Gleam [Karma Cultivator Isekai] - Chapter 100: Shiny thing
For the next week, Chance and Bella traveled through the Ancient Vault. They investigated several ruins and checked out four more floating islands. Much of the area had already been cleared out before the two of them had gotten there, but they still stumbled upon a fair amount of gold and pills.
Even though they did end up finding a few more pieces of equipment that had traces of Essence on it, they elected not to take it. Carrying the extra loot around would have painted an extra target on their backs and, more than anything else, that seemed to be what got cultivators killed.
Over their week, the two watched easily twenty or thirty fights go down between other cultivators. Many of them poured out so much Essence during the battles that Chance estimated they were Rank Fours at the absolute lowest.
That didn’t stop them from killing each other like dogs. Every single fight filled Chance with distaste. It wasn’t anything like the battle in the arena he’d had with Wren, or his duel with Seleth.
It wasn’t like he had notions that battle was anything but a struggle for victory, but the manner in which he saw the other cultivators rip one another apart in exchange for an artifact with so little power that it was probably little better that the urumi wrapped around his wrist made him feel ill.
Men that had been allied turned on each other midway through the fight, grabbing their former allies gear and fleeing to safety, only to be chased down by a group of other cultivators and killed as well.
People would go from joking and laughing to fighting to the death over what Chance wouldn’t have paid more than a few hundred gold for in Gleam. If there was some sort of grand Karmic scale weighing the entire event, Chance got the feeling that one end of it would be plummeting through the floor.
He and Bella mostly kept to themselves, and their lack of any interesting belongings made them far less interesting. A few cultivators paid them some attention when they grew close enough, but luckily none cared enough to bother them.
“It’s kind of depressing,” Chance said as they made their way up a winding path toward a set of a dozen floating islands, all interconnected by swinging rope bridges. “I thought people were better than this.”
“I’m just glad we didn’t take all that stuff from the first island,” Bella said, shaking her head. “We would have been fighting nonstop if we wanted to keep it, and that’s assuming we didn’t just killed by some asshole flying by and blasting us. Don’t feel too bad about this, though. Everyone here only showed up because they wanted to get their hands on more power.”
“That’s pretty much what all cultivators do.”
“Fair,” Bella admitted. “But there’s more than one way to get strong. Entering what is essentially a huge death battle with a few limited exit points pretty much summons every monster in the immediate area like a glowing beacon. This isn’t how the whole world is.”
Chance laughed and gave Bella a small smile. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Trying to make me feel better. You don’t have to, though. We can’t control other people. I would have liked to be able to do more for the ones that didn’t deserve the trouble, but you’re right – everyone chose to come here.”
Bella grimaced and glanced to the side. “Was it really that obvious?”
“The thought is appreciated anyway. It isn’t something you can control. We should just–”
A loud explosion rocked the mountainside, ripping through the relative silence and buffeting Chance’s hair back as a shockwave followed after it. One of the islands floating in the group above them shuddered violently and pitched, bobbing in the air and threatening to fall.
Chance and Bella stared up at the island as it righted itself. A huge plume of smoke rose up from it. An instant later, a wave of Essence crashed into both of them. Chance stiffened as the power washed over his skin.
“What was that?” Chance asked, squinting up at the island. It wasn’t too far away from them, but he couldn’t see anyone on or near it. The wave of Essence had passed just as quickly as it had come, leaving just the thick cloud of smoke gathering above the island.
Bella didn’t respond. Her eyes were wide as she stared up at the island, longing burning in them.
“Bella?”
She shook her head and swallowed. “That Essence is really close to mine. Like… really close. Not exactly the same, but it’s enough that I could probably cultivate next to it and take huge steps to advance.”
Chance peered up at the island, then glanced down the mountain. There weren’t any signs of fights beyond the explosion, which meant there probably weren’t too many other people in the area. Yet.
“We can try to check it out,” Chance said.
Bella started to nod, then paused. She pressed her lips together. “We don’t have to. That much Essence is probably going to draw a lot of people. It could be dangerous.”
“You really want that Essence though.”
“Well, yes. But not enough to get you killed as well.”
“We might not have come here for the same reason as everyone else, but now that we’ve arrived, we might as well have,” Chance said, starting to walk again at a faster pace. “We might as well give it a shot. If it’s dangerous, we’ll leave.”
