Table of Contents
No Summary
Shadow Alley Press Mailing List
Dream Spirit Attack
Nightmares & Wake-Up Calls
Etiquette Lessons
The Komodo Emperor
Charge of Justice
Hanging Poolside
First Date
Fallout
Sentenced to Death
Fight in the Pagoda
Lad’s Night
Burning Hatred vs. the Hangman
Proving Forge
First Impressions
Death vs. Saline Life
Meet and Greet
Hemorrhaging Blood Money
Bushwhacked
Wrathblade
Campout
First Day on the Job
Fight at the Temple
Skelebuddies
Overcultivated
Condensing
Work Week
Tikrong Hustle
Dance Hall Recon
Old Enemies
Crucible Casket
Price Tag
Smooth Recovery
Temple Run
Lost Artifact
Temple of Doom
Informant
Cleaning House
Run Through the Jungle
Riverside Recon
The Gang’s All Here
Showdown on the Clifftop
The Bullet
The Two Paths of Ten
Cursed Death
Master of the Heartblood Crown
Winning the Battle, Losing the War
New Weight Class
Books, Mailing List, and Reviews
Acknowledgements
Books by Shadow Alley Press
Books by Black Forge
LitRPG on Facebook
Even More LitRPG on Facebook
GameLit and Cultivation on Facebook
Even More Cultivation on Facebook
Copyright
About the Author
About the Publisher
No Summary
FIGHT TO KILL. KILL to advance... whether you want to or not.
Death cultivator Grady Hake has had to learn a lot of harsh realities since he was isekaied to the prison planet. This isn’t cushy first-world Earth. Here, Spirit is power, relying on others can get you killed or worse, and trying to do the right thing can spark a gang war.
Now assigned to be the avenging angel for the Eight-Legged Dragons, Hake’s got to come to terms with the hardest truth yet: Others have to die for him to get stronger. The more death, the more Death Spirit.
He never wanted to be a killer, but his friends’ lives are on the line. If he wants to get them through this gang war alive, he’s got to advance, which means he’s got a lot of killing to do.
Maybe he can’t keep his soul intact, but maybe that’s the price a Death cultivator has to pay to protect his friends.
From eden Hudson, author of Rogue Dungeon and Path of the Thunderbird, comes the third book in her bestselling Death Cultivator Series! Death Cultivator is a sci-fi fantasy cultivation saga perfect for fans of dark shonen anime such as Attack on Titan and Bungou Stray Dogs.
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Dream Spirit Attack
EVEN I KNOW YOU’RE not supposed to start a movie with a dream. Nobody likes it because it’s cheap, it’s confusing, and if it’s a good dream, somebody’s got to pay for it by the end. But in real life—or I guess my second life—I never saw the dream coming.
My HUD buzzed on the nightstand, the wood resonating with the vibrations, waking me up and making Kest groan.
“What time is it?” she grumbled without unhooking her arm from around my waist.
“I don’t know. I didn’t set an alarm.” I slapped around one-handed for the hunk of junk. Not easy with my eyes still shut and Kest lying across half of me. My palm bumped smooth plastic and glass and the edge of the soft leather band. I caught the HUD just before I knocked it off the nightstand.
The notification was a message from Warcry.
Let’s go, grav. Hour ten to tournament check-in.
I sighed and strapped the HUD onto my wrist.
Be right there, I sent back.
“I’ve got to go.” I kissed Kest on the cheek.
“Don’t get killed,” she said, already messing with a schematic on the HUD screen she’d integrated into her tricked-out prosthetic arm. “I’ll be at the workshop when you get back.”
“What, you?” I got up and pulled my pants on. “At the workshop all day and night until somebody has to come get you? No way.”
“Yeah, sorry.” She wasn’t, and she didn’t look up from the schematic. “I’m just so close to a breakthrough on this mechanical Spirit sea. I was dreaming about one of the components until your dumb SignalSong woke me up.”
“SignalSong?” I frowned down at the all-black HUD and ran my fingertips across the smooth surface of the screen. Not a crack or scratch in sight. “What happened to my Winchester?”
Kest looked up at me like I was crazy. “It died, like, two years ago.”
“And I just threw it away and got this?”
“No, you begged me to rebuild it four times before you threw it away and got this. I keep trying to get you to upgrade to the SS12, but—” She rolled her lacy eyes and shot me a smirk. “—you’re being a classic Hake about it.”
“What’s the point in upgrading when this one still works fine?” I mumbled absently. Throwing away the Winchester didn’t sound right. I wouldn’t have thrown away the very first thing Kest ever gave me. I would’ve at least saved the broken pieces somewhere.
I tried to remember deciding to ditch them or stash them, but nothing came to mind. In fact, nothing since transferring from the shuttle to the Eight-Legged Dragons’ cross-galaxy transport ship came to mind. Not meeting the gang’s Emperor, not getting whatever job paid for this fancy new HUD, nothing about how Kest and I ended up in the same bed together... All things you’d think you would remember about your life.
“Hake?” Kest was looking up at me from her HUD, the lace in her eyes thinning out with concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Where’s Rali?” Hanging out with her brother was the last thing I remembered. We’d been on the ship to the Shinotochi system, practicing cultivation and conversion. According to Rali, space was ideal for strengthening your Spirit sea because dragging Spirit in through the vacuum was hard for everybody but Celestial affinities.
Kest opened her mouth to answer, then stopped.
In the silence, I heard birds screaming at each other outside, the tinkle of wind chimes, and the low whine of semi tires on the highway. Closer, a coffee maker gurgled.
I knew those morning sounds. There was nothing unfamiliar or alien about any of them, which made them the weirdest thing I’d experienced since dying and being dropped on a prison planet in another universe.
“Where are we?” Kest asked, sliding out of bed. I only sort of half noticed she was
