Arthur needed to get the hell out of there and fast. Staying in the same spot while under fire played to the advantage of the attacker, allowing them to reposition and shoot the stationary moron in the back. The problem was that he didn’t really have any countermeasures. At his current level of cultivation, and taking his physical condition, Arthur was essentially a normal human. He didn’t have any special equipment, technique, or power that could really help him.
He’d briefly considered using his killing intent, like he usually would use back in the other world, but that idea was swiftly abandoned. Killing intent worked best when it could be focused on a single enemy or clustered group of enemies, and given his current state, projecting it properly was essentially impossible. The sniper would essentially have to be right in front of Arthur for him to make any real use of it.
Another arrow embedded itself in the concrete next to him, on the opposite side of where the first one had hit. Arthur almost spat blood at the sudden surge of rage that almost consumed him. The sniper knew that he’d moved to take cover behind the engine block. Wanted Arthur to know that he knew. He was screwing with him, like a cat playing with a cornered mouse.
Arthur almost wished that he’d decided to practice the Burning Soul Fist again, at least then he could launch some fireballs in retaliation, burning of his life force be damned. He slammed his head against the body of the car to clear his mind. Thinking like that would only serve to get him shot as he was consumed with the false power of passion. Arthur would not tolerate such foolishness in anybody, let alone himself.
Arthur decided to go with the tried and true adage, “a stupid plan carried out with intensity was better than a perfect plan half assed”. Reaching into the gym bag, he grabbed every single colorful chip package he could fit between his fingers and chucked them into the air like high cholesterol confetti just before he made a break for the nearest alley. Arthur heard the arrow whistle through the air and explode one of the chip bags while it was still in its’ ascent as he pumped his legs as hard as he possibly could, burning a little of his precious Qi reserves to squeeze out just a little more speed. This proved to be the correct decision, because if he didn’t do it, the arrow he felt just slice across his back would’ve instead introduced itself to his lungs.
Spurned on even faster, Arthur booked it down the alley fast enough that even using Qi enhancement, his body was really starting to feel the strain. Knowing he needed to find a place to hide before his body just gave out, Arthur took random turns left or right looking for a decent place to hide, ripping his hoody as he ran to create a bandage for his back wound so he wouldn’t leave a trail of blood.
Just before his legs were about to give out, Arthur spotted the best hiding spot he was going to get, a nice big dumpster that he really, really hoped wasn’t full of rusty knives and used needles. Thankful that at least his back wound had something covering it, he jumped into the dumpster and lowered the lid until there was just a slight crack to look through, willing his heart to slow the hell down and his lungs to stop burning.
Arthur waited for what he knew was coming. There was no way anybody who would shoot at random strangers for no reason, meaning he had trespassed onto someone or something’s territory in his efforts to leave the city, and then fled further into said territory in an effort to escape. The person who shot at him would have to try and hunt him down, if only because this affront couldn’t be allowed, lest others think them weak and try their own trespasses.
Arthur wasn’t exactly sure what to expect his pursuer to be, but what finally caught up to him was not it at all. Peering through the slightly cracked dumpster lid, he still didn’t see his hunter until he was almost right on top of him. It was a man, but slightly off. His limbs were slightly too long, his frame a little too slender. It wasn’t until Arthur saw the pointy ears that he realized what he was looking at. The person hunting him was a fricken elf.
This elf, however, did not fit the popular perception at all except for the pointy ears. Instead of being almost supernaturally pale, the elf had dark hair and the deeply tanned skin of someone who spent their entire lives outdoors. He was also almost completely naked, wearing only a skirt of grass and strategically placed mud as a kind of stone age camouflage. That wasn’t the only thing stone age about the elf either, the arrow in its’ bow was tipped in some kind of stone and the quiver on their back was made out of bark tied together with sinew.
All in all, definitely not what Arthur would picture when someone said the word “Elf”. Said elf was slowly creeping along the alley, arrow nocked and eyes scanning around, As if he knew Arthur had been running out of steam. No that didn’t make sense, then it hit him. His blood, the elf had been tracking his blood trail. Now it was looking for any other sign of his passing. If Arthur had tied off his wound sooner, or been able to run for longer, he might’ve flat out just lost him. It was as he was thinking this that the elf did something he did not expect. The elf started sniffing the air.
It was only through instincts and mental fortitude honed by centuries of conflict that Arthur managed to keep his composure. He was still screwed, he just didn’t panic. As the elf sniffed around looking for the trail, Arthur carefully reached into his pilfered gym bag, preparing to spring an ambush.
Arthur knew the odds were stacked against him, but he was used to that. The Elf was obviously in far better physical condition than he was, not even taking into account whatever ability it used to be able to embed stone tipped arrows into goddamn tarmac. The only way he was gonna win this fight is if he did it on his terms and as dirty as possible. With this in mind, he made his move.
The first thing Arthur did was release his killing intent like opening the sluice gates on a dam as he scrambled out of the dumpster. Killing intent was a powerful weapon to wield but difficult to cultivate, best described as one’s own will honed into a weapon, and only being possible to generate by experiencing numerous battles where your life was well and truly on the line. Every cultivator of a certain level possessed killing intent, for it was impossible to walk the path of cultivation without experiencing conflict. However, not all killing intents were created equal. Sect dwellers who spent most of their lives in walled off and secluded compounds, waited on hand and foot by those in the sect weaker than them, very rarely got into the kinds of fights where one could truly cultivate killing intent of any real consequence, seeing it as more a tool to intimidate mortals and shield themselves from the killing intent of others.
