Chapter 14: Devil Training
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"Step right up, don't miss out! Fresh green-quality weapons, just 12 Tree Coins to take one home!"
"Buying all kinds of recovery potions, long-term! Price is negotiable!"
"New player protection service available! Guild escort guaranteed, 5 Tree Coins per person!"
Compared to the deserted back half, the front half was lively as a wet market, even the usually cold Lu couldn't help but look around with curiosity.
The stuff sold here looked pretty basic, but the prices were genuinely cheap. 1 Tree Coin could buy 3 basic life recovery potions, each restoring 100 HP. Su Ling was a little tempted by these standard life-saving items, but Lu wouldn't let her buy them.
"Your blood has changed your current life form. Regular life recovery items have absolutely no effect on you."
Hearing that, Su Ling's face immediately fell. She looked so pitiful she could have been a kitten that just got abandoned: "So you're saying every fight from now on I'm basically dancing on a knife's edge? What if I get ganged up on?"
If it were anything else, seeing Su Ling like this might have softened Lu's heart, but when it came to combat, Lu was stricter with Su Ling than with anyone else, because she understood very clearly: going soft now would only get Su Ling killed on an enemy's blade someday.
"That's something you'll have to learn to handle. When we get back, I'm putting you through special training." Lu didn't even glance sideways, her tone cold and firm, leaving no room for argument.
"Fine."
Su Ling trudged along, looking defeated. After browsing around, she bought 3 mana recovery potions, the same price as the life ones. She kept the remaining 2 Tree Coins unspent, planning to restock whatever she needed once her first official mission came around.
Without money in your pocket, even window shopping felt hollow. Before long, Su Ling headed back to her private room with zero enthusiasm. She had no plans to add any furniture for now, don't even ask, she was flat broke.
That said, it didn't really matter, because the moment Su Ling got home, Lu said she was taking her somewhere. Su Ling was confused, she was in Tree City and didn't even know how to leave. Where could Lu possibly take her?
She voiced her confusion, but Lu didn't answer with words. She simply raised her right hand and snapped her fingers. As a cloying, metallic scent of blood gradually overtook Su Ling's senses, everything her eyes could see changed completely.
The ceiling dissolved into endless crimson clouds blotting out the sky, and only feeble rays of sunlight managed to filter dimly through the heavy overcast. The ground beneath her feet, a vast, barren expanse of red earth, seemed coated in a thin layer of blood. That sickly, sweet stench of iron appeared to rise from the earth itself.
Before her, tens of thousands of beings knelt prostrate on the ground. And in the direction they all faced, an altar rose from the earth like a pyramid. Along both sides of its full 50 tiers of steps, beings stood at attention like guards, perfectly upright.
At the very top of the altar, upon a throne built from piled bones, a white-haired dragon girl rested her cheek in one hand. Her eyes were gently closed, giving her an expression that looked serene and peaceful, as though she were simply asleep.
The dragon girl was breathtakingly beautiful. But as Su Ling studied her for a moment, she made a startling discovery: that face looked almost exactly like her own, just older. Though she herself didn't have the other's dragon horns, and couldn't keep her dragon tail permanently manifested like the other could.
Compared to her, she felt like an incomplete, juvenile dragon. A rather ridiculous thought suddenly bubbled up in Su Ling's mind. She looked at Lu standing beside her, equal parts suspicious and astonished: "You're not pulling some kind of twisted stand-in romance plot on me, are you?"
Lu's expression instantly darkened. She reached out and flicked Su Ling on the back of the head, in this realm shaped from Lu herself, this little world of hers, she was capable of affecting physical reality.
"What are you even thinking? You are you. You're not anyone's stand-in."
That flick knocked all the weird thoughts right out of Su Ling's head. She rubbed her head and sneaked a resentful glance at Lu's face. She didn't find a single trace of dismissiveness there, and the tone of those words carried absolutely no hint of trying to placate her.
That was the most genuine thought in Lu's heart.
Knowing she wouldn't be turned into the lead of some cringe-worthy stand-in romance, Su Ling let out a huge sigh of relief. She had zero interest in being the center of a trashy love drama.
"Besides, I'm a sword spirit. I don't understand the feelings and romance of you mortals."
That was a lie!
Whether it was some kind of shared understanding with Lu, or a side effect of Spirit Eye, the moment Lu finished speaking, Su Ling immediately sensed she was lying. But she didn't call it out, because she figured if Lu wanted to tell her the truth, she would on her own.
And if Lu didn't want to say it, pressing her would just be rude. After all, everyone deserves their own privacy and secrets. Digging into someone else's private matters is not exactly great behavior.
Wait, hold on, wasn't it that Su Ling herself no longer had any privacy or secrets from Lu's perspective? No way! She wanted a do-over!
The thought had barely formed when Lu gave her no chance to dwell on it. With a gesture toward the crowd prostrated before the altar, 5 humanoid beings of different races stood up and quickly approached Su Ling.
Among the 5 were an elf, a vampire, a dwarf, and a genuine human. Each of them used a different weapon, and every single one of them was one notch weaker than Su Ling.
In a 1v1, Su Ling was confident she could beat any one of them cleanly. She could even handle a rotation fight without breaking a sweat. But Lu obviously hadn't brought them here to line up and feed her kills one by one.
