We had been rolling along for a few days now, and my resources were getting a little, well, sparse. Betsy was complaining that she was getting hungry,well, and I was too. It seemed like work for a trucker turned wagoneer in a Japanese Fantasy Land wasn’t as in demand as I was originally led to believe from Nakayasu and the couple of others who had been generous enough to give me work when I first came here.

  We had bunkered down for the night just outside of a small warehousing district in a medium-sized town… somewhere. I couldn’t really tell you exactly where in the Empire we were. I wasn’t really paying much attention to the map I was gifted because, well, quite frankly, it didn’t matter where I was. The weather was nice, if not chilly, and I had the feeling we were closer to the southern part. Otherwise, I had a feeling it’d be colder.

  Betsy was being ornery and moved a little way away from me and the wagon to lie down. When I tried calling her, she just bellowed loudly, and I could feel the annoyance through our link.

  “I know, girl, I know. Tomorrow we’ll try to write Nakayasu again. See if he has something for us again,” I told her in an attempt to placate her.

  She just bellowed and put her head down.

  “Yeah, alright, alright. Let’s get some sleep,” I said as I laid down on the sleeping mat I took out of the wagon and set beside it. Nothing wrong with sleeping under the stars when it’s though, nice out, I figured. It didn’t take long for Betsy to breathe heavily and then snore as she drifted off to sleep. I got to sleep eventually, but it took me a while.

  I’m not sure how long I was out when I heard a loud crack of thunder. I woke with a start and grunted, ready to dash and jump up into the wagon to escape the rain that must have surely been coming. When I opened my eyes, though eyes,and looked to the sky, I realized there weren’t even any clouds in the sky.

  “What the hell?” I sat up and looked around. There weren’t any more noises, just Betsy snoring a few yards away from me.

  I stood and went over to her and nudged her with my foot. “Betsy goddammit, your snoring literally sounds like thunder.”

  She grunted and looked up at me. She glared, head, and just as she was about to shake her head another loud crack of thunder echoed through the fields we were asleep in. My eyes went wide, and even Betsy lifted her head in confusion. We both looked at the warehouse we were closest to. With the thunder, the building had lit up in a bright electric light.

  “Uh, Betsy, what do you think is going on over there?”

  A confused bellow was my only answer.

  “Well, I guess let’s go check it out?” I looked down at her to see her thoughts about doing that. Her gigantic head moved back and forth a moment before she climbed to her feet, er, to her hooves.

  Betsy looked at me and nodded her big head. She looked kind of worried as she looked towards the warehouse where the commotion came from.

  “What’s wrong, girl?” I asked and raised a brow while I watched the warehouse with her. As was typical with Betsy, I didn’t get much of a response from the ox. Just a soft bellow and I could feel her mentally shrug.

  I furrowed my brow and shrugged. Maybe she was sensing something I couldn’t. I was kind of a dumbass and didn’t really know how to do everything I could do.

  “Alright then, let’s go check it out,” I shrugged and started off towards the warehouse.

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  We got there pretty quickly, and we saw a couple more displays of power. These weren’t lightning and thunder combos like the original ones. A windstorm kicked up at one point and took us by surprise, so it almost knocked me off my feet. Betsy came up behind me and steadied me. There was also a display of ice where the entire warehouse seemed to turn into an ice palace for a quick second before it melted away.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Betsy’s uneasiness grew as we got closer, and I tried and failed to reassure her as we walked closer. She grunted and nodded and huffed while motioning up to a window.

  I put my hands on my hips and looked up to where she motioned towards. “Yeah, I guess.”

  I scanned the side of the building to try to figure out if it’d be very easy to climb up and peer into the window she motioned to. The windows here on the ground floor were all covered with something heavy, so we couldn’t even tell if there was a light on inside the building. The one Betsy pointed to though, was lit up. I sighed and shrugged.

  “Okie dokie then,” I muttered and made my way over to a ledge. I tried to grab and latch onto various pieces on the wall to try to Spider-Man my way up. All that resulted was my wearing myself out and getting hot and sweaty.

  A loud grunt interrupted my thinking about just trying to jump up to the ledge under the window she motioned to. The ledge covered a small area that looked like it might be a break area for the workers. There were even some crates stacked on top of each other for someone to sit on, and I imagined someone sitting there sneaking a smoke.

  When I finally looked over at Betsy, she was glaring at me.

  “What?”

  She rolled her eyes and used her head to motion for me to come to her. When I did, she lowered her head for me to climb on. I was trying to do as she wanted and grabbed hold of one of her horns. As soon as my soft-soled shoe was safety on her snout, she grunted, and I could feel the mana in her body cycling. Next thing I knew, I was thrown in the air, and I let out a very manly, deep, gruff yell. It wasn’t at all shrill and surprised. I knew she was going to do that.

  Thankfully, I landed on my feet, and the overhang did not, in fact, break when I landed on it. I stared at my feet for a moment, not believing I'd landed that, and then I moved over to the window to look inside.

  It was hard to really get a peek into the building since the window seemed to be into some sort of office or something and had a bunch of stuff in front of it. Using my fingertips, I clawed my way up to stand on the windowsill, yet again amazing myself a little. Thanks to the shoes I wore here that were mostly just canvas, I could tie my way to stand there. That’s all without talking about the finger strength I must have had.

  Once I could peer in, I looked over a piece of furniture to a wide open warehouse, and then I gasped. Betsy must have sensed my excitement because she gave a loud, curious bellow.

  Inside the warehouse, there were shelves, and primitive-looking pieces of equipment pushed against walls. In front of all of that was a bunch of people, most of whom looked like cultivators. The group formed a circle around a fighting ring that I knew all too well — a dohyo.

  There were even two men on each side of the makeshift ring wearing mawashis. Though they were built nothing like a traditional rikishi. Maybe before the size creep, when the sumo wrestlers really got big. These wrestlers were built and muscular compared to the modern-day wrestlers I was used to seeing. Though… they weren’t wrestlers, were they?

  I blinked and worked my way off the windowsill so I could get down to Betsy. She hadn’t stopped bellowing since the one loud one. I never really looked down as I climbed down from the overhang.

  “Betsy, you’ll never believe what I saw going on in there,” I said as my lower half was hanging down.

  Mentally, I knew a drop from this height, especially with my cultivator body, wouldn’t hurt. I still struggled and had to hype myself up. It took me a minute, and when I finally let go to drop it, it was just before my feet hit the ground that I realized Betsy wasn’t giving me curious bellows; they were bellows of distress.

  I landed and balled a fist instantly, turning to see what was going on. I realized there was someone on top of Betsy with a blindfold covering her eyes, and they had somehow gotten the jump on her to even get her hogtied. How the hell long was I up there? Shit.

  “Hey man, what the hell!” Before I could advance to knock the guy off of her, I felt something crack against the side of my head,her, and then all I saw was blackness.

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