He woke to the sound of feet shuffling around in the sand. Amaranth rubbed his bleary eyes and got out of his tent. Were they traveling again this soon? The caravan usually started traveling after a break a little later than this, he could have sworn, but he supposed that catching the majority of the hours before noon for travel meant that getting up before sunrise wasn't a bad idea. Amaranth stretched out his limbs, and got himself as awake as he could this early in the middle of the desert. Well, if he was going to be awake anyway, he might as well chat. He was traveling to Shen Kingdom for the experience of meeting people in a place where bronze was uncommon anyway, so he might as well enjoy the journey as well as the destination. He headed over to where the guard Chen Wuming was, along with several other guards.
Chen Wuming was a body cultivator who looked like a middle-aged mortal, and unlike the many body cultivators Amaranth knew from his Clan, he lacked the bloodline of bronze. It made sense. After all, he wasn't part of the Clan, so naturally he wouldn't. Still, Amaranth marveled at that ordinary fact. For the vast majority of Amaranth's life, he'd only seen body cultivators with the power of bronze backing up their motions— unlike him. Amaranth, with bronze so weak that a fall that shouldn't have left a scratch made him bleed, Amaranth, whose fists couldn't even crack stone. Lacking that, the path of body cultivation should have been the last spot he placed his efforts, yet it was. He didn't back down from the challenge, because inefficient as it may be, he loved to fight with his fists. Amaranth trained as hard as he could to keep up, but in the end clan members who spent just as much effort would dumpster him in a spar. He remembered the jeers from those who believed that he was just wasting his time doing what he did. Amaranth brushed it off as best as he could, but he couldn't deny that he didn't envy them for their natural ability. Still, he knew that there were many powerful body cultivators out there who didn't have bronze in their bones at all. He couldn't give up. He wouldn't give up.
So, when Amaranth saw a person who was a successful body cultivator even without bronze, it made him smile, since it made that intangible knowledge in his head feel like it had some weight to it beyond the weight of books and rumors.
Still, as much as he tried to suppress it, he couldn't help but remember. Remember that there were those in his clan at the very same stage as Chen who would have much more combat power, which made him uncomfortable, to put it lightly. A smile, but then a frown.
After some banal chatter about the day-to-day issues of the caravan, Amaranth mentioned his experiences to Chen, and if he'd have any advice. Chen only had one thing to say.
"That's just how Fate is at times, so you've just got to settle with it. A person with a bloodline is always going to—"
Suddenly, a dull red flash appeared in the distance. Chen quickly became alert.
"Get to your tent," he said curtly.
"What is it?"
"The Battle Blood Cannibal Sect.
Now, get to your tent if you want to live."
Amaranth quickly nodded, and rushed to his tent, but watched what was happening from the opening.
He still can remember exactly what happened to this day if he just closes his eyes.
The guards try to reason with them, saying that the locals already paid the tribute so they should have no reason to do this, but the Blood Cannibals just
laugh.
"Tribute? Do you honestly think that'd actually stop us?", the one in the front finally says. "Besides, all I see are some particularly juicy slices of meat, ready for the eating. What's wrong with taking advantage of that?"
And then the battle ensues.
The Blood Cannibals burst into blurs of frenzied motion, and one slashes at Chen Wuming with claws the shade of congealed blood. The guard retaliates with arms that shift to solid ice in the middle of the counter, parrying the strike and returning the attack. The cannibal takes a battering ram of freezing power to the stomach, turning the point of impact into a mess of frozen and shattered flesh and bone. He's staggering now, face twisted in a rictus of rage and hateful promise. However, Chen can't care less. After a strike like that, the guard is confident that he's got him done for, and moves in for the finishing blow. Just one more job completed, and he's gonna retire from this. As exciting as this life is, there is such a thing as too much of it. With thoughts like these in his head, he makes a rookie mistake. He's taken his focus off a cornered foe. With a look of madness in his eyes, the cannibal bites his tongue and burns his life force to boost his ability for a final, suicidal lunge. Chen hastily moves into a defensive stance, his arms like a wall of ice glinting under the light of the moon, but a crimson flare shears straight through the barrier and into his neck. His last thoughts are of regret. He was so close... The cannibal exults in his kill, sending his claws into the heart of his foe while roaring in triumph. A red haze emanates from the corpse, traveling into his body and stitching his wounds together. As the cannibal turns around to rejoin the melee, his head is crushed like an overripe watermelon by a bronze fist and sliced in half by a silvery arc of sword intent to confirm the kill.
