Death Cultivator Read online

  Table of Contents

  Summary

  Shadow Alley Press Mailing List

  Fight in the Parking Lot

  Freezer Burritos, Westerns, and Kung Fu

  Fight in the Kitchen

  You’re Dead

  Transportation

  Van Diemann’s Planet

  The Shut-Ins

  River Monsters

  Stealing from the Dead

  Chaos Creatures

  Ghost Town

  Prison Planet Sunup

  Coffee Drank

  Out Back of the Saloon

  The Bailiff

  Fight in the Cage

  Rock Bottom

  Welcome to the Gang

  Spirit Surrogate

  Boneyard Cultivation

  Making the Quota

  Training

  Kishotenketsu

  Spirit Jade Mining

  Looting Ferals

  Sneaking into a Mass Grave

  Graverobbing

  Hungry Ghost

  Mr. Champion and the Martial Devil

  Two-a-Days

  Jade Books

  Dead Reckoning

  Burning the Night Sun

  Gang War

  Fight to the Death

  Moving Targets

  Death Wish

  Fight the Reaper

  The Will of the Death Cultivator

  Blocking the Signal

  Sudden Death

  Fight at the Train Station

  Jade City

  Missed Connection at the Ossuary

  Dead Man’s Hand

  Number One Seed

  Burning Hatred vs. Glass Hammers

  Narrow Escape

  Restrictions

  Riot Bracket

  Cornered

  The Shoguns Speak and People Die

  Party Like You Lived

  Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Books by Shadow Alley Press

  Books by Black Forge

  LitRPG on Facebook

  GameLit and Cultivation on Facebook

  Even More Cultivation on Facebook

  Copyright

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Summary

  FIGHT FOR YOUR DEATH.

  When regular high schooler Grady Hake is mistakenly taken by the Angel of Death, he thinks his life is over. Then he wakes up on a prison shuttle bound for Van Diemann’s Planet, a penal colony run by brutal gangs of criminal cultivators. This is his life now, and if he wants to survive it, he’ll have to learn to harness his unique Death Spirit, make friends with alien outcasts, appease a band of hungry ghosts, and fight his way into one of the strongest gangs on the planet.

  Death Cultivator is a sci-fi wuxia for fans of shonen manga and anime such as Hunter x Hunter, One Piece, and Deadman Wonderland.

  Shadow Alley Press Mailing List

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  Fight in the Parking Lot

  THERE’S AN ART TO GETTING your butt kicked. You can see it in any kung fu movie. It’s the first big fight that shows you how outclassed the hero is, where a dozen goons beat him up, and he barely escapes with his life and has to recover while learning the skills to come back and kick butt later. Ideally, if you’re following the kung fu formula, you stay stoic throughout the fight, bleed dramatically from somewhere on your face, and above all, never stay down when they knock you down.

  That’s not as easy to follow in real life. Especially when one of the goons punches you in the back of the head as you’re walking to your car after school.

  I hit the asphalt hard, skinning my palms and chin and dumping pens and junk out of the pocket on my backpack that never stays shut. That didn’t bother me as much as almost biting my tongue in half, though. Blood flooded into my mouth.

  “Get him, Blaise!”

  “Show that loser what’s up!”

  Blaise kicked my backpack, and the momentum turned me over to face him and the crowd of kids from our high school who’re always following him around.

  “What happened to kicking my ass, Grody?” Blaise sneered. “When does the beatdown begin? I’m ready when you are. Or was that all just talk?”

  Actually, it had been about ninety percent talk.

  Earlier that day, during third block Anatomy-Physiology, we’d been dissecting frogs. By some unlucky trick of the draw, I got paired up with Blaise. Cool rich guy, good at all the important sports, liked by all the girls and friends with all the other jerks in our class.

  Except today Blaise hadn’t looked very cool after Mr. Meighan plopped our frog down in the dissection tray. Blaise had looked like he was about to barf up his lunch. His face didn’t get better when Mr. Meighan told us to use pins to stick our frogs to the trays as shown on the smartboard. So, I opened my big fat mouth.