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But those who cultivated outside of the sects, the wandering cultivators, knew the true potential of killing intent. To the wandering cultivator, who experienced like and death struggle as a casual occurrence, killing intent was both an invaluable weapon and a mark of status. And Arthur had been one of the greatest wandering cultivators to ever walk the Jianghu.
In his current state Arthur wasn’t able to wield his killing intent with any form of finesse, otherwise, he would’ve just speared the elf’s soul like a fish in a bucket and went about his day. What he did instead was just release it as an aura, using his limited control to direct as much as he could towards the elf.
Arthur’s killing intent had the desired effect, stunning the elf like a mouse that just realized a dragon was looking straight at it, but he knew that wouldn’t last long. He slammed into the stunned elf, knocking it onto its back and putting in the perfect position for his next move. Wielding a bottle of hospital strength rubbing alcohol like a priest would a bottle of holy water, Arthur dumped the bottle right onto the elf’s face and eyes, causing it to howl in pain and claw at its face.
Taking the opportunity this presented, Arthur sent a swift kick straight into the elf’s skirt, right between his legs. This attack having the desired effect, the elf’s hands swiftly shot from its’ face to its’ bludgeoned jewels, leaving their head wide open to a few swift kicks enhanced with Arthur’s quickly dwindling Qi. Finally, and possibly mercifully, beaten into unconsciousness, the elf lay still as Arthur snatched up the elf’s bow and used a scavenged scalpel to cut the string.
Arthur briefly thought about using one of the elf’s arrows to stab it to death, but decided agains it. Now that he had a chance to get a better look at it, the elf looked kind of young, likely being a teenager or young man out on a hunting trip of some kind to secure food for its’ family or tribe. This coupled with the fact the only thing it was guilty of was defending its’ or its’ tribe’s territory from a possible threat. Or it had been hunting Arthur to try and eat him, he had no way of being sure. Either way, the idea of just killing an already soundly defeated enemy left a bad taste in his mouth.
Not wanting to leave the poor bastard at the mercies of whatever the hell else was out here, Arthur put the unconscious elf into the recovery position and before using the last of the bottle of rubbing alcohol and his lighter to create a nice smoky signal fire in the dumpster in the hopes that the elf’s tribesmen or whatever came to investigate and dragged his ass home.
Having done what he could, Arthur left the elf to his fate and decided to head to the roof of a nearby building to get his bearings. Thankfully, the door was unlocked and the interior had no sign that anybody had been through it in quite some time, so getting to the roof was pretty easy after he busted out his alcohol lamp. Judging from the numbers on all of the doors, Arthur guessed this place was an apartment building and briefly considered busting into a few of them to look for supplies, but abandoned the idea. He needed to get his bearings and beat feet as soon as possible before something, especially the elf’s assumed tribesmen, came to investigate.
To Arthur’s surprise, the roof access door wasn’t locked, but kept from truly closing with a piece of wadded up paper in the doorjamb. Likely so people could smoke, judging by the cigarette butts scattered around the roof. The view from said roof wasn’t fantastic, but it did let him see that he was only a few blocks away from the edge of the city. It also let him see the spaceship flying right towards him.
Arthur took a moment to blink at the spaceship for a moment before rubbing his eyes. Nope, the spaceship was still there, flying right towards him and fast. He turned around and walked to the edge of the roof where he could see smoke rising. Peering down, Arthur saw that in fact the caveman elf was still there. He looked back at the spaceship again, then back at the elf, and then repeated going back and forth for a few seconds, trying to come up with an explanation as to how both things were supposed to exist at the same time.
Unfortunately, neither the logic or patience departments of Arthur’s mind were currently up to the task, and decided to type up resignation letters in response to the frankly unreasonable workload they’ve had to put up with lately. Arthur threw his hands in the air in frustration. “What the hell kind of schizophrenic apocalypse is this”? He sat down to wait.
Arthur had thought about booking it, but he had already emptied his tank running away from a single guy that wasn’t even wearing pants, so he wasn’t even going to bother trying to run from a goddamn spaceship. He knew a get probed tired situation when he saw one. Deciding to make the most of his break, Arthur fished out a drink and one of his few remaining bags of chips and had a quick snack, if only to treat himself before he had to experience alien prison food.
As Arthur ate, he just watched the spaceship get closer and closer, musing on whatever extraterrestrial creatures were piloting the craft before he heard something that almost made him choke on his snack. The crackle a loudspeaker made right before it made noise. “This is the Haven City Security Force, we see your signal fire and are en route to your location, please stay where you are”.
Approximately fifteen million questions shot through Arthur’s head like coked up lightning. The chief ones being, what the hell was a Haven City, did I just run into the post apocalypse border patrol, what the hell kind of story was he going to feed these guys to explain what the hell he was doing out here, and most importantly, what were the odds that these guys were able to facilitate access to pizza and a hot shower?
