Gleam [Karma Cultivator Isekai] - Chapter 121: Story

Jade batted a large, buzzing insect away from her face, cursing under her breath. Despite what she’d told Chance and Bella, she’d fully expected some degree of disciplinary action from the Shikari after she reported her failure to capture her targets.

But, when she’d returned to Gleam, Shae had been nowhere to be found. She’d went to find Gibson, he was missing as well. Jade had ended up reporting her results to Janet, who didn’t look like she possibly could have cared less.

Jade had originally thought that was a good thing. If nobody was there, her crushing defeat in the mission might actually slip under the notice of anyone of importance. She’d waited around the city for a few days just in case, but nobody ever came knocking.

The temptation to sit around and do nothing for a few days was strong, but Jade had pushed through it. She’d promised Chance and Bella to find their friend, and she wasn’t going to sit around and do nothing while another innocent person got butchered by whoever was after them.

That was how she found herself stumbling through a smoldering hot jungle, batting aggressive insects away as sweat poured down her brow. Her clothes stuck to her back and every breath came laden with the scent of heavy moss and a faint tinge of dead animal.

“Who choses a place like this to hide?” Jade muttered to herself. She cursed as she tripped over a protruding tree branch and grabbed onto its rough bark to catch her balance.

Letting out a long suffering sigh, Jade squinted through the dense canopy above her. There was still sun trickling in through the gaps in the leaves, but she couldn’t even tell what time it was anymore.

The heat was quickly growing oppressive, and while it wasn’t posing a real threat to her, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this uncomfortable. Jade pulled her shirt away from her back, grimacing as it stuck to her skin.

“Where in the world is Yeo? If I didn’t promise to do this, I would have turned around a day ago.”

“If you weren’t complaining so much, you might have heard me behind you.”

Jade leapt nearly a foot into the air, spinning and grabbing the hilt of her sword. A dark haired boy leaned against a tree behind her, his tanned skin crisscrossed with fading scars. He held a black sword in a loose grip in one hand. The hair on Jade’s neck stiffened. Despite the boy’s relaxed posture, something about him set her on edge.

“Yeo?”

“Good guess, Shikari,” Yeo replied, spinning the sword in his hand. “How many of you do I have to kill before you get the message? I don’t mind the training, but it’s kind of a hassle at this point. You could at least send people that are a bit stronger.”

Jade’s brow furrowed. Yeo was acting exactly how she’d expected Chance to act when she’d first met him. They couldn’t have been more different – and, unlike Chance, she didn’t feel safe in the slightest beside him.

She slowly drew her sword, holding it before her. “You’ve been killing Shikari?”

“Training against them after they keep sending people after me,” Yeo corrected her. “They do end up dying as a result, though. I’m surprised you haven’t attacked yet. Did you get wise enough to try an ambush or something?”

“No, I’m here on my own.”

Maybe he’s just putting on an act to keep people away from him? It was reported that the Shikari coming after Yeo went missing, though. Has he actually just been murdering Shikari? I guess it’s self-defense, but he doesn’t seem too bothered about killing anyone.

“That’s a disappointment,” Yeo said with a frown. He pushed himself away from the tree and raised his sword. “I hope you’re stronger than you look, at least. Considering you’re hunting a dangerous criminal, you aren’t very prepared. Are you going to raise your defenses or anything? This is going to be way too easy if you don’t.”

This guy is dangerous. Something’s going on here, but I don’t think this is the person that Chance was talking about. He’s a threat.

“Chance said you were a friend, so I didn’t think I’d need to do something like that.” Jade adjusted her chance, keeping her sword between them as she prepared to draw on her Essence. “It looks like he might have been deluded.”

Yeo blinked. He lowered his sword before narrowing his eyes and pointing it at Bella. “Chance? Where did you meet him? Did the Shikari catch up with him?”

“I don’t know if I’m going to answer that.” Jade pulled more Essence, enveloping her body in a faint yellow glow. “You aren’t like him at all. Maybe the Shikari were right to try to eliminate you. Did Chance and Bella just get caught up in something you started?”

Yeo grunted. He flicked a finger and a thin steel wire sliced through the air toward Jade’s side, suddenly pulled taut. She shifted her sword, catching the line on the edge of her blade before it could bite into her flesh.

“Not bad,” Yeo said, inclining his head slightly. “You’re not going to drop my guard that easily though, Shikari. You really think that you’re the first one to show up talking about my friends? That’s not going to work.”

He darted toward Jade, ribbons of neigh-invisible metal swirling from his fingertips as they caught the light. Jade dove to the side. Her Essence armor flared as metal carved against it, scraping past and failing to cut her flesh.

She rolled to her feet, swinging her sword for Yeo’s chest. He blocked the blow with his thin blade and a violent tremor ran down the hilt of her sword and into her arms with enough intensity to force her to break her grip on it.

Jade swept her leg, trying to take Yeo’s feet out from under him. He jumped over the move and Jade felt several more metal lines grate against her back. She rolled to the side a moment before Yeo drove his blade into the earth where she’d been, burying it up to the hilt.

He jerked the blade to the side and it swept through the dirt as if nothing was there. Jade drove her foot up into Yeo’s chest, launching him back. He vaulted off his hands and landed on his feet, skidding a foot back.

Jade stood, watching Yeo warily. They locked eyes for several seconds, neither of them speaking.

“That it?” Yeo asked. “You’re not trying very hard to kill me. If you don’t make things a little more interesting, I’ll just end them here.”

“You’re the one that tried to kill me,” Jade pointed out. Essence gathered around her sword, crackling with power as she drew more of it into the blade. “I’m not so sure Chance would approve of your methods. He was worried about you for some reason, but that’s just like him. But I don’t see how the guy that was sad that he couldn’t save every single person while fighting Rank Six cultivators would ever consider someone like you a friend.”