"5 versus 1. You rest when you win."
As Lu's merciless words landed, the 5 of them launched their assault. The shield-wielding dwarf charged at Su Ling first, barreling forward like a raging bull. The sheer overwhelming pressure of that charge instantly snapped Su Ling's full attention into combat mode.
Clash head-on? Or dodge?
In a split second, Su Ling made her choice. The vague sensation of being locked on by her instincts made her pick the former, her gut told her that if she dodged, it was over right there.
Dragon scales surfaced on her thigh. Su Ling stepped forward, meeting the dwarf's charge and driving a kick straight into his shield. The deafening impact seemed to make the air itself tremble for an instant. But before Su Ling could follow up, a sense of danger from her right flank made her instinctively throw out her most critical survival skill, Blood Butterfly!
An arrow gleaming with emerald light pierced through a swarm of red butterflies. The butterflies re-coalesced into a human shape behind the dwarf. Su Ling didn't pause for a heartbeat, the moment she materialized, her longsword came slashing down. If that hit landed, the dwarf's head would have left his body on the spot!
Bang!
The bullet arrived before the gunshot. Her longsword took a hard hit, forcing her swing off its intended trajectory. By then the dwarf had also reacted, spinning around to smash his shield into Su Ling's deflected blade!
A weakened force met a full-power blow, and the Immortal-Slaying Sword in Su Ling's hand predictably swung wide. Su Ling herself lost her footing for just a split second, and in that exact moment, a dagger drove hard into her shadow, locking her in place at her most vulnerable instant.
Then, in the very next second, an arrow pierced her throat, a dagger pierced her heart, and the pain triggered tears, but death arrived first. The world in Su Ling's eyes plunged instantly into darkness.
Her consciousness felt like it was sinking into the deep sea. Su Ling struggled in the dark like someone who had drowned, thrashing desperately. Perhaps it was only an instant, or perhaps a hundred years had passed, when a thread of light finally pierced the darkness, her consciousness surged back. She snapped her eyes open.
"Hah— hah— hah—!" The shock had Su Ling gasping for air like a fish out of water. She looked around, she was still in that bloody, eerie space. The 5 of them stood calmly in front of her as if they'd just been waiting.
She patted her neck, then looked at her heart. Both were perfectly intact, as though the death just moments ago had been nothing but a nightmare.
"Going for the tank first in a group fight, huh? You really live that gamer life." Lu gave Su Ling a sideways look, her tone carrying a slight upturn, the kind of amusement that only comes when someone is so done with you that they just have to laugh.
Not that there's never a situation to kill the tank first, but that's only when you can completely overpower them, when you're too lazy to bother with the others and just mow down whoever's closest.
Su Ling clearly didn't fit that situation. She had no way to take down the tank in a short time, and getting tied up with the hardest target to kill would only put herself at a disadvantage. And the one thing you absolutely can't afford when fighting multiple enemies is getting dragged into their combat rhythm.
Even funnier, a single feint arrow had baited out Su Ling's most important survival skill. Did she even need to be told what happens without her invincibility? Got controlled, then got combo'd to death without a single chance to fight back.
If those 5 had just displayed a textbook example of how to surround and eliminate a target, then Su Ling had displayed a textbook example of fighting multiple enemies, just the "what not to do" edition.
Those 5 hadn't even needed all of their members. Just 4 of them had pinned Su Ling down and finished her off in under 30 seconds. Lu had expected Su Ling to lose her first 1v5, but she hadn't expected her to lose this badly, this fast.
She felt a wave of relief, relief that she had put this devil training on the schedule early, rather than letting Su Ling develop at her own pace for a while first. Because at the level Su Ling just showed, losing face would be the least of her problems. Losing her life is something you don't get a second chance at.
Lu could tell that when Su Ling first faced the 5 of them, she hadn't shown much caution. It looked like soloing the Contaminator, Spider Type had given her a surplus of confidence, making her think she was already invincible at her level, so anyone weaker than her wasn't even worth taking seriously?
Thinking that, Lu gave Su Ling no time to rest and immediately had the 5 launch another coordinated assault. She needed to grind down the arrogance that had just started sprouting in Su Ling's heart. Confidence is fine, but arrogance is a countdown to self-destruction.
Underestimating any enemy can cost you in blood. History is full of examples of the weak defeating the strong. If Su Ling keeps going into every fight with a dismissive attitude, she'll sooner or later become the latest addition to that long list of the weak defeating the strong, except she'd be the strong one who lost.
"Looks like you haven't played a Soulslike in too long and forgot the trauma of getting wrecked by the Three-Dog Ganking Formation."
The corner of Lu's mouth curled slightly. She knew she might be misreading Su Ling's mindset, but she didn't care. When it came to Su Ling's training, her policy was: it's better to be wrong and harsh than to let things slide. She would never allow Su Ling to put herself in danger over some basic mistake.
So she was going to be the villain here, and she was fine with that. Better to be tormented by her now than to take real losses and get hurt in actual combat. And in this place, Su Ling dying didn't mean she was actually dead, but in reality, there was no extra life waiting for her.
The smile on Lu's face grew more dangerous. A devotion bordering on obsession gradually surfaced on her cool, composed face.
"But that's fine. I'll help you remember."