The boy across from me had blue skin, bulging muscles, and a confused frown on his face.

“But… but he’s just a kid?” Said big blue, staring at the attendant next to our sparring ring.

The attendant was frowning as well as she looked down at the carved mark in her hands. It was the small wooden plaque that I was supposed to keep with me as proof of my identity in the tournament; it contained a rough description of what I looked like, as well as my name and where I went to Academy. Since I wasn’t supposed to be able to read (being a non-noble), I assumed that all the attendants followed the Path of Water and used the plaques to make sure we were at the correct ring.

I glanced around, not bothering to get involved in their dispute (if they really didn’t believe I was in the right place, there was nothing I could say to change their minds anyway). There were twenty-four rings in total set up in the center of a massive plaza located smack in the middle of the city, with six rings (arranged in a circle) located in the territory of each Great House. Each ring was composed of a small raised wooden circle that was a dozen paces across, and around me I could see quite a few matches already underway.

The whole tournament ground was buzzing like a hornet’s nest, with thousands of spectators circling around the hundreds of contestants present, kept just outside the ‘contestant only’ area by a line painted directly onto the stone tilework floor of the plaza. The line was composed of four different colors (red, white, blue, and gold) that provided a clear demarcation of which Great House each area belonged to.

This part of the tournament was primarily a contest of strength and agility, designed to display the prowess of the contestants without posing a serious risk of injury. The objective was simple: Push your opponent out of the ring any way you could, but no ‘strikes’ were allowed (no punching, gouging, kicking, etc). It was actually a lot like Sumo wrestling, but without as much technique… and without the crazy underwear.

So, basically… it was the worst thing possible. I was a good five years younger than everyone else present, with the next smallest being a boy who was still nearly a head taller than me. Yeah, sure, I had superpowers, but what was I supposed to do? Lightning bolt everyone? Freeze them? I was pretty sure that using cultivation powers wasn’t allowed, even if it wasn’t stated explicitly, because nobles were excluded – they got to be cultivators anyway, so why bother having them in the Black Tournament?

And not only was it the worst possible contest for me, I had to do it hundreds of times over the next few weeks! Every single contestant had to compete against everyone else present, making for an insane number of matches we had to go through over the next few tendays! No wonder there were so many concurrent battles going on. We had at least ten matches a day scheduled for the next twenty or so days, and at the end each contestant was awarded a single point per win – 140 points was the minimum requirement to pass on to the next stage of the tournament!

A few words from the attendant woke me up from my musings, so I glanced over at big blue – he still looked uncertain, but apparently the match was going ahead. I had already come up with a whole host of tactics that might work, but the most effective one would be a judo-style approach; get my opponent to charge me, then use their own weight against them.

-------------------------

A few days later I was making my way through a series of streets, wearing a dark cloak in an attempt to conceal my features. My heart was pounding with excitement: I was finally going to meet Wolfram! Being that he was a noble from House Spiritwind and I was a commoner from House Flameward, having us meet out in the open was judged by both of us to be a terrible idea – there is no way that wouldn’t cause trouble of some kind.

“Hammer Time.”

I nearly jumped out of my skin as a woman in armor suddenly peeled herself off of a nearby building, somehow having completely escaped my notice! My mind went blank for a moment before I recalled that I had to give her the second half of the password Wolfram had sent me last night.

“Can’t touch this.” I said, wincing as I spoke the words. Why the hell had I let him choose the passwords, anyway? I was definitely going to get him back for this.

The woman gave me a salute of recognition, jerking her head to indicate that I should follow her as she strode across the street into an adjacent alleyway.

A few moments later we stopped in front of a strange looking building that wasn’t directly connected to any streets – it was kind of caught between the buildings on either side. The armored woman opened the door, took a quick look inside, and then stood back while motioning for me to enter.

I took a deep breath and strode boldly forward, resisting the temptation to apply TR on the off chance something had gone wrong. So far things were going exactly as we had planned via the soul-link.

The room inside was brightly lit, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the sudden change.

“Heller!” I heard footsteps, and my vision finally cleared just in time to see a red-furred blur hurl itself at me.

“Wolfram!” I said with a laugh, returning the hug. “By the spirits, it’s been a long time!”

Wolfram stood back, trying to get a good look at me (and giving me a good look at him). We had exchanged vague descriptions in preparation for our meeting, but this was the first time actually getting a clear picture.

Wolfram was a bit shorter than I was, had dark red fur, a tail (which was waving up in the air behind him), and the skin of his face and hands was strangely smooth (he seemed to have the same ‘toughened skin’ mutation as Kodan). All in all, he looked a lot like a character I remembered from Chinese legends, Sun Wukong, the Monkey King.

