Path of the Berserker

THE GOLDEN SPIRE was on the edge of the restaurant district, bordering the seedy brothels and dive bars on the bad side of town. Roughneck cultivators from unknown sects gave me long and uneasy stares as I pushed through the dingy curtains that served as a door to the place.

I was immediately hit with the pungent aroma of Qi-infused herbs and cheap wine, the stench a visible haze that shrouded the already dimly lit interior. Shouts and yells stood in the place of music as a rowdy crowd took to cheering an arm-wrestling match that was center stage for the hundred or so patrons within the shoe-box sized establishment.

Despite the few stares I got, no one seemed to recognize me thanks to my [Mask of the Despised] technique. And by the looks of the crowd that was just fine with me. I couldn’t even tell what sects anyone belonged to, their robes all tattered and mismatched. If not for the display of weapons on the walls and the battle-hardened look of the patrons themselves, I would have pegged the bar for any other in the district. A cheap place for the less fortunate of the city to get drunk and high.

But there was no desperation to be felt in the place at all.

There was instead raucous laugher and mirth.

I weaved through the crowd of men and women alike, some of the women so burly and scar ridden they reminded me of Threja. There was definitely a mixture of cultures here as well. A stark contrast to the Yee-dominated society of the Imperial City I’d recently visited. Although I seemed to be the only Terran, there were plenty of people from other worlds that were long since conquered by the Yee Dynasty. Tan-skinned Dharmians, folks that looked like Master Edrik and Lysa. I even spotted a grey-skinned giant the same race as Threja and Sumatra…Sullied I think they were called.

“Chun? Is that you?”

I was taken off guard by the sudden call of my name and looked behind me to see a small figure in a wide-brimmed bamboo hat. I recognized him immediately. The old dude from the square. My very first supporter and the one who came looking for me to bring me back to the final showdown with Hein.

“Old man?”

I laughed, giving him a short bow. “I know. I know. Old habits die hard. What are you doing here, Master Sung Wei?”

“I was about to ask you the same,” he said, sliding off his stool to stand next to me. Under his hat, his bushy gray brows bunched together with curiosity as he stared up at me while stroking his short beard. “How do you even know about this place?”

“I was invited here for a drink,” I said. “By Iron Pot Wong. You haven’t seen him, have you?”

“Ah,” he said. “That makes sense. You won’t find him out here. He’ll be in the back. Come with me.”

The place took on an even greater sense of oddity as I followed Master Sung Wei. He never spoke much while in the square and to come across him in a place like this was surprising to say the least. The more I studied the patrons, the less I saw in terms of congruity. There were young and old, various different sects, yet somehow, they all shared a commonality I couldn’t quite place.

One that even Sung Wei shared.

“Hey, what is this place exactly?” I asked, leaning down to Sung Wei.

He chuckled. “Don’t you know? It’s a veteran’s bar. Everyone in here is a soldier who’s fought in some war or another.”

I blinked shocked. “Wait. You’re a soldier?”

“A long time ago, yes,” Sung Wei said and then lifted his sleeve to reveal a dragon tattoo with a set of numbers below it. “8,254th Battalion, Imperial Army Infantry.”

“Holy crap,” I said. “I had no idea. You’ve been to war?”

He shrugged. “Nothing special about surviving. That’s what we all have in common here. We simply survived. But as they say. Once a soldier always a soldier. Don’t matter where from. Even if you were enemies on the field, all are more than welcome here. You’ll find a place like this on every world.”

I looked again to the crowd and the obviousness of it now hit me like a slap to the face. It wasn’t that they all looked or dressed the same, far from it. It was their attitude. Their unabashed comradery. A rugged, ‘I don’t give a shit because I’ve lived through hell kind of look.’

I envied them immediately.

Sung Wei led me through another set of curtains guarded by a burly dude in gray robes and into an even smaller back room with a group of people sat around a table playing cards. I spotted Iron Pot Wong immediately. He was thin as a rail, sans his bulbous black iron armor, with a thick white beard, bushy brows, and a completely bald head. The four gentlemen with him looked much the same. Veterans amongst veterans it seemed, all of them looking like they were in their sixties at least.

As Sung Wei approached, he offered a bow. “Brother Wong, you have a visitor.”

“Eh?” Wong looked up at me, confused. “Who’s this?”

I removed the cowl about my face and dropped the [Mask of the Despised] technique and recognition lit up on his face immediately, as did the other four men around the table with him.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Wong shouted, rising from his chair to slap me on the shoulder. “You finally decided to show up! Boys, welcome the Iron Bull!”

A salute of praises and lemonade went up at that and the entire room threw me toasts of cheer.

“To the Bull Man!”

“Kick those bird bitches out of the tournament, you hear!”

“Someone get him a drink!”

Wong pulled up a chair beside him and pushed a cup of wine into my hand. “As promised, my friend. Come join us for a bit! You too, Sung Wei! Didn’t you even know who this was? You’re such a damn recluse! You really need to get out more.”

