The events John was anticipating didn’t happen immediately. It was a fancy party, after all, and those were all about waylaying random people for any conceivable reason. Alright, well, mostly for the sake of scoping out enemies and looking for potential alliances, but a few people were interesting to talk to as well. Though those conversations would probably be related to the other two, even if they were somewhat enjoyable.

John himself was pulled aside into several conversations, though most of them went nowhere. Biotite county was close enough to the border that John wasn’t entirely surprised to see a few light element cultivators, but he hadn’t expected to be approached. The prejudices of the world might make light and darkness cultivators not get along, but John didn’t have anything against them… except the time where he’d briefly been blinded by one. Somehow that felt worse than getting stabbed in many ways, possibly because he hadn’t been ready to defend against it.

Even if John didn’t mind light cultivators, that didn’t mean they would be friendly with him. Despite his different elemental totems, considering his position in the Tenebach clan John straightforwardly displayed his darkness element and kept the others hidden.

When he was approached by an amicable man who radiated the light element, John didn’t know what to say. Fortunately, the man made things easy with a formal greeting. “A good day to you. I believe you are Forktran Tenebach, yes? I saw you in the tournament in Astrein last year.”

“That’s right,” John nodded. “And you would be… part of the Golden Tomb Guardians?”

The man smiled, “That’s right. You can call me Zacharie. You were matched against Monika. I was impressed by the manner in which you overcame her, not the usual straightforward bluster and inelegance of most men your age.”

“I’ve had my moments in the past,” John admitted- though most of them were in either version of his previous life. “Given the path I am on, I’ve had to learn to use what I have to the maximum.”

Zacharies eyes roamed over John, his spiritual energy politely remaining passive. “I can’t even tell now,” he commented. “But enough about that. You were defeated shortly after that.”

“I’m sure quite a few people took note of that,” John nodded, “But I am not ashamed of my performance.”

“Oh no, I would not mean to imply such,” Zacharie smiled widely. “I would dare say that most people would have either not chosen to enter that fight… or not survived. An elder of the Society of Midnight with a grudge isn’t something to casually mess with. And yet you did something to make him even more angry, just before the battle was over.”

That would be ripping out the piece of Ciaritzal, though John wasn’t going to make that information public. “I truly barely survived. It took some effort to recover.”

“And I’m glad you did,” Zacharie nodded. “The Society of Midnight… we’ve had a few clashes with them as well over the decades. We don’t exactly encounter them often, obviously- the Sunfields and Darklands are quite a distance away from each other- but neither of us just remain in our sects continuously.”

John wondered what the man wanted. Was it the offer of an alliance? Even if it was a loose promise to beat up any members of the Society of Midnight they saw that wouldn’t be bad. But before the conversation had time to get there, they were interrupted.

Specifically by the young master Bora running out of the building covered in green flames. “Hmm,” John pursed his lips.

“Oh my,” Zacharie commented wryly. “Someone seems to have ticked someone off.”

“I was just expecting blue flames,” John admitted.

“Ah yes,” Zacharie nodded. “You are familiar with the young Lucanus.”

Some of the other cultivators were bristling, wondering if there had been an attack of some kind- but others calmly made their way outside, after the screaming young master and the source of the green flames following not far behind. John glanced over at Steve, seeing that his eyes were flaring up. He was incensed, but it wasn’t his fight to butt into. Though that wouldn’t necessarily stop him. John approached Steve as they walked out together, their senses focusing on the event unfolding in front of them.

“One thing wouldn’t have been a problem, you know,” Yustina stomped her foot. “Me being clearly not interested, if you hadn’t been a jackass I could have introduced you to any number of… hotheads.”

Bora’s main response was trying to put out the fire on himself. Messing around with the air wasn’t working well, but he also called upon a bubble of water. It didn’t immediately put out the fire, but it was quenched shortly. The most damaged thing was his dignity- which included his clothes. “The Kartal clan is-”

“Not relevant here,” Yustina interrupted. “You think because you’re from a decently big clan you can act however you want? The Milanovic clan might be a little bit smaller, but what matters is you. And you suck. I bet you haven’t even jumped in a volcano!”

“The local topology isn’t conducive to visiting volcanoes, and they’re not relevant to my elements anyway. I have, however, explored the ocean depths and climbed to the top of the greatest of the Blustering Peaks.”

“So what? This guy spent days in one of the deep trenches!” Yustina waved towards John, who wondered how she learned that information. It wasn’t secret, but it wasn’t really public either.

“Pfeh. Doesn’t matter. I won’t stand for such insults to my person and my dignity. Guards!”

