FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Four of his bodyguards walked with Jun, sweating and sweltering under the honestly mild temperature. But then, they usually rode around in horses, not walk through vegetable and millet fields in the middle of the day.

In their full brigandines.

They had left their horses back in the village when their village guides had assured them that they knew of shortcuts to where the Spirit Beast usually spent its time. Shortcuts that went through a few places where horses were known to break their ankles. After being cramped in the carriage for two days, a little bit of walking didn’t sound so bad, but Jun wouldn’t have agreed to take them if his bodyguards hadn’t insisted. So they left a guard behind to see to their things and left Captain Jianjun to…”enjoy” himself on behalf of Jun.

So yes, Jun didn’t at all feel bad about the way they huffed and swiped sweat from their foreheads. Because this was, technically, their fault.

“The sooner they were done, the sooner they could leave” was essentially the spirit of an argument couched in being efficient, flawless and many other things they thought would appeal to a Noble. Now, after an hour of pushing their way through tall grasses, Jun was beginning to regret not dismissing their concerns, no matter how bad he felt for them.

And not even because he was getting tired, but because this was getting uncomfortably close to being manual labor.

“This is why we prayed for a Heavenly answer,” one of the villager guides, a young man whose name eluded Jun, shook his head as they broke into a clearing.

It didn’t seem to be any different than any other clearing, except the weeds here grew short and the soil seemed to…have been tilled.

There were perfect lines marking what once, Jun was guessing, had been growing millet, “The work of months, ruined because a glutenous pig decided that all of our hard work belonged to it!”

“It turns this Young Master’s stomach to see a field in such a poor state?” Jun attempted to empathize.

“Understandable, My lord,” the second of their guides energetically nodded his head, “But I am afraid this is just the beginning.”

Indeed, the cut across the clearing….to arrive at a bigger similarly looking clearing.

“Behold!”

It was nothing but acres of wild-growing grasses and weeds starting to reach for the sky. Kind of like the millet fields and bushes they had been forging through.

“It looks like everywhere else,” one Jun’s guards put word to Jun’s thoughts.

“Can you eat grass? Are you a horse or cow that you don’t need to worry about where your noodles come from?” the young among the guides sputtered.

“We eat rice, little brother,” the guardsman flatly replied.

“Be polite,” Jun chided his guard, “This Young Master certainly appreciates the noodles that show up on his table.”

“As any true man should!” the young villager said.

“Yet this Young Master must confess that he thought that we were taking a shortcut,” Jun felt like throwing his guards a bone, “It almost feels as though the point of this trip was to show off the ‘ruined’ fields.”

“They are ruined!” the young man spoke up again before, finally, his older acquaintance elbowed him in the ribs.

“What he meant to say, Lord, is that we merely know where the Demon trawls,” the second guide admitted, “Given how dangerous the Beast is, we cannot afford to have an eye on it all the time.”

“The Beast that has not killed a single one of the villagers,” one of the guardsmen dubiously said.

“That wasn’t because of mercy!” the young man hissed.

“The Beast took great pride in humiliating every single one of us,” the other guide put a soothing hand on his young companion’s shoulder, “And would not spare us the loss of face by taking our lives.”

“Sounds more like it couldn’t,” Jun said, “But worry not. This is why the Heavens have you growing millet and it has this Yan son taking up arms.”

Jun was privately surprised when this was enough to mollify them.

But then, the mention that these were the areas where the Spirit Boar was had all of them on alert.

Spirit Beasts were weird things.

Just like people with the ability to work Chi could make wonders and those who could harness it could become wonders, run-of-the-mill animals who, through whatever means possible, managed a certain utility with Chi tended to turn into aberrations of nature. This might be more indictment of how strange Chi itself was, but the change wrought in animals was widely understood to be more fantastic than in mortal men.

Usually, one of the widest spoken of changes was in their size. Or perhaps it was merely just the most noticeable change? Chi made things greater and that, apparently, applied to bulk too. Whatever the case, a simple change in size was often enough to put one outside of the means of a peasant community to handle. For example, a cat the size of a big dog was significantly more dangerous than said dog while still being as hard to spot or see coming as it was when it was a cat

In truth, though, it wasn’t the physical changes that made them truly dangerous.

Spirit Beasts, you see, were all as intelligent as a normal man. And more than a normal man in some cases.

