Chương 13: "You’re Over Here Swinging Your Spear Like an Idiot”

Ch 13 "You're Over Here Swinging Your Spear Like an Idiot" The caravan had been on the road for several days now. The wheels of the physician's carriage creaked rhythmically as they made their way along the dusty path. Amber walked alongside the carriage with her guardsman spear held over her shoulder at the ready, her golden eyes constantly scanning their surroundings for any signs of danger. She didn't want to mess up the first job she ever had, although the other guards seemed to be more relaxed.

Lulu poked her head out of the carriage window, her blonde hair catching the sunlight.

"Aren't you tired of walking yet, Amber? You've been on your feet since dawn."

"A guard has to stay ready," Amber replied, her posture straight despite the hours of travel.

"Besides, I'm used to walking." Lulu laughed lightly.

"Well, I admire your dedication. I could never manage it. My legs would give out after the first hour."

"Aren't you a cultivator?" Amber asked.

"I'm an herbalist! I can barely feel Qi." The girl laughed into the cool air as she crossed her arms on the carriage window.

"I'm not like you. I don't even have a cultivation technique yet. Besides, the test for alchemists are supposed to be more about knowledge and potential. I think I'm covered!" The blonde girl looked awfully proud of herself.

"Miss Thyme told me a bit back in Misty Hollow Village…" Amber kept her eyes scanning across the horizon as she talked, "But what exactly is alchemy?"

"Well…" The blonde girl looked thoughtfully up at the sky.

"It's like, mixing and mincing plants to make medicine. But it's more complicated."

"Sounds like it," Amber said.

"Even though their power is usually low, alchemists have a huge standing anywhere they go! They make all the elixirs and pills cultivators rely on."

"Elixirs?" Amber asked curiously, her mind going back to the elixir given to her by Ember.

"Yes! Concoctions that have all kinds of effects, more common ones are for Qi replenishment or stabilization, but even those are pretty expensive." Amber wasn't sure she wanted to know how expensive the one she had was. She didn't want to feel like she owed Ember, or that she was on unequal footing in their new partnership.

"And pills are even more valuable. If an elixir is an extremely powerful medicine, then a pill is a miracle."

"What kind of miracle?" The talk of miracles caught Amber's curiosity and had completely distracted the girl from looking out on guard duty.

"Well from what I've heard, there are ones that can transform the body, bestow powers, or even raise the dead!"

"Really?" Amber's eyes widened.

"And the Great Clans have these?"

"Of course! And someday, I'll be making them!" Lulu looked filled with pride as she pointed her thumb at herself.

"You're really amazing!"

"Ah, I guess I am!" The blonde smiled.

"We're stoppin' for 2 hours!" Guren's voice rang authoritatively from the front of the caravan.

"Ah guess it's finally lunch time! I'm starving!" Lulu exclaimed happily, "Are you going to eat with me today?"

"Sorry," Amber smiled, "I've got to keep training. I spend a lot of time on guard duty now so I have to take every chance I can get!"

"You can't always eat your lunch walking! Ah it's ok, we'll eat lunch all the time when we make it into the same clan!" The bubbly blonde said.

"Yeah!" Amber smiled, before she excitedly hurried off to a not so distant clearing to practice her spear.

"Hiiiiii-ya!" Amber Fang swung her spear like a club, leaving a whooshing sound in it's wake. Then she brought it over head with another loud yell.

"You're swinging it like you're trying to chop wood." Amber froze mid-swing, her spear still raised above her head. She turned to see Dante leaning against a nearby tree, arms crossed, an amused smirk on his face.

"I'm practicing," she said defensively, lowering the weapon.

"You're wasting your energy," Dante replied, pushing off the tree and picking up his leaning spear from the tree trunk.

"A spear isn't a club. If you keep swinging it like that, you'll tire yourself out before you even land a proper hit." Amber's cheeks flushed.

"Then… how am I supposed to use it?" She knew how to throw a hunting spear a bit from the time with her father as a young child. Dante stopped a few paces away, his expression calm as usual.

"Let me show you. First, your grip is all wrong." He put his right heel back, and settled into a stance.

"Pay attention to my hands. Your lead hand should be here, about a third of the way down. Your rear hand goes here, near the end. Keep your elbow angled and tight. This gives you leverage and control." If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. The young guard girl looked down at her hands gripping the wooden spear, then to Dante, and sunk into a similar position, looking back and forth to get her hands positioned right.

Amber felt the difference immediately. The long spear felt more balanced, and less unwieldy.

"Now," Dante continued, stepping back, "the spear is about reach and precision. You don't need to swing it wildly. Quick thrusts, controlled movements. Watch." In one fluid motion, Dante stepped forward and thrust the weapon forward in a straight line. The movement was so fast and clean that Amber barely saw it happen.

"See? No wasted motion. All your power goes into the point. Try it." Amber adjusted her stance, trying to mimic what she'd seen. She thrust the spear forward, not perfectly straight, but deadly nonetheless.

"Oooooh!" Amber's face lit up in joy.

"I can stab people from SO FAR away with this!" She looked like a little girl with a new doll, rather than a slightly older girl with a new murder weapon. She gave a few more thrusts, "So much farther than my dagger!"

"Not bad," Dante said, circling slowly around her.

