You have a cheat skill.

I read the text, confused. A cheat skill? It was from a number I didn’t recognize. Moonlight Qi drifted in the air around me as I stared down at my phone. Who could be texting me?

is this rose?

This is Kikm. From the Raid

Kikm? Kim? She thought I had a… cheat skill. I sort of did, though progressing through cultivation wasn’t easy. It wasn’t a cheat. I made this path look like it, through years of experience, but no one else could possibly practice the Moonlight Path without spending years to study and reflect on it. They could, however, follow a lesser path.

i have my own power

You’re unranked. how?

I stared at the screen, contemplating. What would anyone from this world believe if I told them I had spent hundreds of years in another? What would they think if I told them the things I’ve done? The little indicator that told me she was typing popped up and disappeared several times. It couldn’t hurt. The worst she could think was that I was crazy.

I needed no help killing the monsters of this world and advancing. What I really needed was a guide. Someone who was at around the same level of power as me, to progress forward. Kim could fit that role… but this was a dangerous power. I couldn’t just give it out to anyone. I closed my eyes.

The Demonic Sect recruited those who were worthy— we held an annual ritual known as the threshing.

To separate the grain from the weeds.

Each year, hundreds entered an ancient forest, full of monstrous spirit beasts and half formed demons, and were sealed inside by a formation spanning miles.

They were mortals, led into a slaughter. To survive the forest, they had to kill, without having ever reached the first realm. It was a path to power, for the weak. I still believed in that— that to be worthy of having power, you have to seize it. But leading hundreds of people to die…

It was unproductive. Even the weak had a place. And really, that was only one half of the puzzle— I had seen several elders or rising star cultivators who had indeed seized power, and who were not worthy of it. Power in the pursuit of itself only leads to destruction for nothing. Each generation stepping over the last, slaughtering the previous— we built nothing new. We only repeated the cycle indefinitely. I needed my own way to judge who was worthy of power, not just through merit of seizing it, but what they would use it for. It was something I would have to evaluate myself.

i have seen other worlds

I replied after some hesitation. Then I sent another message.

i killed. i conquered. i didnt cheat. the only way to progress is step by step

Wtf? Kim replied. I sighed. This was a lot to explain over text.

i know a way to get stronger. it can be taught. do you want to meet?

There was a long pause. The indicator that she was typing popped up and disappeared several times. She replied almost 30 minutes later, with a time and address.

I triple checked the address.

This could not be the right location, but the GPS on my phone said that it was. I started the routing again, and it instantly ended, telling me my destination was on the right.

It was a church. Not a new one. Broken wooden paneling showed decay and a lack of maintenance. I stepped towards it, directly over overgrown landscaping sections crawling with weeds. Wooden skeletons showed where landscaped bushes used to be. There was bark as fill in the landscaped area, but grass was growing all around it and it was old and gray with age.

The lines in the parking lot were faded, the concrete on the curb damaged. One of the windows in the front was boarded up. My breath showed in the cold air I stepped into the lot. The parking lot was cracked and uneven, holes growing in the pitted surface, and I stepped towards the door, pausing hesitantly outside.

This place looked abandoned. The cars in the lot were beat up enough that they could have been scrap, for all I knew, one of them even sporting what looked like a bullet hole from a distance. My eyes darted around.

I wished I had reached the peak of the third realm and begun to develop a prototypical Spirit Sense— at least then I could detect what was going on around me. Was this an ambush? Was she waiting inside to kill me? To peel my secrets away bit by bit—

The door swung open, and I tensed, entering a stance.

A man looked up at me. He was probably 5’6, lean, with messy brown hair. He looked at me with a dopey but curious expression that rapidly turned to a smile.

“Hey bud!” He said. “Here for food? Come in, come in! Its cold out!”

He grabbed my arm, and I almost reacted by pure reflex, my fist tensing, but he just lead me inside. The door shut behind us, and the smell of freshly baked bread assaulted me. It smelled fantastic. I entered into a hallway full of crackled tile and decrepit wood paneling, but it still smelled as if it was cleaned religiously, and no dust was left out of place.

“Did Kim send you our way?” He asked, walking forward.

I followed. “Yes, I was supposed to meet her here…?” I said.

“Oh yeah, she sends people this way all the time! Shes an Awoken. How cool is that? I mean, she isn’t like part of the Pantheon or anything but its still cool knowing how much she does. Fighting monsters and stuff, its like a video game!” The man said, talking without pause. “I mean, I guess its dangerous though. Not so much in iron. Its just like hunting animals, right? Anyway, whats your name? I’m Moses, but everyone calls me Mozz. Its because of the time I ate— Hey! All ready?” Moses— Mozz, stopped talking to me, changing conversation mid way as someone crossed us in the halls. He was pushing a cart with a lidded bowl past us. The man smiled and nodded. I stared suspiciously at the bowl. What was in there? “Anyway, I was saying, the time I ate twenty mozzarella sticks.”

“What?” I asked, as we burst through a door into a kitchen. Two other people were inside, one separating out food into portions on plates.

The other was Kim, who was standing over a bowl of dishes. Soap foam poured over the top of the sink. “Oh fuck. Oh shit!” She shouted. “Mozz, can you get a towel? Or two? Or three?” Kim leapt over the counter, fumbling the sink to turn it off through thick plastic gloves. “This new soap creates so much foam!” She said. It was too late. It poured over the sink and all over her. Her apron was covered in stains, evidently from before this. Mozz ran off and she tried(and mostly succeeded) to contain the bubbles, reaching into the sink to let the water drain. I stepped into the cracked tile kitchen, scanning the room. There were knives on the counters, but no one was making a move towards them. On the other side, a woman stood with plates of bread rolls— french rolls.

“Hey! You want some? Its better in the dip they’re serving a room over!” She said.

“I… I’m not here for food.”

“Rain?” Kim asked, turning to look at me. She was covered in soapy bubbles on gray clothing. “Oh shit, sorry, I got caught up. We were missing one volunteer and I ended up…” She looked at the bubbles, then back to me. Mozz came running back in, throwing towels on the floor to soak up the water that came with the bubbles. “Do you want to talk outside?” She asked.