“I knew him before you did, you old bastard,” Sung Wei said with a laugh as he pulled up a chair beside me. “Back when he was just a dumbass kid picking fights in the street. Now look at him.”

“Aye,” said one of the other men at the table. “Picking fights with the ruling clan now. Bull’s balls indeed, my friend. Cheers to you!”

I sucked up the praise along with the wine, cultivating both within my spirit.

“Thanks for the invitation, Master Wong,” I said clinking cups with him. “I realize this is a special place that I haven’t earned the right to be here.”

“An honorary guest for certain,” Wong said. “But I thought you’d be here sooner once you took off that damn mask.”

“He unveils a face like that in the ring, and you think the first thing he’d do is come running to see the likes of you?” a gruff old woman with dirty blonde hair said from behind the bar. “He probably had half the women of Jurin to bed first.”

That got more laughs and praise, and I couldn’t help but blush a little.

“You’re just jealous you’re not one of them, Ingrid,” Wong said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You old bag!”

The woman laughed. “That I am! Can’t deny.”

Wong nudged me. “Stop listening to her and down your drink, lad.”

“Aye,” one of the other men said. “It’ll make her look better at least.”

Ingrid threw a chopstick that lashed the man across the forehead and he laughed.

I grinned and downed my drink, feeling immediately at home as the fire slipped down my throat. The heat of it warmed my gut and Wong quickly poured me another.

“Drink, drink!” he said. “Tonight is all on me. To the only man to ever break my armor. The Iron Bull!”

“The Iron Bull!” everyone at the table echoed and raised their cups.

The card game and banter continued and I became a spectator to a world I never even knew existed before. It was more akin to when I went drinking with my fellow handlers. Co-workers sharing funny stories about their day on the job.

But instead of stories about minding dumbass cultivators looking to nearly get themselves killed by spirit beasts, it was stories from far-off worlds. Massive battles where the armies were either quelling uprisings and defending cities or even entire planets from a scourge of demons or giant monsters.

“It was a meteor strike from one of them Cursed Stars,” Wong was saying. “Overran half the planet with demons. Our Battalion was stationed two planet hops over, the closest to respond. My platoon was riding the first skiff down and right when we were about to launch this guy Li Gong puts his hand up and asks the sergeant to go to the latrine. I’ll never forget his answer. ‘You secure that shit until we reach the surface, Li Gong.’ ‘But I won’t make it, Sergeant!’ he goes. So then the sergeant says, ‘Well shit your pants then. You’ve done it hundreds of times as a damn baby. What’s once more?’ The whole skiff starts laughing and halfway through the descent the guy starts crying and shouts, ‘I can’t hold it!’ Then he damn well does it! Shits his pants right there on the skiff, farting and stinking out the whole damn place!”

Everyone laughed like crazy.

“So from then on, he was known as Shitpants Gong,” Wong said with a smile. “Last I heard he made general. But people who know him still call him Shitpants to this day.”

They all laughed some more.

All the stories were like that. The horrors of the battles and atrocities they faced mere context to the more interpersonal jokes and tomfoolery of soldiers on the edge of war. It was riveting to say the least and a glimpse into a private club that I desperately wanted to be a part of, if not to just be able to share in their comradery and laughs alone.

“Any of you guys ever fight on the Hell Worlds?” I asked.

“What? With the Legionnaires?” Wong said before letting out a chortle. “You wouldn’t find us slumming around here if we did!”

“Aye, the poor bastards,” one of the other soldiers, whose name I’d learned was Boros said. “They say only one in twenty return from a tour. Probably even worse odds now. If you’re the lucky one you’re set for life, kid. Damn near a Warden in status. If you’ve got a soul left to enjoy it, that is.”

“True,” Ingrid said from behind the bar. “I met one of those poor devils once. The lass was hollow. Like a deaf mute or something. Couldn’t do naught but eat and stare at the walls. Not sure what they see down there, but it can’t be nothing good. Even the best of them come back broken.”

“I hear that goes for the High Marshall too,” Boros said. “A damn sadistic prick he is. Or so they say.”

“Well, you’d have to be to run a school that sends people through that kind of hell,” Ingrid said. “Maybe the worlds twisted him, or maybe he was so twisted already that it didn’t affect him at all.”

Wong slapped me on the shoulder. “Point is, never get drafted, son. Stick to the ring, my boy. A much safer path to the stars.”

The others all laughed.

“Wong and his damn ring fantasies,” Boros said. “You should be encouraging him to face a real battle not live his life forever a ring flower.”

“A ring flower?” I said.

“Pay them no mind,” Wong said. “They’re all just jealous they couldn’t step foot inside a tournament.”

Boros blew a raspberry. “Piss on that. That ain’t real fighting. All pomp and show. None of that fancy crap will work when you got a thousand demon beasts swarming atop of you in some dankass cave.” He then looked to me. “You see what I’m saying, lad?”

