What do you do when confronted with violence? Do you fight back or run away?
It's one thing when it's happening to you. It's another when it's happening to someone else. It feels so—foreign—like you're watching it play out on TV from the comfort of your room.
But there was nothing comforting about watching a little old lady and her husband being robbed right in front of me. Especially when I had the power to do something about it—but did I really have the power? Sure, I'd started cultivating, but I'd nearly drained myself testing that new spell before I got here.
It's not like mana replenishes on its own. I was still at 10% here, and first realm, second stage, half-step. So what? I caught the gleam of cruel, sharp metal in the guy's hand as he snatched the purse from the woman and waved the knife at the old man, demanding his wallet.
It's not like I'm knife-proof, right?
So does that mean I should just mind my own business? I mean, didn't I just say how things could be replaced, but a life couldn't? I didn't fight back when I was robbed the other day—but this felt different. This punk wasn't a cultivator. There wasn't an ounce of mana radiating from him; he was just an average, two-bit criminal.
Was I really going to just stand by and let this elderly couple be robbed of money they looked like they could barely afford to lose?
I don't know when I started moving, but I did. I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears. My breath burned as I sucked in rapid gasps, trying to absorb even a sliver of my power back, to restore even a fraction of my reserves as I steeled myself.
The couple saw me first, and the robber, noticing their gaze, turned and met mine. He swung his blade at me wildly, and everything felt like it was happening in slow motion—I almost couldn't believe how easy his moves were to read. I'd been in a few fights before, sure. But this was different. Almost instinctively, I blocked his backswing with my right hand, then pulled down at his elbow with my left while wrenching his wrist with my right.
Fueled by adrenaline, I put every ounce of strength I had into the movement. I heard a sickening crack—something in his arm snapped. The knife flew from his hand and clattered across the asphalt.
He cried out in pain, arching his back dramatically, and—without even thinking—I grabbed the back of his neck and brought my knee up to meet his descending face. There was a grotesque crunch, and I felt something wet hit my knee as I quickly stepped back.
The would-be robber crumpled to the ground. He lay there, and I stared for what felt like hours, straining my ears until I could hear faint breaths and see his chest rising and falling. Then, just as time had seemed to crawl to a halt, it jerked back to life with a dizzying lurch.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled slowly, opening my eyes just in time to see the old couple approaching me, gratitude in their eyes.
"Thank you, young man—I can't believe you risked your safety for a couple of old fools like us," the woman said warmly, gently holding my still-shaking hand.
"Yes, we really can't thank you enough. We'd just cashed our social security checks, and that brute was about to make off with all of it," the old man added with a nod, patting me gently on the back. "That took a lot of courage, what you did. Thank you, truly."
As more people gathered outside, drawn by the commotion, a few rough-looking bikers came over to praise me and self-appointed themselves as guards over the crook, who was starting to stir but didn't look like he was about to get up. Did I go overboard? I couldn't help but wonder.
The police arrived eventually, followed by paramedics, who took the criminal away with an officer riding along in the ambulance. Another officer took my information and statement, then patted me on the shoulder with a warm smile, saying I was free to go. Apparently, with so many witnesses, this was as open and shut as cases got.
The elderly couple offered to buy me lunch—it was well past noon by now—but I politely declined, saying I was running behind. They tried to give me some cash, but how could I take money from a couple on a fixed income? So, I declined that too; I wasn't that hard up.
Finally, I managed to slip away from the crowd, too embarrassed to linger under the warm gazes of the bystanders. I'm not used to being the center of attention. While it wasn't a bad feeling, I don't think I'd be able to taste food in those circumstances.
Instead, I went through a drive-through, starving by this point. After getting my food, I parked and started eating in the car—not even bothering to go inside. I really needed some quiet.
With all the adrenaline that had built up, I have to say, that fight was a bit of a letdown. Don't get me wrong—I'm no battle maniac. Sure, I'd been in a few fistfights, but after psyching myself up for a life-or-death confrontation, I realized that robber moved with the grace of an elderly eighteen-year-old cat. Folding him in half like a lawn chair just felt… hollow.
It was like gearing up to punch a wall, only for sanity to kick in at the last second, leaving me with nowhere to vent the frustration. I was like a balloon so tightly filled it could burst—only to deflate with a slow, anticlimactic leak.
If anything, it was disappointing. The only real "excitement"—if you could call it that—was when I almost thought I'd crushed his skull with that knee. Note to self—normal humans don't require that much force to subdue, that scared the shit out of me.
I keep forgetting the standard I set for myself when I developed my cultivation ranking system: a cultivator is already superhuman. Strength, speed—by any metric, being in the first realm means being beyond normal human limits. Of course, a regular person wouldn't stand a chance.
Unless someone had a gun. And even then, I'd just have to be faster than they could pull the trigger. Now, that's a crazy thought. But what if it was a group with guns, or even just one person I didn't notice? I shuddered. Yeah, I'm definitely not at bullet-dodging levels yet.
With a small smile, I tossed my trash into a nearby bin from over ten feet away with unsettling precision.
"But I definitely couldn't do that before," I muttered, rolling up the window and heading back home.