his cheeks and chin.

Then he was gone, melted to slag. The black liquid sank into the ground of the Old City, slipping between the cracks in the stone. Within seconds, there was no trace of the man or monster.

Chance drew a shaking breath. He knelt, laying his useless weapon on the ground as well. It wasn’t going to do him any more help now – not in its current shape. Maybe someone would stumble across it in the future and it would provide them with some aid.

“Well?” Chance demanded, clenching his hands. “You made me kill someone. What did he do to deserve this? Why are you making me do your dirty work? You better give me some real goddamn answers, Old City.”