When Dorian opened his eyes, he found, to his annoyance, he couldn’t quite let loose. Yet.

First there was the array hemming him in. But more annoying—he appeared to be surrounded. By people.

The crowd had filled out. It’d mostly been workers before. But now its ranks swelled with Heilong robes. There were young acolytes and gray-bearded Elders and balding enforcers, their heads sculpted with draconic tattoos. There were even batches of little boys and girls pressed up to the front of the crowd, craning over one another for a better look at him.

And almost every last one of them was sneering, or glaring, or scowling at him. Suspicion drifted from them like a stench of rot.

Apparently Dorian had inspired a Heilong family reunion! By the size of the crowd, this must be most of them. They’d come to see the guy who destroyed their house and snatched their heirloom treasure—all in the span of a day. If the Heilongs were like any other noble family Dorian knew, half of them hated the other half’s guts. But a shared dislike of something else has a funny way of bringing people together.

“So?” said Bin. His arms were crossed. The frown on his face was cross. “Will you get on with it?”

Dorian blinked. “With what?”

“The breakthrough!” snapped Bin. “I’ve not got all day, child!”

Huh? I just—Dorian blinked again. Oh. I see. His breakthrough was subtle. There was no explosion, no great shower of qi, not even a pulse. It all happened within. Outwardly, Dorian had been frowning for minutes for seemingly no reason at all. The only weird thing was the Javelin suddenly vanishing, but it could’ve simply gone into his Interspatial Ring.

To others, it probably looked like Dorian had stage fright. Or he was stalling.

Or maybe he’d botched the breakthrough.

As though on cue—“Heh!” It was Heilong Yu—the First Young Master who Dorian had met outside the gates of the Estate, Tan’s brutish older brother. With one hand, he cooled himself with a gaudy paper fan lathered with hand-painted glaciers.

With the other he jabbed a finger at Dorian, smirking. “You failed, didn’t you? I thought as much. You may trick your way into our family. You may steal our treasures. But you will never be one of us, Outsider! We all know it. It seems the Javelin does too!”

The crowd was suddenly boiling with speculation.

“No way…”

“Did you see anything? When Young Master Yu fused with his weapon there was a flash of scorching fire,” said a soldier.

“That’s right—I was there when Princess Eudora fused with hers! The Heavens sang with lights!” cried another.

“It’s true, it’s true! The mudspawn’sscrewed it up!” cackled a noblewoman.

“Pathetic,” growled a hulking golem of a man in spiked greaves—one of the army’s elites.“Hear me, pretender! If you had a shred of honor, you would forfeit the weapon and never return!”

“Yea! Go away, go away!” That last one came from a toddler so young his hair was still growing in, squirming in the arms of his scowling mother. He shook a tiny fist at Dorian. The kid was probably a year from figuring out object permanence, but he sure knew bad man bad.

Must I suffer these fools? Dorian sighed.

There must’ve been over a hundred of them here, most high in the Profound. A good chunk in the Earth Realm. Half were in soldier’s garb. The other were young, but bore bodies sculpted by stringent training. These were warriors bred from birth, one and all. Even the toddler had some biceps on him.

Hmm. I suppose I must bear them—at least a little. They’re some of the best warriors in the Oasis. Armed well, they could serve as damned good meat shields between me and Nijo.

Yes. His eyes glinted. This crowd could be quite useful to him. They simply needed to be put in their place.

But first—“Bin?” said Dorian, rolling his eyes. “Muzzle your hounds, will you?”

The general shrugged. He looked quite pleased with all the hubbub—as pleased as his stony face got, anyways. “I police men, not thoughts. The opinions of my family are their own.”

“Ah, but you forget that it was written in our soul contract that I would have equal rights and privileges to a Young Master!” Dorian wagged a finger at him. “I should think a Young Master should deserve a certain respect. Perhaps Fate thinks so too! Want to bet on it?”

An invisible string seemed to tighten between them.

Bin blanched. Then he spun around, waving to the crowd. “Shut up, all of you!” He roared. “What’s done is done! The kid is a Heilong now. You might not like him. But you shall treat him as such.”

A flurry of grumbles and mutters sprang up.

“That is an order,” snapped Bin. His monstrous aura rose above him like hackles. “Hear me, soldiers of Heilong. I am your General. You will obey!”

That shut them up.

“Thank you,” said Dorian with a grin. His eyes swept the crowd. “I get it. It’s only natural to have your doubts! Why, it would be unreasonable to expect you to accept me.”

“You’ve got that right,” snorted Heilong Yu, still fluttering his painted fan.

Dorian smirked. “But the weapon has.”

He reached for the space in his soul. And pulled.

