The Phoenix [Cultivation, Reincarnation, Tower Climber]

It takes a lot of effort not to roll my eyes at the man's offer. Unfortunately, he actually poses a threat, so I need to avoid offending him too badly until I'm in a more advantageous position.

"Can I look it over first?"

"Of course," he says with a smile.

I take the paper out of his hands, noting how he and his subordinates keep their hands on their spears as I move. The paper itself is pretty simple. It's only a few paragraphs, and it's written plainly without any complex legalese.

It's also a slave contract. Almost literally. I can sense some complex oum within the page, and I know that if I actually sign this, I will be bound to its terms, and its terms are not favorable to me in the slightest.

"The Shin family, huh," I say.

"It's the best place to be," he says. "Especially for someone with a life affinity. You'll be unkillable."

"Unless I try to go against the contract."

"Unless you try to go against the contract," he agrees. "But the terms can be re-negotiated later, depending on your performance."

"Can I take some time to think about it?" I ask. "I'll get back to you in a week."

"Hahahah!" He lets out a loud and fake sounding laugh. "No. You sign here or you die."

"Is this not illegal? What are you going to do if I mysteriously disappear shortly after you were following me?"

"A new Climber got over-confident and took on a Quest beyond her means. It was quite unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected, especially after her display of unshakable confidence and blatant disregard for her assigned advisor's Lessons. She was so over-confident she never attended a single one of the practical lessons. It was bound to happen eventually."

"You've thought this out pretty thoroughly," I say.

"Thank you."

"But I must say, I am both insulted and disappointed."

"Oh?"

"Insulted because you really think I'm stupid enough to have confronted you all alone here without a plan. Or that I have so little self-respect that I'd sign a slave contract to save my own life. And disappointed because for all your thorough thinking, your execution was utterly moronic. You didn't even notice that while you were following me, you were being followed yourself."

I look behind him, and his smile vanishes as he turns around to see what I'm talking about. The other five with him do the same. I turn and run.

Could I take them all on in a fight? Maybe. It would be difficult, especially when they all have more range and more oum than me. But why fight them on their terms when I can just not?

Behind me, I hear the leader barking orders at his subordinates, telling them to follow me faster or something like that. I'm not sure if this command actually does anything, but they're not getting any closer. They may have an advantage over me in oum, but, as usual, they fall far behind in skill. It's a bit odd that what should be a pursuit squad is so incompetent with movement techniques, but it works out well for me. Especially since the leader doesn't seem to be willing to push out ahead of his men on his own. I don't even have to ditch my bag to stay ahead of them.

Right now, I'm running about parallel to the tree line, so I turn to head deeper into the region. I still fully intend on searching for that ginseng after I deal with this, so I might as well head in the right direction. It also has the added benefit of turning my pursuers from a wider fan formation to an almost single-file line.

Unfortunately, I can't run forever. My movement techniques are better and more efficient, but theirs aren't actually that terrible, and they have more oum than me, so they can go for longer. I look around for a place to fight, spotting a section of pines that look older and thicker than the ones surrounding them. I veer off to the right, breaking line of sight with my pursuers, then leap up and start rebounding off the trunks of the trees to avoid leaving tracks in the snow. I travel about a hundred feet this way before jumping up and clinging to a branch about 15 feet in the air behind a tree.

When my pursuers reach the place where my tracks stop, I hear them stop as well and look around.

"She's in the trees!" says the leader. "Eyes up! Find her!"

I hear them fan out, moving slowly as they start looking for me. It looks like I most definitely could have continued leaping from tree to tree and I would have gotten away without issue. I probably still could right now even. But I don't like leaving loose ends. If I don't take care of this right now, they'll keep coming after me, and with my luck, they'd end up ambushing me at the worst possible time. Better to handle things right now.

If I kill them, it might cause trouble later, but it should be fine. It's not my fault that a powerful Stray happened to be passing by and took issue with them. And if that doesn't work, I still have the contract they tried forcing me to sign.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

I listen as two of them start to get close to me. No, scratch that. They're all getting close to me. They looked like they were fanning out, but they silently started circling back toward me. I examine the contract again, then facepalm. It has a tracking signature on it. Of course. And it's buried within all the other oum that make the contract what it is, so I don't have time to remove it.

No time to wait around then.

I springboard off the tree trunk to my left where I can sense one who is just a bit further away from all the others. I am spotted immediately by the leader and two of the others, who shout warnings. They're just a bit slow, and I land in front of the lone spearman with about two seconds to spare before the leader reaches me.

The spearman sends oum coursing through his weapon and stabs forward, aiming right at my heart. I sidestep to the right, drawing my own weapon. The blade absorbs my oum like a sponge as it swings up, cutting cleanly through the steel spear shaft like it's made of butter. Before the tip of the spear even hits the ground, I continue the swing around in a wide arc, bringing it down right on the man's shoulder by his neck. He does his best to defend against it, but only manages to slow the sword a bit with his oum before it breaks through and bites into his flesh, nearly cutting him in two.