  “I’ll do all the hands-on stuff if it makes you sick,” I said.

  For the record, I wasn’t trying to be a jerk, I was just offering. It didn’t occur to me that what I’d said could be misconstrued as making fun of Blaise until I heard Hannah giggle in the seat behind us.

  “Are you seriously going to puke, Blaise?” She and her partner, Isobel, did that girl-laugh thing together, and Blaise’s face went from green to red faster than a string of color-changing Christmas LEDs. Hannah held her frog up by a back leg. “It’s just a little dead amphibian.”

  “I don’t give a crap if it’s dead or alive,” Blaise said. “I’d chop this thing up into little pieces, no sweat, if I hadn’t been partnered up with the trailer trash pit stain over here. His stench is making me sick. Do they not put showers in single wides, Grody Flake?”

  One, my grandpa’s trailer is a double wide. Two, I didn’t stink, Blaise was just being a douche to take the attention off looking like a wuss. And three, I should’ve punched him right there in class.

  But when I get mad, my mouth starts running.

  “It’s Grady Hake.” I started pinning down our frog’s limbs like I didn’t even care enough to look Blaise’s way. “If you can’t remember my name, it’s probably because you’ve got brain damage from all the drugs your mom did while she was pregnant with you. Drugs my dad sold her. Not for money, though. Probably why you suck so hard. It runs in the family.”

  His right fist twitched back like he wanted to knock my teeth out right there in front of Mr. Meighan and the school’s security cameras. But guys like Blaise don’t stay at the top of the food chain by being stupid.

  “You better get a police escort back to the trailer park tonight, pitstain,” he growled.

  I shrugged. “I can kick your butt without their help.”

  That turned out to be a lie. By the time I climbed back to my feet and picked the biggest pieces of parking lot gravel out of my palms, I’d already figured out I was going down. Blaise had been taking tae kwon do at the Y since middle school, and he wouldn’t shut up about all the tournaments he’d won. I’d never been to a martial arts class in my life, just tried to pick up what I could from movies and YouTube.

  Besides, nobody brings an audience if they think it’s going to be a close fight.

  I let my backpack drop and put my hands up. It hurt the road rash on my palms to make a fist, but it’d be better than breaking my fingers.

  His buddies went crazy. They really wanted to see me get stomped. Which made sense, considering I’d insulted every one of them at one point or another. You get pretty good at verbal defense when you’re the only kid in the school whose dad’s in p
rison.

  Blaise grinned and bounced around with his hands down, coming at me with little jabs, then bouncing away. I took most of them on my forearms, keeping my fists in a high guard. The blows weren’t heavy. I would’ve thought he’d hit harder than that, but they barely stung.

  Then suddenly, I saw my shot. Blaise threw a body shot combo. I ate both punches, and while I was in close, swung my elbow like an axe. His nose crunched, and blood shot out everywhere. He stumbled back, holding his face.

  Somebody watching yelled, “Holy crap!” in one of those ecstatic voices.

  I should’ve gone in for a kick to the shin—go ahead and chop the tree down, like the muay thai guys would say—but I was as surprised as Blaise that I’d hit him. This was my first fight with another person, and it wasn’t going like the movies at all.

  Blaise let out a yell like some kind of berserker and tackled me. All the air shot out of my lungs, and I slammed into the side of my junky Oldsmobile. The metal dented, and the horn started honking. Not the car alarm sound that came from the cars of kids whose parents had bought their vehicles for them. Just one long, endless blare that meant the wadded-up piece of cardboard I’d stuck in the crack of the steering wheel to keep the horn from going off continuously had fallen out again.

  I tried slamming elbows down on Blaise’s back and throwing knees into his chest, but it wasn’t doing any good. He kept me pinned to the car, pummeling my ribs with his fists. No more controlled shots that barely stung; these were serious I’m-gonna-kill-you punches that felt like shotgun blasts to the side. The only time he backed off was to smash his shoulder into me again. I doubled over, the strength going out of my arms and legs at the same time.

