"Though they do not think it to be so, many of the martial and magickal sects of the Realms Belligerent are liberal in thinking and capitalist in economics and metaphysics. This is because many of the new sects are built within a world where the dominating ideology of the Ruling Class is liberalism.

  Coming from the Triumph over Kings and Emperors.

  Coming from the toppling of the Wizard-Gods and Sorcerer-Regents.

  Even older sects, such as the Lustrous Void Sect and the Thunderbolt Monastery Sect and the 108 Stars of Dirt Sect have begun to take on individualist liberal values, despite forming during the time of Aristocracies and Monarchies and, in the case of the 108 Stars of Dirt, the time of the Magocrats. But this must soon change, if the Sects want to survive being consumed by the Great Market and being turned into commodities to be exploited, used, and squeezed for profit, before being thrown away once the Great Market has manufactured a new thing for the Masses to be obsessed with."

  From the Raging River, Calming Lake Sutra

  The Malachite Blade bandits had set up a camp around a ritual furnace-pot turned campfire. They had a couple of tents and temporary stilt houses set up. They settled by a hill that overlooked most of the western side of Kabini Town.

  They were a Spear Gang. This meant there were six of them at the ready. Two bowmen, one gunner, two shieldmen with spears and one shieldman with a sword. They would fight together like this: the shieldman with a sword up front, two shieldmen behind him, flanking him, spears outstretched and shields readied creating a "wedge" with their shields. The gunner behind the two shieldmen, and the bowmen behind the gunner. It was a dangerous combination, and showed the traianing that the Malachite Blades possessed.

  It was also the basic tactics of an urban-combat lance-unit of the Selorongian National Army.

  Their captain was the swordmaiden. Her hair tied up in a tight bun, kept back in a bandana. She wore real leather lamellar over a reinforced shirt and skirt combination. Her shield was made of rattan, allowing it to catch sword blades and spear thrusts, at the cost of being flammable. Her name was Teo (pronounced tyoh) and she has found it an incredibly lucrative and safe career choice to shift into Selorongian banditry.

  The two spearmen behind her were men. No, they were boys. The tall lanky one was named Ramn and the short stout one was named Jyo. They were new on the job, nascent recruits, straight from Urangwais Town just a few kilometers south. Their eyes did not have that same crusted look of dried blood that years of banditry gave someone. Either you became a cynic or a psychopath.

  At least, as long as you stay with the Malachite Blades.

  They didn't have a choice, though. There were no more ways to make money in their town, and they were preparing to go to Selorong when they were approached for a lucrative money-making scheme. The money was real, of course, but their hands became dirtied. Jyo had lost his ring finger.

  "Stand tall, boys," said Teo, grinning and unsheathing her wicked sharp longknife. It was wide, a true butchering saber. "That auto should be passing by this road right about now."

  Jyo swallowed. Nodded. "Of course, captain."

  Teo looked long and hard at Jyo. She came in widely close—the smell of cheap beer on her tongue was both miasma and aphrodisiac to Jyo. It didn't help that Teo—removed of grime and muck and with proper dentistry—had very attractive feminine features. She fit the Selorongian beauty standard after all: high nose bridge, round eyes, thin lips, rough jaw, short forehead. "Ya regretting comin' out here yet, boy?"

  Jyo shook his head rapidly. "N-No, captain." Jyo was the only one that hadn't killed someone yet. Even the lanky Ramn had already slain someone with a lucky bow shot. So in this particular gang he was the least capable of all of them. The weakest and lamest.

  "Oy, what's this?" Teo reached down and gripped Jyo's hardened penis. "Why the fuck are ya hard, boy?" Teo grinned widely. "You like this, ah? You like being yelled at? You want to fuck me right here and now?!" Jyo could see, this close up, in conjunction with her dogshit breath, that her pupils were dilated to excessive degrees, and her irises vibrated impossibly within the whites of her eyes.

  "That's enough, captain," said a rough voice coming out from the shadows of their mountainside camp. A man in a black clothes, no armor, but with a gun slung across his back. His hair tied up into a tall headwrap, and a sparse moustache and goatee. He had intense, deep set eyes. A hawk-like demeanor. An old bandit, for sure. This was Tarramju, a name he had chosen from himself. And he was unparalleled with the gun, trained Heaven-Splitting Dragoon gun art. "Wouldn't you think?"

