Nolan leapt back to his table, snatched up Esteban and then jumped into the fighting area. He let go of the erratic boy and knelt down, put both hands on his shoulders and stared him straight in the eye. “Chill out or you’ll end up killing that kid.”

“So what!”

“We kill when we have to, not when we want to. Think about your parents, Esteban. Do you want me to slap you in front of all these people?” Nolan had an impactful epiphany and suddenly channeled energy from the millennial ring into Esteban’s inner essence channels via the pores in his skin. “Alright, listen. That kid deserves to have his teeth kicked in, but you can’t kill him.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “On that note, do you remember what I told you about dantians and what happens when you puncture them?”

Esteban’s eyes lit up and he nodded vigorously.

“Finish it quickly, okay?”

With that Nolan retreated to the fringes of the makeshift arena and looked toward the king, who wore a complicated expression. “Your Majesty, if it is okay with you then will you give us permission to do this? Haldi is a friend of Esteban’s and nobody harms a friend of the Earth Sect.”

Did you really beat my father’s challenge?

He nodded.

Can your friend win?

Nolan gave him an assuring smile.

“Very well. If that young boy manages to beat Recks then Keplin will hand over his marrow mending pellet and my son will remain in Ridgerock. If Recks wins then they will receive the supply of black halmite rewarded in the challenge of the royal plaza, and also…this young man’s life. Are both parties agreed?” Once he’d received confirmation, he nodded and signalled for the fight to begin.

As with the time before, Recks dashed right towards his opponent and struck out at his stomach. Esteban sidestepped the strike much faster than anyone anticipated and smacked Recks in the face with a violent haymaker that spun him around five times and left him sprawled on his back with dazed eyes and a bloody face. While everyone was still recovering from the shock of such an unexpected scene, Esteban appeared above the boy like a predator of the sky and pierced Recks's chest with his index, middle, and ring fingers.

My life is so fucked up these days, Nolan thought as he reflected over the fact that he was happy to see a nine-year-old boy lying unconscious in a small pool of his own blood.

Silence reigned as Recks’s cultivation gradually began to slip away, though Nolan wasted no time in leaping over to Keplin, holding out his hand and snapping his fingers impatiently. “Smokes—I mean, the pellet, let’s go.”

Keplin ignored Nolan and appeared at Recks’s side, a marrow mending pellet pinched between a finger and thumb. Oddly enough the pellet suddenly disappeared and then immediately reappeared in front of Nolan, courtesy of the king’s father. Enraged, Keplin pulled out the second pellet that he’d spoken about before, paused to think and then put it away without a second thought. Looking down at his disciple with indifference, a grey beam of energy suddenly erased the dying child’s existence.

While Keplin shook with rage and humiliation, Nolan rushed to Haldi’s side and pushed the pellet into his tiny mouth. Let alone Hueler and Cera, everyone present appeared flabbergasted. Kneeling down over the boy as Esteban rushed over to see his friend, Keplin’s aura appeared above him at the same time he sensed a heavy wave of killing intent.

Keplin’s fist never reached Nolan’s back, for Hueler had cut it off with a concise chop of his hand.

“Leave this valley and take your other disciple with you.”

Enraged and erratic, Keplin’s body shook for a moment before he sealed his bleeding with inner essence and then rushed away from the plaza. His remaining disciple, Hal, rushed after him with a frightened, flustered expression.

“Haldi!” Cera stared down at the pale face of her unmoving son. “Haldi…”

Suddenly the boy began to twitch and spasm, light cracking sounds audible to all in the immediate area. He opened his eyes a minute later, sitting up with a wince as his parents helped him to his feet and supported him by the arm.

“What…what happened?”

“Your friend avenged you,” said Commander Hueler. “A fine friend you’ve made, son.”

“My friend?” Haldi took a moment to gather his wits before his eyes settled on Esteban, who stood beside him while staring at his own bloodstained fingers. “He…beat that boy?”

“He didn’t just beat him,” said Nolan. “He crippled his cultivation. That elder couldn’t heal his disciple because he bet his medicine on the outcome of the match, so he just killed the kid. Instead we used the medicine on you.”

“What is your name, young man?”

He dipped his head toward Haldi’s father. “It’s Nolan.”

The commander took a knee and bowed his head, surprising everyone in attendance. “I’m in your debt, Nolan.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa—stand up man. Just shake my hand or something.”

Commander Hueler stood up after a moment and caringly patted his son on the shoulder. “Thank you Nolan.”

Everyone’s attention had fallen upon him, including the king’s.

“You said you belonged to an organization called the Earth Sect, yes?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

King Caimen raised his right arm to address the crowd. “We here in Ridgerock might enjoy a high status in these parts of the Dragon’s Tail, but compared to the sects of the Western Isles we are the same as any of the other clans and communities that call this region home. In that we are all connected, and we all share the same roots.”

Many guests began to mumble and nod in agreeance.

“For years those western sects have been poaching our talented youths away, and for years we have sat by and let it happen.” The king’s sunken eyes seemed to brighten as his thin lips turned upwards in a grateful smile. “I think I speak for everyone here when I say thank you to Nolan and the Earth Sect for helping us vent some of our anger, and on someone like Keplin no less.”

Cheers and applause erupted all around, and for once Nolan felt a bit embarrassed. Even his friends received words of thanks and pats on the back, Reynolds and Katerina clapping more vigorously than those around them.

“The Earth Sect has earned the good graces of our people, and I hope that this will be remembered by our respected guests from elsewhere in the mountain range. Now,” the king indicated toward the main table where his family sat, “it seems that the seats of honour are now vacant. Members of the Earth Sect, please, come and sit with me.”

Nolan patted Haldi on the head and smiled at his parents before making his way over to the head table and taking a seat next to the king, who’d just returned to his seat. The rest of his friends followed suit, a fourth chair quickly added to the mix to accommodate them all.

The feast resumed as if nothing had happened, though the general mood was much more genial. King Caimen was a kind and jovial man, and Nolan spent the majority of the next four hours talking to him about random things. Haldi came up to hang out with Esteban, though both of them ended up running off into the crowd to play games like manhunt or tag.

As it turned out there were four Otherworlders in Ridgerock, all of them living in the king’s palace as pets of sorts to members of the royal family. King Caimen was attempting to gather as much information as possible about the world that they’d left behind, though this was proving difficult since none of them had properly grasped the Universal Language.

Once the feast began to die down, Nolan slid King Caimen a spatial bag with two thousand regular spirit stones and asked if it was at all possible for him to purchase them. Though he hesitated at first, the king slid the spatial bag back and agreed with a smile. As far as Nolan told him, the Earth Sect was attempting to gather as many Otherworlders as possible in order to build a menagerie-like collection.

The king agreed to let Nolan meet them and it was with butterflies in his stomach that he followed Caimen into the palace where his servants had already assembled the Otherworlders as per the instructions he'd relayed to them via sound transmission.

He found himself staring at three women and one man, all aged between twenty and forty years. They were all dressed in comfortable clothes made from some sort of silk, and none showed signs of malnourishment or mistreatment, which further convinced Nolan that Caiman was a good man.

“Do any of you speak English?”

All of their heads snapped upwards, four pairs of eyes widening in shock. Caiman’s eyebrow’s jumped up as well, for like everyone else on Venara he’d probably never heard another tongue aside from the Universal Language.