When I was a kid many people said I could become anything I wanted to be. As I grew older their encouragement started gaining more specific directions. Mostly they wanted me to take over as the family head while others wanted me to become a diplomat.

I knew that they had been trying to encourage me to find something I loved when I was still a child. As I grew older they had split between pushing me toward what they saw as my destiny and what they saw as my talent. It wasn’t malicious, but neither were things I wanted to pursue.

There was one man who was different though. When I was still quite young my parents spent a great deal of money to give me a chance to learn martial arts from master Ho-sung; a renowned master in our province. I wasn’t a disciple, not a real one at least, but it was still an honor and a great opportunity. I took to it like a fish to water. It was amazing and wonderful. He had been teaching me for less than a month when he sat me down one day and we talked properly.

He always used to drink this super bitter tea. I could never swallow the stuff so I always just sniffed it for a while before dumping it when I thought he wasn’t looking. I kind of miss it nowadays though. I still remember the smell as we sat on the porch watching the pond. That day master Ho-sung had been acting odd, so I was nervous.

“Little Ma… What are you planning to do with your life?”

That question made me feel relieved that I wasn’t going to get scolded, but having to think about my future was still terrifying.

“My mother says I should become a diplomat since I have a gift for languages. ...Um, father says I need to hold the reins of the family.”

Master Ho-sung sipped his tea without speaking for a while. He turned to grab some fish food and I quickly poured about a third of my tea into a patch of weeds. Those wrinkly, talon-like hands flicked a palmful of the food so it spread evenly over the center of the pond. He wiped his hand on the edge of the porch and took another sip of tea before sighing.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

It took me a while to figure out what he meant, and even longer to formulate an answer. Master was patient though. He didn’t even look at me; he just watched the fish gulping at the surface of the water.

“I- I don’t know what I want.”

Master turned towards me and gave me that funny little grin he would always have when I almost got something right.

“Really? Or is it more like you know what you want, but aren’t sure if you should want it?”

I nodded quietly while staring into my teacup. Master flicked another handful of fish food into the pond, but I missed the opportunity to dump more tea. His voice was quiet but sure when he continued.

“You are talented. Not only that, you have many different talents. There are not many people as lucky as you, little Ma. You have a gift for languages, you have charisma, you are good with numbers and organization, and you are one of the most talented students I have taught. Honestly, you have the potential to be successful at whatever you turn your hand to, and that is something many would be jealous of.”

He paused and turned to look me dead in the eye.

“However, if you end up pursuing a talent that you have no love for, it will become a curse. Remember: talent is not a responsibility or a purpose. It is a tool. If a talent becomes a tool to pursue your love, it is a gift, but one that becomes an obstacle is nothing but a curse.”

Those words stuck with me, and they were the catalyst that set me on the path of a mercenary. And during fights like this, when my heart started beating like a drum in my chest, I knew I had made the right choice.

Manto smashed open the gate. That sort of thing was absurd; as overly ornate as the design was, it was still solid stone beneath. The sheer power Manto wielded matched, even surpassed, the strongest of mythic beasts. It takes a massive amount of brute force to destroy a gate that large. And yet Manto did it with two blows.

I’ll admit to being more than a little jealous of the fellow. I mean, all that power, plus shapeshifting and regeneration?

Once the gate was so much rubble, we marched in like we owned the place. I know that everyone wasn’t screaming at me, but it was weirdly flattering all the same. I really ought to make dramatic entrances to battlefields more often. It was more fun than I thought it would be. We practically swaggered out of the dust cloud, making sure everyone saw us walking towards the palace.

As much as I wanted to walk dramatically all the way, I needed to be prepared. One thing I have learned over the years is to never underestimate my enemies. I had more than a few scars from opponents who were much weaker than I was. I took to the roof of a building and hid like the elves in our group.

