Canvas Town, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Seventhmonth, 1634 PTS
Orion smiled, gesturing outwards, where a circle had been crudely marked onto the ground with light projectors.
“I want you to test yourselves in a real fight. And for that reason, I’ve put together a relatively safe opportunity to do so.”
“Are we… supposed to spar?” asked Wue Lin, one of his personal disciples. Wue was quite muscular, and Orion had picked him purely for this fact. His physique was rather impressive, though he was far too simple-minded to exercise any of his potential. Orion sighed, annoyed by his disciple’s inability to comprehend the obvious.
They stood in a warehouse, one used as a storehouse for the materials and foods sold at the brothels and restaurants the sect had inherited from the Redwater Gang.
“You can’t be serious, Master,” said Sashan, who seemed to have realized what he planned for them. Orion shrugged.
“The Sect Leader signed off on it. You need to test yourselves, and this is the safest way to do so.” His eyes roamed over each of his disciples’ heads. “If you can’t do this, then you have no business being a martial artist in the first place.”
“You want us to fight them?” asked one of his other disciples, his eyes firmly locked on the crowded mass of gangsters on the other end of the room. They were guarded by Orion’s forces, and had been stripped of their weapons.
“You do not need to kill your opponent if you do not wish, but you can if you want to,” Orion continued, cutting the boy off. “Now,” he said, “which one of you wants to go first?”
There was a long pause, as all six of them hesitated. Orion sighed in disappointment. He liked to think that he had been far bolder at their age. What sort of martial artists were they? He would have expected them to be more confident. Finally, however, as the pause dragged on, Wue raised his hand. Orion nodded appreciatively. The boy was a fool, but at least he was proving not to be a coward.
“Perfect. Get in,” he said, motioning to a soldier, who handed him a sword. With great trepidation, Wue accepted it, hefting a weapon of real metal for the first time. The sword sagged for a moment, and Orion recognized the surprise at how the blade bore a greater heft than the synthesized composites that composed the training swords.
Hesitantly, the boy stepped into the ring, and the first of the gangsters stepped forward to meet him, hefting a blade of his own.
These were some of the gangsters that Orion had captured, those whose martial talents left them in the early stages of the foundation refinement realm, just like his disciples. Those more advanced had been sent to the Linen Palace.
Orion had told them that if they defeated a disciple in combat, they would be allowed to leave, and he intended to keep his word. But he was confident in his teaching abilities. If any of his disciples were to fail this test, he would need to resort to… more extreme teaching methods. The gangsters’ weapons were blunted, to reduce the danger the disciples would be in.
For a long moment, Wue paused, and Orion could sense the manifest energies flowing within his disciple’s body. He had learned only one technique, and was the slowest in activating it of his cohort. But once it had been activated, such a simple manifest technique was trivial to maintain.
The moment his technique had begun, Wue charged impulsively, slashing out with his sword. It glowed slightly, heated by a technique which, practiced to completion, would eventually become able to summon a sword of fire.
The gangster glanced down at his own weapon, then lashed out, pressing his blade towards Wue’s forearms. Though Wue had moved first, his movements were clumsy, betrayed by his relative inexperience. His blow was intercepted, and with a loud cracking noise, the gangster knocked the sword loose from his hand.
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Wue cursed, diving for the blade, but his bulk made him slow, and with a cruel grin, his opponent stabbed firmly into his turned back. Had the blade not been dulled, such a blow might have taken his life.
Enraged, Wue spun, giving up on retrieving his weapon, and dove for the man’s legs. He took another painful blow to his shoulder blades, but the thug was too slow, and was unable to dodge. The two of them toppled to the ground, with Wue on the bottom. The thug prepared to stab his sword once more into the teen’s injured flesh, but Wue reached out, managing to grab hold of the gangster’s forearm. He tried to shake the heavyset boy off, but Wue was stronger, and his grip held firm.
Mere seconds later, he began to scream.
Orion smiled in approval. The thug was no master himself, and had underestimated Wue’s ability. The technique he had performed did not heat up metal: it heated up whatever he was holding. The gangster’s shouts resounded across the room as the scent of roasting meat slowly spread. Beneath the screams was the sound of his arm sizzling as it cooked.
“I surrender! I surrender! Just get him off of me!” he shouted, terrified by the pain and the mouth-watering scent.
Though Wue laid on the ground, wounded and breathing heavily, the battle was over, and Orion felt a sense of pride at his disciple’s victory.
“Excellent job, Wue,” he said, motioning towards his lieutenant, Li Qing, who stood at the edge of the ring, and quickly pulled the two apart. From the corner of his eye, Orion could see Sashan’s face, which had acquired a greenish hue. He sighed, hoping that she would grow out of it soon. Perhaps it would only happen after her first kill.
A hint of motion towards the edge of the room attracted Orion’s attention, accompanied by the approach of a cohort of souls. He had not expected visitors so soon, particularly not without forewarning. He frowned, but made no move to approach. Soon, the warehouse’s entrance slid open, revealing the refined appearance of Karie Hadal and the forces under her command.
Orion did not generally get along with the scions of orthodox forces, and nor did he particularly like this woman. Still, he had to admit that there was an undeniable air around her that set her apart from others. Even the white robes they both wore appeared more refined on her than most. Her hair was also tightly tied up in an intricate braid that any other woman would have needed assistance to tie.
As she walked in, her steps had grace more than befitting a spirit refiner. The only person Orion had met who moved with more finesse was the sect leader, but that was to be expected from a formless artist.
As she approached, the Hadal Clan’s Heir Candidate raised an eyebrow as she glanced at the makeshift fighting pit, where two martial artists had been dragged away to receive medical attention.
“Really?” she asked, the look in her eyes clearly revealing amusement at the spectacle.
He shrugged.
“My disciples need true experience,” he said by way of explanation. She nodded, not disputing the assertion. It was the simple truth that sparring was no substitute for real combat. As the scion of a powerful force, she knew that all too well. Far too many of her relatives remained untested.
Or, at least, they had been prior to the recent conflict. In a sense, he thought, a short, intense conflict like the one they had just gone through was a good thing for the Hadal Clan in the long run.
In the end, Karie sighed, turning to him.
“Let my disciples use it too.”
Orion smirked as he watched the shift in expression of a large disciple standing behind her. Reinwan Dan truly was the image of a talented genesis practitioner, a very bulky boy who would surely be able to take a punch. He seemed uneasy at the thought of fighting a gangster in the pit.
“Of course, Lady Hadal,” Orion said, chuckling. “There’s plenty of gangsters to share.”
Internally, he suspected that part of the reason the sect leader had assigned Karie to work with him was with hopes of this very outcome in mind.
Manifest Technique Progression: [Unlike the techniques of most other miasmas, manifest techniques do not simply work from their inception. The power and complexity that a foundation refiner can put into the ability is simply not enough to truly manifest material from the Spirit World. Instead, the techniques are generally simplified. A practitioner trying to summon fire might instead summon heat, or one attempting to summon metal might simply be able to slightly harden an object they are holding. Despite being lesser variants, such abilities are still been more than enough to form a third-rate sect or martial academy.]