Single combat among cultivators is common and can range from actual life and death fights to simple sparring. Fighting is a common reaction to someone impugning one’s honour and there are often arenas set up in settlements so that the participants don’t deal too much damage to their surroundings. Sparring is also very common among both friends and rivals but is generally much less dangerous and simply ends when both parties are satisfied with the results. However, the most infamous form of single combat is what I prefer to call ‘trial by combat’ in which the participants are often out to kill each other for reasons ranging from the ridiculously petty to revenge for the death of a loved one.

-Excerpt from Telram’s notes on single combat.

“I beg your pardon?” Gerry asked raising an eyebrow at the three people who were trying to confront them. “We have no such desire.”

“Then why has my wife told me otherwise?” asked the village head. He was an older man with short dark hair that was just beginning to get a few grey hairs sprinkled through.

“Well like I said, we have no desire to rouse the nobles. But we are trying to create an organisation that will improve your way of life in this village and increase the number and power of the cultivators here which I suppose could make them a little cautious if they found out,” Gerry admitted. “But it would be very difficult for the nobles to find out that we were doing this, unless of course someone told them.”

“What do you mean?”

“We are planning on teaching a group of children as well as anyone else who is interested from this village to cultivate as well as several other subjects that will be useful for them in the future,” Gerry explained easily. “Besides, as far as I’m aware there is no specific law that prevents us from creating such an organisation.”

This was actually true. The nobles had a tendency to crack down on those who created such groups out of fear for them trying to gather power to overthrow the noble family who controlled the area which was naturally forbidden. This had given most people idea that creating an organisation to train cultivators was forbidden but this wasn’t actually the case as the nobles themselves trained groups of guards and occasionally soldiers to cultivate so that they could maintain order in their territories or fight on their orders.

“While it is true that there is no law against such a thing,” the village head admitted with a sigh. “You know as well as I do that most organisations like the one you are talking about are still destroyed if they aren’t sponsored by a noble and those involved are killed for trying to rebel against the nobles.”

“Excuse me, may I butt in?” Telram asked as the older man finished speaking.

“Very well,” the village head sighed wearily.

“This is a border village, as such not only are the number of cultivators higher on average than other places due to the need for people to defend themselves in case of Mana Beast attacks but border villages are largely considered to be outside of the jurisdiction of the noble families in most cases. Certainly, it would be difficult for such a small village to stage a true rebellion against the nobles with the people that we have here and there wouldn’t be much point anyway,” Telram pointed out as diplomatically as he could.

“That is true,” the village head admitted. “But it’s still a big risk to take.”

“And what about the benefits of having such an organisation?” Telram countered. “As I’m sure you are aware being a cultivator yourself, cultivators are capable of doing much more work than normal people which would allow you to provide the tribute that you are required to give your lord and increase the wealth of your people.”

Once again, the village head visibly struggled to come up with an argument that disputed this claim much to Polly’s visible irritation.

“Just tell them that they can’t do it for goodness sake man!” the dumpy woman shouted angrily. “I don’t want to be killed for rebelling against Lord Undar and I’m sure that you don’t either!”

“Again,” Gerry said calmly looking pointedly at the furious woman. “How would Lord Undar find out?”

The village head frowned as he looked back and forth between his wife and Telram’s family. He was rapidly running out of ways as well as the desire to prevent them from creating the organisation that they were talking about. He was no fool and understood that Telram had been correct when he had suggested that teaching people how to cultivate would increase the productiveness of the village which would actually please Lord Undar who didn’t really even care about what happened in this village so long as they sent their tribute on time and if even if the tribute happened to increase Lord Undar would be too happy to look into it too much.

“Now, now dear, maybe we could give them a chance to train some of the children to cultivate, not all of them but there are a couple who would be interested,” admitted the village head with a loud sigh before turning back to Telram and company. “Would that be acceptable?”

“It would,” Gerry replied.

“Excuse me,” the young man standing next to the village head and his wife interrupted after Polly elbowed him. “May I ask who would be training the children and what qualifies them for such a position.”

“Well I’m not sure that this entirely relevant,” Gerry began. “But my student Telram will be teaching the children for the majority of the time.”

“And may I ask what qualifies such a weak cultivator to train anyone?” the young man prompted. He himself had recently become an Ascendant Realm cultivator and as such he looked down on Telram who looked older than he did thanks to his impressive height and build.

“My student has created several martial techniques of his own at the age of 14 and has one of the most powerful souls that I have ever seen for his cultivation level,” Gerry replied calmly. He was understating how powerful Telram’s soul was and deliberately not mentioning how powerful these techniques were because the wily old man was already seeing where this was going.

“Is that so,” the young man snorted. “Maybe he’d like to show me a few of these techniques and exchange some pointers with me? I’d hate for people to let you people teach their kids only to find that they were being scammed.”

“You want me to fight you while I’m badly injured?” Telram replied sneering slightly as he glanced meaningfully down at his arm. “Is your cultivation rank not advantage enough?”

