Maksym Pachesiuk
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Moon Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 94: Round Four
🕑 Added 2025-06-22 23:36:01 +0000 UTC“You’re an unbelievably lucky son of a bitch,” Kate declared as Tesfaye’s match ended. “Hey! Easy,” I said. No need to insult anyone’s paren
“You’re an unbelievably lucky son of a bitch,” Kate declared as Tesfaye’s match ended.
“Hey! Easy,” I said. No need to insult anyone’s parents — neither mine nor Jake’s.
“Sorry!” Kate said. “But you’ve got every chance of making it to the semi-finals! She got hit hard. If you blow this fight, I’ll bury you myself!”
I leaned away and looked at Kate with concern.
“I felt calmer when you didn’t believe in my victory.”
“Don’t worry. I still don’t believe you’ll win. I’m only talking about the semi-final.”
“Oh! That’s so much more reassuring!” I said with a touch of sarcasm. “Wait! This is the fourth round, isn’t it?” I remembered. “Did Marlon lose his match?”
I pulled up the tournament bracket.
Marlon had won his first match, but withdrawn from the next round.
Reason?
I’d ask later. No time for that now. I needed to draft a plan for the next fight.
Apparently, Kate was thinking the same thing.
“So what’s your plan?” she asked. “How are you going to counter Tesfaye? She might be injured, but she won’t hand you the win.”
“How do you know? Maybe she’ll withdraw too.”
“That’s what you’re banking on?”
“No,” I admitted. “I’m thinking I’ll take that spear from her.”
“Again?!” Kate asked.
“It’s a working tactic!” I defended myself.
“One she’ll be ready for! Although…”
“Exactly,” I said. “She’ll only have time to watch one fight. And it’ll be the most recent.”
“But in both fights, you closed the distance.”
“In the first one, I didn’t. And I don’t really have a choice. Either I get close or she pokes me with those spikes.”
“Speaking of the spikes. Didn’t they seem pretty weak to you?”
I nodded, then asked.
“Should I ignore them?”
“No, they’ll still be a distraction,” she said. “I’m thinking you should block them with your shield. She loses control when they hit. You stop them, pick them up — chuck them out of the arena.”
“Makes sense,” I agreed.
Tesfaye didn’t forfeit the fight. We met on a plastic arena with columns — not the one I’d already fought on, but an exact replica. Near the centre, there was a large wet patch from a recent clean-up.
The plastic gave the girl a small problem. It was too hard for her to plant her spear into it, and she clearly wasn’t willing to just lay it down.
Indirectly, that created a problem for me too. I was hoping she’d quickly throw all her spikes at me, but Tesfaye decided to throw them one at a time.
“Begin!” the judge commanded.
She hurled the first spike, and I fired off a Chain Punch series and activated a light shield a split-second before the spike passed over my head. Even though it only clipped the edge, it shattered the shield. I managed to reactivate it just in time to catch the second spike, and the third she threw much higher, forcing me to jump to intercept it.
She held onto the fourth and final spike, clearly realising that tossing it would leave her completely without secondary weapons.
I tried provoking her with more projections, but the accuracy of Chain Punches still left much to be desired, and it wasn’t hard to dodge a Hook from that distance.
I stopped and assessed my chances of disarming her of the last spike.
She didn’t rush. She began circling me slowly.
Damn it. If I waited too long, she’d just go and collect the others. I picked up the first spike… then the second…
And she threw the last one at me.
I couldn’t activate the shield! I fired a short burst of Chain Punches and took the spike to the chest. Her throw packed more of a punch than I’d expected — it knocked me back hard. And then I saw the spear following right behind the spike, along with its wielder.
Monkey allowed me to leap aside just in time. The spear hit the cocoon of my shield at a sharp angle — and punched through it. I twisted my body just like I’d practised with Cinar, and launched a Hook on an uppercut arc. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, it struck the spear. The projection detonated, sending the tip upward, and it slammed into the girl’s helmet. Now she was holding the spear vertically.
I Monkey-leapt towards her, grabbed the shaft between her hands with my left, and fired a Hook at her jaw with my right. The technique nearly fused with the actual movement. The projection had only a few centimetres left to travel.
Tesfaye yanked the spear back, pulling away and nearly dodging the blow, but the projection grazed her with a silver pinkie and detonated. I felt the backlash in my hand. She felt it much closer in her head.
She staggered and released the spear.
“Yes!” I couldn’t help but shout, though I quickly reined myself in and hurled the spear out of the arena. One of the medics caught it.
Tesfaye got back to her feet, swaying — but she stayed upright.
She still had one spike in her hand.
“Wanna give up?” I asked.
In response, she aimed the spike at my gut and dashed forward.
“Fuck!”
I barely dodged. Her spike scraped a long line down my side.
That was it — no more mercy.
While she was still being pulled forward, I hit her with a Hook between the shoulder blades. She started falling before the telekinetic pull of her technique even stopped. The girl sprawled across the plastic floor.
I twisted again and launched a Hook from above. Then twisted the other way and sent another crashing down.
My Hooks hit like hammers, pinning her to the floor, giving her no chance to get back up. Clearly, she had no formation to protect against that sort of pressure. But twisting my body for each strike took too much time, so I repeated the Monkey stomp trick.