Amaranth watches this completely horrified, but as he sees the red haze get absorbed by the cannibal, he feels a strange resonance in his body, and a faint eagerness to join in on the murder. The much larger portion of him is utterly repulsed, which intensifies even further when he sees the face of the person who just got killed. It was the guard he was talking to! Those damned Blood Cannibals, I'll tear them apart for what they've done! I'll kill them, I'll kill them, I'll KILL THEM ALL!!! There is blood everywhere. On the ground, on the swords of the clashing combatants, and unbeknownst to him, in his own eyes as he tenses to strike.
However… he can't join in. He knows that he can't join in, as much as he hates the fact, because he's just a mere mortal while these are full cultivators. He'd just get slaughtered, so he shouldn't try it, or so he repeated to himself again and again, while his body twitched and his eyes impotently glared.
The fight continues. Many guards fall, just like Chen Wuming did. Valiantly, but ultimately to the end. But, for every fallen guard, another Blood Cannibal meets the grave, and there are many more guards than Blood Cannibals. Slowly, realization comes to the eyes of the remaining Blood Cannibals, and they head to flee. The guards don't stop them. They've taken enough losses as is, and can't— won't spend more just to wipe out the rest. The Blood Cannibals aren't worth that anyway, and keeping the caravan safe is paramount, which means advancing to kill them off would be counterproductive. Still, it's not like the guards like doing this anyway. Throughout their careers, they've seen Blood Cannibals, bandits, and all sorts of others try to rob caravans, and end the lives of comrades and even close friends in the process, so the resentment can grow deep. Oftentimes, there are lone guards that break from the group to chase them, but they just as often get killed. But in the end, keeping the caravan safe is paramount, or so they repeat to themselves again and again.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The rest of the trip wasn't nearly as exciting. Amaranth visited the stalls of the streets of Shen where there were some pretty tasty local foods that he hadn't tried out before. And of course, there was the experience of having the vast majority of people he saw not have that distinctive bronze in their skin and hair, which was nice. However, his thoughts always returned to the face of that guard, and the sound of those wretched claws shearing through the ice. He remembers the flow of the red mist strengthening the cannibal, and that strange feeling in his body when he saw it happening. He remembers that final bronze fist that ended the cannibal.
That final
bronze fist. He looks at his own hands, as weak a shade of bronze as a member of the bloodline could have. Even here, the weakness of his bronze blocked him off from his dreams. With a bloodline as thin as this, how could he ever hope to pay back the Battle Blood Cannibal Sect? A memory bubbled to the surface.
"That's how fate is sometimes kid, you just got to settle with it."
No. He refused. If fate had decided that he'd have to settle with being mediocre compared to the others of his family, then he'd defy fate. He stood up in his bedroom. He hadn't noticed the details of the feeling before, but the bronze of his own fists sung to be sunk into the flesh of his enemies. Perhaps with this, he'd be able to make his body match, no, surpass the rest of his clan.
Or maybe he was just hallucinating from the stress of the battle between so many cultivators. A mortal's physique with the barest tinges of bronze would probably be feeble enough to fall to mundane ills like that. Honestly, that was probably much more likely than him awakening to some secret power. His shoulders slumped. What was he thinking? But the hope refused to be crushed by practicality. (Or was it that he just didn't want the hope to be crushed?) Either way, he resolved to test out his theory at the sect. He'd soon join and finally become a cultivator, so he might as well see if killing one of the sect's enemies on a mission would do anything special. If not? Well, he'd just keep on doing what he did. The hard route is still a route, after all.
A/N: As you might have guessed, Amaranth misunderstood what Chen meant, and it certainly doesn't help that he was interrupted in the middle of his spiel. Though, motivations born of misunderstandings can still be fun nonetheless. If it seems to you that Amaranth's character is different than described in my Good Seed blurb, you're probably correct. This is just what ended up as my end result.
@occipitallobe, I'd like my bonus to be to his constitution, so his baseline isn't low enough to lead to an early death. Kind of like that cultivation bonus giving 10 years worth, but to his constitution instead. (So, considering how it grows, offscreen it would be explained by killing more enemies of the sect.)
(BTW, this was my real first omake ever. My Good Seed blurb was more like of an outline than a true omake, TBH. I hope that I managed to make a 4-5/10 one at least, but that's probably too optimistic tbh.)