D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

Kat started tuning out the announcer. She was sticking around so it didn’t really matter. “Hoooo, what a final fight. The interruption was a bit weird… but that was cool. Do you think Bodeir did a good job?” asked Kat.

“I think he did excellently,” said Lian, “It was great to see Feng beaten so handily!”

“Bah, while I agree Bodeir did well, even if that play with the ice was a bit risky, I’m more concerned with my brother’s poor performance. Perhaps I rattled him? Eh, I doubt it. Still, on his side of things, his showing was pathetic. He should know better when it comes to Mountain Shaker Sect members. Bodeir is THE HEIR for crying out loud,” grumbled Bing.

“What else could he have done?” asked Sue.

“Well the biggest thing that I can think of is the fact that he didn’t use any other weapons,” said Bing.

“But daggers are his main weapon right?” asked Lily.

“Yes they are,” said Bing with a nod, “but Feng is a talented fighter. He knows plenty of other weapons and his storage ring should be full of other weapons. They aren’t anywhere near as good as his daggers, and his skill with them aren’t that high… but even if Feng had just picked one of his old short swords from when he wasn’t as tall and used them like daggers. Really ANYTHING would be better then two short daggers for getting through that rocky armour. Honestly I don’t know what he was thinking,”

“Oh” said Lily.

.....

“Oh indeed,” said Bing with a sigh. “He’s a bit of a hothead… so he might not have been thinking about it, and fights go by fast… but he really should’ve thought of it during the intermission or before the match started. It’s not like he doesn’t know who Bodeir is!”

“Would his backup weapons be good enough though?” asked Lian. “A lot of the other weapons Feng has are just for training. Just as an example, his old backup spear, didn’t that break on an ice-troll hunt a few months ago? Did he ever get that replaced?”

Bing winced, “Yeah… I remember that. Hmm… I just assumed our parents would have provided replacements. It’s not like that weapon broke because he was stupid with it. The spear was just getting old, and the shaft snapped, leaving the head buried in troll blood and guts for too long ruining the array work and damaging the metal,”

“I don’t really know anything about how your parents decide you guys deserve new weapons and whatnot,” said Lian with a shrug.

“No… that’s fair… but I just thought they’d have replacements for Feng you know? He’s broken plenty of weapons before, and only that time he broke a sword trying to cut through a giant boulder did it take a while for him to get a replacement. We were taught to care for our weapons, but to replace them if necessary. So the fact Feng doesn’t have any replacements… is a bit strange, but I suppose it’s not as easy to replace a basic sword for a Rank 1, as it is to replace a spear fit for a Rank 2,” said Bing with a nod.

“Well, how would you rate Feng’s performance otherwise?” asked Kat.

“Hmm… he did quite well improvising that ice breath move. I’m sure he stole it from me. I’m sure he practiced it at least somewhat before now, but he was forced into using it to slow Bodeir down. Honestly, if he had that move perfected I think he could take out Bodeir with it. If Bodeir was too cocky, just freeze Bodeir to the spot and then keep piling the ice on afterwards,”

“And Feng didn’t do that then because?” asked Sue.

“Because he was about to pass out, duh,” snipped Lian. “If Feng passed out from qi exhaustion before the ten seconds of ‘restraint’ necessary for Bodeir to loose, then Feng would be second place. It wouldn’t even matter if Bodeir failed to free himself. As long as he could prove he was still awake and active while in the ice he would be the winner, and even if he didn’t manage that, the match would likely just end in a tie. Feng HAD to stop himself from collapsing. He… partially managed that at least,”

The room descended into silence after that. There wasn’t really much else to say about Feng’s performance. At least, not that the girls could see. They didn’t know enough about dagger use to point out more specific flaws, and the big ones were really obvious once you realised they were there at all. For Bodeir… it didn’t feel right to criticise him, especially not in the nit-picky way they normally would after he’d just won the whole damn thing. That’s why Sue asked, “So what are y’all doing tomorrow?”

“Um…” Lian shrugged and glanced at Bing, who shrugged as well.

Kat and Lily looked at each other, before Kat said, “When exactly is the boat leaving? We’re still in charge of Bodeir’s safety till then. If it’s not till later tomorrow… then that’s what we’ll both be doing,”

“I’ve been chatting with some of the servants and they said that Bodeir was likely to leave late tonight, or early tomorrow,” said Sue. “So we probably won’t be too busy, and we’ll almost certainly be free after lunchtime.”

Kat and Lily shared a shrug this time, so Sue clapped her hands together, “In that case we should arrange a place to meet up! Maybe have Bing or Lian play guide for a bit,” Sue could see Lily’s slight frown, but Sue waved her off, “Oh you can still have your date the day after, or the day after that, don’t you worry your pretty little head Lily.”

Lily immediately flushed red and started sputtering, “That… I wasn’t thinking that… we can meet up… it sounds fun…”

“You’re not demon enough to be forced to tell the truth Lily… but your face gives it all away so I don’t know why you even bothered trying,” said Sue while supressing her laughter.

“I’m down,” said Bing cheerily, “It’s probably better you won’t be available in the early morning, I’ll need to do a bit of meditating first. I can’t let myself get too far behind on my cultivation so spending that time cultivating properly should do me a bit of good. What about you Lian? You up to it?”

Lian shrugged, “Eh, I don’t mind. A girl’s day out might be nice, but it’s not something I really care about. I’ll show up if you do though,”

“Excellent,” cheered Sue.

“Question,” said Lily. When she saw she had the others’ attention she continued, “What is the difference between recharging your qi and cultivating?”

“Lian do you want too…” offered Bing with a wave of her hands.

Lian rolled her eyes but nodded, “Sure, it’s pretty simple. Think of qi like money, and cultivation like long term investments, and attacks like… buying candy or something. You take in qi, the money, and then you spend it on a long term investment, like building or upgrading your house, cultivating, but sometimes its worth buying candy to motivate you… or something like that. Er… and when you have a house, you can store more money then just keeping it in a wallet or something. So you keep upgrading you house, because you live there, and you can store more stuff. Does that make sense?”

“Right…” mumbled Lily. “Does it take extra effort, cultivating?”

Lian nodded, “Yes, I suppose, if we keep using my example, it’s more like you’re using qi to buy building supplies that you then use to upgrade your house then just paying to have the house built. Though, some of the best cultivation techniques do actually have a system for automatically ‘building your house’ so it’s still fairly correct,”