It was like a mockery of the ascension that all Cultivators sought, with significantly less effort and more results. Because sapience and sentience were one hell of a boon.

When the villagers spoke about the Spirit Boar humiliating them, they weren’t being hyperbolic or anthropomorphic about their danger. Not only could the Beast possess such intentions, it could also be capable of communicating them. Because that was another interesting facet;

They could talk.

Jun wasn’t sure how it was done, whether the physical changes they went through allowed them to articulate the words or if it was the outcome of some strange Chi interaction, but he knew they could. He’d never met enough in his second life to generalize them but all the stories, all the warriors and all the Cultivators he’d ever met all talked about them as if they could. As if they did. As if it was to be expected.

This one evidently did too.

There was no telling what other abilities it could have but, for now, the only thing they’d be able to readily spot would be if it were the size of a bull or something. And, in that case, they better damn well see it coming. So they looked.

Every single tree that swayed in the afternoon wind their eyes would roam over until they were sure it didn’t hid fur nor hide. Every bush was walked around, to make sure they weren’t inadvertently about to meet it. They didn’t slow their pace, but they did walk through the fields thus far devoured, eyeing every single place that could hide a monster capable of defeating an entire village.

It shouldn’t have been hard.

But, after another hour of walking, Jun looked at the passing sun and muttered: “We should have taken the horses.”

Well, lesson learned.

“I-it has to be around here, Lord!” the older of the two guides nervously said, “It has to be! It never takes long to come upon it!”

“Maybe it felt the Young Master’s powerful life force and fled before it could meet its death,” one of the guards huffed, letting out his annoyance, “Or, perhaps, maybe you rubes thought it’d be funny to play a prank on the Young Master.”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be grand?” another guard piped.

“Are you guys calling us liars?” the young man asked.

“Would we dare to make accusations of wasting the Yan Master’s time?” the guard laughed, “Of course not. But then, we wouldn’t ask him to travel days away from his duties just to come walk through weed-infested fields either.”

“We swear on our fathers that the Beast usually comes through here!” the older villager said, “Upon our ancestors too, if that would help!”

It was honestly sad how fast and quickly things could deteriorate if Jun wasn’t keeping his eyes on them, but his family didn’t send him his guards because they were the most patient. He was about to defuse things, again, when he spotted something out on a corner of the field, where tall grasses grew.

Except that these weren’t really grasses, now were they?

“Oh, sure, that might help,” another of the guards replied, “But let’s ask the Young Master what he-what are you looking at, my lord?”

‘Is that patch of millet shaking?” Jun pointed at a good piece of it

“I-huh,” the guard stopped intimidating their guides for a second to look at what Jun was, “Why, Young Master, I believe it is.”

“Oh gods,” the eyes of the older villager went wide when he spotted it, “That’s it, that’s it! The shaking of the beast! See how it gorges itself on the fruit of our labor? How it devour our only means to live?”

“Will you peasants shut up?” A very annoyed and very feminine voice said from the patch of millet.

The jaw of their guides clicked shut as the tall stalks stopped shaking.

And, not two seconds later, a boar came out.

…a normal looking boar came out.

Oh, it had blue stripes going through its fur and its eyes looked at them with very livid and very human annoyance. Or would that be sapient annoyance? Either way, it looked at them all as if they were the ones intruding upon her and not her upon the whole village. All while being, at most, 150 pounds.

It…probably didn’t even reach Jun’s waist.

“That’s the fearsome Spirit Beast you people were talking about?” one of the guards points at the boar, his sound full of disbelief.

“Who are you pointing your uncouth finger at?” the Spirit Boar demanded, “Are you a boor as well as an imbecile?”

“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter,” the guard growled, “It clearly wants to die.”

“As if killing me could change anything about your class,” the Boar sneered, “Or am I giving you too much credit by assuming you have any?”

The men drew their swords.

“Wait-” Jun began to say when, all of a sudden, his men charged.

“For the Yan!” they screamed as four grown men in armor and stomped over to a creature any one of them could have outweighed. Worse yet, one of them dropped Jun’s spear in the process, which made his eye twitch.

What followed more than made up for it though.

There was an old train of thought that stipulated that martial arts were something you learned to fight other men. That if you took up a weapon to slay a beast and learn by which means it did so that it would have to, logically, be called hunting.