“Stop the fight!” the judge ordered, and almost immediately added, “Victory goes to Sullivan!”
Tesfaye rolled onto her back and lifted her visor.
“I can still fight!” she declared stubbornly.
The judge pointed at the medic standing just outside the perimeter, still holding her spear.
“The doc says you’ve got no chance. Sullivan’s in much better shape right now, and continuing would just be a beating nobody needs. Honestly, he just doesn’t want more work for himself. But I agree — you can fight, but you can’t win. Do you accept that? Because if not, we can go on. Back on your stomach, and let Sullivan keep stomping you.”
Tesfaye let out a bitter breath. The adrenaline from the fight had left her, and she could think clearly again.
“No… I’m done.”
“Excellent. Can you walk to the medics on your own?”
“Yeah,” she groaned like an old lady, getting to her feet.
I helped her gather her spikes. She even thanked me.
I was in the semi-finals!
Waiting for me there was Tobias Okoro. I knew this guy — I’d seen his fights in previous tournaments. Two tournaments ago, he’d taken third place. Well, let’s hope he sticks to that placement this time too.
Okoro was a Mace cultivator who fought with dual one-handed hammers, but used an Air-type movement technique. Not Shoal’s ‘solid air sliding’ style — more like a variation of my own Monkey. An airburst would propel him forward like a spring. On top of that, he had a formation that protected him against both Palm and Fist Qi.
He was an absolute nightmare of an opponent for me. In the matches I’d watched, he was literally smashing through his opponents’ armour. And I didn’t think my weapon-snatching trick would work here. Try to grab one hammer and you’d get the other one straight in the head.
Still, it was too early to draw conclusions. I had a few minutes to watch his last match.
In the previous round, he’d faced someone else I’d been preparing for: Mariya Skoryk. She cultivated both Point and Wood, like Cinar, but her fighting style couldn’t have been more different. First off, she didn’t have a massive pike. Instead, she used oversized needles she hurled at her opponent. Technically, they were shorter than standard spikes — less than twenty centimetres long, with a steel tip and a wooden shaft thinner than half a centimetre. And they weren’t stored in a bandolier.
They were mounted on her forearms. A hedgehog of needles clung to her bracers, and the wood itself crawled into her hand when needed.
Even knowing the girl would lose, I still found myself rooting for her.
The judge gave the starting signal, and the sand exploded under Okoro’s feet from an airburst. He launched himself at the girl, kicking up a cloud of sand behind him.
Skoryk flicked her hands, and needles sprouted between the fingers of her clenched fists. She slashed her right hand — three needles shot toward Okoro. His formation didn’t block them. One steel tip bounced off his armour, two stuck in his chestplate.
Okoro raised his right hammer to strike, but Skoryk lifted her left arm and jumped. First time I saw this move, I couldn’t figure out how she’d done it. Thought it was some fancy special technique. Turned out, it was just a standard Point dash movement — she simply aimed her needles straight up, and they dragged her into the air telekinetically.
What came next was a new trick. Okoro couldn’t stop that quickly, though he managed to slow down. Skoryk slashed with her right again, letting three fresh needles crawl into her grip between her fingers. She completed her previous technique and activated it again — right hand aimed straight at Okoro’s back.
She dropped onto him like a hawk from the sky. All three needles pierced his armour just above the left shoulder blade, but the wood couldn’t handle the pressure. Two of the three snapped on impact. Skoryk took him down — but hit the ground herself as well.
Okoro screamed in pain. His left hammer hit the floor, but his right hand clung to the weapon like iron. Somehow, he managed to activate his movement technique with that same hand, without letting go. In one explosive push, he flung himself off the ground, threw Skoryk off, and landed upright.
She didn’t have time to get up.
The hammer came down on her shoulder.
Boom-m-m!
A huge dent was left behind — bigger than the hammerhead itself.
Boom-m-m!
The next hit slammed into her helmet. It crumpled the faceplate and tore it clean off, along with a good number of teeth.
“Stop!” the judge barked. But he didn’t rely on the command alone — he lunged towards Okoro and grabbed the hammer just before it fell again.
“Stand down, cadet!” he barked. “That’s an order!”
Okoro stared at him through his visor for a long second, then finally switched off berserker mode and nodded.
“Understood, sir. You can let go of the hammer now.”
The judge let go and stepped aside to make way for the medics. Then, just to clear any remaining doubt, he said clearly:
“Victory to Okoro.”
The cadet raised his hammer again — this time in a victorious gesture. His left arm dangled uselessly by his side.
“How badly is he hurt?” I asked Kate.
“Left arm’s definitely not going to move the same way again,” she said. “But if the formation engravings weren’t damaged, he’ll still show up for the match. You’re an easy opponent for him.”
“If he comes in with just one hammer, I’ll try to disarm him.”
“He’ll show up with both,” Kate assured me. “They’ll pull the needles, give him painkillers. Maybe he won’t swing it like before, but I doubt he’ll be unable to use it entirely.”
“What stimulants do you have left?” she asked.
Comments
Jonathan Griffith
Tyftc!