It was as though he’d pulled a tempest out of thin air. A tempest of smoke which wreathed him, wrapping around him, snakelike, swirling around him and blotting out the sun above. In that funnel of swirling smoke was something stark and pale white, a fang the size of a man’s chest, curved wicked sharp. It coiled around him like a pet serpent, hissing as it shared the air. Effortless.

Dorian basked in it, relishing the way the fang carved its way about. Oh, that is lovely. Its aura was smoke: smoke that drifted off Dorian like a sickly purple-black mist, seeping off him in tendrils, shrouding him in the gloom.

The crowd was stunned silent. They looked like they’d seen the ghost of the Heilong Ancestor himself. The lady in war paint gaped. The soldiers stared. The giant’s eyes grew wide as plates.

Even Heilong Yu was speechless. He nearly dropped his fan. It was frozen by the side of his face.

“It— it—“ gasped Bin. “Gods! It truly is. You’ve—you’ve done it! The Heilong Javelin, dormant for centuries… has awakened!”

Nobody said a word. Dorian got why. It was a storybook legend from their childhoods brought to life. Even Bin must’ve not really believed Dorian could bond with it. Until he did.

Then—

“S-so you’ve merged with it,” croaked Heilong Yu. His eyes were red with disbelief. “So what? That’s not even the hard part! The Javelin is notoriously hard to wield! It took the Founder three years to budge it an inch, and he was the most talented spearman in the history of the Oasis. It took him decades to master it! And you are not him!”

He thrust his fan out at Dorian, desperate. “A weapon is only as good as its wielder! Without that, it’s dead weight!”

“Good point,” said Dorian, nodding. “Hold still for me, will you?”

“Huh?”

It felt like extending out his arm to grab something. Easy, intuitive, with almost no distinction between thought and act. He willed, and the Fang moved.

It whipped by so fast it seemed a trick of light. Holy hells that’s fast! Dorian only realized it’d passed by when he saw the rope trailing behind it—a shadow in broad daylight, defying the sun, smoking black mist.

Its head pierced clean through the fan in Heilong Yu’s hand. The poor Young Master didn’t even have time to blink. He only saw it slink back to Dorian, his fan speared on its tip.

Dorian snatched it out of the air.

Then he started fanning himself with it. “Ooh this is nice,” he said with a grin. “I see why you like it.”

Young Master Yu seemed to have lost control of the muscles in his face. He stared at his hand—at the place where his fan had been. Then he looked at it. In Dorian’s hand. Then at his hand. Then at Dorian’s, and his torn fan wafting about. The two puzzle pieces in his head just weren’t clicking together.

“Bluh?” he said.

A fresh, familiar voice popped up.

“Yes, yes! I knew it!” Tan Heilong broke out of the ranks, beaming. “I knew you could do it! That’s my friend, everyone! That is Io! Our new Hero!”

Dorian grinned. Thanks, bud. What a timely injection to sway the crowd.

A few workers sank to their knees. The Heilongs pointed at him, trembling. A few seemed near tears.

Even Bin’s mouth hung open.

“It is exactly as father said,” he breathed. “Even more. How do you wield it so—so easily? It ought to be impossible!”

Dorian tapped at his chin. The crowd now had a much different face than at the start. If they were hardened metal, now he’d blasted them in fire and they were molten—malleable. Open. Impressionable.

Here was a chance to carve an opinion in them before they hardened back up.

“Impossible?” Dorian laughed. “You will soon learn, I expect,” he mused, loud enough for all to hear. “Not to use that word around me. No matter the odds, my newfound compatriots, stick with me and I shall deliver you. It’s my right and duty as your Hero.”

No cheers arose. He didn’t expect them. But when he glanced around, he did see a sea of dumbstruck awe.

It would do. Gaining respect was the first step to gaining allegiance.

For now…

He looked up to the sky, squinting.

It was nearing noon—the First Round of the Tournament—and he still hadn’t gotten a chance to test out his new Weapon Ability!

Which poor sod will be my first victim?

***

Somewhere tens of li away in an underground training bunker, Eudora Azcan licked her lips.

It had taken some begging and batted eyelids, but she’d done it. She’d gotten the pairings changed ever-so-slightly… and who would notice? Low seeds got paired up in the First Round all the time.

They might call you a ‘Hero.’ But you haven’t got me fooled for a second! Hmph!

A nasty smile on a pretty face.

“Oh, Io, Io, Io…” she crooned, twirling her Spirit Weapon about her. The Two Sashes of Heaven, a pair of pure-white silks which glittered with black spots like black stars in a white sky—the night sky inverted. One Sash whipped through the air, setting upon a dummy. She imagined it was that horrible Io instead.

It was like a funeral shroud squeezing with the force of a King Wyrm. The reinforced steel groaned, caving in, twisting on itself, hissing with leaking steam as it was crushed under the force. In seconds it was squashed to a ball.

You poor thing, she thought with a smirk. You don’t have the faintest idea just how screwed you are, do you?