“That’s our cue,” John moved to elbow Steve, but the other man was already on the move. As he stepped to intercept one of Bora’s guards, John locked eyes with Aydan. His uncle would be watching if he needed to interfere, but otherwise planned to stay out of it. John also briefly sought out the host, Raghu of the local Quartz clan, who seemed interested in watching- and relieved that the fighting had moved out of his manor.

The man who John blocked was not particularly physically impressive, but he did have a presence about him. And like Bora, he had a combination of air and water totems, a popular choice in the stormy Blustering Peaks which also bordered the Shimmering Islands. Though John was aware the majority of cultivators in the area were still strictly air dominant. “Do you know what you’re doing?” the guard asked.

“Stopping people from ganging up on my friend,” John replied. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

The man’s response was a grunt, and then an attack. It was skillfully performed, with a gust of wind circling around behind John to shove him forward into the wave of water energy the man created with a forward thrust of his palm. But the level of the wind was simply too insignificant to bother John. Training on Cyclone Island and with Kusuma in general had shown him what real wind was like. He locked himself in place with a bit of earth energy and countered the palm with his own punch holding lightning coated with a concealing layer of darkness energy.

Just comparing the ranks of John and the guard they would be of similar power. However, when their attacks impacted each other, the guard was sent flying back and left twitching. His totems were decent for his position- all third tier. John’s were fourth tier, which was already an advantage- but he also had an elemental advantage. His earth could overcome the man’s air while he also had air element to overcome water. There was an extra portion of water element to worry about, but that gap was made up for by surprise and the darkness element that at least wasn’t bad against it.

Steve was having a bit of a harder time, which was to say his opponent hadn’t been taken out instantly. But despite an elemental disadvantage with the water, he also wasn’t losing. He certainly wasn’t having an easy time of it, but the situation had gotten into a grapple where he was flaring his fire as much as he could while continuously kneeing the guard in the stomach. The water that was there to restrict his movements was bubbling and boiling from the heat, and neither of them looked particularly like they were actually winning.

Then there was Yustina. Her cultivation was lower that Bora’s, somewhere around the twenty-third rank compared to his twenty-sixth. She’d begun the conflict with something akin to a surprise attack, both in its execution and her fire’s unexpected ‘stickiness’. After Bora recovered from that, she would have lost her advantage… is what John thought was going to happen.

Bora’s weapons were a pair of fans, an unorthodox weapon in most cases but actually surprisingly effective. John didn’t know why the two guards didn’t use similar weapons to augment their water and air abilities, perhaps it was a personal choice- or a technique exclusive to Bora or main members of his clan. Either way, the fans pushed waves of water, blew wind, the sides sliced, and they were even folded to be used as a club. It was all very skillful, but the way Yustina danced around it indicated she was not perturbed by the possibilities of the weapons. Even when she was deluged with a pile of water, she moved elegantly to avoid the attacks as if it didn’t even slow her down. John thought he felt her exerting a small bit of control over the water formed by Bora’s energy, but it didn’t really fit with her selection of fire totems.

She danced closer and closer to Bora, eventually grabbing his wrists and snapping the weapons out of his hands, picking them up at the same time and swinging them together. The whole mass of water surrounding the area was shoved back as he rolled across the garden.

“Not bad,” Yustina said- clearly commenting on the weapons and not the wielder. Then she spun around once, instantly drying out. A second spin and she produced a tornado of green flame that made its way towards Bora.

Even defended by his water elemental spiritual energy, Bora looked hesitant to take the attack. Instead, he called out. “Raghu! You are the host here! Deal with this!”

“And how should I do that?” Raghu raised an eyebrow. “If you had not escalated the situation, it would have been quite easy. But you had to go and drag your guards into it, taking it away from being a personal scuffle.”

Though Raghu said all that… Bora wasn’t able to hear most of it. The tornado of fire mixed with the bubble of water around Bora to create a cloud of steam, though both eventually petered out, leaving Bora dazed and half passed out on the ground.

“Whew,” Yustina casually fanned herself. “That took a lot out of me.”

Feeling her energy reserves, John knew it was technically true. She didn’t have much left over… but she was also the one who was standing upright after the battle. Bora looked a bit like a boiled crab and wasn’t terribly injured, but if she’d wanted to kill him it could have happened.

John hadn’t interacted with her much before, mostly hearing about her through Steve’s recollections. She seemed… more experienced in combat than he would have expected. Now he was curious. He could just ask, he supposed.

“Where did you learn to fight like that?” There weren’t many people listening, and John felt she was the sort to straightforwardly brush him off if she really didn’t want to answer. And she hung around Steve, so she had to like straightforward to some extent.

She turned her head and looked him in the eyes. “Aglor,” she said, as if that was a sufficient answer.

Maybe it was, but John didn’t know who or what an Aglor was. But if it wasn’t just a bogus answer, it very much seemed worth looking into.