NOVEL NEXT 5 - Good Grass
The gloved man is still smiling, but I can see a bead of sweat forming on his head. As far as I can tell, he's in deep with organized crime, and is no stranger to death, but what I've just done is not something he's ever experienced. I applaud him for not backing away though. He's braver than most.
Everyone else has their gaze fixed on me, but one person's attention feels different from the rest. While his face hasn't shifted, Ganyu is staring at me unblinkingly, and with much more interest than he had before. A chill runs down my spine, and I almost regret what I just did, but I strengthen my resolve. It had to happen sooner or later. No point in wasting effort delaying it.
"Do him next!" shouts a man, pointing at one of the other loners at the opposite side of the field.
A few others shout in agreement. I vaguely recall him killing a woman earlier, so I'm not entirely opposed to killing him. However, I'm right here, and he's way over there. I'd really rather not.
"Get that guy!" someone else shouts, pointing to yet another of the loners.
Soon, a third person shouts, and after another minute, everyone on the field is shouting for someone else's head. At least now I don't have to do anything. The threat of me existing should be enough to get the process going again. I sigh and sit down in the grass, causing a few people to look at me with confusion. After a few seconds, the field is silent again.
"Since you all can't decide, I'll just sit here. If it gets down to a minute remaining, I'll take things into my own hands. Otherwise, figure it out yourselves."
Silence again, but it's not long before the shouting picks up where it left off. Not long after, one of the groups has chosen a target. Or rather, two of its members have chosen a target, and the rest are carried along by mob mentality. The same happens with a few more of the groups, and the fighting resumes, this time with the tides turned, and the loners on the defensive.
A few of the loners decide to form their own group, turning a simple headhunt into an all-out brawl. No more than a minute after I spoke, Ganyu starts counting down again.
As the fights rage on, I stay planted in my spot. I see Vanessa, huddling together with the jogger and the police officer. Their group is smaller than the others, but they seem to be relatively unbothered. A few times, I notice the more aggressive groups look at them, then look at me, then steer away. I guess they don't want to risk my wrath if they kill my companions.
Eventually, I get tired of watching, so I turn to plucking blades of grass out in boredom. I look up when I sense someone coming, only to see the homeless man crawling toward me. I can't detect any aggression, so I simply sit and wait until he arrives and sits crouches in front of me, picking grass out as well. His face is bruised and bloody, but he looks otherwise unharmed, and the ki around him has stopped trembling.
"Good grass," he says.
"Pardon?" I ask, not sure if I heard him correctly.
"Good grass," he repeats. "Poa annua. Annual meadow grass. Quite common. But this grass is different. Better. Good."
"I see."
He doesn't speak again and simply keeps plucking strands of grass out. After a moment, I take a closer look at the grass as well. It's nothing special, but it has absorbed quite a bit of the ambient ki, making it more vibrant than usual. I suppose I have to agree with the homeless man then. It is good grass.
While we sit there plucking grass, no one dares approach us. Whether intentional or not, the homeless man has set himself up to appear to be my friend, and no one is willing to test that. Even in the chaos of battle, they give us a wide berth.
"200 remaining," says Ganyu after a few more minutes. "Still ten minutes left. Well done."
Many look up at him expectantly, but some are still locked in fights, and Ganyu makes no move to stop them.
"199 remaining," he says after a moment.
The ongoing fights continue for a bit longer before the calmer survivors start pulling the combatants apart. Two more die during this time, and one man is left writhing on the ground in pain with both eyes reduced to bloody sockets and about half his teeth missing, but he is alive, and likely won't bleed out before the time is up.
Most of the survivors turn to face Ganyu, probably expecting him to end the trial. However, seeing as Ganyu doesn't seem to have any intention of moving before the time is up, I remain seated where I am as well. While I sit there, I notice that Vanessa has managed to make it through unscathed. She keeps stealing glances over at me. I try to ignore them.
"So are you all finished?" asks Ganyu.
"Yes, we are," says the energetic girl who, as always, is in the front.
"Are you certain?"
"Yes!" she replies with murmurs of assent from behind her.
"There are still eight minutes left in the trial. Please know that once this trial is over, you will not be able to kill without consequence again for quite a while. If there is anyone here that you want dead, you should kill them now while you still have time."
A lot of people immediately glance at others, some of them at me, but no one moves.
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"We've shed enough blood today," shouts the shirtless jogger.
Some people nod and call out in agreement, but plenty of others are glaring daggers elsewhere. While the fighting stopped, clearly some of the grudges remain. Still, no one actually attacks anyone, and the time runs out, Ganyu simply steps forward with a sigh.
"This concludes the first trial. Any further killing will be punished. I will now guide you to the first floor's central area. Follow me. You don't want to be left behind here at night."
I stand up and brush the loose grass off my pajama pants. The homeless man is still playing with the grass, so I give him a quick nudge with my foot. He looks up at me in confusion, so I nod toward where everyone else is starting to follow Ganyu up a hill. He stares blankly for a few seconds, then he stands up too.
"Good grass."
"Yes, good grass. But it's time to leave."