Strangely enough, I did. Fighting against those demon hordes each night, or even hunting giant spirit beast felt like a whole different skillset. Far more raw and visceral. Instinct and intuition over technique. I preferred it actually.

But that was also exactly why I had come here.

I needed new skills to wield Threja’s sword properly.

I smiled. “Well, speaking of being a ring flower, I was hoping you could help me with something, Master Wong.”

He raised a bushy brow. “Eh?”

“I’m looking for a teacher,” I said. “Someone who can teach me the basics of Glaive wielding.”

I was going to mention the Phalanx Glaive specifically, but knowing what I did now about the Cursed Stars and how they all felt about legionnaires I figured that detail best be shared later, or perhaps not at all if I could manage it.

Wong responded by slapping the table. “Now that’s a real weapon! Good on you, Iron Bull. Do away with that toy hatchet of yours.”

I laughed. “So you’ll train me?”

“Hold on now,” he said. “These are still the sacred arts of the Iron Crane Sect we’re speaking of here. They don’t come easy… or free.”

I felt suddenly embarrassed and realized I was perhaps asking for something way out of line. I was taken back to my first foray into the Jiangu where I had to barter with Hong Feng for my training manual full of Axe techniques. I’d perhaps gotten too comfortable with my recent success, taking for granted that asking such a thing might not be out of the question.

I bowed respectfully. “Forgive me, Master Wong. I did not intend—”

He suddenly burst out laughing, slapping the table again.

“You’re such an asshole, Wong,” Sung Wei said sipping his wine. “Making the poor kid think you know anything worth knowing.”

“Hey, I know a lot of useful things!” he said in retort. “And as for you, son. It’s free of course. But to learn from a master like me, it’s not without initiation.” He slapped the table again. “Ingrid! A jug of my special please!”

“Oh gods,” she muttered, but disappeared behind the bar as she ducked down to retrieve something. She reappeared a moment later with a familiar-looking gourd, the same as he constantly sipped when out in the ring.

“What’s in that?” I asked.

“What’s soon to be inside you,” Wong said, slapping the table again. “I’ll train you on one condition. Finish that gourd in a minute and I’ll train you all you like.”

“Deal!” I said with a laugh.

Ingrid brought the gourd around and shook her head as she set it on the table. “The dumb games you men play. Go on then. Drink up and make yourself sick. Just don’t do it all over my bar.”

Everyone laughed at that and I could only imagine what kind of foul concoction was inside it. I cycled my Frenzy, preparing to detoxify myself as if it were a poison. And I guess for all intents and purposes, it was. I took the gourd to my lips and to my surprise the liquid was cold like ice as it went down, but then, like a bow being sprung the sensation changed to roaring heat.

I coughed and sputtered and that got another round of laughter.

I raised a hand to silence them, fortifying myself with [Struggler’s Resolve] as I downed the icy-hot beverage, gulp by painful gulp. I finally finished and slammed the empty gourd on the table to resounding applause.

I belched what felt like literal fire from my throat and coughed. “I’m going to feel that in the morning.”

“Indeed, you will,” Wong said, slapping me on the back. “That means we’ll start your training tomorrow afternoon then. Meet me here, but around back. We’ve got a little ring back there that we can use.”

I gave him a sloppy bow, already feeling the effects of the concoction despite my best efforts to purify my system. “Thank you, Master Wong. You won’t regret it.”

“Aye,” Boros said. “But I think you will, mate. Better get him home before it really kicks in, Sung Wei. Unless you want to be carrying the big bastard all by yourself.”

“Let’s go, Chun,” Sung Wei said, standing immediately. “No way in hell I’m carrying you.”

I laughed. “I’ll be fine. I am the Iron Bull, after all.”

“We’ll see,” Wong said patting me on the back again as I left. “See you tomorrow, kid.”

* * *

My words came back to haunt me as we neared the halfway mark to home.

I was walking on rooftops and laughing my head off.

Somewhere, Sung Wei was trying to hold me upright as the world spun.

“Come on,” he said with a grunt of effort. “We’re almost there. And you’d better not tell your sister I was responsible for dragging you to that place.”

I couldn’t care less though and stumbled all the way to the square, singing some song I didn’t even remember I knew. Somehow Sung Wei got me to my small tent outside the new building and I crashed into the ground without feeling a thing.

“Thanks, Old Man,” I mumbled, and Sung Wei didn’t even bother to correct me as he stumbled off to his own cot for the night.

I laughed at my predicament.

It was well past midnight and I was stone cold drunk.

And I had not one but two serious training sessions starting first thing in the morning.

I gave myself a thumbs up. “Way to plan, Chun!”

I chuckled at my own stupid joke and then burst out laughing, waking some of my neighbors. They all told me to shut up and couldn’t help but snicker as I tried to comply, literally laughing myself to sleep as visions of Legionnaires, Hell Planets, and soldiers shitting their pants filled my mind’s eye.