Relationships

Four was unable to make it to dinner that night, needing to rest for his body to recuperate. By the time Thirteen reached the dining hall and acquired his food, the others were all speaking animatedly. Forty-five excitedly asked if he would be watching her fight with Ten tomorrow and he replied "Of course." wishing luck to them both.

When dinner came to an end, Thirteen decided not to cultivate his Grand Life Tome as he did not have an abundance of energy left, most being used already to heal himself. Instead, he simply practiced the many mental exercises of Unhindered Motion, including tracing multiple complicated geometric shapes at a time, and then running simulations of fights against a group and how he would react to the best and worst case of their attacks, followed by everything in between.

When he awoke the next day, he attended half a day of classes before heading to the dojo to watch Ten and Forty-five's fight. They had all come from the same class and so it was quite an excitable walk to the dojo. Forty-five seemed overly determined while Ten was practically bouncing.

Unlike Thirteen, Ten didn't care much for the daily grind, but enjoyed fighting immensely. She enjoyed the thrill and excitement more than anything else, which Thirteen could definitely understand, having a slight case of it himself.

When they reached the dojo, it was mostly empty. They had come here immediately after classes and there weren't nearly as many people to contest the space as there once was.

"Go get em" He said encouragingly to Ten as she then moved to the center of the clearing.

He caught Forty-five sending him a glance and realised he was picking sides in a spar among friends. Correcting himself he smiled and gave a nod to her "You got this."

'Might as well render both comments meaningless' he thought, as Forty-five nodded in response and moved to the clearing.

As a personal spar, the duel was not moderated by anyone, but there were always helpers and a medic in the dojo. In fact Thirteen had even wandered in here when it was completely empty of students before to find that those on duty had to remain here nonetheless. They had all been sprawled out in the middle of the cold floor talking when he entered. They hastily got up to resume a professional appearance when they noticed him. It was truly quite funny.

Forty-five conjured her sabre and smallsword from her basic spatial inventory. They each had one, but qi cultivators required no inbuilt gestures to retrieve items, able to use their qi to carry their will and manipulate the item.

Surprisingly enough, Ten conjured not her daggers, nor anything to aid her unarmed combat, but a bow.

Just as the two finished their mental preparations, Four quietly entered the dojo and moved to stand beside Thirteen.

"Good to see you're up" Thirteen whispered, eyes still on the battle about to begin.

"Can't miss this can I?"

"One moment."

Thirteen raised his two hands before him, each of them somewhat cupped, and then clapped loudly.

That was the sign to begin and immediately Ten blurred and vanished, reappearing further back from her original position, drawing an arrow of pure force that manifested along her bow.

Forty-five shot forward immediately, having expected a retreat from Ten now that she held a bow and made to close the distance. Ten employed all manner of high speed maneuvers as she shot many arrows at Forty-five, most of which were deflected or dodged, only one grazing her.

Forty-five on the other hand took a different approach, she began to move smoothly as her footwork became complicated and impossible to follow, her whole form leaving many afterimages despite her moving slowly.

Gradually a silver mist began to form within the bounds of their duel, and Forty-five became obscured. Unfortunately, the fight then became impossible to watch as spectators. Thirteen tried to see through the mist with lifesight, but that too was blocked.

As he was focusing intently on the shifting shadows and silhouettes within the mist, Four turned his head to look at him, before returning his gaze to the mist.

"Can I give you some advice brother?" He asked.

"Shoot."

"Hurry up."

Thirteen looked at Four with confusion.

"We only have so many years here before we will be separated and stationed elsewhere. Don't waste our final four years delaying and causing friction with the others."

Thirteen had an idea as to what Four was talking about, but was simply shocked to hear this kind of advice from him of all people. Four was two years older than Thirteen, but had never shown much of an interest in girls. Perhaps it was his unfortunate luck that none of the girls left were his age. After all, Four was now the oldest among their generation along with a few other boys his age, most being of the same year as Thirteen and Ten.

As he was thinking about it, the silver mist was dispelled with a mighty gust to reveal a smiling Ten, having ditched her bow and hopping from left foot to right with bare fists held loosely before her.

Forty-five was nowhere to be seen at first, but soon appeared at three places around Ten, her flying small sword appearing in six places. Ten didn't have time to confirm which were real, but she could eliminate some of them, while dodging and striking at others. She relied heavily on her newly awakened Intuition for this, and managed to land a fierce roundhouse to the head of the real Forty-five after getting to safety.

Forty-five fell towards the ground but recovered in one swift motion, rolling back to her feet as the flying smallsword assaulted Ten. Forty-five cultivated the Butterfly Sword art which allowed her an incredible amount of control over the flying blade. It moved erratically as it avoided anything that would deflect it from it's target, causing Ten more trouble than she'd expected.