A frown passed over Yeo’s face. “That… actually does sound like Chance. You really know him?”

“That’s what I said. Are you an idiot?”

“Now you sound like Bella,” Yeo said. His eyes narrowed and he pointed his sword at Jade. “Who are you?”

“You’re normally supposed to ask my name before you try to kill me,” Jade said, not letting her guard down in the slightest. “It’s Jade. Come at me again and you’ll find out just how good I am at fighting.”

Not that I’ve had the most luck as of late. I haven’t had a good fight since before Chance bailed me out fighting that crocodile monster, but I’m not losing a fight to some murderous Rank 3 after everything that just happened.

“Maybe we got off on the wrong foot,” Yeo said. He passed a hand over his sword and the blade vanished. Jade caught a flash of the hilt as he slipped it into a pocket and raised his hands, palms toward her. “I thought you were a Gleam thug. Did you actually meet Chance and Bella?”

“Yes. They asked me to check on you. Gods know why. They’d be better off without you, I think.”

“Come on,” Yeo said with a sheepish grin. “You can’t hold that over my head. I’ve had people trying to cut my guts out for weeks, you know. Only an idiot would just sit around and actually believe someone that came along claiming to know their friends.”

“You’d think you’d at least do your due diligence and find out if I was actually lying or not before you tried to kill me,” Jade said. “What if you killed someone innocent?”

The grin on Yeo’s face faded as his eyes darkened. “Trust me. Nobody coming here is innocent. What was your name again?”

“Jade.” She let out an annoyed huff, then wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of a hand. The fight hadn’t helped her cool off in the slightest. “I think this counts as you being checked-on, though. Alive, check. Crazy murderer, also check.”

Is it even right for me to leave someone like this around? He’s killing people – but I feel like Chance wouldn’t be friends with a monster like that, right? Are the Shikari in the wrong yet again?

“You don’t look too happy,” Yeo observed.

“I am not,” Jade replied flatly. “I’m trying to figure out if I need to try to kill you or not.”

“Very upfront. Respectable.”

“I wasn’t joking.”

“Oh, neither was I.” Yeo flashed Jade a grin. “You look soaked, by the way. Need to dry off? I’m not letting you leave without you telling me how Chance and Bella are doing.”

Jade’s eyes narrowed. “Is that a threat?”

“Do you want it to be?”

“We’ll see,” Jade said. She pulled at her shirt again, then sheathed her sword and shook her head. “Fine. Chance trusted you, so I’ll go out on a limb and listen to his advice. Hopefully it doesn’t get me as close to death as the last time.”

Yeo laughed. He turned into the trees and beckoned for Jade to follow after him. And, against her better judgement, she did.

A few minutes later, Jade found herself standing in a small cave. Light filtered in through the opening behind her, illuminating a mossy bed and a pile of weapons and armor in the corner. A large pack of rations had fallen on its side beside the bed, spilling out dry jerky and cheese.

“Who are those from?” Jade asked, pointing at the armor.

Yeo raised an eyebrow. “Just take your shirt off and dry out already. Do you really want to start a fight again?”

“I am not–”

He didn’t wait for her to respond. Yeo knelt by the pack and dug through it, pulling out a plain cloth shirt and tossing it to Jade. He straightened back out and brushed his knees off. “I’m going to walk out into the forest and I’ll stay there for a minute exactly. Then I’m coming back – so either be changed by then or be content with me watching.”

Yeo winked, then strode out of the cave. Jade glanced over her shoulder at him, then looked down at her shirt. She heaved a sigh. It really was soaked, and it wasn’t going to get any more comfortable.

She stripped out of it, briefly wiping herself off before pulling the new one on.

I hate this damn overheated jungle. I can’t even imagine how anything survives in here.

“All done?” Yeo asked, stepping back into the cave.

“Yes. Has it already been a minute?”

“Just about. I’ll be honest, I didn’t count it. I figured you’d make a decision one way or another pretty quickly.”

Jade shrugged. “I suppose you were right. So, answer the question. Who are these from? Shikari?”

“Who do you think? They’ve been sending them after me for a while now. No point wasting good gear. That a problem?”

“I suppose we’ll see. I’ll hear you out.”

“Tell me about Chance and Bella first.”

“They’re doing fine. They just demolished a slaver sect’s leading body by getting a massive dragon to pop out from under the ground and kill multiple Rank Five and Six cultivators in a single second.”

Yeo let out a slow whistle. “That sounds like Chance all right. Are they safe?”

“About as safe as one can be outside of a Scholar City. They were doing fine the last time I talked to them, and that was a few days ago.”

“Good.” Yeo let out a relieved sigh. “I was worried they might have things worse than I do, but it sounds like they’re doing all right. How’d you end up meeting them in the first place?”

Jade cleared her throat and glanced to the side. “I was hunting them, but I met Chance on accident while he was helping save a small town. I tailed him for a while, but they convinced me that the Shikari had things wrong and that you were all innocent. Not so sure that’s true anymore.”

“They’re innocent,” Yeo said. He glanced down at the pile of weapons on the ground, then shrugged. “I’m not so sure about me, but the Shikari came looking for blood. I’m not Chance. I won’t show mercy to people coming to take my life.”

“I suppose I can’t fault you for that – for now, at least. I’m going to need to know more, though. Tell me about why the Shikari are after all of you. I want to see if your story matches up with Chance’s.”

“Oh?” Yeo raised an eyebrow. “And if it doesn’t?”

“Then I do what I need to in order to protect the people of Gleam from a threat.”

Yeo grinned. “We’ll see. I’ve been training a lot, and I won’t pass up the opportunity to keep at it. Though, if you want the whole story, it might be wise to sit down. It’ll be a bit.”