“Watch your mouth!” the young man shouted as his face turned crimson at Telram’s words. “Don’t you try and avoid this!”

“Avoid what exactly?” Telram sighed tiredly. “I don’t see why I should agree to this in the first place. Let alone why I should agree when I’m still tired from travelling and injured.”

“You keep making excuses all you like as far as I’m concerned, you’re just trying to avoid fighting me!” the young man exclaimed angrily as Telram’s family and friends stared at him pityingly. Even the village head was glaring at the young man. It was obvious to everyone present that he had completely lost his temper due to Telram’s words

“Believe what you wish, I just want to get a good night’s sleep right now,” Telram shrugged.

“Son at least let him get some sleep,” the village head suggested putting his hand on the young man’s shoulder who as he had said was in fact his only son. “Don’t make a fool of yourself.”

“Look,” Telram groaned as he decided to throw the young man a bone so that he could get some sleep and deal with this later. “If you really want to go through with this, we can do it tomorrow.”

Telram was struggling to remain reasonable right now, he had only gotten a little sleep over the past couple of days and had been both running and working on fixing his injured arm and Mana Core ever since escaping Palamar so dealing with this obviously spoilt brat was working on his last nerve.

“I guess that would be fine,” the young man grunted as his fathers’ hand clamped down on his shoulder. “I’ll meet you at the sparring grounds first thing in the morning then.”

“Very well,” Telram nodded deciding that it would be easier to just agree to the duel than it would be to keep winding the other young man up. “Thank you for letting me get some rest.”

“Uh, sure,” chuckled the young man weakly as he felt his mother’s eyes burning into him. In reality he didn’t particularly care whether Telram and the others taught the village children or not, he just didn’t want to deal with his mother’s nagging. He had gotten a little worked up when Telram had so rudely refused to fight him, but even he had to admit that Telram had a point about the two of them fighting when Telram was both injured and exhausted. Now though he was actually somewhat looking forward to their fight, he was the higher ranked cultivator so normally he would say that he would win easily especially since his opponent was injured however Telram’s family didn’t look even the slightest bit worried about the outcome of the fight, in fact they looked quite confident which made him assume that Telram was more powerful than he appeared to be.

Turning back towards the house that his family had been staying in Telram yawned widely and walked inside. Rolling their eyes at how casual he was acting when he had just been challenged by a more powerful cultivator the rest of the group followed him smirking slightly as they heard Polly start screeching at her husband and son.

Once inside Telram made his way to the room that had been set up for him by his parents and collapsed on the bed in exhaustion. Seeing this both Willa and Jai laid down next to him and fell asleep making the others laugh.

“Well he wasn’t kidding about being tired, was he?” Gerry chuckled before turning to Fergus and Diana. “Now then why don’t you tell us your side of what happened after we left Palamar?”

The next morning Telram woke up covered in sweat thanks to the two furry bodies next to him and snorted in amusement as he got out of bed before breaking out in outright laughter when both Willa and Jai cracked a single eye open to look at him briefly before closing again as the two went back to sleep.

“Telram dear, are you awake?” Lily asked from the other side of the door having heard his laughter.

“Yeah, I’ll be out in a minute!” Telram replied. “I’ve got that appointment to be at after all!”

Lily smiled as she heard the happiness in her son’s voice. Despite the fact that he was going to have to fight someone it was already obvious to her even after being in Yulis for one night that he wasn’t as stressed as he had been back in Palamar which was good for her to know.

“Alright, I’ve already made breakfast for everyone so we’re just waiting on you,” she said. “And that includes the other two in there with you!”

Hearing this both Willa and Jai leapt to their feet and pushed their way past the surprised Telram on their way through the door making him laugh once again as he followed them out the door to where everyone else was waiting for him.

Once they had all finished their breakfasts Gerry turned towards Telram.

“How’s your arm?” he asked with a mildly worried expression on his face. “Is it going to be okay for you to fight with it?”

“I’ll be fine,” Telram replied waving his teacher’s worry aside. “I think that guy might be a bit more reasonable today and I’m sure he doesn’t want to injure me any more than I already am.”

“His name is Warren and he’s the son of Henry; the village head and Polly,” Gerry explained. “So, I expect he was put up to challenging you by his mother and got a bit heated when you refused.”

“Yeah I figured that was what it was,” Telram sighed. “I mean, I kind of expected something like this to happen when I brought up the idea, I was just hoping that I’d have a few more days to work on my arm.”

“Well at least you knew that you would be challenged I suppose,” Aran admitted. “But yeah a few more days to heal and recover would’ve been nice.

“By the way,” Diana said drawing everyone’s attention to her. “How confident are you of winning this fight? I know you beat an early Ascendant Cultivator in the evaluation, but you weren’t injured then and this kid probably has more experience in actual combat as well.”

“You’re assuming that I even have to win,” Telram pointed out. “If I at least earn the respect of the villagers by putting up a good fight in my current state then it’ll be much harder for Polly- who I’m assuming is the only one who’s really against the idea- to make things difficult for us.”

