Chapter 238: Move Forward
Kael frowned. "What do you mean, you mean I’m done with the Demon Fist?"
He couldn’t help but stare into his master’s eyes, thinking it was some sort of joke. His master didn’t do jokes though, and Kael knew it.
The idea made his stomach twist. Done? After a year? After all that? He didn’t even know half the terms his master threw at him. He still didn’t understand why the Iron Bone Marrow technique burned like it hated him.
"Done? You didn’t even start yet. One second," the master said and walked inside the newly built house, leaving Kael confused.
He went in without urgency, as if Kael could wait forever. The door, if you could call it that, a heavy plank on leather hinges, swung and thudded shut. Kael stood there staring at it, then at the cracked boulder, then at the dust around his feet.
Some time later, he returned with two books in hand. A small one, barely a hundred pages. One of them red as blood, and the other cream white.
The books looked out of place in this mountain life. Clean edges. Unwarped pages. The red one had a cover that looked like dyed hide, deep and rich. The cream one was simpler, almost plain, but the paper looked expensive, like it hadn’t been scavenged or made from scraps.
He handed it to Kael and said, "It’s time for you to gain real life experience... this is the first three stages of the Demon Fist technique. And that’s the Wanderlusting Demon. A movement art. I couldn’t allow you to learn it before your legs grew some meat on them. Otherwise, you’ll tear your tendons and destroy your bones."
Kael took the books with both hands automatically, feeling their weight like it mattered. The words real life experience made his skin prickle. In the tower, "experience" usually meant blood. And a lot of it at that, mainly his.
"Movement? What does that mean?" Kael asked, as he was still unable to understand the more ’technical’ terms of his master’s martial arts.
The question came out before he finished thinking it. He was still staring at the cream-white cover like it might bite him. "Wanderlusting Demon" sounded like a joke until you realized who named it so.
The Fist King had had enough of Kael’s strange way of talking for the past year, so he simply showed him.
"This," the Fist King said, and from Kael’s Pov, nothing changed.
Kael blinked.
The world was the same: house, boulder, treeline, wind dragging cold over the slope. And his master was still there, in front of him. Didn’t move.
"What?"
A light tap on Kael’s shoulder made him turn; his master was standing there.
Kael’s body reacted a half-beat late, not from slowness but from disbelief. His master had been in front of him.
He turned back; there were two.
"What the fuck?"
A flick to the forehead, "No cursing."
The flick wasn’t hard, but it carried that humiliating precision. Like the master could punish him with a finger and still make it sting in his bones.
"Oh, sorry, wait, how are you real? Are you a clone?"
Kael’s eyes darted between them. Same posture. Same expression. Same presence. It didn’t feel like an illusion; illusions didn’t carry weight in the air like that.
"No, it’s the real thing." He heard from both places.
"That can’t be, you can’t be at two places at once,"
Kael’s heart picked up anyway. Not panic, anticipation. This was the kind of thing that killed people when they tried it without understanding.
"How about six?"
Immediately, more copies of his master showed up.
They appeared like the world had suddenly decided to stop respecting distance. One moment there were two, the next there were bodies occupying space that had been empty. Different angles. Different elevations on the slope. One on a rock. One near the house. One close enough that Kael could see the slight crease in his brow.
Kael’s eyes opened wide.
His mouth went dry.
"Or twelve," even more copies showed up, and they all took a step forward, extended their hands in a flick, and all smacked Kael at the same time.
The hits landed like a swarm of hornets, sharp, precise, everywhere at once. Forehead, temple, cheekbone, and back of the head. It wasn’t enough to seriously hurt him, but it was enough to make his vision go white out for a split second and his balance wobble.
It felt at the same time, but for a brief second, he felt that there was a fraction of a fraction of a time difference between each flick.
That detail stuck in Kael’s brain like a thorn. The spacing. The rhythm. The deliberate staggering. This wasn’t teleportation. This was speed so obscene it mimicked multiplicity.
"Ah." Kael gripped his head as all the ’Masters’ walked away.
The copies didn’t vanish. They simply moved, and then there was only one again, as if the rest had never existed. The air felt emptier after.
"You’re moving at that speed... shit, that’s insane."
Kael said it through clenched teeth, half in awe, half in dread of what training it would require.
"Yes," the Masters became one who stood in front of Kael. "It’s not one of the strongest movement arts," his master said.
"Oh," Kael felt a bit disappointed.
The reaction was immediate and honest, and he hated himself for it. Of course, he wanted "strongest." Of course, he wanted a cheat code. That was what the tower taught you to crave.
"Because it is THE strongest movement art. Not even the sacred sects and the righteous ones were able to mimic it. The fastest was the Dharma protector of Shaolin, who mastered the Wind God’s movement, and even he was slow as a turtle when compared with the Wanderlusting Demon."
Kael swallowed. The names meant nothing to him in a practical sense, but the way his master spoke them gave them weight. Sacred sects. Righteous ones. Shaolin. Dharma protector.
