Depthless Hunger

Being smashed through a table hadn't stunned Kai much, but the hand around his neck felt like steel. How the hell could such a thin woman wield so much strength? She kept him pinned there, apparently determined to suffocate him.

Whatever strange power she possessed, it flowed in her far more powerfully now. He had no idea what abilities she might have or how they worked, but he was sure that she hadn't been faking her illness. That meant that the medicine she had swallowed must have been responsible for her improvement, so before he did anything else...

Kai sloppily swung at her face with his off-hand and the foreign woman tilted her head out of the way contemptuously. An instant later he rammed his other fist into her stomach with his true speed. She gagged, and her grip weakened enough for him to throw her off.

As soon as he was up, he didn't take any chances: Kai kicked her in the stomach hard enough to send her sliding across the room. When she stopped against some boxes, she began to vomit black bile again. He remained alert for a trap, but he didn't think she was faking the trembling in her limbs. It seemed that his blows had effectively interrupted her absorption of the pill.

"I save you and this is how you thank me?" Kai put his hands on his hips and stared at her, but she glared back darkly.

"I know all about the 'thanks' you want. You disgust me."

"Whoa, wait!" The venom in her voice took him completely off guard and Kai found himself on the defensive even though she was the one who had attacked him. "You think I'm going to try to extort something out of you?"

"Of course you are."

"Is it so hard to believe that someone might help you because it's the right thing to do?"

"Yes." She stared at him with a baleful gaze that held not the slightest shred of doubt.

"Fine, I can see I'm not going to convince you." Kai faked a sheepish smile as he shifted his weight, then lunged to grab her box of medicine. Her eyes widened and she froze. "I want to give you these and let you go on your way, but I need some kind of reassurance that you won't immediately take another pill and try to murder me."

"I swear on my honor that I will not raise a hand against you."

"Is that how your people swear oaths?"

"No, I was imitating you." The woman's eyes narrowed as she examined him. "I still think I hate you, but I can see we'll have to cooperate. What do you propose?"

"Let's start things off on a better note." Kai gave her a real smile. "My name is Kai Granfian. May I have your name?"

"You may not."

He stared at her, trying to determine if it was a joke, then sighed and moved on. "Even at your full strength, I don't think you can just leave here. I also need to get out of here before the rest of the smuggling gang shows up." When he'd started talking, Kai hadn't known where he was going, but as he looked over the boxes a plan came together. "There was a wagon out back, I think. I'll take it out and you can hide in the back until we leave town. Nobody touches anybody, nobody murders anybody. Does that sound acceptable?"

After another pause, the woman nodded. While Kai retrieved his arrows and pulled together some fake supplies, she sank down into her chair and shuddered through a series of racking coughs. Many of the wounds crossing her face had broken open again and her ragged clothes were further stained as if her entire body was bleeding. If that black bile really was blood.

After staring over all the bodies of the smugglers, Kai threw them all into a pile in front of the cage. It would have been better to interrogate them or drag them all back to the city for judgment, but maybe this would scare the rest of the gang off enslaving any more people. The world was probably better off without them, he just wished that he could have made more of a difference.

Once he attempted his plan, the woman cooperated without further complaint. With her covered by a tarp in the back, the wagon looked ordinary enough, so Kai began to pull it away. It was unusual for a warrior to pull a wagon themselves, but his strength was more than up to it. Hopefully by the time anyone thought it odd, he would be long gone.

Every step of the way, Kai was sure that something would go wrong. Smugglers would pour out of nearby buildings, or a leader with a powerful Class would appear, or the heavens would strike him with lightning because they just hated him that much. But he only got a few odd glances. With every step further away from the town, Kai began to accept that it might work, and once the buildings were tiny on the horizon he could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

"That worked better than I expected." He turned back to see what insult the woman would throw at him next, but there was no response.

When he checked underneath the tarp, he found her lying unconscious. She groaned in pain, yet didn't wake up, even as more blood dribbled from her mouth. Without her power or her hatred, she was a miserably bedraggled thing. Kai felt sorry for her, even though he was certain that she would have hated it.

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Since she didn't seem likely to wake up, Kai didn't abandon the wagon after all and kept putting distance between them and the town. Once he needed to stop to ward off a minor monster, but otherwise it was a smooth trip. He noticed that her coughs seemed to be getting worse and she was delirious, babbling in the language she had used previously.

Since she seemed to be getting worse, Kai stopped and tried to help her drink some water. She drank a little but struggled if he ever touched her, so he backed away. After some thought, Kai pulled out her thin box and removed one of the pills.

She was too delirious to take the pill, but he managed to feed it to her with some more water. It wasn't long before her eyes shot open and her entire body tensed. Kai braced himself in case she charged at him again, but this time she remained calm.

"Do you think I'll be grateful for this?" she asked.

"Given your behavior," Kai said, "I'll be glad if you choose not to spit in my face."