  Teo grinned, not looking at Tarramju. "Ya'll think you're the only ones that can do sexual assault, eh?" Teo rolled her eyes and let go of Jyo's balls. Jyo sniffled. "Pathetic. Double standards."

  "True," said Tarramju, with a soft grin. He both genuinely agreed and also only acquiesced to placate the heightened Teo. It wasn't a good idea to argue verbally with someone under the influence of Devil Tiger Datura. "But also, captain, I'm pretty sure we're going to need all of our members to be able to do what we need to do. We can't let our spear gang be broken. Besides, boss is not going to like if they lose an asset, yeah?"

  "Yeah yeah," said Teo, waving her hand. "Tarramju, what's the ETA on the target's auto? I'm getting antsy here."

  Tarramju chuckled. "Yeah, we can tell." He looked up at the lookout—one of the archers. All chopped short hair and broken nose and mismatched eyes. "Xejia! You see them?"

  Xejia said: "Should be any minute now." She readied her hunting bow. Mantra lined it. Her quiver was powered by some miniature machine that automatically ejected arrows with strengthening coatings and miniature explosive attachments. "I'll ready the engagement arrow just in case."

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  "Wait," said Tarramju, furrowing his eyebrows. "Who's in charge of remote tracking?"

  "That'd be Yantong," said Xeija, readying her bow.

  Yantong walked out of the small cave and said: "Heaven barges have honed in on their location," he said, adjusting his glasses (dusty, broken, and entirely lacking for his level of astigmatism and nearsightedness). His hair was a shock of hastily dyed white, cropped short, with a moustache that only congregated at the corners of his mouths and very small, slender, monolid eyes. "They should be here in a few minutes."

  Ramn said: "Th-The plan is... to get in and get the girls, right?"

  Teo took a swig of her beer again, kept within a gourd. "Right," she said. "And shut them up before you grab them."

  Tarramju heaved a sigh. "It sucks that human trafficking gigs are the biggest paying ones."

  "You're a fucking bandit Tarramju," said Teo. "Don't go having a fucking moral system now."

  "Who said it's morality?" said Tarramju, looking up at the night sky. "It's an ethical code. Ethics and morality are entirely two different things."

  "Do we know who these people are?" asked Ramn.

  Teo, without looking back at him, said: "Citizens of Kabini Town, that's mostly it. Farmers' daughters. You know how stupid people keep themselves in poverty because they keep having children they can't provide for? Let's just say we're doing that farmer a favor."

  "Farmer doesn't even own the land he tills," said Tarramju, biting the inside of his cheek. "Tragic, really. If he joined us, perhaps he'd have a chance. I know some Malachite Blade orators tried inviting him over, but he had his own ethical code I suppose."

  "His loss," said Teo. "In this world, it's kill or be killed. Simple as that."

  "They're here," Xeija said.

  The next thing to sound was her arrow cutting through the air, and then exploding the side of the autocar.

  The autocar careened out of control and slammed into the trees beside the road. Four young girls stayed within, together with their parents. The farmer and the farmer's wife. The farmer had been the driver. The arrow blossomed his face into a grotesque flower of bone and viscera. The mother's right side had been blown open as well—she was pregnant. The infant within was almost fully formed. But death had taken it.

  "Fool," said Yantong. "You could've killed the four girls!" he said.

  "They're fine," said Xeija, looking through her bow's looking-sight (a scope that allowed zooming through the use of mantric syllables etched onto its side). "Boss really does hook us up with some quality tech."

  Teo nodded. She clapped her hands and said: "Come on, like we rehearsed it."

  They came down to the autocar that had been blown open. Teo hurried over to the door left ajar, while the others stood watch. She forced that door open and found all four girls inside. One was in shock—she'd just lost her arm. The others were mostly fine save for the cuts and laceratations across their faces. One of them—what looked like the oldest of the four and the most beautiful too, with a square face and slender eyes—had a large piece of glass puncturing the right side of her chest. Not deep enough to puncture the lung. She'll be fine.

  "Look at what you've done," said Yantong. "How are we gonna sell these girls at the condition that they're in?"

  "Fool!" said Xeija again. "We can bring them to the malasurgeons and they'll be fine. Besides, some buyers want the disabled ones without arms and legs."

  Jyo shuddered again. So did Ramn. Despite this, they readied their shields and spears—standard factory made carbon-steel shields and spears. Eteched along their handles was the symbol of an eight-pointed star. The emblem of Haestann Weapons Company.