He laughed again, “Bloody beast, Heller, you look like a beasting…” He paused for a moment, searching for the word before switching to English for a moment. “Demon.”

I smiled back, having long since come to the same conclusion. I’d like to say I looked more like a Dragon, really, but I supposed it could go either way because my face was ‘human’ except for the layer of scales and a few other reptilian oddities. Well… and the horns…

“And you look like the Monkey King.” I said, having to switch to English as well.

“That’s the guy from that Chinese TV show, right, the one you showed me after you got back from China?” Wolfram’s tail came up and over his shoulder to wave at me: I had to admit, I was kind of jealous of the people with tails - it was like having a third hand. “That’s who I thought of too.”

I grinned as I squeezed his shoulders, nodding. It really was great to see him again, even if he looked nothing like what I remembered – he was the same on the inside, and that is what mattered.

Wolfram’s bodyguards (he had a squad of eight, each of them full Warriors of House Spiritwind) waited outside while we chatted for the next few hours. The soul-link was a lot like keeping in touch with someone over video-chat, and even though we hadn’t met for nearly a decade we hadn’t lost our easy familiarity.

Then came the part that we were simultaneously looking forward to and dreading: using TR to help Wolfram pass through to the next sage. We both knew it was a risk, seeing as we had no idea how the crazy lightning would interact with my power, but at least I would be here to try and heal him if something went wrong. He had prepared this location specifically so that we could get this over with; his guards were told to expect explosions and lightning, but were under strict orders not to enter until he summoned them.

“Alright, here we go.” I said after collecting a sample of his blood. Reaching out, I tapped his forehead and activated TR. “Good luck!” I moved backwards, giving him as much room as I could. I then activated my own defenses and applied TR to myself as well – I wasn’t sure if I would be in danger or not, being this close to him.

Wolfram nodded to me, sitting down on the stone floor and preparing to spend enough of his Cultivation Points to reach the threshold… and suddenly his eyes shot open and he started chanting.

“Something is happening! My defenses are up, but I don’t kno…”

*ZAP*

A surge of energy enveloped him, causing his body to convulse as it was suddenly burnt to a crisp, the smell of burned hair and cooked flesh permeating the room! Oh crap! I stood up, wondering what I should do as I watched his shaking form. I could see new hair growing out from under the charred remains, telling me that TR was probably still active, but the new flesh was just being burnt again. I could just barely sense a dense energy field, something that vaguely reminded me of ambient Qi, fluctuating around his body.

I moved forwards, gritting my teeth, but then I noticed that the energy field around his body seemed to be getting smaller. But what was going on? Was TR messing up whatever was supposed to happen? My heart was in my throat as I just stood there, helpless, not knowing what to do. Should I cover him in Ice, or would that just make it worse…

A few seconds later smoke hung thick in the air, and I had to hold my breath to avoid going into a coughing fit, but things seemed to have calmed down somewhat. His body was no longer being constantly burnt, but he was still convulsing slightly. His skin and hair looked normal, and I had a feeling that the energy field around him had stabilized.

All of a sudden I felt his TR turn off as his body jolted again and he sucked in a deep breath of smoky air, sending him into a coughing fit. He needed fresh air, fast, but before I could do anything I heard him sputter out a few words and the smoke just... disappeared. Alright… that was pretty impressive.

Wolfram looked up at me, his eyes raw and red from both the smoke and, presumably, the process of dying over and over again. “Well that sucked.”

We spent the next half hour trying to figure out what had happened, and by the end we had a pretty decent theory: The energy, whatever it was, came out as a raw and powerful surge, but then had somehow stabilized after five or six seconds. But he hadn’t been able to properly absorb it with TR active, so he had to voluntarily shut the power off, which caused him to feel a powerful jolt… but nothing deadly. All in all, we decided that TR had helped as he was in a lot better shape than I had been after I had gotten zapped.

“I really hope that was a one-time thing.” Wolfram said, giving me a slanted grin. “But seriously though, thank you.”

I felt a little guilty, realizing now just how risky that had been. But… all’s well that ends well, I guess?

“So have you been able to spend the rest of your universe juice?” I asked him.

Wolfram gave me a mysterious smile, “Yep.” He chanted a few words, vanishing from right in front of me. What the beast! Invisibility?

“I can teleport, motherfucker!” Came a voice from behind me, causing me to jump and spin around.

Wolfram laughed, and after a moment I couldn’t help but join in. All in all, this had gone about as well as I could have hoped.