At this time Forty-five attacked once more, mixing illusions in between her attacks. For the entire fight she had conjured illusory blades along with her real one to trick Ten, but it had failed to strike a critical wound. That is, until Forty-five subtly conjured a second real blade, identical to the first. There were now two real blades among the illusions, and Forty-five made one of them appear obviously fake, perfectly mirroring the actions of some other illusions.

It worked and while Ten deflected the original blade, the second one stabbed through the back of her shoulder. Forty-five immediately closed in to finish the battle, causing illusory duplicates of herself, while her original flying blade vanished completely, becoming invisible while being replaced with an illusion.

Again, Ten defended against Forty-five only to be cut by the invisible blade.

Recognizing the bad flow of things, Ten employed her qi to force the smallsword in her shoulder out, and then took her speed to its peak. She vanished immediately, reappearing with a firm palm strike to the gut of an unaware Forty-five.

Like Nine, Ten had also picked up an art to cultivate her speed. But that was not all. Ten's palm strike had left a glowing sigil on her target, and with a mental command, the many arrows of force scattered around the battle each conjured a spectral chain that made contact with that sigil, binding Forty-five.

Forty-five could not be held completely by these chains, but was unable to move too quickly and could no longer hide which was the real her.

As Ten closed in and locked Forty-five into close quarters combat, parts of her body would phase out whenever struck against, preventing hits, while her palms, knees, and kicks would phase back in the moment she struck.

She could not keep her entire body immaterial, but partial phasing performed with practiced speed and reflexes was truly a devastating ability. Ten immediately established the new momentum of the fight in an unending, high speed barrage of attacks, every one of them interfering with the flow of Qi, and disrupting the soul in minor ways, leading to headaches, confusion, and most importantly, a lack of control over Forty-five's flying swords and illusions.

Forty-five tried to bring it back with her new sabre arts and even manifested the silver mist to act as a domain-like ability, bolstering herself and hampering her opponent, but nevertheless Ten pushed on.

It ended with Ten compressing an air palm before her own and delivering a critical blow to Forty-five's gut that made Thirteen flinch, remembering his own gut pain from the day before.

As it ended, Four clapped first, followed by anyone else within the dojo as Ten helped her friend up.

After a medic took Forty-five to ensure she was okay, Ten came bouncing over to Thirteen before crashing into him with a hug. "Good work" he squeezed out as his heart skipped a beat, but was immediately let down as she then hugged Four, and then Nine as they each gave their congratulations. She even went so far as to give an awkward hug to a girl she barely knew.

Shaking his head slightly, Thirteen was relieved to see Forty-five not seriously injured, the medic not taking her away as they had with Four yesterday.

"It was a good fight, I look forward to the next one." He said in hopes of cheering up his friend.

"Right. The next one." Her eyes brightened at that. It seemed this defeat, while disappointing, wasn't anything that would hurt Forty-five's confidence.

Thirteen started to ask about those illusion arts and Forty-five was glad to talk about it, having struggled to keep them somewhat secret from her friends for so long. He also asked about that silver mist that had blocked his senses. Apparently it was just the foundation of a new technique. It could obscure her enemies vision and even act as a domain, but later she would be capable of wielding it directly in battle.

As they were speaking, Thirteen felt a grasp on his right arm and turned to find Ten, her face flushed from battle.

"Come on, we're going to the dining hall. Let's go Forty-five!" She called out the last part while pulling Thirteen away. It seemed that Four and Nine were already ahead of them, walking to the hall as she had said.

He followed willingly, but she continued to drag him, her arm wrapped around his, all the way until they reached the dining hall itself.

Dinner was rowdy with talk of the fight, and Forty-five was already trying to reschedule a rematch. Four too looked at Thirteen when the topic was brought up and demanded "One week".

Thirteen hadn't expected it so soon, but agreed nonetheless.

Long after dinner, when they had all finished talking, they split up to go their various ways. Four pulled Nine away to spar despite his lingering injuries, while Forty-five returned to the dorm eagre to cultivate. Ten walked with Thirteen, still talking about whatever came to mind, all the way until he reached his dorm, before following him in as they continued. Apparently she was eagerly pushing to breakthrough to the next realm of Qi cultivation in order to use her art's more extraordinary aspects.

While sitting on his bed she talked animatedly about what it would be capable of and Thirteen was shocked by its versatility. It seemed that the Spirit Palm art she cultivated was made to function in close quarters even at higher levels, though it wasn't necessary to do so. It could tap into so many different powers in the world that Thirteen didn't even know where he would start if it was him.

They continued to talk for a long while, before calming down.

When Nine returned to the dorm, he found them each sitting on the bed with their legs crossed and eyes closed, following their own breathing rhythms. Nine stared from the doorway for a long while before moving to his own bed and cultivating.

Like this, Thirteen's day to day life continued, now a lot more hectic with frequent, intense battles with his friends.