Manto was stomping about, making noise and generally raising a ruckus. He even would smash open buildings. That struck me as a bit petty and childish. It wasn’t like he needed to draw more attention to himself. The entire city must have heard those shrieks he made. Still, he was having fun and the damage he would leave would take a long time to repair. It was killing two birds with one stone in a way. There wasn’t much to be gained from the acts of catharsis aside from his morale, but the destroyed buildings would make Honeywood’s message to Macedor all the more clear.

In the distance, a silhouette rose into the sky. I found myself frowning for the first time in days. Laomedon knew flying magic.

It was a good thing that Manto had wings. Mages that could fly were some of the most obnoxious people to fight. Out of the forty-six powerhouses I had fought over the years, three of them could effectively fight while using flying magic. They were among the most difficult fights in my life.

There was also one twit who tried to fly and use attacking magic at the same time, but he doesn’t count. I still don’t know if he was really a powerhouse like people had claimed. The moron lost control of his flying magic at the start of our fight. He face-planted into the only boulder on the battlefield and died. The soldiers who had seen him kill himself had made up a limerick about him after the battle but I can’t remember the words.

Hopefully, Manto could keep up with Laomedon. During our fight, Manto had barely used his wings. I appreciated it at the time, since fighting flying enemies is more frustrating than fun, but in retrospect that was kind of stupid of him. Wings are an amazing advantage that he should capitalize on more often. I hope he can actually use them effectively.

The elves and I signaled him and I got ready to fight. Axios wouldn’t be far behind. I felt my lips twist into that smile once more and the beautiful feeling of nervous energy flow up my spine. I saw the glint of light shining off Axios’s spearhead and I dashed towards him. The tiles on the roof broke and slid free easily, so I was going to need to stick to the streets if I wanted good footing.

Manto had shrunk down and disappeared into an alley. I was worried for a moment that I would be facing two powerhouses while Manto set up an ambush, then a cart flew out of the alley, arcing towards Laomedon like a ball. I grinned even wider as I watched the mage’s eyes bulge at the sight of the mass of wood shattered against his hasty shield.

A steady stream of cobblestones and chunks of nearby buildings followed, smashing against the mage’s defenses. It was idiotically genius; even the best mages could only manage three spells at once, and a flying spell already counted as one. Even if the Macedorian mage could cast three spells at once, and I seriously doubted that he could, focusing on all of them would make him sloppy. Laomedon seemed to realize this as well. His face was screwed up in a frustrated grimace as he dodged and weaved in the air.

Manto’s strategy was working, even though it was the dumbest one I could imagine. A melee fighter attacking a mage at range? It was clever, but it was also stupid. I turned away from the two before a headache formed. I really should know better; Manto is lots of things, but rational and wise aren’t anywhere near the top of the list. Still, if it’s stupid but it works…

I couldn’t afford to watch any longer. I had my own fight to worry about. Axios was approaching. My cheeks stretched a bit more as I saw his face. He winced a bit as we locked eyes. It made me remember what an old friend had said about what my smile looked like before a good fight. He would joke that my smile caused ‘short term incontinence and long term insomnia’ in my enemies. He was weird like that.

“Traitor, I knew you were an honorless cur.”

I felt an eyebrow raise and gave him a mocking sneer.

“I am a mercenary. Our relationship as allies ended the moment you gave me my money. Also, did you really think I wouldn’t take the opportunity to make good on my promise?”

I raised my blades and approached him smoothly. He planted his feet and waited. The spear he wielded was the thick inflexible kind that you got around here. It wasn’t a bad design, and flexible spears that were tough enough to handle attacks from a powerhouse were rare, but they were never my style.

He stabbed at me with a sharp lunge. It was a careful attack, he didn’t overextend and his whole body was ready to dodge. As I twisted out of the way and slid past him he shifted away to keep his spearhead pointed at me. A little sigh escaped my mouth, though my grin didn’t fade. An orthodox style that took no risks. This fight wouldn’t be boring, but it wasn’t exactly breaking new ground either.