-----------------------

Now that Wolfram had passed the trial thing he was able to meet me a lot easier – all I had to do was send him a clear picture of my room via the soul-link, and he was able to teleport straight to my room! It was pretty crazy how different our Cultivation Techniques were; I would have to spend hundreds of CP for a reliable teleportation ability like that. But, of course, if I spent that much I’d be able to teleport around at will, whereas right now Wolfram had to focus and pay the price to cast the spell every time.

Introducing Wolfram to Tetra and Wulfric had been awfully strange. Wulfric had been surprisingly self-conscious, not at all comfortable interacting with high nobility, but at least he made an effort to be friendly. Tetra, on the other hand, seemed to have a pretty huge initial resentment towards Wolfram – probably to do with her prior experience with nobles. I tried to get them to interact with him as friends, but Wolfram’s status put a massive gulf between them. Maybe things would get better with time… For now, I was just glad they bought my (admittedly weak) explanation that I knew him due to my Cultivation Technique. I didn’t explain further, and decided to let them assume what they would.

“So Wulfric is near the top of the Black Tournament ranking? Good job, big guy!” Said Wolfram, slapping Wulfric on the back (which made him cringe). “Not surprising though, all things considered.” He looked at Tetra, “And you are doing pretty well too, right Tetra?”

Tetra nodded, giving him a level stare. “We worked hard, my lord, to prepare. We earned our place.”

Wow, that was cold as ice. I glanced at Wolfram, but he just shrugged. He knew Tetra was my friend, and he also knew that she was only thirteen years old (almost fourteen), so he seemed willing to give her a lot of slack. At the beginning he had teased her back, but I had asked him not to – after all, he WAS in a position where he could have her, and her entire family, sent to the Shieldwall (or worse) if she pissed him off enough. Sure Tetra was taking advantage of my friendship with Wolfram to give him a hard time, but we decided to give her at least a tenday to see if she got it out of her system.

That was also one of my favorite things about Wolfram though – he was remarkably hard to insult. He just didn’t really take offense to much of anything, and didn't care all that much what other people thought. Of course… that was also why he got into so much trouble sometimes…

I was about to break the silence (Wulfric was looking increasingly uncomfortable), even though I found the whole situation kind of funny, when Wolfram asked another question.

“It looked pretty tough for you though, Heller.” He grinned.

I chuckled, “Yeah, there were some who were too smart to charge at me, so all I could do was squirm as they tossed me out of the ring.”

I already knew that I could make myself very hard to move if I timed things right, as I could take most of the force out of anything that was touching me by manipulating ambient Qi – even the force of someone trying to pick me up! However, it would have given me away if I abused my powers too much… And it was also very hard to sustain, so although I could resist being picked up for maybe a second or so (if I was lucky), eventually my focus would slip and I would be hoisted into the air.

And I couldn’t really ADD force, at least not in the same way… all I could do was add penetrating power, kind of like reducing the resistance of my target. Meaning that while I could stick my fist though my opponent’s chest, I couldn’t really push harder than a regular nine-year-old. Getting my opponents out of the ring had been, to say the least, pretty damn hard. I had just barely managed to collect enough points to pass onto the next round, even with my enhanced time rate and Qi manipulation.

“At least you are doing better in this round.” Wolfram commented idly, taking a leg of roast beast off of the platter he had brought for us. There were plenty of domesticated animals inside the city that couldn’t survive outside (they would be torn to pieces by wandering beasts), but wealthy nobles usually paid extra to get meat brought in by hunting parties that went outside the city pick off wandering packs of monsters.

Interestingly enough, there didn’t seem to be anything that we couldn’t eat, at least as far as I knew. Any plant, and any animal, was a potential food source for us – it’s just that some tasted terrible, and others didn’t provide any meaningful nutrition. And while poisons did exist, they all required special preparation by an Alchemist (based on what Tetra had told me) and they didn’t occur in nature. So not only were we, as a race, seemingly immune to sickness and disease, we also had a very high resistance to poisons. Odd as heck, yes, but hardly the strangest thing about us…

I grabbed another haunch of meat as well, shrugging at Wolfram’s comment. There were three stages to the tournament: Sumo match; point based combat with wooden weapons; then finally full contact duels with blunted iron weapons. There were a lot of rules as well, but the main one was that purposefully striking your opponent on the head or face meant forfeiting the match.

All in all, I didn’t like the tournament much, probably because I couldn’t use my powers and everyone was so much stronger (and larger) than I was. I would be able to dominate in the last round, though, by subtly using magnetism – something to look forward to, anyway.

I found myself often thinking of my fight with the monkey-lizard beasts… now THAT had been fun! I hadn’t had any idea that real combat like could be such a rush! Fighting for your life, all your other worries and concerns falling away... But it’s not like I wanted to do it again…

… or… did I?