Bella hurried to catch up with him. She didn’t offer any more protest. It couldn’t have been clearer how badly she wanted to get her hands on whatever had caused the outpouring of Essence.
They quickly reached the bridge leading up to the nearest of the islands. It still swung slightly from the explosion, and the wood that made it up didn’t look particularly sturdy. Chance called on his Essence and grabbed the rope rails, stepping onto the planks gently.
Wind made them sway beneath his feet as he stepped forward. Chance swayed with them, easily keeping his weight distributed to avoid suddenly putting pressure on anything. The luck he drew on with every step didn’t hurt either.
Bella followed behind him, holding onto the ropes with a death grip and taking every step with meticulous precision – she put her feet exactly where Chance had put his, not willing to risk any other parts of the bridge. Chance sent as much of his luck back to Bella as he could. It would have been ironic to get this far only to get killed falling from a shoddy rope bridge.
Even though the climb up the bridge was only a minute or two at most, it felt like half an hour. By the time that they set foot on the floating island, Bella’s forehead was drenched with sweat.
The island was essentially a single grassy flat, connected by three bridges to other nearby islands. One of them had a small ruin of a house on it, while the other two both had shattered guardhouses on them, well into the stages of decay. Beyond them, the island that had caught Bella’s attention floated in the center of the group. A small castle sat upon it, a good half of it demolished and smoking. Fire had started to lick along it, consuming the building at a steady rate. Chance wasn’t sure how stone was burning, but he wasn’t about to stop and question that over everything else he’d seen since arriving on Centurion.
“I felt your Essence on the bridge,” Bella said. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Chance replied, his eyes on the castle. “I don’t hear any more fighting. If there was ever fighting in the first place, that is. That means it’s either safe or–”
“Someone won,” Bella finished with a nod. “Let’s be careful. I’ll go first. If it’s anyone that looks too dangerous, there’s no point fighting them if we can avoid it. It isn’t worth it.”
Chance nodded and Bella took the lead. They stepped onto the next rope bridge and golden mist swirled around both of them as Chance drew on it, making sure they wouldn’t find the one rotten plank waiting for someone unlucky enough to stumble upon it on their way over.
All the islands on the way over to the main one were deserted. No signs of anyone having investigated the area were present, nor were there any items or patches of Essence to catch Chance’s attention.
They were empty for all intents and purposes – aside from the castle. They had no difficulties in crossing the remainder of the bridges, and the two soon stood at the front of the burning building.
The two double doors stood askew, one of them blasted off its hinges and the other hanging at an angle. A thin stream of smoke filtered out from the top of the castle and joined the plume rising into the air.
“That’s… reassuring,” Bella muttered as they approached the entrance. She peered inside and Chance poked his head over her shoulder.
It looked like a castle. There wasn’t much else to say. There was an old red rug that had probably once been beautiful, but it was now bleached white by the sun and crushed down by thousands of feet.
The walls were stained as if there had once been tapestries that had protected them from the sun, but someone had stolen them some time ago and left slightly discolored patches in their wake.
At the back of the entrance hall of the castle was the source of the smoke, where a large hole had been blasted through the floor. Deep within it, something glittered with both light and Essence.
Even though Chance could tell the Essence had absolutely nothing to do with anything he cultivated, the pull coming from within the hole was strong. If Bella hadn’t been there, he would have been tempted to try and take whatever it was for himself.
The two of them crept toward the hole, their Essence at the ready. Even if there wasn’t someone already there, it wouldn’t be long before someone was.
“What is that?” Chance wondered softly.
“I don’t know,” Bella whispered back. “But I want it. Really badly. Do you think it’s using some form of mental influence?”
They drew up to the edge of the hole and Chance squinted into the smoke, trying to make something out within it. “I’m not really an expert on this stuff, but I don’t think things that use mental influence typically wants you to think about said mental influence.”
“What if that’s part of its strategy?”
“Do you want the shiny thing or not?”
“I want it,” Bella grumbled. “I was just being careful.”
“Then let’s go,” Chance replied, calling on his Essence and feeling the rush of it as it flowed through his system. A grin slipped across his face and he spotted a dry spot on the ground within the hole that would make for a safe landing. “It’s at the bottom of this pit somewhere, and the faster we get to it the better.”
Then he jumped.
