Ruthless: Path of Conquest

“I don’t know what he meant about that either,” James said for the third time. It was just as true this time as it had been the previous two.

It was after they had put the children to sleep, after Mina had fed James Junior. The husband and wife were rehashing James’s conversation with the “Unknown Entity” who called himself Bear.

Bear’s obvious knowledge of their situation meant that James had to take what the masked figure said seriously, but the advice was vague, especially the stuff about the monotheists and training Mina for certain “violent eventualities.”

A part of James believed that the advice to make Mina stronger was to address the same future prophecy that Sister Strange had shown him. But it didn’t quite make sense. In the vision he had seen, Mina was incredibly powerful, and it did not save her. He still wasn’t certain the Wraith even had the power to present real visions of the future anyway.

“What did he say that made you so angry?” Mina asked.

“Hm?” James was lost in speculation and took a few seconds to realize what his wife had said. “Oh, it was everything. He just kept needling me. The guy was definitely doing it on purpose. And it especially pissed me off, because he kept implying that bad things might happen to you or to the country if I didn’t listen to him. But he wouldn’t come out with anything specific. I also felt…” He let his voice trail off.

“You also felt?” Mina poked him in the stomach as she spoke. Where he had once had slight love handles, now James was all hard muscle. The attempt to lightly tickle him failed completely.

He cracked a smile anyway. Mina’s face as she touched him was priceless. Like she couldn’t believe what she felt. He could almost hear the Wow.

James had gotten very accustomed to his new body, but Mina was much less familiar with it still.

“I also felt a little helpless,” he admitted, lowering his voice.

“Helpless? You? How?” She sounded nearly incredulous.

“Normally I can sort of calculate the odds of beating someone in a fight, with higher accuracy the longer the fight goes on and the more I know about the enemy. When I looked at him, though, that part of my brain just shut off. Like, ‘Don’t even bother, man, you don’t have a shot.’ When I got closer to him, I felt it. I could punch him, but it would be pointless. Like hitting a brick wall, back before I could punch down a brick wall. Or maybe more like fighting a ghost.” He paused thoughtfully. “I don’t think there’s any human being like that.”

“What do you mean? No human being like what?”

“No human being that I shouldn’t be able to beat under some circumstance. Whoever or whatever Bear really is, it might be more appropriate to just think of him as ‘the entity’ rather than trying to pretend as if he gave us a real name. Like he’s a person who just likes being in disguise. Because that guy isn’t human. I don’t know if he’s a spirit, a demon, or something else. But he is not a human being.” With every word he spoke, James’s confidence in what he was saying grew. By the time he pronounced his judgment on the situation, he felt certain.

Bear is something else. Maybe he’s well intentioned, coming here and speaking to me as directly as he has. Maybe. But it’s hard to trust someone when you don’t know the first thing about him. Only that he isn’t like us.

“What do you want to do about him?” Mina asked. “Even if you don’t think you could beat him in a fistfight, there are other ways, right? I’ve seen how you move the soil. You could use your power over the land and expel him from the Kingdom. Just toss him like the ground is a catapult.”

James grinned at the mental image. It was ridiculous yet also plausible. At least more plausible than him smashing the masked figure’s head in. When he drew close to the man, it felt like a punch might just pass straight through Bear’s body. But whatever he was, the entity still needed ground to stand on.

“Or we could get a mob of people together,” Mina continued, “and see how the unknown thing does against a few hundred people trying to tear him limb from limb. I know those people you just blessed would love to help you solve a problem right now.” She smiled and kissed James on the cheek.

“I’m honestly not even thinking about dealing with him right now,” James said. “I gave him a timeline. If he’s still here in three days, then we’ll see what we do about him.” He turned and kissed her back, full on the lips.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, giving him an enticing look.

“Well, tomorrow, you and I are going to start training together,” James said. “That was the one thing he said that I agree with. You have magical Skills that you might be able to teach me. And I have a long list of Skills that you can probably learn just by seeing me use them over and over. Plus, I could give you some basic martial arts training. The System has taught me well. And it should be fun. I’ll show you how to wrassle.” He put on a faux southern accent with that last sentence. “But all that’s tomorrow. First, there’s tonight.”

He wrapped an arm around her, pulled her close, and gave her another, much longer kiss.

The next morning, they performed their usual morning chores. Breakfast and cleanup with the children and Yulia. Then James lined the children and Yulia up, from oldest to youngest.

“I need you all to stay sort of still for this,” he said. He looked at Abhi, and the little boy nodded with understanding. If the little ones tried to run or crawl away, Abhi would fetch them back.

And James blessed them all, starting with Yulia and finishing with Junior.

He had intended to do this from the moment he learned he could offer a form of blessings to people. Now that he had seen the beneficial effects on those incapacitated in the forest battle, he had decided there was no point in waiting to extend the same privilege to the children.

Eventually, every one of my citizens will have a blessing from me, he thought. Since it’s clearly not a problem to have both that and a blessing from a god—Mina has both—there’s no reason to forgo this advantage.

He was still hazy on how his blessing power worked, but he at least now knew from real world results that they could hasten recovery from a debilitating condition.

He would have to ask Mina later if she noticed other effects.

James rose from his chair—he had taken a seat after the last couple of blessings, since they still took a lot out of him—and looked around to see where his wife had gone. He heard her distant movements in the bedroom, where she must be getting ready.

Then a short person had latched onto his leg. James looked down and made eye contact with Abhi.

