Hardcore: Qi Worlds Chapter 50: Dawnharbour 3

  Benzhi's mouth opened and closed, normally he would just say, no I cannot do this, but everyone had been warning him against doing such a thing. Benzhi grabbed another chair, using the time to calm himself, and sat facing Seneschal Cain.

 "I have a few questions," Benzhi started, meanwhile he viewed the Seneschal under qi sight.

 Seneschal Cain nodded, then realising Benzhi's eyes were closed said, "Go ahead, young man."

 "How long have your Doctors said you have?" Benzhi asked.

  "I am past that point," Seneschal Cain said.

  'So none,' Benzhi said to himself, 'Shit. Fuck. Shit. Stall. I have to stall or find a way out of this.'

   "Have you read the report from the researcher Hiuneng wrote on my qi healing ability?" Benzhi asked.

'Don't bring me into this!' Huineng sent.

'You are already in it,' Benzhi sent back

'Oh yeah, I am panicking, you need to stall, find a way out or to shift blame,' Huineng sent

'I realise that but how?' Benzhi asked.

'No idea, let me think. If I come up with something I will send or speak up,' Huineng sent.

Seneschal Cain shifted in his chair, "yes I have."

'I am just going to say it,' Benzhi sent.

Huineng visibly shivered but offered nothing.

"Then you have read that I have the ability to heal organs excluding eyes and brain due to their complexities," Benzhi said.

Seneschal Cain spoke with authority, "I thought you would say that. Yet here I am." He then paused for half a minute, letting his statement sink in.

 "Son, let me enlighten you on a few things," the Seneschal started to lecture Benzhi, "you do not get to my position by accepting what your subordinates say what is possible and what is not. I will give you an example. A team of expert hackers were assigned to wreck a movie studio for embarrassing a strategic partner. The team and its leaders did a thorough investigation of what was required, worked every detail out and then reported to one of my generals. I was listening to this report and when I heard what their timeline was. What was achievable under their engineered solution was unworkable, as the situation was time sensitive, so I intervened."

 "Each and every member of the expert hacker teams family was taken on a holiday to parts unknown, and I informed them that they had until the end of the week, to get the work that they estimated would take six months, or they would never see their families again. I didn't even say whether we would kill them, or keep them, or kill the hackers. I let their minds imagine what would happen. The hack began in earnest, the report had taken them three days and the actual hack took them another seven. They were still three days over the deadline I had set."

 "What was important, was, they had blown away their initial assessment by five months and three weeks. Yes, they were motivated, but they found a way when they did not limit their thinking. They found more and more creative ways to complete the task, they found shortcuts and shortcuts for the shortcuts. They worked around the clock, I do not think any of them slept for the week. They drugged themselves with lucid and other similar substances."

 "My message to you, young man, is find a way, you have no other option. But this time, instead of the stick, as you do not seem to care enough about anyone to contact them after being cured of paralysis and gone for three years, I will offer a carrot," The Seneschal said.

 "If you cure me, I will owe you a favour," the Seneschal stated flatly. The Grandmaster inhaled loudly as if swallowing a lump of air. "If I die, you will not die, not until you have healed the others and trained a replacement. By which time you might be lucky enough, to gain enough favour from the others, to save you."

 "Now back to the task at hand, I am not an idiot. You do not need to heal my brain, you just need to remove the tumour, it is inoperable by conventional means. The only reason I am still able to talk is that I have been in QW9 since it was opened and it has bought me more time." The Seneschal finished.

 Benzhi breathed, what Seneschal Cain said was true, about removing the tumour, he could do that. But, there was a problem, it was not in his lump, he could not see it.

 "There is a way I can remove the tumour, but we are going to need help, something to show me where it is, here in your avatar. Otherwise, I am blasting away blindly and you will end up brain dead," Benzhi stated bluntly. The exchange with the Seneschal gave him the confidence to call it how he saw it, they both wanted the same thing in the end.

 "So you need an overlay or some other mechanism to show exactly where my tumour is, so when you destroy parts of my brain here, it will destroy the tumour in my earthly body," Seneschal Cain reiterated.

 "Yes and one more thing concerns me. The safety measures of the next-gen pods and this place. The limits will need to be removed completely, the safety measures removed. I do not know what has been done, but I have been thinking that in order for the healing to work the same system that protects you from dying will protect you from healing," Benzhi stated.

