Maksym Pachesiuk
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Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 98: Scars and Scores
🕑 Added 2025-06-29 23:36:01 +0000 UTCAs Bulsara later explained to me, Nur’s breakdown had a very specific cause. She’d received a video message from Zola’s parents. The school’s bureaucracy had automatically notified them of Zola’s improving physical condition. Her whole big family sent congratulations and warm wishes for her recovery, eager to hear back from her as soon as possible.
But Nur didn’t see those people as her parents or siblings. And she couldn’t contact her actual parents.
No family, no friends — no one to confide in.
Even I had pulled away from her after the incident with the ring. I’d done it for her own safety, but I doubted anyone had taken the time to explain that to her.
High stress and a brutal schedule pushing her to the edge of physical exhaustion had nearly broken her. Good thing Bulsara had been monitoring her vitals and found a sort of solution. Now we were officially “acquainted” and allowed to run into each other around the School. It put Zola at risk, sure — but the alternative had been worse, and Bulsara decided it was worth the gamble. Especially since both of our first two meetings had taken place alone in the med block.
For me, it felt like two half-hour windows between opening and closing my eyes. In reality, two full days had passed.
From what Zola told me, I hadn’t suffered too badly — just a few perforations to the intestines. Dubois, though, had taken it far worse.
With my final strike, I’d driven the stiletto into his gut. The blow hadn’t been strong enough to pierce the back plate of his armour. I hadn’t infused it with Piercing Qi, so basic physics applied — steel versus steel. The stiletto had punched through Dubois’s abdomen and scraped along the inner wall of his backplate. No clean exit wounds for him. His intestines had been shredded in multiple places and required painstaking repair.
Dubois was stuck in the infirmary for a week. A week with no cultivation, no training, no work.
Was it worth it?
Of course not.
On the other hand, I’d only lost two days and one cultivation session and in return, I’d earned three hundred and five points. Which was a bloody fortune.
Wait!
Dubois got points too.
Second place earned 30% of the prize pool — that was 183 points. So now it was harder to judge whether it had been worth it for him. He’d lost a suit of armour, sure, but I doubted that made much of a dent in his family’s finances.
My armour had taken damage too, but I decided not to pester Alan until I was officially discharged. One thing I had decided, though — screw protection against Palm techniques. I wanted a formation that could counter Point.
They released me late in the evening. Not Bulsara, not Robinson, not even Diego or Zola — it was some random third-period on duty, who neither knew nor cared who I was. He scanned my abdomen, cleared my record, and told me I was free to go.
He gave me a standard jumpsuit and showed me the door.
Back at the dorm, though, my return caused a minor uproar.
My guys wanted details, late hour be damned. I’d been lying around in a pod for a while — so why not?
We made tea, loaded up on junk food from the vending machines, and stayed up till the middle of the night, going over every one of my fights almost second by second.
And finally, I found out what had happened to Marlon.
His opponent was Angus Lloyd — not exactly top-tier, but he had a real shot at the final, considering he’d placed fourth two tournaments ago — just one step shy of the podium. Mace-Fist versus Point-Air. The fight was a true clash of philosophies: precision and refined control against brute destructive force.
Marlon used only standard steel spikes and no other weapons. He launched them with powerful bursts of compressed air, then guided each one mid-flight using standard Point telekinesis. The spikes curved, adjusted their trajectories mid-air, slipped into blind spots, struck from the flanks or from multiple angles at once.
The most interesting part? He didn’t lose control after impact. Every Point cultivator I’d faced so far lost connection with the projectile the moment it hit something — that’s how I disarmed Tesfaye.
But with Marlon, it was different. I think it had something to do with air. Some technique that allowed him to re-establish control before the spikes hit the ground. Still, it had limits — once a spike hit the dirt, he couldn’t lift it again remotely.
Lloyd was the opposite — encased in heavy armour, wearing reinforced gauntlets overlaid with knuckle-dusters. His projections hit like cannonballs.
The first minutes were standard exchange of fire. Both kept their distance, both launched their best attacks. Lloyd struck with fast projections; Marlon propelled his spikes with air, sending them straight for the chest — only for them to glance off a flawless formation.
It was a variation of the layered shield type, but the golden hexagons didn’t appear in a tight grid at a straight angle. They fanned out diagonally, like someone spreading playing cards across a table. Each new card shifted slightly sideways. A spike hitting that formation didn’t meet resistance directly — it slid off at an angle. Even when it broke through the hexagons, the projectile was deflected away from the armour.
That was the kind of formation I wanted on my own suit.
Lloyd started calm and confident. Marlon was the one dodging to avoid projections, but he quickly realised something wasn’t right.
Marlon had an impressive bandolier — twelve spikes. He fired off half of them within seconds. Logically, which is how I would’ve thought, those spikes should’ve hit the formation and been done. Game over. But it didn’t take Lloyd long to notice he’d already taken more than six hits, and the spikes kept swarming him like an angry hive.
