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

the other, because I’ll still get my commission for bringing you in until you drop dead or your year’s over.” He patted the hunk of metal on my shoulder with one webbed hand. “At the end of every day, our good buddy the Transferogate will send ten percent of whatever Spirit you’ve amassed straight to my reserves. Now, I use Air Spirit myself, a variation of the Elemental supertype, but I don’t mind the extra distilling practice it takes to change Mortal to Elemental and then to Air.” He thumped his chest a couple times. “It’s good for keeping the Spirit sea in fighting shape.”

I finally wormed my fingers under the Transferogate. They bumped against a piece of wire poking me. I tried to bend it so it wasn’t sticking me, but when it moved, something in my chest moved, too. It went all the way through the meat into my insides. That made me panic a little, and I tried to yank it out.

A Mack truck of pain slammed into me.

When I could think again, I was on my hands and knees, sweating and slobbering onto the distillery floor.

“Don’t tamper with the Spirit transfer probe,” Muta’i said in that flat bass voice.

“Best advice a surrogate can get.” The Bailiff held up the script remote. “I didn’t even have to activate it. The Transferogate automatically calibrates to its user’s tattoo script, and if they try to take the probe off or disable it—zap-o!”

I wiped some of the drool off my chin with the back of one hand. The ghost arms reached for me to stand me up again, but I slapped them away and stood up on my own.

The Bailiff chuckled.

“As you like it.” He flipped the remote to Muta’i. “You’re gonna want this while you’re showing our new pal here the ropes. Humans are a little slower on the uptake than the surrogates you’re used to handling. You have a good time, now, Smart Boy. Get me lots of Spirit.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled out the door, whistling. The screen banged shut behind him.

Muta’i and I looked at each other.

“You gonna attack me?” he asked.

I made my fists and jaw unclench.

“Not unless I want to die,” I said, adding, again, in my head.

He let out a bovine snort that might’ve been a laugh and stuck the script remote in his apron pocket. “Then let’s get to work.”

Spirit Surrogate

MY T-SHIRT WOULDN’T fit on over the Transferogate, so I hooked it in my back pocket as I followed Muta’i through the distillery. He led me into the back room, a maze of shelves filled with brown bottles wrapped with handwritten labels.

“Counterfeiting elixirs is my specialty,” he said. “Some are real, some are worthless knockoffs, some are poison. Only I know the difference, so steal at your own risk.”

“What’s the point in making knockoffs?” I asked him.

“Money,” he said, then motioned for me to follow.

We went through another door, outside into a dusty little garden full of cactuses, rocks, and tumbleweeds. A board fence surrounded the place, and a little stream of water ran down a series of miniature wooden sluice gates to a shallow pool made from black plastic set into the red sand.

Two other people were already there, a green guy with thick, batlike ears sticking up at the top of his head and another shark guy. Sharks must’ve really gotten into a lot of trouble in this universe, just based on how many I’d already come across on Van Diemann. They’d each picked a shady spot in the garden and were sitting with their eyes shut. It looked like they were meditating.

Both had clunky Transferogates attached to their shoulders.

“You can gather Spirit anywhere,” Muta’i told me, “but it’s easiest to do where your type is most concentrated. Most surrogates choose to do it at the distillery because it’s safer back here. No violence allowed, and no warning shots fired for violators.”

The shark guy cracked one eye to check us out, then shut it again. I edged a little farther away from him.

“Having a Mortal affinity, your best cultivation will be done in bone yards, near shallow graves, or anywhere stuff dies regularly. Since all living things eventually die, you can do it anywhere to varying success.”

I put up my hand. “What is Spirit exactly?”

He turned his big bull eyes at me, whites showing in the far corner.

“If you’re pawing the ground with me, we’re gonna have a problem.”

“I’m not doing whatever that is,” I said. “I don’t know anything about this stuff. Not even the basics. Can you teach me or is that against the rules?”

When he scowled, I realized that was probably a pretty disrespectful way to ask. But he didn’t reach for the tattoo script remote. He took a deep breath and huffed it out like that was all he could do to keep his patience.

“Spirit’s the essence of everything. The energy of the universe. The more you have, the better you can maintain your body and soul essences, and the longer you live. Assuming nobody kills you outright.” He looked at me to see if I was tracking. I nodded, so he went on. “Everybody in the universe has Spirit, but not everybody uses it beyond everyday living. None of that matters to you, though.” He pointed one huge beef-link finger at the Transferogate on my shoulder. “All you need to worry about is meeting your quota of Spirit for the day. Sit down.”

I did, keeping my eyes on him. He sat in front of me, hairy legs crossed in a weird cow-human lotus position.

“Shut your eyes.”

That one I didn’t feel so great about. Basically the only thing I’d learned so far about Van Diemann’s Planet was that it sucked and everything on it wanted to kill me. Except maybe Rali and Kest.

“Nobody’s going to gore you,” Muta’i rumbled. “Unless you don’t shut your eyes.”

It took a lot of effort to make my eyelids come down and stay down. I