 Seneschal Cain, nodded, "consider it done, I will have my teams on Earth work on it immediately, we will give them four hours to turn off the safeties, which won't be a problem and to find a way to reflect the location of my tumour. We will meet here at this time tomorrow and reconvene." With that, The Seneschal stood and left, without so much as a goodbye to Benzhi let alone the Grandmaster.

 The Grandmaster approached Benzhi and said vehemently, "you tread a fine line. What did I tell you yesterday? I gave you one golden piece of advice and you throw it away in your first meeting." The Grandmaster stood by the Core and glared at Benzhi waiting for him to leave the room.

 Benzhi and Huineng were back at their dorm a couple of hours after dawn.  

 "I will go and find Anastasia," Benzhi said, "we can start working out the academy and the tests for the rest of the day, there is really nothing I can do to prepare for tomorrow."

 "You have done well, I could not believe it when you had not only stalled a day, which was minor, compared to putting the onus back on him to allow you to see where the tumour is," Huineng replied.

 "Well, I really didn't do anything except try and help him," Benzhi said. 

  With that Benzhi left, he did get quite a few stares from students, in white, green and red as he walked across the grounds in his leathers. He did notice animal symbols on some of their robes, with the Tiger taking prominence.

  Almost half wore a tiger emblem. The senior students could wear white robes with a red sash, or red robes. Most wore all sorts of different shades of red robes. Some bright, some with a dash of orange, some maroon although the colour sets were sharply defined there was certainly a lot of room for an artistic license within the set. It wasn't as bad as he thought, everyone, wearing one colour of identical robes would have been much much worse.

 The second level novices mostly wore different shades of green. Almost none wore white with a green sash. Nearly every green robe looked different, hundreds of shades of green represented. Different cuts on what were effectively Buddhist or kung fu robes. Most individuals had two or more shades of green on their robes. 

 Benzhi did stand out, he did not look human, and every student was human; either western looking or oriental and he also did not wear robes nor shoes. He could not have stood out more if he tried. Every time he passed a group, there were plenty of whispers, while not all the students were teenagers in appearance, they ranged in age from fifteen to fifty they still behaved as such. Most of the time when he asked for directions to the library, he was met with backs being turned while they ignored him.

 Funnily enough, it was the younger students that did not shirk him and answered while gawking, pointing the way to the Library.

 Benzhi finally found the library and probably could do so again without asking assistance. He entered and started looking around, Anastasia was nowhere to be seen. Probably in class. He started to take a look at the books on the shelves as he had nothing better to do. As he browsed the titles, about to take one that looked interesting, Martial Arts and the Manipulation of Chi by some old white guys, aka Dr John Ankerberg, Dr John Weldon, the word occult in the synopsis peaked Benzhi's interest, three students wearing various colours of red robes accosted him.

  "Hey, are you allowed in here?" one asked. He had a tiger emblem on his chest as did the other two.

  "Probably not," Benzhi replied, "I was looking for someone." 

  "Tsk, tsk. We won't tell," the same one kept speaking, "but I recommend you come with us that way you won't get into trouble as our guest."

  "I'm not afraid of trouble," Benzhi answered truthfully.

 Number one laughed, then his companions shushed him as they were in a library. "Then you should definitely come with us, we are going to spar in the arena, you can put that book away and watch real martial arts and qi manipulation."

 "Is it a class or ad-hoc sparring?" Benzhi asked he was intrigued but didn't want to intrude on another Teacher.

 "Oh most definitely free spar, classes are usually dull so we duel most of the time to hone our skills," number one said.

 "Ok, I am intrigued, I would love a lesson on how you use aids when fighting and see their effectiveness. But I have one question. You are third rank why are you inviting me, a total stranger, to come with you?" Benzhi asked.

  "Deng here," one indicated number two, "said you could be a hidden quest because you are so out of place and you do look like some sort of elf. So we thought we would take a chance and hang with you for a bit."

 "That sounds reasonable and you may be right," Benzhi couldn't help himself.

 Deng said under his breath, "I told you."

 Number one asked Benzhi as they walked to the arena, "you don't have any magic items, do you? That sword looks wack. Is it wood?"

 "Magic items aren't that easy to come by," Benzhi replied, "you should know that. You would need to complete an epic quest line just to have a chance at one."