  Blaise let me drop.

  “Yeah!” he screamed, throwing his hands up like the crowd was going wild. “Mess with the best, die like the rest!”

  I swallowed and tried to get up. My ribs didn’t like the idea. Felt like something was broken in there.

  “Want some more, pitstain? Huh? You want some more?” Blaise kicked me in the ear.

  I folded over, grabbing my head. The ear was still connected, but it’d felt like his kick had ripped it off.

  “Eat it, loser!” Blaise crowed.

  Now that he was back on top, his dumb friends were all yelling and shoving each other around like he’d just KOed Connor McGreggor. Isobel was there, too. She looked a little freaked out by all the blood, but her and Hannah were cheering Blaise on anyway.

  “That’s right!” Blaise yelled. “Don’t come at me unless you want all your teeth knocked out!”

  This was the part where I was supposed to get back up no matter how many times he knocked me down. Except when I started to get up, he planted his foot on my collarbone and pinned me to my car. I tried squirming out from under his shoe, but I couldn’t get loose.

  “What’s that, Grody Flake?” Blaise leaned down with his hand cupping his ear like he was some kind of pro wrestler selling his crap to the cheap seats. “You want your mommy?”

  That set his buddies off again.

  “No.” I swallowed some bloody spit. “I want yours.”

  If you’ve never been punched in the head while it’s pressed up against a metal car door, I don’t recommend it. The next thing I saw was black.

  Freezer Burritos, Westerns, and Kung Fu

  I STOPPED ON THE RUSTY metal steps leading up to the trailer house. Gramps and I still called it “the trailer house” like we needed to specify which house we meant, even though he’d lost his farm when my dad skipped bail and the bondsman took it forever ago.

  Before I went inside, I checked my face in the window of the screen door. Skinned chin, right ear swelling and red, a big ugly splotch of blood on my T-shirt. I hurried up and swapped it out for my gym shirt, stuffing the bloodstained one down in my bag. With Gramps’s eyesight, he probably wouldn’t notice the chin and ear, and the shirt would hide the bruises on my ribs.

  As soon as I stepped inside, I heard the familiar sound of snoring and the TV in the living room playing Gunsmoke. It’s weird how easy it is to relax as soon as you walk into your own house. Like, you think you’re relaxed most of the day at school when no one’s paying attention to you, but once you’re back home, surrounded by all the familiar smells and sounds you’re used to, that’s when it really kicks in.

  “Hey Gramps, I’m home,” I called, letting the screen door swing shut behind me.

  The snoring cut off, and the recliner in the living room creaked. Gramps let out a growl as he cleared his throat.

  “Grady?” he croaked. “How was school?”

  “Fine.” Instead of heading straight for the fridge like usual, I went down the hall and shoved my bloody shirt into the washer along with my gym stuff. I peeled off the replacement shirt and threw it in, too, because it actually did stink like pits. “I’m out of gym clothes, so I’m going to wash some stuff. Got anything you want me to throw in?”

  The linoleum in the kitchen crackled, and something slammed down on the table. Gramps started cussing under his breath.

  I hurried up the hall and back into the kitchen. The old man had almost tripped over that piece of flooring that was curling up at the corner. Thank God he’d caught onto the table.

  “Piece of crap,” I muttered. I went to the junk drawer and rummaged around until I found a utility knife.

  “Don’t worry about it, Grady,” Gramps insisted. “I’ll get it later.”

  “Nah, it’s no big deal.” Except it could’ve been a huge deal. I should’ve cut that crap up yesterday when I saw how bad it was getting. Gramps could’ve killed himself while I was at school, which made me feel like a jerk for leaving it. I sliced off the curled-up piece of linoleum and threw it in the trash.

  “What do you think I am, decrepit?” He grinned his toothless old-man grin and gave me a weak shove. I managed not to wince at the flare-up of pain in my side. “I’d still kick your ass in a footrace any day. So don’t go getting no ideas.”

