Mates, chapter 7!

Before the chapter, here a little story from RL. Well actually it is already two days old, but better late then never, right?

Eitherway, currently I'm having hollidays and I'm spending them with my family in the Netherlands. My grandma also joined with us and we have an small house for two weeks.

Well two days ago, it was our first day, I was on my way back from a nearby town as my father suddenly grinned.

"Son, your grandma fucked up." (Dialog is a biiiiiit changed)

"What happened?"

I asked confused.

"She has put the electronic water boiler onto the stove."

............

Well shit happens I guess (the whole house stank of burned plastic)

Chapter 7 Mira

Central district, King's Sanctuary's headquarters

"Soooo~ father, now that you true strength was revealed what will we do now?

I heard that Death Crown has gained a new expert that is soul stage too and that they have already clashed with Emperor's Rule. Considering the power difference we should ally with Death Crown no?"

A girl, about 16 to 17 years old asked her father.

Seeing her excited face, he could only sigh and shake his head. Youth really was ignorant.

"We will stay out of this. Tell the others in the faction to stay as low key as possible and please refrain from making any trouble, will you?"

The girl's eyes widened disbelieving at her father's response.

"But now that yo-" she wanted to respond, but her father intercepted. Unnoticed by him, his voice suddenly grew louder.

"MIRA! We stay out of this! Do you understand?!"

Mira, was a bit shocked and dissatisfied bit onto her lip. This was the first time in a while that she was actually scolded by her father. Furthermore the reason for it was completely illogical!

She just wanted to retort again as she saw a strange look in her father's eyes. The normally calm and friendly eyes of her father who had raised her for 17 years, something she was too familiar with. Somehow they had turned melancholic and sad as he staring at the distance, in deep thought about something. It was just as if she wasn't even standing next to him.

It was obvious, whatever it was that had affected her father this badly, it was important enough for him to even disregard his own daughter while being deep in his thoughts. As for what he was thinking, this was something only he himself could possibly know.

In the end seeing her father in this strange state, she opened and closed her mouth for a few times, before actually suppressing the urge to further discuss with him and furiously turned around quickly walking out of the room.

The sound of the door violently shutting echoed throughout the room.

……..

Standing in front of the closed door that led to the room her father was in Mira couldn't help but feel dissatisfied. Her father had finally chosen to reveal his strength and she had hoped that she would finally have a chance to show her own strength.

Having cultivated every single free moment for the last three years and even reached the third level of the body stage, she itched to finally show the world which extent her martial powers reached. After all a level three expert, while not the peak, was at least considered a powerful expert in this world.

But now, instead of gripping for the rule over the city and simply destroy this two other factions that were left, her father had suddenly fallen into his strange depression-like state and refused to move at all. She really couldn't understand what her father was thinking.

Thinking about this chance to show off her success in cultivation she was losing her patience, Mira couldn't help but stomp on the ground. It wasn't just that she couldn't show the inhabitants of the city what she had achieved, she also lost the chance to demonstrate her ability in front of her father.

But there was nothing she could do. Her father had already decided and didn't seem to change his opinion any time soon. Angrily she had no other choice but walk out of the hallway and pass on the words her father told her to pass onto the other faction members.

_____________________________________

Inside of the room her father sighed as he heard his daughter angrily stomping down.

"She's still too young after all.….

No rather she doesn't remember what happened back then. If she did…. How could she even think about all this?"

He helplessly smiled. A figure appeared in his mind as he suddenly said:

"Still, to actually meet here again…..

It's fate isn't it?"

"So it's really him?"

Another man had suddenly appeared from behind the old man. His face showed tension as he waited for the others reply.

"Yes, there is no doubt. That old bastards son actually appeared here."

"……."

Both fell into silence as they seemed to reminiscent old times. In the end both emotionally sighed again. The newly arrived man's face grew hard as he suddenly interrupted the silence.

"Seems we will need to repay the debts made back then at that place……!?"