I shifted into my favorite attacking pattern. My feet fell into a comfortable rhythm and I started circling round and round the Macedorian. He spun with me, his face screwed up in concentration. It didn’t take long for him to start sweating. Nothing he did affected me and I got close to nicking him multiple times.

I had spent years creating this technique and even longer perfecting it. I was quite proud of it, and being named after it felt rather good. At the very least I would rather be named ‘Vortex’ over ‘shark eyes’ or something similar.

I had seen a lot of different counters that my opponents had tried to devise. People had tried jumping, throwing weapons, outlasting me, or overwhelming me with pure speed, but none of them had worked more than once. A more dependable method was to use the environment to one’s advantage, but even that wasn’t foolproof.

Axios clenched his teeth and lunged violently. He timed it perfectly; if I wanted to keep circling him I would either have to enter his range or risk slamming into the wall of a storefront. Unfortunately for him, I had recently seen a rather fun answer to that sort of problem.

I made a few strikes to certain parts of the wall, then smashed straight through. Chunks of brick, wood, and glass rained around me as I repeated the feat and burst out of the store. My grin widened even further as I saw Axios’s bug-eyed expression of shock. He hadn’t expected me to actually ‘ignore’ the building as I circled him.

It’s too bad this fellow never saw the original technique; it had been quite a thing watching Manto wade through Macedor’s army to keep me on my toes. I bet Axios’s face would be much funnier if he had seen that. I don’t have the armor and sheer power to pull something like that off, but I can do a pretty good imitation.

We moved up the street in a deadly waltz. I had definitely pressured Axios mentally with that move, but he had rallied himself admirably. He was leading me somewhere. One of the elves gave a signal and was ready for his plan though.

I don’t know where the other pseudo powerhouses are, but apparently, Kliment was here to support Axios. It was annoying but inevitable to be disturbed. I can’t really claim this was a surprise. All’s fair in love and war and all that. Plus, people like this tend to be just as paranoid as they are arrogant.

I really enjoy working with the elves though. Their professional attitudes and competence are really great to work with. Manto seems to thrive on chaos and tends to act like a wolf among sheep, but the elves are amazingly coordinated and prepared on the battlefield. They gave the signal telling me the enemy archer’s location. He was planning on shooting me in the back. As soon as he made the attempt, he would get ambushed by multiple elvish archers, who were incredibly skilled in their own right.

This was going to be tricky. Dealing with archers always was. An arrow from a powerful archer moved like greased lightning. If you weren’t prepared for it then you wouldn’t have a chance to survive. The arrow would punch through you before you could react.

Of course, things were much different if you knew their exact location and that they were preparing to shoot you.

I have great peripheral vision. Even better, my ...unique eyes meant it was hard for people to see where I was looking. It was easy to spot Kliment perched on a roof a block away. It was hilariously easy to spot him, especially with how Axios had gone defensive and how his eyes kept flicking towards Kliment’s hiding place. The Macedorian archer was slowly getting used to my rhythm as he drew back his bowstring. The way he held himself made him easy to read.

When he finally let the arrow loose, I was more than ready. Bending my torso to the side, I held out my right kukri ‘Burning West Wind’ where my torso would have been. It was flat side up, and the arrow skipped off it with a musical noise. Axios didn’t even have time to change his expression when the arrow’s ricochet sent it through his waist. It punched a hole right through his side, just below the ribs.

I stopped my vortex and watched the spearman double over and wheeze. I kept Kliment in my peripheral vision, but it didn’t look like he would be interfering anytime soon. The elves had shot him full of arrows the moment he’d attacked me. Axios forced himself to straighten and choked out a single word.

“H-How?”

I sighed, waving my kukris idly.

“I became known as a powerhouse thanks to the Battle of Red Mud.”

He looked a little confused. I had forgotten how far I was from home.

“It was in Zhongguo. The emperor had died and there was a war for succession. The princes, the empress consort, the general… anyone who mattered in the court was fighting. Even the neighboring nations sent troops to support one side or another. I was just a relatively skilled pseudo powerhouse who was drawn into the war.”