I swing him around, still stuck on the end of my sword, bringing him around to the other side of me just in time to intercept a spear strike from the leader. There is so much oum behind it that it punches a fist-sized hole straight in my shield's stomach, and forces me to tilt my head to avoid the residual oum coming through the body.

I don't wait around for the follow-up strike. I pull my sword out of the dead man and leap backward, and a moment later, the chase is on again. Once again, the leader doesn't push ahead of his men. I'm certain he could catch up to me if he did, but he refuses to do it. In fact, he even starts to slow down, pulling his men back with him, and soon after, the chase stops entirely.

That's no good. He's being smart. This has turned from a chase to a hunt. It's a game of endurance now, and they'll keep pushing forward just enough to keep me on my toes without directly attacking me. I doubt they'll split up again either, so I won't be able to pick them off one by one. Not without a ranged weapon, at least.

I stop moving again, letting them catch up a bit. While I'm definitely a better fighter than them, my need for sleep and rest is greater, and that's not something I can get around with any level of skill. If they keep chasing me, I will eventually get exhausted and fall, which is probably their goal. I could ditch the contract, but then I lose my evidence, and they can just go back and claim that I murdered one of them for no reason. I doubt I'd be able to properly ambush them using the contract either, because they'll be too on guard.

As I contemplate my next options, Trinity blinks into existence on my shoulder, startling me so much I almost fling her off.

"Jeez, Trinity," I say, reaching up to scratch her head. "Actually, hold on."

I grab her and set her down in the snow. She doesn't seem particularly happy about her paws being cold, but she bears with it, staring at my bloody sword expectantly.

"Trinity, do you want a body?" I ask.

"Mraw!" she says.

"If you take this and run really far that way, I'll give you a body."

I hold out the rolled-up contract to her and she tilts her head in confusion.

"Take this. Go that way." I point ahead. "I will give you a body when you get back."

She leans forward to grab the contract in her mouth, but she still doesn't quite look sure about what do do with it.

"Go that way," I say, pointing again. "There's a body over there."

That seems to work, and she immediately starts trotting off into the distance. With that taken care of, I leap into the nearest tree and backtrack a few dozen feet. I need to be here because they'll realize something is up when they see Trinity's tracks in the snow, but I can't go too far, or they'll sense me.

I stand on a sturdy branch about twenty feet up, and then begin using a stealth technique to hide my oum. I'm not quite to the point of being able to hide my appearance yet, but they shouldn't be able to sense me otherwise.

For about half an hour, nothing happens. I guess they're waiting a bit to try to lull me into a false sense of security or something. Trinity hasn't reappeared yet. Hopefully she's still searching for the body I said was over there. I know if she got in trouble, she'd just go into her voidspace.

Actually, if she took the scroll with her into the voidspace, they wouldn't be able to track it anymore. It's a paired tracking symbol, so it's just reacting to an identical one somewhere else, meaning that if it entered her voidspace, it would probably be out of reach. I should have just told Trinity to do that. Well, too late for regrets.

Another five minutes pass before they finally reappear on the edge of my senses. They're moving quickly again and staying in a tight formation. Two of the late 1 stars in the front and back and the leader in the middle. He seems to be a coward, using his men as meat shields. A coward, but unfortunately, a smart coward, as this is by far the smartest play.

His men are no match for me, and he knows it. If I can take him out, the others are as good as dead. If he were in the front or the back, I would have a window to ambush him before the others could react without putting me in serious danger, but with him in the middle, even if I dropped down on him from above, it would put me in a very dangerous situation with foes on all sides. And if I failed to kill him with that attack, it would be even worse. If he's going to keep doing this, I'll have to take out the subordinates first.

I wait for them to approach, and as they pass under me, I lean to the side, falling off my branch. None of them are looking up, and I make as little motion as possible, so they don't notice me until it's too late. I land on the furthest-back one, my sword coming down on the top of his head, and with the force from my fall, the blade cuts all the way through, straight down the middle, bisecting him.

I land in a crouched position, then spring to the side toward the next closest man, but I am forced to stop mid-charge as the leader's spear stabs the air right where I would have been if I kept moving. He stabs again, forcing me back a step as the other three regain their bearings.

"Done running, bitch?" says the leader with an angry sneer.

That is an excellent question. I glance between my foes who are trying to surround me with spears out. Six on one was a bit much, and four on one isn't much better, but I think it might have to do. I could keep running around, maybe whittle them down a bit more, but I won't be able to use the same trick with Trinity again. I could come up with another trick if I could manage to convince Trinity to take the scroll into her voidspace, but that would take time, and I'd rather just get this over with.

"Last chance," he says. "Sign the contract and we'll forget any of this ever happened."

Eh. Four on one is doable.

"I choose the third option," I say, then lunge toward the right-most spearman.