Hunting Rumours

Chun Xi blew a thick cloud of smoke into the salty winds of the sea, which quickly carried the cloud away, playing with it until it finally dissipated. She emptied the pipe overboard and got up with a sigh, finally there was land ahead. Never in her 28 years of life had she been as bored as in the past months.

Training had been intense. Fighting in the Arena of the Final Breath was thrilling. Challenging and defeating an Aspirant was exciting. When she finally brough down the tenth ranked Swordmaster, she felt on top of the world. The youngest Swordmaster in history. She could still hear the cheers when she closed her eyes, feel the mix of emotions overflowing, but it all felt so distant.

Now she was ranked number eight and she felt ascending further was such a bother. When she was number ten, she was constantly challenged by Aspirants which eventually bored her, so she challenged number nine and took his place. She thought that would be the end of the constant challenges, but whoever was number ten would often challenge her to escape the constant challenges she also sought to escape. After she climbed to rank eight, the challenges against her got much less frequent. Looking up seemed fruitless too. While numbers eight to ten changed often, number one to six hadn’t changed in a decade and number seven was hard to get a hold of.

There was nobody to fight.

Chun Xi walked along the deck toward the captain, a heavyset older man with a full beard and piercing blue eyes, “Yo, old man, how long until we land?”. The captain smiled, he had given up on trying to check her attitude somewhere along the trip, “We will dock before sundown, then I’ll finally be rid of that nasty mouth of yours.”. Chun laughed a cheerful and genuine laughter, “Thats great news gramps!”.

The ship made good progress towards the harbour of the city of Vilfenheim. She had heard many rumours of an uprising of Naga, powerful creatures with a humanoid upper body that transitioned into a snake’s body at the hips. Usually, monster problems were handily solved by local adventurers, but Vilfenheim reportedly had been struggling for a while at this point. She ran her fingers along the sheath of her trusted companion, a magical katana called Raindrop, and though to herself, ‘Maybe something there is worth fighting.’