 The three tigers nodded.

  The group of four arrived at the arena, it was made up of one main field surrounded by seven others. The main field itself was the size of a football field with stands that could house a few thousand people. The minor fields had no stands, merely corals.

 The three tigers escorted Benzhi to the main arena, "The Tigers own this place," number one said, "we always spar in the main arena and the riff-raff can use the outer circle of seven."

 "Very good," Benzhi said, "Can you spar first and explain after each bout what you did with the aids?"

 "Is this part of the quest?" Deng asked.

 "Most certainly, you activated it when you invited me to watch you spar," Benzhi answered.

 Deng looked excited, Number one did not look so gullible and merely gave Benzhi a sideways glance.

 Number two and Deng paired off, Benzhi engaged qi sight to watch them while number one watched Benzhi. They fought with fists and feet, no weapons. As they sparred another couple of Tigers came and when they saw Benzhi they looked quizzically at number one.

 Number one mouthed "quest," back to them and they eagerly came and sat near Benzhi. Another ran off, probably to tell other Tigers a unique quest was taking place.

  Benzhi watched the movements of number two and Deng and mostly ignored the goings on around him. At first, he was impressed with their moves, but after awhile it was obvious they completed the same moves over and over. The moves were all from the Tiger form. 

 Benzhi started to ask number one questions as they sparred and encouraged the two to continue.

 "Do they not have any movement aids?" Benzhi asked because as they fought, there was a leap attack, but there was nothing like a free-form leap, or speed, or use of the environment. They just ran or moved normally.

 "The leap attack is used to close the gap, Tigers are naturally fast, we get a ten percent boost to run speed," Number one answered.

 "Ten percent, impressive," Benzhi did his best not to sound contrite.

 "It is the highest of all aspects," number one nodded as he answered. 

 "I notice Deng uses three attacks over and over, in the same order, how many aids does he have total?" Benzhi asked. 

 "Deng is limited, I should spar against them both. He uses the same combination because they stack with each other. There are fifteen aids when you reach adept, and I have twelve at the moment, Deng has nine as he only just reached rank three," number one informed Benzhi.

 "Ok, I have seen enough of these two," Benzhi said. There were now forty tigers in the stands surrounding Benzhi and number one of various colours, white, green and red. Most of them were red. "Can I see the two best tigers spar? I would like to see someone more adept at using aids. At the moment you are failing the quest."

 Number one swore. "Deng, Yaki. Enough, you are failing the quest," he shouted and the Tigers gasped.

  Number one looked around surveying the Tigers present in the stands and he frowned, "Keiko, I need your help, we are about to fail this quest. I want you to spar with me."

 Keiko smiled, she was tall, athletic, with long black hair tied back. Her robes were tight fitting deep red with bright red trim. Exactly what you would imagine a female noble martial art expert to look like. "I guess if you are desperate I can help out, but you will owe me Takeo," she grinned at Takeo, formerly number one, like a predator smiles at its prey.

 Takeo sighed and made his way down to the arena floor.

 He faced off against Keiko. Benzhi examined the pair with qi sight, they had good circulation and adept level qi cores, nothing amazing, but good, however, Anastasia was more talented than this pair.

  These two were on a different level than the first pair. Small movements in and out of range, they knew their opponents reach and abilities exceedingly well. But therein lay the problem, Benzhi had no doubt that they were exceptional when it came to duelling one another. Against a yeti or trollkin, they would struggle. Against a hellhound or a troll, they would flat out die. Hell, a black cloak would eat them alive, seeing through their moves in moments.

 Benzhi allowed them to duel for five minutes. In his opinion, aids were overrated. Especially when they did not give movement benefits. In order for it to be a great system, they would need thousands of aids and then a skilled practitioner would create multiple moves from these sets. Plus none of them had weapons? Not even a spear user amongst them. He guessed tiger was all claw and strike. Takeo mentioned a magic weapon, but Benzhi wondered if they had anything like the extra-planar beings created. The Duke had leathers and Benzhi wasn't sure where they came from. But even those could not hold a candle to what the dwarves created.

 Benzhi stood and held up his hand, "enough, you have passed stage two."

 Benzhi walked down to the arena. 

 All eyes were upon him. This strange, elf-looking, being with long white hair and leathers. He walked around barefoot with a shield on his arm and a sword on his back.