I licked my lips as the images, sounds, and smells filled my mind. I felt the phantom twinge from a half dozen old scars as I continued.

“Most of the war was spent jockeying for position, with no one willing to commit their forces. That was until, for whatever reason, everyone met at this one spot. It was just a bunch of bad farmland. The soil around there was dry and yellow. That particular area didn’t grow crops too well. Still, the land was flat, and it was a good enough battleground.

There must have been millions of soldiers, hundreds of elite fighters, over a hundred pseudo powerhouses, and dozens of true powerhouses.”

Axios’s eyes widened. I couldn’t blame his shock. That had been three generations of powerhouses, and it was still considered a massive number no matter where you lived. This little wannabe who lived in this tiny country couldn’t begin to understand the scale that empires like Zhongguo operated at.

“It was the dry season. Even so, by the second day, we were all wading in mud. The blood from hundreds of thousands of bodies soaked into the dirt and our steps churned it into a foul-smelling muck. Hundreds fell from exhaustion, were trampled into the mud, and drowned.

...The battle went on for three days and two nights. I don’t know how many people ran, in the center we certainly couldn’t. There were only three of the original powerhouses alive after that battle, but the few of us pseudo powerhouses who lived were considered powerhouses from that day on.”

My smile had been fading for a while now, but then I completely dropped it. I gave him a deadly serious stare.

“That was when I learned what it meant to fight as a powerhouse. You don’t count on the perfect environment and fair fights. If you want to be the real deal you need to be willing to fight in the middle of a swamp made of blood and gore. You need to be able to do it while arrows and spells rain from the sky, and someone is always sneaking up to stab you in the back.”

I dropped the expressionless look to give him a sneer.

“Your little scheme? One archer shooting me from behind? It’s a joke.”

I shifted my grip on my kukris and crouched down like an animal, digging the tips of my blades into the stone.

“If you were a real powerhouse it might have put me in a bad position, but you aren’t. You don’t have the willpower, and you don’t have the mindset. You’re a paper tiger, and now it’s time to meet the real deal.”

I started moving once more. This stance was definitely unorthodox, but I had worked to refine it into a working strategy. It was something that most powerhouses did; if you wanted to stay alive and keep your position you needed to keep others guessing.

At first, I ran around him, leaping about just out of reach. I would leap and plant myself on the side of a wall before pushing off and flying by him. He was having trouble keeping up, especially with the hole in his side.

I slammed my kukri, ‘Cold East Wind’, into the cobblestones. It kicked up stone dust and shards of rocks but gave me leverage to change directions easily. The way I moved in this stance, shoving off the ground and walls violently, was a lot different than my much smoother ‘vortex’ technique. It was also deliberately animalistic, taking cues from the way wolves and lions brought down prey.

Axios was really starting to panic now. It was actually kind of embarrassing. He had the skills and strength, but his mental composure was shot and he was letting his wound slow him down. I made a vicious leap, sweeping my blades against the shaft of his spear. He absorbed the impact competently, but his caution made him retreat. He planted his back against the wall of some windowless building to keep me from getting behind him.

It was so stupid.

Aside from how it prevented from using his spear properly, I had already proven how brick and wood wasn’t the impenetrable barrier he thought it was. I lunged for him before turning at the last moment and diving into the wall. It took four chops to cut a hole in the wall and one simultaneous strike from the backs of my blades to smash the chunks out of the way.

Instead of carving my way out I aimed for the section of the wall where Axios should be and shoved my kukris though the wall like the pincers of an enormous insect. When I pulled them back there was no blood, so it looks like I missed. I wasn’t really expecting to hit him though.

A few more cuts and sections of the wall fell away. I stepped through, frowning. Axios was on the other side of the street. He was so cautious that he gave up a golden opportunity to attack me. Neither of us could see the other through the wall, but my attack earlier should have revealed my position to him. The fact that he retreated too far to take advantage of that showed his cowardice.

