The Competitors Seven - The Unwise

He wasn’t entirely sure how he found himself here, but he supposed that it wasn’t the strangest place that the wind had carried him to. 

Yu Xiang.

He had seen the city before, had walked its streets, but that was... hmm, how long ago was it? He couldn’t quite recall, but the city had certainly been smaller then. It was definitely less vibrant than it was now.

He had been in just about every city in the Jade Empire, by his reckoning, even a few that didn’t exist anymore, and some that had only been little towns with a humble little sect the first time he passed through. 

Of all of those, Yu Xiang, and really most of the cities of the Flaming Steppes, ranked rather low in his estimations. There were a few that weren’t awful, but... well, the area wasn’t beautiful the way an every-man might appreciate it. 

Regardless, it was changing now. The city, and the tournament grounds next to it, were festive and bright and chaotic.

He recognized the feeling. It was what happened when people that had expected little out of life were suddenly open to the possibility that there was a whole lot more in store for them. The citizens had hope, and with that came growing expectations. 

It was both good and bad, but most of all it was interesting.

So he decided to participate in that tournament.

Honestly, he had a few ulterior motives. With so many people from across this fledgeling little empire rushing to their new capital, the cost of an inn room had exploded far out of proportion of what it was worth. Common citizens were selling their own living spaces for guests from out of the city.

He... was kind of broke. Usually he didn’t mind camping in the outskirts of a city. Sometimes he’d pick up a humble job or two. Muck some stables, help someone find a lost pet, wipe out a village of goblins, or infiltrate a bandit cultivator camp to steal back a family heirloom. It was simple, common work, but it paid for his meals, let him earn a little coin and make friends.

Yu Xiang had no need for anything like that. Their stables were mucked by the undead, and undead horses didn’t produce manure to begin with, the local goblins were the undead doing the mucking, and any bandit cultivator that lived had done the smart thing and had wandered out of the region.

He wasn’t a great fan of large, powerful militaries and the like, but he could admit to being a little impressed by how things here were organized.

A discussion with a friendly young local had revealed that participants in that huge tournament that everyone was talking about came with some perks for the participants. That included room and board. 

It was hard to refuse that. Plus, a good tournament was always a nice way to stretch his skills a little and maybe put a few young masters in their place. He frequently had to run out of town afterwards to avoid some repercussions, but that was fine.

So he joined, which was a rather painless affair. 

He walked up to a booth around the tournament space, spoke to a hovering ghost, then was politely led to a magical plinth of some sort. A press of his hand against it and he was rewarded with a strange page, then a file with instructions for which housing unit was his and where to find it, as well as tickets to be used for free meals for the remainder of his stay.

Convenient, that. These undead certainly had a knack for logistics. He idly wondered how the Jade Empire would handle that. It was one thing to put down an upstart rebellion out in the boonies. It was very much another thing to put down a rebellion when it was well-organized, had decent numbers, and was led by people who seemed to have their heads on straight.

He suspected that one of the goals of this whole tournament debacle was to prove that this new nation had what it took to stand up to their neighbouring empire. The Jade Throne wasn’t going to take that lightly if it succeeded.

Oh well. He didn’t plan to be here when the more powerful cultivators of the Throne showed up.

In the meantime, he had a curious sheet to look at. 

Name

Class

Secondary Class

An Unwise Sage

Wandering Monk

N/A

Strength

Race

Alignment

17

Human

Neutral

Dexterity

19

Current Level

EXP to Next Level

Constitution

48

4530

9

Intelligence

Hit Points

112

9

Armour Proficiency

None

Wisdom

Armour Class

3

16

Resistances

None

Charisma

Flaws

Rootless

11

Affinities

Evocation (Dust)

What a strange page. What were these numbers supposed to mean? Was he more wise than intelligent? But how did wisdom and intelligence diverge? Were they not the same coin flipped about?

He arrived at his designated home, and it was a proper home. A small building, of a style he was unfamiliar with, but which featured a lot of sharp, unnatural angles. The house was one of several dozen, all entirely identical and laid out in neat rows next to one another with only plaques with numbers at the front to differentiate them.

He opened the door and stepped in, then froze. The house was occupied.

A very short man... no, that was a dwarf, a dwarf was spinning in the centre of the room, one hand clinging onto his chin in a pose often adopted by those contemplating deeply, only this dwarf was actively twirling on the spot while standing on the tip of one foot.

The dwarf stopped with a suddenness that surprised him. “Oh? Ah! You must be my roommate?”

“I suppose I am,” he said before looking at the number on the page he had been given. It did match the number on the door. “Are roommates common?”

“Seems so!” the dwarf said. “What’s y’er name, human?”

He bowed slightly. “I’m just an unwise sage,” he replied easily. “I don’t have much use for names. Yourself, sir dwarf?”

“Bit! Drill Bit, of the Bits Clan.”

“A pleasure,” he replied. He liked dwarves, they were usually more honest than man. Though he hadn’t wandered through their underground halls very much. “I suppose you’re here for the tournament as well?”

“Aye!” Drill Bit said. “Going to show those young human ragamuffins what-for! Hah!  How about you?”

“Mostly I’m here for the free food, though I wouldn’t say no to a good scuffle,” he said.

Drill Bit eyed him for a moment, then grinned. “Then I think we’ll get along just fine! Are you hungry, human? There’s free grub, but I brought a few things from home through one of those fancy portals.”

“I make a habit of never refusing foods that I’ve never tried before,” he said. 

“Good! Then we’ll get along just fine!”

***