“That’s true,” Lily nodded. “And you’re right Polly is definitely going to be impossible to get on your side- according to the other villagers she’s just not the sort of person to change her mind- but if you can get the support of most of the villagers then Henry won’t stand in your way, he’s a good man.”

That’s the impression I got yesterday,” Telram agreed. “Right, we should get going. I’d hate to make it look like I was trying to get out of this fight, that wouldn’t be a good impression to make on the villagers.”

“That’s true,” Gerry chuckled. “I guess we shouldn’t waste any more time then.”

The others agreed and after cleaning up after themselves they made their way outside where Gerry lead the way to the area of the village that was set aside for disputes between cultivators. Most villages and cities had at least one area like this so that cultivators could settle disputes without hurting any bystanders or damaging property. In Yulis village this was a simple looking platform that was slightly raised off of the ground with a few inscribed Mana Cores inserted around the edge that formed a weak barrier to protect anyone watching the fight. Most of the villagers weren’t particularly powerful cultivators so this was usually all that was needed to make sure there weren’t any accidents.

“So, you’ve finally shown up have you?” Warren grumbled as Telram and the others approached. “Took you long enough.”

“Sorry,” Telram chuckled. “I might have slept in a bit too much.”

“Well at least you showed up,” Warren replied giving Telram a weak smile. He was far from the only one present, both of his parents were here as well and Telram could see that Polly seemed to still be in a bad mood but from the way the other people who were present were acting this wasn’t anything unusual. There was also a small crowd of villager’s present including Dale, the blacksmith that Telram had met yesterday. Standing next to the powerfully built man was a plump young boy and a woman whom Telram was assuming were the blacksmith’s wife and child.

Waving to the blacksmith who nodded back with a confident look on his face. Dale knew that Telram actually had a decent chance of winning this fight despite having a lower cultivation rank because of his body strengthening technique. That was how much of an advantage someone with such a technique had over someone like Warren who didn’t have one of his own even despite Telram’s injury and Warren’s higher cultivation realm.

“Shall we get started then?” Telram asked as he turned back to Henry who nodded in agreement. “After you then.”

As the two young men jumped up onto the platform some of the villagers started muttering as they saw that Telram had his right arm in a sling. While they had been told by Dale that Telram was injured they hadn’t been expecting it to be so obvious a disadvantage, especially when most of them were cultivators themselves who could plainly see that Telram was the weaker of the two fighters.

“Now I’ll do my best not to hit your arm. But you know was well as I do that, I can’t make any promises,” warned Warren as he took a stance that Telram was very familiar with; the basic stance of the Solid Fist Style. Warren probably wasn’t actually going to use this fighting style and had just taken the stance to let those watching know that he was ready to fight.

“Of course, Telram nodded. “I just hope you don’t expect me to win in my current state. That would hardly be fair now would it?”

“That sounds fair. So how about this; if you give me a good fight in your current state then I don’t think that anyone would say that you wouldn’t be able to teach people how to cultivate and I’ll put in a good word for you with my father as well,” Warren replied with a nod, ignoring the glare that he was getting from his mother as he did so. He did wonder if Telram was suggesting that he would be able to win if he wasn’t injured but then shook his head. That didn’t matter right now.

“Well then,” said Henry who looked between the two young men with a stern look on his face. As the village head he was the one who would be acting as the referee in this fight which was normal in smaller villages like this. “You may begin!”

Several balls of Air Mana formed around Warren as he launched himself towards Telram who’s eyebrow raised as he noted the technique that the other young man was using. It wasn’t a technique that he was very familiar with, but he did have a basic idea of how it worked. It was called the Gale Orbs technique and could be used to both attack and defend. However, it was also a technique that was vulnerable to being interrupted as Warren found out when he encountered the strange grey mist that appeared around Telram.

This mist was of course Telram’s Dissonance technique and as soon as the orbs of Air Mana came in contact with it the strain caused by keeping them from going out of control increased dramatically making Warren come to a halt before leaping back to rethink his plan. This entire time Telram had barely moved, choosing instead to watch his opponent to learn Warren’s fighting style but even if that was what he wanted to do he knew that Warren had been thrown off by his technique almost escaping his control and that was an opening that he simply couldn’t miss.

Telram’s body flowed forwards as he used his Graceful Mist Steps to close upon Warren whose eyes widened in surprise as Telram’s fist slammed into his hastily raised guard with enough force that he felt his bones creak.

Warren’s eyes widened even further as he realised that Telram had a body strengthening technique, already he could feel bruises appear on his arm where Telram’s fist had struck him and he knew from the way that Telram had moved that he had been holding back considerably so he didn’t accidentally injure Warren.

It looked like Warren had been underestimating Telram, still that couldn’t be helped most cultivators looked down on those who had a lower cultivation than themselves and this was especially true when someone was a whole Realm below them as was the case with Telram so it was difficult to blame Warren for his lack of caution.

“You finished warming up? Telram asked calmly as he rolled his shoulders. “If so, shall we get serious?”