 Benzhi dropped his shield and sword into a corner.

 "In order to make this fair, I will not use weapons," Benzhi stated, plus he did not want to cut anyone. He could not afford a million dollar bill for destroying someone's avatar.

 "Who will you fight?" asked Takeo nervously, as Keiko had the best of the duels.

 "Rest, regain your qi, I will fight you both," Benzhi stated confidently.

 Takeo just stared at him and then Keiko who shrugged. She tilted her head side to side as if limbering up. She had just been sparring for five minutes. It was Takeo's turn to shrug.

 Takeo asked, "is this the final part?"

 Benzhi shook his head, "no, but if you win there is a reward at this juncture."

 "What's the reward?" asked Takeo.

 Benzhi looked at the stands, which now hosted a hundred students of all colours and denominations.

 "Fame," Benzhi stated flatly.

 Takeo nodded, looking excited for the first time.

 Benzhi nodded and said, "begin."

 Takeo allowed Keiko to charge first, hanging back, she assaulted Benzhi with a five combo move, but he just slapped away her hand with each thrust and when she completed a backwards flip kick he merely took a step back.

 Takeo charged him from the left, as Keiko retreated, he spammed jab three times before attempting a sweep, it was a move he tried on Keiko, the jabs were designed as a feint with the sweep extending his reach by a metre. Benzhi skipped over the sweep and bopped Takeo on the top of his head.

 Keiko was angling to come from behind Benzhi, she circled slowly as Takeo attacked trying not to draw attention to herself.

 Benzhi turned and shunpo'd directly in front of her, well out of reach of Takeo in an instant. Keiko's eyes widened in surprise at the speed with which Benzhi moved. Benzhi punched at her shoulder, she moved to her left trying to dodge the blow, getting off balance, the shoulder blow was a feint, Benzhi struck Keiko in her centre with a qi strike. She flew back twenty meters at the force of the blow crumpled in a heap.

 Benzhi shook his head, he used too much qi, he would check on her as soon as he finished with Takeo. Takeo was approaching Benzhi cautiously. Benzhi shunpo right into Takeo's face, they were standing almost nose to nose. Benzhi engaged qi body speed and stuck him with six quick qi blows to shoulder, chest and stomach. This time reducing the amount of qi he used in the strikes. Even so, Takeo crumpled over in pain. Benzhi pushed his head so he fell backwards with a thump.

 Benzhi then shunpo'd over to Keiko to check on her. The fight happened so quickly no one from the stands had even moved to her aid. As he concentrated on Keiko with qi sight, he lined his back with stoneskin, just in case Takeo thought to sucker punch him.

 Keiko had internal bleeding and two broken ribs. One of the broken ribs had punctured her organs causing the bleeding. Benzhi ran and retrieved his shield, syphoning off stored qi from the shield rather than deplete his core. This had become a habit, he would run into trouble if he had to qi heal from the shield every day. But right now he was able to store qi in the shield for weeks between qi heals.

 Keiko groaned as Benzhi healed her. She opened her eyes and asked, "what are you doing?"

 "Correcting a mistake," Benzhi replied, "I used too much qi when I struck you, I should have held back."

 "Oh god," she said, "remind me to never piss you off."

 Takeo never did try and get up. He merely watched Benzhi heal Keiko with a confused look on his face.

 Benzhi walked over to Takeo and said, "the duel is over."

 "So we failed the quest?" Takeo asked. 

 "No, this is an epic quest, it has just begun. I expect to see you in my class when it starts," Benzhi said.

 "What do you mean class?" Takeo asked.

 "Well, I am going to be teaching here, and all talented students should attend my class. That includes you and Keiko," Benzhi said.

 "Are you even an NPC?" Takeo asked.

 "I never said I was," Benzhi smiled and turned to the crowd, "does anyone know where I can find Anastasia?"

 A rank one novice, garbed in all white stood, and made her way down the stairs of the arena stand, "I am here," she said matter of factly. All eyes turned to her. The nerd girl with no friends, who asked stupid questions in class. She wasn't even a paying avatar, she was a ring-in from the company.

 "Ah good, good, are you free we have much to discuss before tomorrow?" Benzhi asked.

 Anastasia took him by the hand and led him from the arena saying, "shh, let's get out of here."

Chapter end