  Tarramju went in and hauled two of the girls—underweight and lanky in proportion—onto his shoulders. Teo did the same with the other two, easy to carry due to their light weights. "Come on, we got what we're here for. We have to patch them up before going out," said Tarramju.

  A water buffalo bellowed.

  "Your past be so shrouded in mystery, master," said Xing as afternoon settled in. They were just half an hour away from Kabini Town now at this point. "You've never told me where you studied your secrets, or why you're so fascinated with stars and whatnot. You are a nondescript obelisk teaching me the mysteries of the universe."

  "Too grand, too grand," said Koago, raising both hands in both accept and defeat. "But as with all heroes of the Realms Belligerent there are some things I cannot divulge, lest it ruin my mystery and secrecy."

  Xing laughed. It would have worked if her master was not such a dork at times. "I barely know anything about master's past other than the fact that you are part of the Ultramystic Sect and are teaching me a martial art that is foundational level for Ultramystics!"

  "Worry not, dear disciple," said Koago. "All things will be revealed in due time. And besides, your training and practice does not end with me! Nay, we will eventually travel to Selorong itself and reconvene with the Ultramystic Sutasoma so that you may formally be inducted into the mandalas of the Five Unsurpassable Omniscients, as well as take the Vow of the Ultramystic. But first we must make sure your Ardor Furnace is ready to be calcified and refined into a Cultivation Womb, which won't happen until you're in the Emergence Stage."

  "So where are we going?"

  "Like I said. Vigilantism," said Koago. "Fighting and applying the techniques you know to real life situations is one of the major ways to cultivate and accumulate Ardor and Merit. And so it must be."

  An autocar zoomed past them. A few beats passed. Xing took a swig of the coldwater within the magicked gourd. Koago furrowed his eyebrows and pulled out a long parasol. It was beautiful, though Xing could not find where Koago hid it all this time. It was the color of mauve, with darker purples speckling it in patterns of death jasmines. He opened it—

  —an explosion burst in front of them. The autocar careened out of control, slammed into the trees on the side of the road.

  Shadows came out of the wood.

  "M-Master—!"

  "Malachite Blade Bandits," said Koago. "Looks like we won't have to go bandit hunting." He grinned. He rose to his feet and readied his parasol. He pulled out the blade from the parasol—a long and thing blade glistening black. Also made of meteorite iron from the night sky.

  "W-Wait, are we fighting them, guro?"

  The more masculine figure pulled out a few girls from the wreckage of the autocar and hauled them over their shoulders. Xing said: "What are they doing?"

  "Human trafficking, dear student. Unsheathe your sword-axe if you wish to cultivate Ardor and Virtue!"

  Xing nodded. She stepped gracefully down from the water buffalo and pulled the sword-axe from its sheathe. She hefted the thing and made it rest upon her shoulders. Though it was wide and heavy, she could easily move it around due to the greater weight distribution of the magicked meteorite iron. It was a formidable sight, to see a five foot tall girl carrying a five foot three long blade.

  "Good," said Koago, smirking. He fluttered down from his sitting position and tapped the water buffalo behind his head.

  The water buffalo bellowed.

  The bandits all turned to Xing and Koago.

  "Remember, dear disciple Xing," said Koago. "They will have the numbers. And in general, having more numbers is going to benefit you more. But sometimes, very skilled practitioners can measure in numbers of two or three. Can you count how many of them there are?"

  Xing was quick. "Six, master."

  "Good. You account for two of them. Four of them have weak Furnaces. But the other two... one has a Cultivation Womb in the shape of a revolving bullet, and another has a Cultivation Womb set ablaze by Devil Tiger Datura."

  "Wh-what?" Xing hadn't thought they'd be fighting other martial artists.

  "Surprised? Cultivation is for the masses, remember? Anyone can cultivate with the right elixirs and the right training," said Koago. "But we only transcend through adversity, dear Xing Naramao. This is what I mean when I say: 'Commit Tremendous Violence.' Now therefore..." Koago raised the flats of his parasol, and he flung it at Tarramju and Teo. It spun forward like a wheel of sharp weapons, cutting through the air.

  Tarramju leapt out of the way, while Teo stepped forward, roared, and met the bladed parasol with her longknife. The parasol chipped as it bit into Teo's longknife, sending shrapnels in every direction. Cutting at Teo, Jyo, Ramn, and Yantong, and even some of the passed out girls.

  Koago turned to Xing and nodded, solemn. "Commit Tremendous Violence."