Sitting on my bunk, watching the recording on my tablet, I saw that Marlon had lost two spikes — the ones knocked to the ground by Lloyd’s projections. But in the heat of battle, Lloyd didn’t notice. So he charged forward, hoping to beat Marlon down with his knuckle-dusters.
Closing the distance turned out to be in Marlon’s favour.
He held back a spike until Lloyd was practically in his face — then fired. The defence couldn’t deflect it. The first few hexagons burned out under the pressure, and the spike still had enough momentum to punch through his abdomen.
Until that moment, Lloyd clearly hadn’t used any painkillers. He went down like a rag doll. Marlon even had to step back.
Once Lloyd’s body came to a stop, Marlon aligned every spike still in the air into a neat, tight train. The ‘train’ arced up, rose toward the dome — and dropped straight down on Lloyd.
The first spike bounced off his remaining defence. The second punched through his abdominal plating. The third drove the second one in deeper. And the fourth sealed the deal.
Despite all that, Lloyd suddenly sprang to his feet and, within a second, closed the gap to Marlon. He landed a punch straight to the gut.
Marlon tried to dodge, but the knuckle-duster smashed into his armour, crumpling the plates and pushing them sideways.
After that, the match was stopped. Lloyd was taken to the infirmary, and Marlon was declared the winner. Only — his right side was jammed. He could no longer bend to the right, and his mentor insisted he withdraw from the next match.
That wrapped up our post-battle breakdown, and we went to sleep. In the morning, I ran into Lin Jiao on my way to the cafeteria. He politely explained that while Dubois and I had been recovering in the infirmary, the rest of the squad had to cover our shifts.
Since the discharge slip I'd received from that third-period in the infirmary clearly stated that I wasn’t to exert myself for two more days, I volunteered to cover all future shifts during that time on the condition that the others make sure I get time for meals.
No one objected.
So I had breakfast and returned to our block. On the way, I passed Tariq and his group and gave them a polite little wave. The entire pack twitched in unison.
From the look of things, something had shifted. Tarik seemed to have lost his position as leader, passing the reins to Kim. It made me smile — not that anyone in the group understood the reason. It wasn’t smugness. Just relief. I had a strong hunch Kim wasn’t going to cause me problems. Whether he’d help was another question — one I had no answer to until after lunch, when I got a message from him.
Incoming message: D. S. Kim
Subject: Stairs, 20 minutes
Content:
Leaving my block meant leaving my post, but I doubted anything would happen in just a few minutes. And I really doubted Kim’s lot would risk jumping me. Not now — not after I’d just won the weekly tournament.
I was right. Kim showed up alone.
I had to wait a bit, kill some time, pace up and down to make it look like I was on duty. But when Kim appeared, I smiled and stepped toward him.
He looked me over, glanced around, and adjusted his pace so no one would be nearby when we crossed paths.
“Kourosh Mehrdadian,” he whispered.
“What?” I asked, puzzled.
“Fuck you!” he said louder, just enough for others to hear, and turned to walk off.
“Hey!” I called after him, Monkey-leapt in close, grabbed him by the collar and pulled him in to whisper in his ear. “I didn’t catch a bloody word of that!”
“Kourosh Mehrdadian!” he hissed quietly through clenched teeth. “Sells stuff. Second period. People are watching!”
“So ask me if this is how I’m supposed to defend order. Be a prick about it.”
“All right,” he said smugly. “Is this how you defend order?” Then he threw out something that sounded suspiciously like what I’d said to Tariq in the showers. “Or do you just really want to kiss me? Sorry, I’m straight! Maybe try finding a match among the other admin lapdogs.”
I shoved him away.
“You’d better watch that mouth, or it’s going to end up somewhere it won’t be able to come back from to tell anyone how straight you are.”
“Oh, you sound like an expert!”
I raised an eyebrow and spelled it out.
“Don’t push it. Or things’ll get unpleasant.”
“Just fuck off, man!” he said and quickly made himself scarce.
I ran the name through my head a few times so I wouldn’t forget it.
Kourosh Mehrdadian, Kourosh Mehrdadian.
Nothing catastrophic had happened in the block while I was gone. At least, Liang Shi hadn’t ranted in the chat or called me directly. I messaged him and sent over the name Kim had given me.
Twenty minutes later, Liang Shi was already at my door.
“What exactly do you know about this Kourosh?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I admitted. “From here, it’s your problem.”
“Well, if he’s a seller, I need a buyer,” Liang Shi grinned.
I furrowed my brows and tilted my head, giving him the best disapproving look I could manage.
“You want me collecting new stabs?” I asked, tapping my gut. “At least the tournament came with a decent prize pot.”
“No…” Liang Shi waved the idea off. “Why would the champion need illegal boosters? That’d raise suspicion. Find me some loser.”
“Tariq,” I blurted out without thinking. “But fair warning — he’s dumb as a brick, and slow as hell. He’ll probably screw up anything you give him.”
Comments
Matthew Bernardin
Now that's a colossally good dumb idea
Jonathan Griffith
Tyftc!