These weren’t "tough guys." These sounded like people whose entire world revolved around martial arts and ending lives.
And his master was calling them turtles.
"And I can learn that?"
Kael asked anyway, because if he didn’t, the hope would eat him from the inside.
"Yes, you’re my disciple. You learn what I give you. If you can. But remember," he said as he looked at Kael’s feet, "Never remove your rings. Until you master the third level of the Demon fist, the same goes for the Wanderlusting Demon."
Kael’s gaze dropped to his ankles. The rings sat there like iron halos, scuffed and scratched from months of movement. They were the first things he noticed every morning. The last things he felt before sleep.
"Why wouldn’t I punch faster, and run faster?" Kael asked.
The question carried its own temptation. He could imagine it, rings off, body light, speed unrestrained. The kind of movement that would make cliffs feel like stairs.
"No, you’ll tear your body apart. It’s not strong enough. You have power, but you don’t have the body to survive it. Those rings, which were used to limit you when you first started, are meant to stop your body from breaking apart once you learn The Demon Fist. If you throw a punch without that ring, you’ll most likely kill your opponent, but you’ll also destroy your arm and never be able to use them or the Demon Fist. Never, ever, remove them until you’re strong enough."
Kael felt his stomach tighten again, but this time it wasn’t confusion. It was the ugly clarity of consequence. He’d lived that kind of trade-off before, power with a price. The tower loved power that punished you.
"I see." Kael nodded, "But, why does this feel like..."
He didn’t finish. The feeling was too familiar to name without sounding paranoid.
His master’s eyes didn’t soften, but his voice did something close.
"Farewell."
The word landed wrong. Too final.
The master said, "You’ve been cooped up here for a long time. You need to explore the world. All I have left to teach you are things that need you to reach the next level in your body’s training. You learned how to balance yourself, how to move, walk, punch, and avoid panic. You learned how to hunt for your food when it’s scarce and when you’re injured. You learned how to defend yourself from someone and how to escape them."
Kael’s throat tightened despite himself. Not sentiment, instinct. He didn’t like endings. Endings meant being alone again, and Kael had learned the tower was most honest when you were alone.
"Escape them? I think I missed that part. I was always getting my face kicked in whenever I tried... euh, displacing myself."
He tried to make it sound like a joke. It came out like a complaint with a weak smile taped onto it.
"Running away." The master corrected.
"Cough, yeah... emm."
Kael rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly self-conscious about how dumb he sounded. A year of training and he still stumbled over words like a kid.
"That was because it’s I who was chasing after you; if another person were to try that, you’re far faster than they are, and can easily climb walls and cliffs. And have more stamina than most of them."
Kael’s eyes flicked to the slope, to the cliff faces he now treated like routes instead of obstacles. He remembered the first month, hands shaking, lungs burning, legs failing. He remembered the panic and the humiliating feeling of realizing panic was just another enemy.
He also remembered being chased relentlessly until his body learned not to beg for mercy.
"I don’t know about that, I mean, they leveled up... I’m still level one..."
He said it like a confession. Like it bothered him more than he admitted.
"Yours isn’t unnatural. Once you add those stats, you’ll realize the difference. And now I lift the ban on your status screen. You can unlock it and add the points when you level up as you see fit, but I’d recommend you focus more on spreading them instead of one statline."
Kael’s eyes narrowed. The mention of his status screen hit him like an itch he hadn’t been allowed to scratch. He’d tried not to think about it. Tried to treat the tower’s system like background noise.
But he’d always wondered why he hadn’t gained anything "official" despite the training.
"Oh, I thought you’d want me to focus on strength."
The Fist King’s gaze didn’t change, but it sharpened.
"Strength is fleeting; you need to be an all-rounder. By focusing on one thing, you’ll be giving up the other. The Demon fist need strength for its power, dexterity for its application, intelligence for when you use internal energy, and stamina to last longer in a fight. Don’t haphazardly add your stats. They’ll help, but they’re not the main focus. Also, you probably didn’t notice it, but you should have earned a few good stats from all this training."
Kael’s brows rose.
"I... don’t think I did. Never once did I receive a notification that my stats have increased."
He wasn’t accusing. He was genuinely confused because the tower loved reminding you when it rewarded you. It was addicted to its own pop-ups.
"That’s because we’re a Master Disciple, I locked them from you. It’s part of this relationship, so you don’t... cheat."
Kael’s mouth opened slightly.
"What? You can do that."
His voice carried disbelief and irritation in equal measure. That sounded like the tower’s job, not a person’s.
"Now I lift it."
The words were simple. The effect wasn’t.
Immediately, a slew of notifications showed up in front of Kael that made his eyes open wide.
The air in front of him filled, layered windows, stacked lines, the familiar cold glow of system text cutting across the mountain daylight.
Kael’s breath hitched, not because he couldn’t breathe, but because the sheer volume of it felt like the tower had been holding its breath for a year just to dump it all on him at once.
