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

I reached back up to feel out the wound, but a hand grabbed my wrist.

“Your script tattoo’s working on healing it, but there are still open parts,” Kest said, appearing in front of my face. “Don’t mess with it.”

Rali leaned into my field of vision. “Can he actually hear you this time? Hake, if you can hear us, what’s your full name and affinity?”

“Is answering questions supposed to help if you have a concussion?” I sat up, almost fell over, then braced myself on my arms. My whole body felt like it was underwater, rolling with the currents. “What happened?” Then suddenly, my insides turned to ice. I lurched forward. “Oh crap. Did I kill that elf guy?”

“You fought well,” Rali said in one of those voices that lets you know your friend is trying to make you feel better about sucking. “His kishotenketsu was a lot more advanced than yours.”

“In other words, I didn’t even touch him.” I laid back down and shut my eyes. I hadn’t killed him. That was a relief.

But it also meant I’d lost. Badly.

I slapped the concrete and growled something that would’ve made Gramps threaten to wash out my mouth with soap. I hadn’t even lasted long enough in the tournament to lose in front of the Shoguns.

“Guys, I’m sorry. I screwed up. I should’ve...” I trailed off. I couldn’t remember what I’d done, so I wasn’t sure what I should’ve done. “I should’ve been better.”

“His finisher is called the Exploding Hammer, Hake,” Kest said. “Your tattoo is still pushing shards of glass out of your face. You should just be glad you survived.”

I swallowed. It felt like I was going to puke again.

“He wouldn’t have killed me,” I said. “That would’ve disqualified him.”

“In an Ylef-human fight, things like that don’t always matter,” Kest said. “Honestly, I thought he was going for the kill shot. It would’ve gotten him disqualified from the tournament, but won major points with the Technols. They’re almost all Ylefs.”

“You made it to the top hundred and twenty-five,” Rali said. “That’s pretty amazing for your first tournament.”

Kest wasn’t as worried about my ego as her brother was.

“Probably not good enough to get an offer from the Big Five, though,” she said, checking her HUD. “But that’s what backup plans are for. We can still win the riot bracket tomorrow.”

I unclenched my fists and sat up, trying not to heave again.

“Do we know who we’re fighting?”

“Not yet,” she said. “Some fighters are entered in both, so the officials are waiting to see who survives the individual competition before they make the bracket.”

“Tomorrow will worry about itself,” Rali said. “Right now, Hake needs to rest. Let’s get back to the hotel and get some food I can infuse with Healing Restoration.”

“No.” I grimaced at how harsh that had come out. “Sorry, I don’t think I can keep anything down right now.” Very carefully, I massaged the ice pick stabbing into my skull. “And we need to stay. If we leave, Warcry doesn’t have anyone supporting him.”

“Whether we’re here or not won’t have any bearing on his fights,” Kest said.

“That’s not the point.” But with the concussion I was having a hard time figuring out the words to explain what the point was.

Rali frowned down at me. “I hate to say this, but I agree with the Death cultivator.”

“Fine,” Kest said after a second. “We’ll stay and watch and keep an eye on anyone who’s also entered in the riot bracket.”

Now that I’d been eliminated, I wasn’t allowed to stay on the arena floor, so I followed the twins up to the spectator seating. The kokugikon didn’t have those fold-down seats like a stadium on Earth; it was all tiered floorspace where you could sit or kneel on wide, cushy mats separated into bed-sized rectangles by low railings. We found an open rectangle big enough for the three of us about halfway up and settled in.

As much as I’d wanted to win, it was also pretty cool to watch the other fights. I saw a lot of combos I wanted to try and a lot of mistakes I wanted to avoid. Warcry won his next two rounds like they were nothing. He looked like a redheaded Tony Jaa taking down kindergartners, and the crowd was going nuts for him.

Eventually, Kest forgot about her plan to watch the riot bracket competitors and got caught up in Warcry’s opponents, reading their profiles to Rali and me and analyzing the strategies he could use to win. It was interesting, but I couldn’t absorb a lot of it. The haze from the concussion was starting to get better, but I still had trouble focusing on what she was saying.

Rali wasn’t paying attention to his sister or the fights. He’d gotten Kest to buy these pita-style wraps from a seller working the crowd and spent all of round seven infusing one with Spirit.

“You don’t have to miss the matches to do that for me,” I said.

Rali grinned. “I can disapprove of violence with my eyes closed. It’s like I’m protesting this whole display.”

“Did you guys see this?” Kest turned her wrist over so we could see her HUD. “Everyone on the tournament boards is talking about Warcry. A new arrival making it to the final thirty-six fighters—and not just a new arrival, but a human. They’re saying there’s no way he doesn’t get recruited.”

“Yeah, but that’s not an actual Big Five guy making an offer,” I said, thinking of the Ylef I couldn’t remember fighting who’d made it to the final ten the previous year and still hadn’t gotten an affiliation. “It’s all just speculation.”

In front of us, a catfish guy twisted around and hooked an arm over the low railing around his seating cushion.

“You might be surprised how accurate the tournament board chatter is,” he said, long whiskers twitching. “General popularity plays into many of the Big Five recruiters’ plans. That’s a key reason they open the tournaments to spectators and broadcast