George Knows Best [Mud Wizard LitRPG]

Master Brown-Eye bows to Senior Disciple Wing-Spear.

Senior Disciple Wing-Spear bows to Master Brown-Eye.

Courtesy earns courtesy.

"We meet again, old friend."

Wing-Spear looked uncertainly around and managed a series of confused clicking sounds.

He had every right to be confused. Bob had never seen the creature in his life. But Bob had read enough fantasy literature to know that they ought to know each other. Dramatic tension demanded it. And so he had decided, for the sake of the narrative, to pretend Wing-Spear was the grizzled, more experienced evolution of his first reaper-insect adversary.

"You have grown much such our last encounter, Wing-Spear."

Wing-Spear clicked and gestured threateningly (was the human mad?).

"My old wound?" Bob consciously misinterpreted, "yes, even now, the scar stings at the sight of you."

Master Brown-Eye clenched his fist at the memory of their first duel. The sickly sound of blade grinding into flesh. The warm blood growing cold on the forlorn grasses. The great aid of the golden disciple.

Wing-Spear swaggered forward. Violence is the great answer to all questions. His right forearm was a five-foot spear, jet-black, hard and sharp. His left arm culiminated in a small diamond shield that Bob hadn't noticed before.

He swaggered forward with the deadly control of the expert. Every step judged and weighed. A form flowing into a form, flowing into a form. His eyes held the deep silence of one who walks along the path.

Ernteklinge (level 27)

The insect monster hissed and clicked.

"Junior Disciple Brown-Eye," Bob pretended to hear, "I have come for an exchange of pointers."

"Very well, Brother Wing-Spear. Share your wisdom with this initiate."

Wing-Spear launched himself forward. He was leagues above Two-Sword. His movements were an uninterruptible stream of action. His spear, the viper's strike, the black head of death.

Master Brown-Eye exhaled, sinking into his stance. The poised ready position of the moving meditation. He watched the hurtling arrow, unmoved, with the tranquility of sage. He breathed in, because all kata begin and end in the breath. In the currents of life.

"The Scorpion Raises Tail," Wing-Spear hissed (in Bob's imagination). The spear-point is cocked back, as Wing-Spear lets himself glide closer and closer, and then boom. The blade thunderbolts forward.

The Brown-Eye twinkled with serene amusement (and fear!). Bob swayed backwards, trusting to the balance of his inherited style. The spear jetted past his side. "Spring Rain!" The spear flickered back and then lanced forward. Again, again. Like the sudden rainstorm of a spring evening. The master swayed and drifted, guided by the strikes themselves into the empty spaces that surround them.

Wing-Spear is airborne, shooting his body at Bob, even as he continues his relentless strikes. "Sky Pillar!" With a twist of supernatural grace, the spear came up and then its butt stabbed down at Bob's foot. Master Brown-Eye feathered his foot to the side. The spear cut into the ground and Wing-Spear pivots around on the contact point. "Glittering Tornado!" The sharp-edged diamond shield lanced towards Bob's face.

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Master Brown-Eye tracked his foot back to its original position. "The Sky is Falling." And The Sky Pillar crumbled down. Wing-Spear fell backwards. His attack swinging wide as his wings burst open to stabilize his descent. He hopped back, regaining distance, while he searched for some weakness in the Master's calm stance.

"Brother Wing-Spear, tripping up in the middle of tournament bout..." Bob tutted disapprovingly, "against a less friendly opponent, that might have cost you your path."

Wing-Spear hissed and snarled. Bob arbitrarily decided to interpret that as: "This Wing-Spear humbly receives instruction. Now die!"

Meditation is the greatest power of them all. It takes an enlightenment for a man to realise that the only true enemy is himself. Every moment, every calming breath, every inch Bob surrendered to the tranquility, the more he embodied that form he had found himself. That form he had taken to calling "the empty cup."

Wing-Spear blazed. His spear was the lightening arc. His movements, the hypnotic zigzags of the serpent. His eyes, the dark coals of pride's fire. And for all that, he could not touch the master. His grand attack, his ultimate combinations, "Moonshine Ripples the Waves", "Dragon-fall", "Forked Tongue", "The God of Thunder", all washed against the bubble of calm and fell away.

Master Brown-Eye didn't try to attack. His was a battle inside. In finding himself. In embodying an ideal he had never seen, but felt buried inside him. He glided, shapeshifting between attacks, flowing around the spear, or seeming to disappear entirely. Sometimes tapping forward. A sharp, light tap. The pin drop that turns the scale.

Wing-Spear blazed. His attacks got faster and faster, as he abandoned all defense. "Spring Rain!" Once more the spear glistened back and then teleported, over and over, in a shimmering mist of half-illusions, like there were a thousand, thousand spears.

Master Bob watched. He had reached the mind-death. The thoughtless plane of the warrior. The Empty Cup is a state of mind. The forms, its mundane expressions, are only a pathway to this place, to the silver cup filled only with emptiness. He knew the pathway. He had the divine inspiration.

"Spring Downpour!" Wing-Spear was unleashing his ultimate attack. Imbuing each spear-thrust wth his wind-burst technique that let them defy air resistance and seem to cut through space itself.

The Master should have been impaled a hundred-fold. He should have been turned into a puzzle of missing pieces. To escape should have been impossible.

The master stepped into the attack. In that invisible, imaginary space between the dancing spears. A hundred times the spear shivered past him but without touching him. Without grazing his skin. Like the spear itself was avoiding him. "A Single Step."

Wing-Spear toppled over backwards. He landed badly and ungracefully. His wings were out of position and awkward. "Impossible!" He screeched, eyed widening in shock and terror. His whole body trembling at the display. He tried to raise himself up, but something about the presence of the master kept him trapped there.

"Who are you?"

The master crouched down. A friendly smile on his face.

"Brother Wing-Spear. Whatever is the matter? Junior Disciple Brown-Eye is still desirous of your instruction."

Wing-Spear rolled away, jumped up, flashing backwards as far, far away from the monster in human clothes leaning over him. Bob's hand darted forward, catching him by the shoulder.

"Brother Wing-Spear. There is something I have been meaning to practice. I am only a beginner and seek the instruction of my betters. Would you do me this service?"

Wing-Spear writhed and jerked. Fear had swallowed up his soul. He stabbed again and again, his wings flapped and pulsed. Master Brown-Eye calmly blocked attack after attack.

"Brother Wing-Spear. This one is grateful for your magnanimous cooperation. Now I will do my best to hold back."

Bob closed his eyes. He concentrated on the mana inside him (while easily deflecting the frenzied blows of his senior discipline). He concentrated a good portion of mana into his hand. That should be more than enough.

"Are you ready, Brother Wing-Spear?"

There was a trembling clicking cry, that sounded awfully like "no." In moments of ambiguity, a man's got to trust himself. Bob decided to interpret that as "yes."

"Here I come, Brother Wing-Spear."

The poor martial artist froze. His antenna trembled as he gazed up at his Junior Disciple. Maybe he could sense the mana accumulated in Bob's left hand. Maybe he was holding still so Bob could aim his shot better. Maybe he'd already gone into shock.

Bob's hand chopped forward.