"... And what was the least kinky shit he ever tried to do?" Aki sumarized while holding his fourth coffee cup.
"Oh my gods, Thanatos is an angel! Also, i missed my espressos so much." Exclaimed a much calmer and messier Minthe in between sips of her tenth drink, complimenting it for the nth time.
"And those are exemples of obvious opossites of quality on your choises. One is a depressed pale guy with a torch, no actual self confidence and daddy issues and the other is a companion that will always keep you warm uncondisionaly." He pointed out with a smile.
"Wait, i know we started this as an exercise to talk shit about some gods, but why exactly did your attitude suddenly take a completly diferent turn? Did you say like an hour ago that you were too lazy to pretend to care?" She suddenly asked.
"Babe, sugar, you thought i was an actual emotionless husk that only thinks about benefits?" He laughinly asked, getting a nod and snickering a bit. "Oh no, I think of benefits and the happiness of those around me relative to my own. That means i don't mind actually becoming your friend instead or just your jailer because both ways i'd still be taking care of you, with the former instead having fun by your side. It's a magical thing." He laughed at his own bad joke, giving her time to hide the small blush on her cheeks. "The idea was simply to dork or nerd around, build raport. What better way than talking shit about awkward exes?" He shrugged.
"Fair enough." She agreed.
'Besides, when else am i going to have you vulnerable enough that you won't be inside a chrysalis of fear, anger and bitterness if not the first time you woke up? Benefits and friendship, almost as good as cyanide and happiness.' He thought and looked at the clock before nodding.
"It's time." He gulped down the pipping hot beverage in his hands. "Put on some confortable outerwear, these two guns, two combat knifes, stell toed boots and boot knives, we're going to a tournament and i have no one to look after you." He told the ginger and got a selection of female clothes out before changing his own pajamas into a leather jacket, red shirt and jeans with the storage artifact and directing himself towards the bathroom to take care of his face.
"Where are we going?" She asked, not bothering to hide while changing. "You're taking care of your nose hair now, with a naked woman in the room? Gross." She pointed out.
"That i am. Picked the triple checking my hygiene habbit from my mother though, so i wouldn't stop even this kind of thing even if you were some hooker." He said before brushing his teeth. Cultivating might reduce the wastes of his body produced, but his teeth didn't automatically turn perfect nor did his hair became easy to tame. He'd need to cultivate specific technics for that, and he just didn't have the time for those at the moment.
*****
'They're all rich assholes that are betting against me, don't attack then to kill. Their money will be washed away from my betting odds otherwise.' He telepathtically told his charge, who was messing on her new phone with a bitch face in the room to the side while he changed clothes.
Payment is nescessary for this kind of job after all. Aki choose to get something he'd normally be unable to buy with mortal essence, Mind arts. Good for anything, from attack to defense, from telekinesis to illusion.
'I wouldn't mind if you hurt someone trying to harass you though, it'd be...' He stopped the transmision as the sounds of screams imediatly resounded. Wails of lament really. Opening the door, Aki found two body guards trying to beat their heads against the walls, already bleeding from the strenght of the blows, and a pompously dressed young man on the floor with a clear yellow stain on the crotch of his white pants. "Oh, for a moment there i thought you'd already killed then, this much is fine. Just let me put the top of these robes and we can start romming around." He nodded and went back on. It'd been only five or so minutes, but they'd completly expected someone would try to make a move on her.
Roaming around for the hour or so before the tournament actually still had before it started, because Aki was raised a good momma's boy and would never make his appointment's wait, they ate churrus, he showed her his playlists and what she should focus while listening for music of her taste, and got her a couple of nescessary earth books, 'American gods' for example, and got her a place to seat while he fought, which wasn't hard because he aparently wasn't the only one that'd taken someone else with him. He was the only one who'd bought a seemingly unninterested woman though.
His first oponent wasn't anything to speak off, but he'd properly pretended to win because of chance obtained during a series of exchanges he'd aparently been loosing. The man was actually only a bit better than the pawn stage guy he'd fought the other day even though he was at soldier stage, he even wined about his loss and had to be taken ãway by a detail, aparently not noticing anything from the punch that almost knocked him out.
The man was only at the beggining of said stage, sure, but the amount of work he'd put into refining his body was not much better than Aki's, nevermind that his energy attacks barely had any stregth behind them. Aki knew for sure that there was no such thing as a mage like him in the current earth, but the man was simply pathetic.
Thanks to this though, he now had around 200k. The betting odds for the next fight didn't go down by much either. The people around this time didn't just come from rich families, they came from martial families, which is to say they have even less attachments to their money and a more rigid view on the whole 'cross rank killing' thing.
Little did they know that Aki was already holding on condensing his fake Qi, the requirement for soldier stage, and could break through at any moment, reinforcing his energy attacks and buffs by at least 20% efficiency!
If you didn't understand how that is awesome, go ask the nearest gamer.
The second opponent.
"I won't be underestimating you." Said the handsome guy.
"A shame. Then maybe I will have to get serious now." Aki said, actually looking serious as the man burned his energy and produced an aura of pressure while showing a readiness that didn't leave any question about his intentions.