Now, Jun’s men were not hunters.

“Good gods!” one of the men screamed as it was launched into the air.

But that didn’t really justify this outcome.

The Spirit Boar set off and countered their charge with one of her own. Unlike Jun’s men, though, she was much more faster at it than they were. Little tusks that barely went up above the Beast’s lip nestled the shin of the man in the middle of the 4 man formation as she lifted it up above her head. Along with the man attached to that leg.

The guards slid to a stop as they turned around as one of their members fell into the soil with a solid “thump”. They tried to face this diminutive threat, but the boar was like a shark circling a school of fish, waiting for their formation to show a flaw. When the men tried to stand in the middle of the Boar’s path, it found it.

It went for the most isolated of the three still standing.

“My legs!” the man yelled as he tried to time the swing of his sword with the approach of the Boar, but grievously misjudged it as only the hilt struck it in the head. And then the boar was bowling through its legs.

That left two men still standing as the Boar did not stop its charge and, instead, made a tight turn that had it coming towards them.

The men both looked at each other and nodded.

They raised their swords above their head and, unlike the third guardsman, set the Beast's charge to their timing.

The Spirit Boar, unbothered by the danger they presented, only sped up as the men grit their teeth and, when the boar’s speed would put its body at the apex of their swings, they went for it.

“Air Cleaving Cut!” they both screamed in unison as they swung their swords, singlehanded.

“Fuck!” they both then screamed as, instead of charging through their legs like it had done through the other two guardsmen, the Spirit Animal instead jumped at them.

The extra burst of speed and unprecedented 3rd-dimensional angle caught them by surprise as the Spirit Boar simply reached them before their swings could reach her.

So it was a 150 pound Sow slammed into their chests

And, just like that, four of Jun’s bodyguards lost.

Oh, the first guard that got launched in the air got up from the dirt, his sword in his hands ready for another go. But the Boar merely and daintily walked up to him and offered her head to it, as if giving him a try.

So the guard did.

The boar merely ducked the horizontal swing and then put her snout beneath the guard’s stomach.

And then, almost predictably, the guard went flying again.

She repeated this exact action to all the guards who recovered until none of them dared to get up.

And that was how his men lost, with a female wild pig standing over them, daring them to try and stand up to her.

On the one hand, this was a little satisfactory; as his men were far too quick to translate their annoyance into action.

But on the other hand, it was more than a bit depressing. Unlike the villagers, they had armor and arms. They had training. This shouldn’t have been hard!

“Men, come back,” Jun flatly said, gaining the attention of the Spirit Boar, “This Young Master doesn’t wish you to fight her yet. He would talk to her first.”

The men gingerly got up and the Spirit Boar didn’t do anything but smugly watch them slowly walk back to Jun.

“You are lucky the Young Master is so merciful!” the guards yelled at the boar once they made the safety of Jun’s back.

“How strange,” the Boar cutely said, “When it appears that it was this mommy that decided to spare you.”

“Thank you for that,” Jun honestly told the Spirit Animal before his men had the opportunity to posture.

“Y-young Master…” one of them made to complain but Jun raised his hand, finally silencing them.

“Oh? A young man with manners?” The Spirit Boar asked, “Maybe it's true about what they said about Noble sons being different.”

Truthfully it didn’t take a lot to be better than Jun’s men, but he accepted the compliment in the spirit that it was made.

“All the same, I would hope that the stark difference between us would be evident by now,” the female pig said, “Or am I going to have to humiliate the Young Master too?”

His guards brizzled at the provocation again, but didn’t say anything as Jun put his hand on his chin. How was he going to go about this?

Well, he could start with the most basic of things.

“What is your name?” Jun asked, making the Spirit Boar blink.

“Truly, you wish to know?” she certainly sounded surprised, “Polite, but I will nonetheless say that it’s telling that you only bother to be such once your men have all been defeated.”

“Or, perhaps-” Jun offered, “I was only going to ask once you proved worthy of me.”

“Ah” the boar actually chuckled, “Charming, I’ll admit. Fine, say that I proved worthy of talking to you.”

“Is the opposite true? Has the Young Master proven worthy of me?”

Jun laughed.

Cheeky.

He took off his shirt.

“....yes, that is nice,” the Boar said as Jun bared his chest and let the top of his robes hand from his waist, “But this Young Sow doesn’t believe beauty to be a qualifier.”

