Maksym Pachesiuk
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Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 120: Lights Back On
🕑 Added 2025-08-06 23:36:00 +0000 UTCGetting onto the arena without visibly limping was no small task. To move my nearly numb, frozen left leg properly, I had to tense my whole body, and risk another spasm. But I tried. Sweating, clenching my teeth so hard they creaked, I forced myself to maintain a facade of calm.
The pain was so intense, the darkness behind my eyes so frequent, that I no longer believed I’d make it to the fight.
Who gets third place if both candidates are too injured to continue?
The one whose match lasts longer.
I couldn’t fight, but I could stall.
Skoryk was visibly limping. If someone were watching us from the sidelines, they’d think she was the more injured one.
That could work in my favour.
We faced each other across the arena, a battlefield scattered with massive concrete blocks — a playground for Mad Monkey, if I were still capable of executing it.
The judge gave the command, and Skoryk moved first, flinging her hands outward and launching six needles into the air.
I started walking slowly toward her.
The needles traced a wide arc, circled the arena, and aligned into a formation to strike my back. A sharp pulse of danger flared like a red-hot nail being hammered under my left shoulder blade.
I had a defensive formation that projected a series of energy shields to intercept incoming attacks, but at my request, Alan had angled them not just to block, but to deflect blows. Each lower layer was offset slightly in the direction of the tilt, so enemy weapons would glance off, even if they tore through the upper layers.
A clever solution against rapiers, spears, and Cinar’s pick. But it worked poorly against small, numerous projectiles.
If the needles struck the same spot one after another, then after the third or fourth micro-shield, there’d be nothing left to stop them.
Whether I wanted to or not, whether I could or not — I had to move.
I Monkey-stepped left. I don’t think I could’ve channelled qi through my left leg without injuring myself further. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I could push off properly with it anymore.
Pain!
I was in hell.
Everything went dark. Panic surged, but then the light returned to my eyes, and in that one flash of clarity, just before the next wave of darkness crashed over me — I raised my hands.
Just one, really — my left arm and the entire side of my body, jaw included, had locked up from the pain.
Darkness wrapped around me once more, and when it cleared, a few needles from that first volley struck me from different angles.
Because the hits weren’t precise, the formation held.
I stood with one arm raised, and Skoryk didn’t rush to attack again.
“Are you forfeiting?” the judge asked.
“Not exactly,” I said. “I was hoping she would,” I added, looking at Skoryk. “Care to surrender?”
“Are you insane?” she asked, clearly baffled.
“Not at all. It’s a solid strategy,” I replied. “I used it last time to save my strength for the third-place match.”
Skoryk fell silent.
She was still standing with her right arm drawn back for a throw. Three long needles were clenched between her fingers, three more in her other hand, held protectively in front of her.
My offer had clearly thrown her off.
“Then why aren’t you using it again?” she asked.
“For a few reasons,” I said, forcing my voice to stay steady. “I could take second place. I could beat you. But I’m not exactly in peak condition,” I laughed, blending truth with lies as I gestured with my right hand to the hole in my left side. “I figure, before I beat you, you’ll make my condition worse, and that’ll hurt my chances in the fight for first. So I’m offering you a deal: give me second, and you take third.”
Shit. I let that slip — I shouldn’t have said second! I should’ve said first!
But Skoryk seemed to miss it. She was thinking.
“You think you can beat Gunther?”
I shrugged, and that simple gesture triggered a spasm that stole my voice. For a few seconds, I couldn’t speak. Skoryk, luckily, seemed to interpret it as hesitation.
“He’s fighting Dubois,” I managed to get out before the silence became suspicious. “And Dubois is a focused bastard and one hell of a fighter. He’ll soften him up.”
Another wave of darkness hit, and I swayed.
Stand straight, damn you!
Skoryk said nothing.
Whatever her answer would be, I couldn’t afford to miss it.
I had to be ready to surrender if she declined.
And she would decline. Most likely.
The picture blurred. Skoryk’s figure lost all clarity.
My left leg buckled, and I dropped to one knee.
The arena vanished into darkness. And in that darkness, a supernova flared.
My stomach swelled, then exploded in agony.
It ceased to exist.
My stomach…
M… st…
Thoughts tangled into a tight knot of images and sounds, tearing through the white-hot glare of pain.
Then everything vanished, like someone had flicked off the lights.
When they flicked back on, icy air tore into my lungs, sharp as a needle that reached all the way down to my bladder. My eyelids felt heavy, begging to close again, but I forced them open to assess the situation.
The world slowly started making sense.
Above me glowed a familiar rounded surface — dim and matte, like a thin sheet of ice hiding the world on the other side. I was cocooned in the tight structure of a medical pod. The walls around me were smooth and cold, and beneath my back, rear, and legs, I could feel that strange gel-like substance again.