I was done; this wasn’t fun anymore.

It was time for the killing blow. Crouching low, I pushed forward at my fastest speed. I shot into the air, throwing myself into a spin. A light twist kept me from getting impaled on Axios’s spear. He nearly got me, and he managed to pull the spear back in time to block. As pathetic as he was, he could manage that much. He wouldn’t have been called a powerhouse otherwise.

I ended my spinning flight towards him with a chop using my entire body. Both kukris impacted the shaft of Axios’s spear with an almighty bang. He did everything right; letting the spear bend, absorbing the impact by utilizing his body, and keeping the attack from striking head-on. It let him take the hit, but my blades had embedded themselves in the wood.

For a brief second, I hung in the air, my weight supported on my blades. Then I threw my body into a wave, starting from my toes and traveling up towards my blades.

Back when I was still learning from master Ho-sung, he had taught a very special technique. It allowed a skilled user to transfer an impact through their body without harm. Master Ho-sung could stand next to a wall and let the nearby town’s blacksmith hammer away at his chest. I remember the way the wall cratered and cracked from each impact, and the way master grinned as he walked away unharmed.

I eventually mastered the technique, and it was very useful in fights against opponents with a lot of brute strength. It was years later that I used my master’s technique as the base for my own. Rather than transfer an impact or momentum I received, I learned to create that force and transfer it into a target. I had refined the one-inch punch into a point-blank one.

Once a king had asked for a demonstration of martial technique. It was a show of power to cow some of his political enemies. I was to use unarmed techniques on a massive man in full plate armor. I planted my fist on his chest and used my technique. He had barely moved from my attack but I left a fist-shaped dent in his armor and cracked his sternum.

I don’t have many opportunities to use it in battle, but using it through my kukris against a blocking opponent works wonderfully. This time was no exception. The force traveled up my body like a wave bearing down on a beach. I kept myself almost boneless as I forced more and more power into that wave. Then, when it finally reached my wrists, I slammed my blades deeper into Axios’s spear shaft. The wave broke; it changed from a gentle swell of water into a tidal wave that shatters stone.

My blades sliced reduced the spear into three pieces and left an X shaped wound on Axios’s chest. It was shallow, but that didn’t matter; I’d won the fight. Axios looked at the pieces of his weapon and I swear he started to tear up. His hands shook as he whispered quietly to himself.

“H-how?”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes slightly.

“What, that’s cloudbreaker oak, right? It looks like it's been alchemically treated, but whoever made it didn’t use the heartwood. Stuff like that isn’t invincible you know.”

His face shot up and his eyes met mine. The coward made a whimpering noise and turned to run. It disgusted me. This was what passed for a powerhouse around here?

He made it a half dozen steps before I attacked. I ran up and kicked off the corner of a building, throwing myself into a spin. One kukri bit deeply as I slashed it across the coward's back while the other took his head from his shoulders. I shook most of the blood free from my kukris and walked away.

The light sound of feet hitting the cobblestones made me glance over. The elves walked towards me casually, although they had their bows out and were ready for any attacks. One looked towards me as I listened for the signs of Manto’s fight.

“We’ve still got a minute before the bombs go off. You really finished that fight fast.”

I tried not to grunt in disappointment. I failed. The elf, Lanius I think, gave me a questioning look at my response. I shrugged disappointedly.

“Axios turned out to be ...underwhelming. I was hoping for a better fight than a cowardly, wannabe powerhouse.”

One of the others opened their mouth to say something but seemed to change their mind. A crashing sound and flashes of fire and lightning came from a couple of blocks ahead. The spells and noises were getting further away as well. We increased our pace until we were almost but not quite running.

With the noise Manto and Laomedon were making, the fight wasn’t going to end anytime soon. We weren’t planning on interfering either; Manto didn’t need the help. I did wish I could have gotten a better fight, but just because mine had been so underwhelming doesn’t mean I was going to ruin Manto’s.

Even from here, that fight looked like a lot of fun.