“What are you going to do now?” the little boy asked. James could see he was still a little anxious about being left alone.

“I’m going to go and train with Mina now,” he replied.

But maybe I could take you, if you’re really worried I’m not going to come back, he thought. Abhi had seemed very relieved to have James acting as normal in the apartment that morning. It seemed that the last few days, in which James had been either blessing people or bedridden, had been hard on Abhi. He knows what it looks like when someone’s ill, probably. He thought that was what was happening to me, and he assumed the worst. Poor kid.

“Can I go with you?” Abhi asked.

Yeah, I thought so.

“Um, Yulia? What do you think?” James asked.

She had spent more time with Abhi and his siblings than James had, and he wasn’t certain if she needed or wanted Abhi to stick around and help supervise the younger children.

“Why don’t we all go?” Yulia suggested. “The kids could go for some fresh air.”

“Yeah, why not?” James said. He smiled down at Abhi, who pumped his fist in response.

If it really makes him that happy, I’m glad. The kids can play outside, I’ll teach Mina, and maybe Yulia will pick up a thing or two from proximity. It would be good if she learned to defend herself, even though she’s a Healer. That was the main thing the entity who called himself Bear was right about. James would not always be around at every moment when danger loomed. He needed to see to his family’s defenses when he wasn’t present.

“Ready!” Mina’s voice came from the doorway of the bedroom.

She looked radiant as she stepped through the opening. James stood for a moment just looking at her and smiling. His wife was gorgeous.

Mina looked up at him expectantly, caught the intensity of his gaze, and blushed. James could tell that she wanted to say something but could not with the children there.

“Are—are we ready to go?” she asked after a moment, still slightly red.

Then James explained the plan, and Mina grabbed a baby carrier that someone had apparently salvaged for them from the old apartments. The family went outside, where Mina and Yulia rigged James up like a pack mule, with babies on his chest and back and Abhi on his shoulders.

“Giddyup!” Abhi said, laughing quietly.

James felt the little boy’s gaze as he looked down to make sure he hadn’t annoyed the grown-up whose shoulders he was riding.

And James smiled up with genuine affection. Then he took off, skipping across the landscape, trying to simulate a horse ride for the little boy without shaking the babies up too much.

It was a challenge worthy of a king.

Mina and Yulia chased after him, trying to catch up to the loose bronco and laughing all the way. The children shrieked with joy.

People outside stopped, watched, pointed, and laughed. James pretended that they were not there as he made a loop around the apartment buildings and came out by the community center.

After one more loop, he finally allowed Mina and Yulia to catch him. They were out of breath and slightly sweaty, though they had not been chasing him especially closely or followed him around the buildings on the second loop. The whole family was breathless from the combination of running and laughing.

But Mina and Yulia’s breathlessness was sobering rather than amusing for James. It reminded him that they both continued to have essentially human physiology, in an incredibly dangerous world. Some training from him might actually save their lives.

Hopefully they’ll grow unusually quickly thanks to the blessings at least.

James led them out from the center of the Fisher Kingdom, toward the woods the new arrivals had come in from. To his surprise, a number of random civilians who had seen what he was doing moved to follow him and his family.

But he shrugged.

Fine. If they want to watch, they can watch. If they learn something, all good. These are my people. I was eventually going to make time to teach more than just my own family some fighting skills anyway. I’ll just have to be careful not to show off anything too crazy.

Most of his Predator in Human Skin Skills were probably abilities that no one could copy even if they spent a thousand years watching him. Predator’s Venomous Armaments, for instance, allowed him to imbue an object with venom that simply seeped from his body when he used the Skill. And Mind of the Predator was a Skill no one else could even see working.

But it would be extremely beneficial to the country if everyone had some basic martial arts knowledge. James thought the moves of Way of the Predator, which felt completely natural and instinctive when he was in the middle of fighting, could be consciously learned by simply observing him.

That was probably true for some of his bread and butter attacks, too. Air Strike was just an attack that imbued the air with Mana and threw a blade of wind forcefully at the target.

So James chose an area large enough for the people following him—now fifteen citizens, plus his family—to watch. Then he put the kids down where Mina and Yulia could supervise them. James established some breathing room between himself and his audience, clearing a fifty foot space for himself. Then he began demonstrating some of his abilities, narrating as he did so.

“Some of you might have abilities that let you copy Skills. Others might just learn something from seeing how my Skills work, as you try to discover your own. So I’ll start with some quasi-magical abilities and then move on to martial arts. When I need to attack from a distance, if I don’t have anything in my hands, my immediate recourse is to a Skill called Air Strike…”

First, he demonstrated his Air Strike, Lightning Strike, and Meteor Strike. He showed those abilities multiple times, from different angles, using different body parts for the strikes, until Mina nodded at each respective ability, indicating that she had copied it with Quick Study.

Then he asked for a volunteer so he could perform hands-on martial arts demonstrations.

“I have to participate in this,” declared a boisterous voice in the crowd. Dozens more people had gathered in the short time since James had started showing off his basic attacks. They all stood in a few layers of people between James and the buildings, where they were safe from his demonstration attacks. So it took a few seconds for the man who was raising his hand to cut through to the front of the crowd.

Mina seemed pleased to see the bald, middle-aged man with the mustache. And James remembered that he had seen him briefly before. The man had accompanied Hilda when she arrived in the Fisher Kingdom.

What did Mina say his name was again? Leon?