“I have not proven myself to you,” Jun unambiguously acknowledged, making one of his soldiers gasp, “So how about I do it the same way you did?”

The Boar’s eyes narrowed as she sized Jun up.

“What is your name, Noble boy?” The Spirit Beast haughtily asked.

“This Jun is a son of the Yan,” Jun replied as he casually walked towards her, coming to a stop just short of reaching her.

“And you would pit yourself against me in battle?” she asked, her eyes going to his waist and tracing it intently. She was probably noting how Jun had no sword to unsheath.

…he should probably get around to getting a knife at least though.

“I would have a duel with you,” Jun corrected her.

“Barehanded?” the Boar demanded, “With none of your human weapons?”

“You didn’t kill nor did any lasting harm to my guards,” Jun nodded at his men who were, even now, still nursing the bruises she gave them, “How could this Young Master bear the thought of coming at you with a deadly weapon after that?”

Not when he was decently sure he could beat her like this.

“So you would face me with nothing but the strength of arm?” the Boar frowned.

‘No,” Jun disagreed, “I would face you with nothing but the strength of my body.”

“Semantics!” a laugh escaped from the Boar.

“Still that does leave us at an impasse, as I am neither willing to kill you nor willing to let you be,” Jun hummed, “And just beating you like you did my men is not something that is sure to end well for this village.”

“As if you could,” the Boar sniffed.

“We are here talking about it,” Jun cracked his neck, “That is certainly an acknowledgment in some sense..”

“I acknowledge that you are a polite and pretty man,” the Boar said, “Nothing more.”

“Then how is this?” Jun said, “If this Young Master wins you’ll leave the village alone.”

“....If the village is so weak that they had to get someone from outside to fight their battles for it, “ the Boar opined, “Maybe it would be better for the Yan to cut their losses and let nature take its course.”

“I kind of have to fight for it,” Jun said.

“Fine!” the Boar huffed, “In exchange, if I win, the Yan will not bother me anymore.”

“Not that I believe a human to keep their word, but it will at least get the Noble boy out of my fur.”

“And this Young Master, in turn,” Jun replied, “Has nothing to assure him that you won’t just wait until he is gone to keep bothering this village…or just go and bother another one.”

“What do you mean I can’t go to another village?” the boar gasped.

Jun gave it a flat look.

“Ok, change of terms,” Jun told it, “If I win, you will, hmmm, become mine? Yes, let’s go with that.”

Keeping a Spirit Beast around wouldn’t be the craziest thing a Noble has already done and he technically already owned two slaves in the shape of Fu and Xia, so what was one more? Of course, the first two were concubines, but still.

Maybe he was committing to this too much, but, argh, this would resolve everything.

The Boar seemed taken aback, which made sense because an offer of slavery should do that to you.

“You would have me be yours?” the Boar nervously said, all of a sudden not willing to meet his eyes.

‘That…is precisely what this Young Master said, yes,” Jun slowly confirmed.

“Well, then,” the Boar cleared her throat, “Let it not be said that your eyes are bad or that you don’t have good taste!”

Ok?

“You’re as greedy as the tales make Nobles out to be,” the Spirit Sow declared, “But that’s how it should be! The strong must gain!”

“This Lingyi accepts your terms, Jun Yan!” the newly named Sow declared and then, of all things, began charging him.

“Wait!” Jun put his hand forward and, to his relief, the Lingyin stopped.

“Really?” she growled, “We are going to stop before we could even begin?”

“We are not fighting to the death,” Jun rushed to explain, “And we are not fighting for first blood.”

“What are the terms of the fight?” Jun asked.

That left Lingyin quiet.

“I am pretty sure that I only need to mount and pound you until you give,” the Boar admitted.

“You might as well give up then, and spare yourself the shame,” Jun clicked his tongue, “Submission or pin? Say, a ten count?”

“Let’s say thirty to give you a sporting chance,” Lingyin shot back.

“Agreed,” Jun shrugged.

“Well, I suppose I must first thank you for thinking about my shame,” the Spirit Sow got into the groove of things again, making Jun spread his legs and get into the wrestling stance his mentors tried their hardest to drill into him.

“But you should be worried about me revealing yours!” Lingyin shouted as she, finally, charged at him.