To his surprise, she gave a slight laugh. She seemed almost as surprised and returned to her scowl. "You have done the bare minimum, nothing worthy of any great honor, but I have done worse. I apologize for my behavior."

"If you don't choke me again, don't worry about it." Kai finally let himself relax a little and set down her bundle of things on one of the boxes. "You don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to. You can run off if you insist. But you'll leave me wondering what the hell was going on here for the rest of my life. Would you really do that to me?"

For a long time she didn't answer him, dark eyes staring into his. Eventually she nodded, almost to herself, and spoke in a low voice. "My name is Zae Zin Nim."

"Well, that's... not a name I've heard before."

"I came to your continent for reasons I prefer not to divulge. My condition is manageable, but I underestimated how much it would weaken me, and I fell into... unfortunate circumstances." Zae... or Zin? Or Nim? lowered her head and frowned. "I doubt they would have been able to extract my qi, but I'm glad they didn't get the chance to try."

Not sure what exactly she meant, Kai focused on the concrete: "I don't know how things work where you come from, but we try to be fair here. What is it you're trying to do? Is there any way we can help each other?"

"And now the question of compensation." The foreign woman was on her feet in an instant, glaring down at him. "As expected."

"I don't mean anything like that! You use a power completely different than anything I've seen. Can't you at least teach me the basics?"

"It's likely not worth it. To judge your potential as a cultivator, I would need to analyze your dantian. Are you willing to take a strike from me without resisting?"

"A non-lethal one?" Kai squared his shoulders. "Do it."

She flitted forward, her palm striking him in the stomach. The force alone was enough to make him stumble back, but it didn't really hurt. Much more concerning was the fact that he could feel some alien power inside him, like spinning water... he tried to grasp it, force it to move like mana, and it slipped between his fingers.

The woman frowned and made a gesture, pulling the power back out of him. She seemed to consider it for a moment, then shook her head.

"How odd. I didn't expect any barbarians here to even grasp qi, but you tried to adapt to it." She slid her hands into her sleeves and regarded him somberly. "You could think of cultivators as having many different characteristics. Inborn talents that hard work can barely change. Your dantian is unusually large, and you're more perceptive than I expected. Strong ability to retain qi as well. But there is no point in trying to train you."

"Why not?" Kai asked. "Those sounded like good things."

"There is another capacity that you could think of as 'growth,' meaning the ability to use qi to move toward the next stage of cultivation. Obviously, this factor is far more important than all the others combined, since high growth will outstrip all other factors given a little time. I'm afraid your growth rate is slower than any I've ever seen... why are you laughing?"

Kai couldn't help himself and laughed until he had to wipe tears from the corner of his eyes. "A skill from a different continent... an entirely different form of power... and fate still has it out for me." He got himself under control and focused on her. "So you won't help me?"

"You may not be a repulsive man, but I can feel your hunger for power. I want no part in it. I will remember you with respect if I never lay eyes on you again."

She leapt away from the wagon and disappeared into the wilderness with startling speed. Kai hadn't been able to get a good look, but he didn't think her feet had been touching the ground as much as they should have. Clearly it was some sort of foreign technique.

If she had been in good health and tried to fight him, Kai doubted that he could have won. Her strength had been intimidating, her speed seemed even greater, and he had no idea what strange powers they might manifest on her home continent. That word stuck in his mind... it was literally the first time he'd met someone from another continent. Usually the other continents were abstract myths, so far from home as to be irrelevant.

Since she'd been so clear about her intentions, Kai decided that he had no choice. He packed a crate of the valuable goods from the wagon and began heading back to the city.

Along the way, he couldn't help but think about Zae Zin Nim. Given her power, he hoped that she would be okay on her own, but that clearly hadn't been true in the past. Whatever illness she carried, it was more than enough to overcome her. For hunters, they usually became resistant to disease as they grew stronger, but he had no idea what kinds of exotic conditions might exist elsewhere.

He found himself wondering if his actions with the smugglers would have serious consequences. They seemed to have stumbled on the foreign woman and had no idea what they were doing, and they didn't have an easy way of retaliating against him. There didn't seem to be a good way to track down or investigate their operations, if they had any. Could the entire matter really just end? A brief incident in his life that he would think back on as an old man in confusion?

That assumed that he would make it to old age. Kai shook his head and focused on the here and now.

The remaining days of the journey dwindled, and miraculously he wasn't attacked by any monsters he couldn't handle. Kai even resumed some of his exercises, both to keep himself alert and to press against his limits. He was going to have so much to do once he got back.

By the time he saw the city gates, he had an entire list in his head. Take a bath, get the flask from Juray, eat a proper meal, report at the Hunters Guild, check if Inafay had returned, see if the jeweled dagger had any value...

Kai hadn't even gotten home when all those plans were thrown from his mind because Gunjin Granfian appeared in front of him with a scowl on his face.

"You're finally back, Kai. We need to talk."