As usual when I'd taken serious damage — I was naked.
One memory dragged the others behind it. I remembered how I’d ended up here. There wasn’t much room in the capsule, but I managed to place a hand on my abdomen, where Dubois had stabbed me—
Wait. No.
That was Cinar this time, not Dubois.
Bloody spikes!
Still, credit where it’s due — good idea.
My little prison reacted to the movement. It shuddered, and began to lift me from horizontal to vertical.
It didn’t raise fully upright, stopping at a slight incline, but enough for my weight to shift onto my feet.
The frosted panel in front of me slid upward, and the frame beneath it split in two and opened like a door.
I instinctively covered myself, just in case someone was there to greet me.
Zola arched a brow at my modestly folded arms, rolled her eyes, and handed me a pair of shorts.
“Want me to turn around?” she asked cheerfully.
“Are you ever going to let that one go?”
“Not until one of us kicks the bucket,” she confirmed.
“Then turn around,” I said.
Once I’d pulled the shorts on, I could finally inspect the markings on my abdomen.
No scars again.
The two pink diamonds from the stilettos and the feline-slit scar from the rapier had already faded into the skin, but a new oval imprint from the wooden spike remained, clear as ever.
I remembered how it had gone last time.
“Two-hour break, then back into the pod?”
Wouldn’t hurt to hit the toilet either — my bladder was full. My intestines, on the other hand, felt utterly empty. My stomach growled, shaking off the artificial sleep and begging for food.
“Roughly,” Zola confirmed, raising a scanner to my side.
I raised an eyebrow.
“You even understand what that thing’s telling you?”
“I’m not an idiot, Jake!” she snapped back.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” But if I didn’t understand any of it, did that make me the idiot? “I’ve just never seen a first-year trusted with a scanner before.”
“I trained with the Doc,” she said, clearly meaning Bulsara. “Now go to the toilet before your lunch gets cold.”
Lunch.
The tray included termite larvae — the only solid thing on it. Everything else was some shade of puree. Zola knew I liked the larvae, but she didn’t know I hadn’t known what they were back when I’d started liking them. So when she mentioned how I should be grateful she’d convinced Bulsara to add them to the menu, I kept my mouth shut.
She’d made the effort — no need to ruin it. I scooped the first spoonful into my mouth.
Once you got past the mental barrier, they were delicious.
“Nice haircut,” I said between chewing and swallowing.
Zola narrowed her eyes, trying to gauge whether I was messing with her.
I rolled mine in return.
“I mean it!”
The short black fuzz from before had turned into a dense crown of tight curls that made her look a bit like a dandelion. But it suited her. It suited this body.
“Thanks,” she said. “It doesn’t take nearly as much effort when you do it on autopilot. And I don’t miss my old hair as much now. Now that it’s not driving me mad, I even remembered there was a time I wanted curls.” She tugged one. “Though not this tight. And I still miss my old body. And the tattoo.”
Last time she’d said something like that, it had led to tears and blame.
But I’d said something about the tattoo back then.
This time, I stayed very quiet and shoved another spoonful in my mouth, pretending I was too busy chewing to reply.
“Try not to choke,” Zola said dryly.
Ha! Dodged it.
I spent a good while working my jaw. And considering you don’t really chew puree, that meant I ate way faster than I’d planned.
A few minutes later, the trays were clean, and I moved on to the tea.
If I just started chugging tea, it’d look suspicious, so I took a sip and tried to think of a safe topic. Something that wouldn’t trigger her trauma.
“Oh! Right!” I nearly spilled the tea. “Tournament results?”
“I was wondering when you’d ask,” she grimaced. Her face alone told me all I needed.
“Fu-u-uck!”
“Fourth place,” Zola confirmed.
“Gunther, Dubois, Skoryk?”
“Gunther, Skoryk, Dubois,” she corrected. “Dubois didn’t fight Gunther. He used your tactic — surrendered.”
“Ha! Didn’t expect that from him,” I said, taking another sip. “He always struck me as the type to go down swinging.”
“He just evaluated his chances properly. He took a beating in the earlier rounds too. Not as bad as you, but still. What the hell were you thinking?!” Zola snapped, angry now.
I was thinking about the crystal, but no way I was telling her that.
“I was thinking they were going to fight,” I said.
“They didn’t. And Skoryk didn’t fight either. She didn’t even step into the arena. After they dragged you out and announced her victory, she withdrew and went straight to the infirmary. She got discharged yesterday. Was in the room next door,” Zola added with a nod toward the wall.
“How long was I out?”
“Three days,” Zola replied.
And how much longer to go?
“Same again.”
I just hoped Zola wasn’t the only one watching me while I was stuck in the pod. I made a very nice target for demons in this state.
Hopefully someone was watching over me.
Comments
Jonathan Griffith
Tyftc!