"But you're leaning too far forward. Your weight should shift with the thrust, but you need to keep your balance. If you overextend, you're off balance. Vulnerable. Try it again." The feeling of being evaluated was something she tried to shake off. She got into position again, this time focusing on her balance. The thrust was straighter and more controlled as she extended the weapon. Her brow furrowed as she imagined the men that had cornered her like prey in the forest.

How she would have loved to fight them like this! She plunged her spear into the belly of a memory, gutting the disgusting man like a savage butcher.

"Good," Dante continued, "There are three foundational movements every spear wielder must master.

"First is the thrust. It's what you just practiced, the most direct and lethal strike. All your power channels through the tip in a straight line." He demonstrated with a thrust so swift it seemed to vanish mid-motion. The air itself whistled in protest as the spear's blade carved through it, stopping mere inches from an imaginary target's throat.

"And I'll teach you the other two after you keep working on your thrust," Dante said, lowering his spear.

"So… amazing!" Amber said as she saw the practiced lethality Dante wielded the spear with.

"Thank you Captain… but… why are you taking the time to teach this young one?" She kept her language respectful as she had already begun to acknowledge him as a mentor.

"Hmmph. Isn't it obvious?" Dante said.

"You're a strong warrior who kept up with me in a spar."

"That's all?" Amber asked.

"You went toe to toe with me in battle. Showed all our men you could withstand a few of my techniques." Dante said, "and now you're over here swinging your spear like an idiot."

"Huh… was I… that bad?" Amber looked up in dismay.

"The men are saying any woman who has trained with a broomstick must be able to match me." Dante's face grew dark.

"Just make sure you practice."

"Y… yes sir!" Amber stood up straight and bowed slightly. She decided she would try to restore Dante's honor before the trip ended if she could. The rest of the day passed slowly as they got back on the road. Amber ate her biscuit and dried meat ration while she was walking again, having used her eating time for spear practice. She enjoyed talking with Lulu along the way, who was happy to spit all kinds of plant and medicine information.

It was all so fascinating to Amber, even if she felt like she'd be lucky to remember a tenth of it. In the evenings she would cultivate before sleeping, staying up much later than everyone else. She felt like the Qi gathering practice was more restful than sleep anyway, although she could only focus for so long. She had begun adding drops of Ember's gift, the Qi Vitality Elixir, to her evening practice at the red robed girl's advice.

Her body felt more permeable to Qi than usual, as if the elixir had opened up her flesh. The energy didn't just flow, it seeped into her muscles, her bones, even her skin with surprising ease. This seemed to be foundational to her body's cultivation after the blood baptism, and the gifted Elixir seemed to be doing wonders for it. Amber Fang drew in a slow breath, pulling Qi from the surrounding air using Burning Sun.

Controlling it felt somewhat easier now, less like wrestling a wild beast and more like guiding a compliant stream. When she directed the energy to flow through her arms, it responded more readily, swirling through her limbs with smoother currents rather than the usual crashing waves. It was easier to make the Qi go where she wanted. She pushed it down into her legs, then back up through her torso, the luminous energy circulating through her entire form.

It was especially helpful in practicing her Blazing Tiger stances. It always took her a few stances to really get the energy in her body moving properly, but it felt like a breeze using the elixir drops! The energy surged as she wanted, like water rather than the usual mud. She had always been told it would be difficult to properly guide it before she developed all of her energy channels, but the blood baptism had seemed to challenge that notion, and the elixir made it seem ridiculous.

Trying the elixir with the next drop of Tiger Saint blood would surely double her results at the least, she thought to herself. Assimilating the blood drops had proven difficult at best, and Amber felt as if she didn't reap all the potential benefits of the two drops. Gaining any sort of edge in control over the Tiger Saint blood's Qi would surely cause explosive progress! She only had so much of the blood, after all. She grinned in excitement for when her body felt ready to take another drop.

From time to time she thought about the little tiger. Sometimes, she swore she could feel him nearby. It was the same feeling as when they cultivated together. Once in a while, when no one was watching, she would call out to him. But there was never any answer. She hoped he was doing well, wherever he was. Hopefully, his mom was still alive and they had reunited. Amber Fang would also spend a bit of time thumbing through the books her mother had left her.

Her mother had not really given them to her, but they were hers by way of succession. She liked to think her mom would have wanted her to have them. Amber was convinced they were pretty complicated and that the problem wasn't entirely her reading level, but at least she was making some progress on the Predator technique. She would spend a bit of her practice time trying to recreate the steps and Blazing Tiger form flows from the fight with Wild Hog where she had felt a bit of enlightenment on the technique.

Although she felt a bit lighter on her feet when she did it, and her stance flows improved, the young Fang girl felt that she was not grasping what the technique was about yet. Her eyes kept coming back to a particular part in the passage: The Predator does not move in nature, he is nature. He is the seen and unseen. What is seen will be unseen. Nature has it's flows, the Predator stalks among them. The words gave her a feeling that something was there, just beyond her understanding.

Her eyes flickered between that and the footstep diagram, along with a small illustration of a man with arrows that seemed to hug his body in all directions. She tried to relate the patterns to the Blazing Tiger stances with limited success. Her days were repeating like this for a while, until day 6 of their journey came. The last few days of their caravan travels Lulu and Amber had been sharing their excitement non stop as the big day came up. They would be reaching Golden Sea City soon.

For the Lucky Tiger Caravan it was a normal day, but for these two village girls, it was their first time in a real city!