The old man nodded his head, cold killing intent glittering in his eyes.

"It's been more than ten years, but debts don't vanish, they only grow bigger!

I swear my name as leader of King's Sanctuary, blood will undoubtedly flow!"

__________________

"SIS, I'M SORRY!"

Dan shouted as he ran throughout the house, constantly evading a bunch of kitchen knives flying at him. Behind him a half naked female figure closely followed behind him, holding a whole bunch of kitchen knives in one hand, whole throwing with the other.

It was his sister, who was only wearing a towel, covering her most important places. Her face was completely dark and bloodthirsty ran thick in her eyes as she stared at her brother, cold anger in her expression.

"SO YOU ARE SORRY; HM? IF, YOU ARE SORRY THEN EAT MY BLADE!

WHO TOLD YOU TO JUST WALK INTO THE BATHROOM WITHOUT ANY NOTICE, HM?"

Her voice was followed by a few blades that barely missed Dan's head.

Seeing that arguing was useless and his sister wouldn't accept any reasoning, Dan acted decisively, suddenly taking the stairs, evading another kitchen blade that aimed to block his path and disappeared behind the 20 cm thick steel door that led to his room.

……..

"This was close!"

Dan breathed out in relief. Of course, even though his sister was a genuine level two expert at the verge to breaking through to level three, he was still stronger than her and is easily capable of taking her out, without doing any damage to her.

But she was his sister and he was willing to do more than just this to make her happy, even if it means to suffer a bit.

Looking back at the steel door, Dan couldn't help but soften. He loved his sister more than anything in this world. She was his sister and the only member of his family he had. For her, he would do about everything in his capabilities.

But he quickly let go of this thoughts. He had no time to get emotional about these things right now. If he wasn't careful he, his entire faction and also his sister would soon die a cruel death and if he wanted to evade this unpleasant end for himself and everyone he knew, his only choice was to quickly grow stronger.

He turned around and let his gaze travel around his room.

It was a pretty big room, about 40 square meters in circumference, simple, but elegant. A black granite floor, one unadorned bed of wood, a small night table and a also wooden wardrobe were all in one corner of the room, leaving about two thirds of it completely empty.

Opposing the furniture were two big windows leading towards the street and letting the light of the moon shine into the room and illuminate it.

Dan had purposely not lit the lamps in this room, he preferred just being with the light provided by the moon. (well it's free isn't it?)

Standing at the entrance for a moment and putting his thoughts into order, Dan finally moved and walked to the small night table that was next to his bed. He opened the black ebony (wooden) door of the night table and revealed a small tresor-door with a code lock.

Tipping in the code he opened the door and took out it's contents…. a book.

He flipped open the first side, looking at it's content. There was a short text english, followed by a number of pictures, depicting a person in various positions and postures.

This was Dan's cultivation manual, containing a rare superior ranked cultivation technique, possibly the only one in the whole city!

After all, money was unable to buy these things. Only good fortune, luck and good relations with powerful people, the government or other institutions could possibly earn you a treasure like this.

Dan for example only managed to acquire this after a fortuitous encounter with a martial Grand master, who gifted this one to him.

Quickly skipping through the cultivation manuals sides, he flipped to a certain part of the manual.

Duo- cultivation!

His expression changed a bit as he stared at the extremely detailed pictures that depicted the different postures needed for this sort of cultivation, involving both man and woman.

Strangely this part of the cultivation manual was much more detailed with it's pictures and descriptions of the different body parts involved. The pictures clearly showed the two genders intertwining with each other, taking extra attention on the different parts of the body that separated women and men and while reading it was obvious that the person that wrote all this down had a lot of…. well…. 'passion' for the things he wrote down.

In fact the details written down caused even Dan to blush deep red and struggle with his body. After all, this Oh'so famous, powerful expert was still virgin.

As he felt his body, going more and more out of control and blood gushing into both his face and ……. ….. well another organ even more important, he finally shut the book with a single motion, gasping for air.

