Death Cultivator by eden Hudson (best books to read .TXT) 📕

wants to stand around talking to himself all day, now do they?” His thumb hovered over the script markings on the remote. “So, when I ask if you got me...”

“Yeah,” I said. “I got you.”

“Mr. Bailiff, sir.”

That’s when my brain finally snapped.

“Mr. Dickface, sir.”

I don’t know how long he held down the trigger of the remote, but it felt like at least a million years. The pain was so bad I was ready to promise him I’d lick his boots and tell him thank you, sir if he’d just stop.

When it finally did end, I was on the dirty wood plank floor of the Distilling Company building, picking up dirt like one of those gym-floor mops and panting like I’d just run a hundred miles.

The Bailiff grinned down at me. “You were saying?”

I swallowed, my arms and legs still jittery from aftershocks.

“Mr. Bailiff, sir,” I forced out, my voice cracking.

“Smart boy.” One of his ghost hands dragged me back to my feet. “For a human, anyway. Now, Smart Boy, meet Muta’i, Master Distiller and OSS 7.”

Standing there in front of me was an honest-to-God minotaur—bull’s legs with fat black hooves, ripped human torso, and a huge bull’s head and neck growing out of his meaty shoulders, the whole nine yards. He was wearing an apron but no shirt, like some kind of blacksmith stereotype, and his fur was a brindled gold and black. His horns had been drilled through and pierced with dangly gold rings. I had to tip my head back to look him in the eye. He was at least eight feet tall.

“Shogun Takiru said you were coming.” Muta’i’s voice was like the deep rumble of bass from a tricked-out truck down the street.

He took a step closer, then leaned down and sniffed my face. His breath stunk like beer and hot grass, and he smelled like sweat and burning hair. I decided to hold off on breathing until he backed up.

Muta’i crossed his bodybuilder arms over his apron. “His Spirit stomata aren’t even open.”

“That’s why we brung him to you,” the Bailiff said, rocking on his heels. “Sorry brat doesn’t even know his Spirit type.”

“Hold him still.”

Ghost arms grabbed me by the shoulders. I tried twisting away, but they locked me in place.

Gold light blasted off the minotaur and slammed into me. A shock wave ran through my whole body, kind of like when I’d eaten Rali’s Coffee Drank flour ball, but this time going from the outside in. For a second, it felt like my skin was trying to lift off my body. Then it was over.

“Stomata opened.” Muta’i grabbed my tattooed arm in one huge paw and turned it over so that the elbow was facing him. With his other hand, he dug into the pocket of his apron and pulled out something that looked like a price scanner gun from a supermarket.

Every instinct I had was telling me to mouth off or fight back, but for once I bit the inside of my cheek and stopped myself. I didn’t need to end up on the floor again, not yet. This was definitely happening, and probably my best option was to get it over with.

Muta’i ran the scanner up my arm, then pressed it to my stomach, then my forehead. It beeped out a series of notes like a calculator playing a funeral song.

“Mortal affinity,” he read off the back of the scanner.

The Bailiff let out a low whistle. “Well, if that ain’t something. I knew you were a good investment when I first laid eyes on you, Smart Boy.”

“Want your usual commission?” Muta’i asked him.

“I surely do,” the Bailiff said.

Muta’i plodded through the distillery and disappeared into a back room.

“Looks like we’ve found your job for the year,” the Bailiff said, turning to me. “Cultivating Mortal Spirit for the OSS’s higher-tier customers. Mortal’s not a popular request by any means, because so few have a true affinity for it, but a couple of our most important clients want it. In fact, Shogun Drako of the Jianjiao has a Mortal supertype, so if we can feed him the pure stuff instead of the distilled, we’ll become his number one contractor.”

The door to the back swung open, and Muta’i ducked into the front room. He had a big hunk of metal and wire in his hands.

“That, Smart Boy, is the Transferogate,” the Bailiff said, either not willing to wait for the minotaur to explain or just not tired of hearing himself talk yet. “At the end of each day, it’ll transfer the Spirit you’ve cultivated to the distillery’s stores, which will then be sold and shipped to our clients.”

Without a word, Muta’i jerked my shirt off over my head and slid the hunk of metal onto my arm. It sat on my right shoulder like a one-sided pauldron from some techno-fantasy video game. While he adjusted and snapped and bolted it together, the Bailiff went on lecturing as if he were getting paid by the word.

“You’ll have a daily quota to meet, a minimum amount of Spirit you’ll need to gather before transfer time. Miss your quota and you don’t eat. Pretty simple, right?”

Muta’i flipped a switch behind my back. The Transferogate let out a pneumatic hiss as it sucked tight to my skin. Something pinched in my armpit, then twisted inside my chest. I flinched.

“Yeah, pretty simple,” I said, trying to wiggle my fingers under the metal and unpinch my skin. “Except for the part where I don’t know what cultivation is, how you get Spirit, what you do with it, or what you need it for.”

Looking back, that definitely could’ve been an opportunity for the Bailiff to hit the script remote again, but he just chuckled and bounced a little on the balls of his feet.

“None of that is my problem,” he said. “Muta’i will give you the tutorial if he feels like it, or he can let you starve while you try to figure it out. I don’t care much one way or