  “You want to settle this right now, old man?” I hooked a thumb at the door. “I’ll race you to the mailboxes and back, then we’ll see what’s what.”

  “Ah.” He stopped to hock up something and spit it in the trash. “Your comeuppance can wait ’til after Gunsmoke, I suppose.”

  “After supper,” I said. “I need some clean clothes so I look good when I beat you.”

  He let out a froggy, phlegmy laugh. “Keep flapping them gums, Grady. See if you don’t get a mouthful of knuckle sandwich.”

  Gramps is the only person who calls me Grady. Ever since elementary school, everybody else called me Hake. When they weren’t calling me names, anyway. I’d insisted on it, since my dad’s first name was Grady, too, and I didn’t want people to associate me with some loser wasting away in jail.

  After I got the laundry going, I started some freezer burritos in the microwave. They weren’t on the list of approved foods Gramps’s nutritionist had magneted to the fridge, but they were his favorite. Anyway, she only came around once a month, so she wouldn’t know. Then we ate and watched Westerns while I did my homework. Between shows, I got Gramps riled up by suggesting that Gene Autry might be a pansy.

  Basically, the exact same evening we’d been having since I moved in with him. Sometimes the routine got boring, but that night it was great. Right after getting your butt handed to you by somebody bigger, better looking, and richer than you, having that familiar stuff to fall back on is a relief. Like you should be thankful for it.

  Paladine ended at nine thirty. Just like always, Gramps slammed down the footrest and, with a groan, shoved himself to the front of his recliner. But he must’ve been feeling kind of pensive, because he didn’t head straight for bed like usual.

  “How the lessons coming?” He squinted at my calculus book. His sight was getting worse all the time. I wondered whether he could see the outlines of stuff or if everything was just a blur to him.

  “Almost done,” I said.

  “Good deal.�
��

  He clapped his hands a couple times in a rhythm I didn’t recognize. He always did when he was thinking.

  After a second, he asked, “Need any help on it?”

  “No, I got it.”

  “Damn smart punk.” He slapped me on the knee. “I never did have a head for books when I was your age. Your dad, neither. Must’ve got it from your mom, God bless her.”

  “I think you’re smart.” Gramps was faster with a comeback than anybody I knew, and he could tell a joke like nobody’s business.

  “Nah, I’m just an old stump who never should’ve come outta the hills,” he said. “You’re on the fast train, Grady. Gonna do something with that brain of yours.”

  To Gramps, “doing something” translated as “become a doctor or lawyer.” He didn’t say it, but I knew he wanted me to make something respectable out of the family name my dad ruined, so doing something awesome like martial artist was out. I wasn’t sure what I’d go to college for—that was still a couple years off—but whatever it was, I wasn’t going to be majoring in drug dealing with possibility of parole in eight years.

  “Well.” Gramps groaned again as he stood up, then gave me a weak noogie, aggravating a spot I hadn’t realized was bruised. I smacked his hand off, but not real hard. That was part of the business. He laughed. “Don’t stay up all night watching them kung fu wushu shows, buddy boy.”

  “I won’t.” I ran my hand through my hair, smoothing it back down.

  “All right.” He shuffled off down the hall to the back bedroom.

  I threw the clothes in the dryer, then hurried back to the living room to finish my Calc homework. As soon as that was done, I turned on Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior.

  Ong Bak is my favorite movie. Everyone in it gives Tony Jaa crap about being poor hillbilly trash, but he shuts them up by beating everybody and taking back his village’s holy statue. I was watching it for the millionth time because it had a form at the beginning I was trying to learn.

  Ever since I was a little kid, I’d always wanted to take a martial arts class, but Gramps and I have never been swimming in dough. I couldn’t ask him to waste some of his fixed income on it when he already fed and housed me on the little he had, and if I had started a class over the summer while I was working, I would’ve just had to quit over the school year when I didn’t have any money coming in.