"This….." His face was still deeply flushed.

"Even if Duo-cultivation is more effective than normal cultivation, I should wait until I get married to do this kind of 'stuff'!"

Still troubled, he sat down cross-legged and started to calm his mind and the 30 centimeter big mountain that rose from his lower body. After chanting a mantra, meant for people who practiced abstinence for thirty minutes he finally felt ready to get back to the 'true path of cultivation'.

He closed his eyes for a few seconds, sitting motionless and gathering his concentration into his own body.

Then he suddenly opened his eyes and simultaneously rose up, his feet starting to move too. His arms drew a circle in the air as he bowed his body towards the ground and lifted one foot from the ground. His body contracted, the muscles tensing up to build up energy.

Then he suddenly used the energy, lifting his body into the air and continuing a set of movements midair. Tipping against the ground he constantly remained within the air, moving every single muscle while executing the almost inhuman postures.

As he went on and continued the sets and different combinations Dan slowly felt a strange energy entering from outside the body and flowing through the pores of his skin. The energy slowly went into the tissue and the different capillaries entering the blood flow.

It began with his arms, that constantly swing through the air, making different figures and postures and continued through his blood vessels throughout the whole body eventually also reaching the heart and the brain. After spreading once across the whole body the energy then entered the cells of his organs and muscles, invading his DNA and begging to change it according to some strange pattern.

More and more energy entered through his arms, flowed throughout the whole body distributing equally and finally entered the cells changing both their structure and the one of the DNA.

Also a part of this energy didn't begin changing the DNA and using itself up with it, it somehow entered the membranes of the cells, strong itself in them.

Dan continued like this, until after about two hours he finally collapsed on the ground, having reached the limit of what his body was able to endure. Two hours of constant jumping, stretching, flying, tensing, swirling and moving had thoroughly sucked all energy out of Dan's body, making him even unable to move at all.

He had depleted everything inside of him during this cultivation session, having given everything in these two hours.

But even though he was already half dead and tired as hell, he also felt that he had gained quite a lot of this two hours. These two hours of cultivation, as savage as they were had pushed up his cultivation by quite a margin shortening the distance to soul stage.

Formerly Dan had said that it would take him at least two months to reach soul stage, but this was if he truly devoted everything of himself cultivating to the point of no return. In fact if he truly wanted to complete this feat it would most likely kill before he reached the soul stage.

The truth was that even if he hurried himself it would still take at least another four months to finally reach the soul stage.

But right now he truly had no time and every week, every day, even every hour was precious. Under this pressure Dan actually managed to squeeze out everything he had, accepting his cultivation speed by a bit.

If he kept on cultivating like today, he would most likely be able to reach the soul stage in a bit more than three months. At that time, even if he still had to be wary around Ricks, he hadn't to fear his own and his whole factions death anymore.

Groaning Dan rolled on his back and stared at the ceiling, before falling into thoughts again.

Truly, too much had happened in this short time.

First they had finally taken over the south district, killing of the scorpion faction and becoming the rulers over three districts.

Then just as they thought they would finally have established themselves in Surn city, this madman Ricks appeared, putting everyone into danger. Following that, King's Sanctuary also revealed a soul stage expert, only making the pressure greater.

"Fuck……

…..

I can't even think of anything to complain about…… to tired……"

Finally Dan stood up moaning over his completely mistreated back. He slowly stumbled towards his bed.

Suddenly he blurred and disappeared.

At the place where he had been standing a moment ago a bullet left behind a once inch deep hole and rebounded.

A point on the other side of the room blurred with Dan reappearing there, his eyes completely cold and an angry face. A small slice was visible on his cheek, made by the rebounding bullet. He slowly walked to the window, noticing the small hole that had been made into the glass. It was obvious that this had been prepared beforehand.

Staring outside of the window he saw a black figure retreating from a house roof.