Nodding, Aki shot forward, taking his tantos out and parrying the man's sword, because basically everyone used one, yes, before finally using his flame in close range, hitting his opponent's face with a cone of fire and using the chance to swipe at his feet.
Those were, unfortunately, already stuck on the arena by a layer of rocks though, so it didn't work as expected and gave the man time to get his bearings enough to strike with a rock clad fist, forcing Aki to roll away or tank the blow. Obviously he chose the former.
Not resting for a moment he dodged again and avoided shrapnels flung in his direction before beggining to dance around his oponent. Having already understood that the man in front of him was probably charging some kind of attack to break his defence, the rock clad man used all his strength and overdid a strike with his fist, hitting the arena and creating cracks on it.
Aki fell backwards from the 'turbulence', but quickly flung himself backwards in a backflip, mostly possible because of the ant like power of his arms and a relisilent set of tortured joints.
A minute into this dodging spree, the spell was finally charged and Aki narrowly avoided another blow before swiftly reaching for his oponent's back and exploding in a spherical wave of stone melting fire while hugging the man's waist. By the time they were visible again, the audience found Aki holding an unconscious man with most of his clothes burnt to cinders plus some slag and sand on the ground.
The man had passed out from the all-out headbut to the back of his cranium and was even bleeding, so the judge confirmed that Aki won.
He now had 540k dollars and an unfortunate rise in fame. Being able to defeat a half way soldier stage cultivator had earned him some attention, but even though that was the case, he'd still get double the amount he bet on himself after winning the next round.
There was a reason why wuxia novels spoke so much about betting, and that is the simple truth that people are dumb and measure other's with themselves as a stardart most of the time. Or translating to more crude terms:
"Did you scam more young master while i played? We can always bet their treasures as well, so anything they claimed to be half their possesions will do." He quickly checked on with charge.
"I'm already betting at the bet house, calm down. Only four guys came to stir up trouble. I must say i'm starting to like this way of making money though. Even if this is practically worthless it is still gratificating to personally take away what those stuck up pricks have." Answered the redhead who was shoving more and more stuff towards the assistants that seemed to be as unending as her own willingness to throw cultivation resources towards making dollars. With the use of one specially poor young master who had to give up on his storage artifact.
"That is one kind of dangerous behavior i insentivate, but remenber to do so in moderation. Both because we can only spend so much of their stuff before they stop coming and because it will get borring if you just repeat the same thing. That's why i gave you four playlists with more than a hundred songs each." He answered as he pretended to meditate while waiting for his next fight. At this point his natural regeneration boosted by his yin and arcane affinities were simply much better than his manual absorption of the poor energy reserves of the surroundings.
If he'd spent more than half his energy than maybe he'd be stresfully grinding at such skill and even using his stamina to help, but all the affinities he'd collected and trained made his usage a 'bit' more effective than 'half the cost and double the result'.
Exactly one of the reasons why he could cultivate so quickly without the use of special materials infussed with reserves of energy (Spirit stone for example) or some kind of human cauldron (dual cultivation). Though both would still be appreciated.
Going to his next fight, Aki found his plan stopped by the simple fact his oponent was a woman, he'd not been paying attention to the other competitors because he literraly couldn't see the fights and simply hearing he'd be fighting one Elliot Mary could mean anything.
Seeing the cold faced woman with obvious asian heritage wearing some sports wear bellow the simple tournament uniform, Aki imediatly noticed her rapier seemed to shine blue and figured she was a ice princess or something, but on closer inspection he saw those were actually electrical currents. His lightning usually had either red or yellow collor because of the tipe of focus he used, his body or the inercia generated by swinging his blade, so he'd not reconized it imediatly.
"Let's get this over with." She said, every bit of bitchiness he'd expected being transmited towards minty together with the question of whether this sounded like anything she usually heard when going out.
"So you can go back to your misserable and completly happiness deprived life, right, that's important." He nodded and scoffed, his oponent clearly enraged, for the standards of someone that usually didn't make any kind of facial expressions.
"You know nothing of my life." He didn't much pay attention to her at this point, the simple provocation was clearly working.
"Besides the fact i'm clearly right about it and that you spend all of your time drowning in work so you can delay whatever plans..."
*Bang*
As Aki kicked the face of the stupidly quick woman into the wall withouth even leaving his starting position, silence reigned. She was uncounsious but breathing, as confirmed by the judge. As the healers were walking up the arena, Aki already sneaked on the judge and started making the woman's bruised face less swollen, including the one hurt from hitting the whatever the fuck stronger than stell metal bars, which woke her up, though her brain seemed to not have booted up yet.
"Even though i don't care, i shouldn't have insulted you and your life like that. Next time try wearing a helmet." He said as he took her by hand and slowly lifted her while uninpeeded by the stupefied judge that didn't expect his sportsmanship. She'd still slapped him with the hand he didn't hold before going away though.
And now he had around 1.6 million dollars, nevermind that the tournament itself gifted ten million towards the winner.