I don't really care what happens to him, but I would like to solve the mystery of the ki around him, and for that, I need him to survive. Fortunately, he's not entirely out of it, and he does realize what he needs to do. He shuffles and sways like a drunk pirate, but he manages to make it to the main group and fall in line behind them. I follow, but I keep a fair distance between myself and everyone else. No one seems to mind that.
We follow Ganyu through the rolling hills for about half an hour before our destination finally appears on the horizon. It looks almost like a college campus crossed with a medieval theme park. There are large stone buildings lined with windows that remind me of dorms, but they each have round towers on the corners, and further in, there are actual castles, ranging in size from simple, worn-down keeps to gargantuan, cartoonish, fantastical monstrosities.
"That ahead is our destination," says Ganyu. "I trust you all can keep walking in a straight line. I will be in the back to keep an eye on stragglers."
That justification is a lie, and everyone knows it. As soon as he finishes speaking, he disappears and reappears right next to me. I don't flinch, but I am once again in awe at the sheer amount of ki he is using. A movement technique like that would have been a trump card in the old Earth, reserved only for surprise finishing blows against powerful opponents. The amount of ki needed to execute it and the strain it would put on the human body would have made it impossible to use more than a few times. And yet, he just did it easily, and seemingly without putting a dent in his ki reserves.
We walk side by side for a minute or so, neither of us speaking. I try to sense the depth of his ki, but when he's not using it, it's like it's not there. If I had a ki core, I'd be more sensitive, but even then, I suspect I wouldn't be able to detect much.
"Who are you?" he asks.
"Bella," I reply.
He stares at me for a few seconds, then looks forward. The gap between me and the rest of the group has narrowed as a few of the others have deliberately slowed down to eavesdrop on our conversation.
"Where did you learn to control Oum?" he asks after another minute.
I assume that by "Oum", he means ki. I'm not going to answer him though. Sure, I decided not to hide my strength anymore, but that doesn't mean I'm just going to reveal my past. Unless he forces me, I'm not saying anything useful. Revealing my past almost never goes well.
"What's Oum?"
"Perhaps it was called something different on your world. However, I was under the impression that your world did not have any."
"Well, I've never heard of it."
"And yet you used it. Quite precisely as well. And without even possessing a core."
"I got lucky," I say, shrugging.
"Hmm."
He's clearly unsatisfied by that answer, but he also realizes that I'm not going to say anything. A few more minutes pass in silence before he speaks again.
"How about a trade," he says. "I'll answer a question of yours for every question you answer of mine."
"No," I say.
"Why not? You may ask me anything. I have reached the hundredth floor. I'm certain that I have much information that could be useful to you. It might even save your life."
"And how much of that information are you about to teach us in your future lessons?"
"Very little."
I narrow my eyes at him. He's hiding something. He said he would be teaching us before, but he also mentioned that there would be thousands more people coming from other groups. The place in front of us reminds me of a college campus. This all makes me think that he might not be the only one teaching us, which would make his statement technically true, but heavily misleading.
"No," I repeat. "I'm not interested."
"I see."
About a minute later, he disappears and reappears back at the front of the group.
"So much for 'keeping an eye on stragglers,'" I hear someone mutter a bit too loudly.
Fortunately for them, Ganyu doesn't pay it any mind. In fact, he doesn't seem to mind us talking at all, and the closer we get to the castles, the louder the chatter gets. Some of the horror of the first trial is washed away by excitement and anticipation, especially after the demonstrations made by Ganyu and I. The dark-eyed boy seems especially excited, and is talking excitedly with the young woman he rescued earlier.
The castles are much bigger up close than they initially appeared. Even the dorm-like buildings are bigger, with their floors appearing to be about twice the height of an ordinary Earth building. The reason for this is obvious almost immediately.
We are not the only people there. Faces peak out through windows, and bodies from behind doors. Some of them are human. Most are not.
I spot a few people who look like Ganyu, with the same gaunt figures and gray skin, as well as some people that look like fantasy dwarves with four arms. There are angelic-looking people with skin like marble statues, majestic wings, and four golden eyes and elf-like people with ears the size of short swords. Some are hardly even humanoid at all. I spot a couple creatures that look more like cats standing on their hind legs.
All of them watch us in silence as our group openly gawks at them. Even I can't help but stare at some of them. On Earth, I met a few giants, as well as the tribe the norse based their elves on whose name I can't remember right now, but despite seeming so inhuman at the time, they're nothing compared to the people all around.
As we continue through the complex, I realize that not only are the buildings bigger than I thought, there are a lot more of them. There have to be thousands, most dorms, and a couple hundred other castles as well.
Ganyu leads us in deep while tens of thousands of non-humans peer out at us. We circle around a few castles, and pass under a few walls until our true destination comes into view. It's a massive stadium made of gray stone made of layered arches, similar to the roman colosseum, but thrice as complex. We walk under one of the arches on the bottom and into a tunnel that leads to a set of huge double doors.
Ganyu arrives at these doors, then turns around to face us all. The tunnel is wide enough that we all fit fairly comfortably, and even far at the back, I'm no more than fifty feet away from him.
"The second trial will begin shortly," he says. "But first, you all need to find a partner. There is an odd number of you. Whoever doesn't manage to find a partner will die."