我的继坶我的性老师

The first surprise of the day, was when they turned up at the same box as yesterday. Bing would have all of his matches here, up until the semi-finals at least. For the semi-finals and above, they would be transferred to the main stage. Said main stage was currently being prepped for the final too matches, and as such, just the smaller, outer stages were in use. None of this was the surprise. No, the surprise was Bing sitting in the room waving at them as they entered.

“Bing what are you doing here?” exclaimed Sue in shock.

“Awwh… don’t you want to see me anymore Sue?” asked Bing with a pout.

“You know very well that’s not what I meant. I thought you’d have your matches to get to?” said Sue.

Bing nodded, “Yeah well, I wanted to talk to you guys! I even told Lian where we were hanging out today but she wasn’t willing to risk getting in trouble for doing this sort of thing. I won’t be around all the time, I’ll see Bodeir and Lian’s first matches of the day, then I’ve gotta leave for a bit, before I can duck back in for one more match of Bodeir’s and then I’ll be away till we all move to the main arena…

“Which is a bit annoying. I’m sure you both care about Bodeir’s fights more than me but the timing just doesn’t work out for me to be here for Lian’s. I will be sad to miss the Lian VS Bodeir fight during the quarter finals. Well… if they get that far. I suppose I am assuming a bit here… oh, and there’s a guy just outside ready to grab me when necessary. He showed me the way here,”

“Um… did you see anyone Kat?” asked Sue.

“Nope,” returned Kat and Lily shook her head from Kat’s arms.

.....

“Hmm…” mumbled Bing as she tilted her head sideways. “You sure he wasn’t outside? Should’ve been right next to the door?” the demonic trio shook their heads, “not near the corner either?” the shaking continued, “welp… not my problem then. If I have to forfeit it’s not the worst thing in the world,”

“Well… on that note, sorry we won’t be able to see your matches,” said Kat with a slight bow.

Bing just waved them off, “Nah, it’s no issue. I know you’ve got your Contract to deal with, and honestly, I’m not too worried about my matchups until I have to fight my Bro in the semi-finals. That’s probably where I’m losing truth be told. Just a question of how much effort I should be putting in. Sure I could maybe beat my brother if I through everything at him, killing shots and aces included… but he’s my brother, and we’re from the same sect. Tactically, it’d be better to just… forfeit. We’d get complaints if I did that though…”

“That doesn’t mean you’re not going to do it though,” said Sue as the demonic trio took their seats, “I can see you forfeiting to give your brother a better shot at victory and not really minding the reputation hit,”

Bing nodded, “Oh yeah. If this was a foreign tournament, I’d do it no hesitation. Only change is that I might intentionally try to run out the clock, give him even more time to recover. Oh, I’d got booed a bunch for it, but at a foreign tournament? That’s just considered good strategy even if it’d be unpopular. Some people wouldn’t have the stomach to do it. ‘Not honourable’ they’d say… which is really just a strange way of saying ‘I value my reputation too much to risk it giving a sect or family member a better chance to win’

“Here though? Where we set the bracket? It would be a massive problem and I’d totally get grounded for making it too obvious. It’d be a bit of a political announce for my parents… and they’d get on my case about it… so just not worth it. I’ll fight Feng ‘properly’ without going all out,” explained Bing.

“Right… are you worried about Lian and Bing getting to each other? And who do you think will win?” asked Sue.

“Nah, I’m pretty sure they can make it to each other… but I don’t know who’s going to win. If Bodeir was watching Lian’s previous fight, then he’ll know the best way to counter her… but technically speaking she should have the advantage. He’s a slower combatant and she can layer down speed impediment curses, or perhaps constricting ones… but honestly? I suspect if Bodeir plays his cards right, he can win,”

“Oh?” said Kat and Sue together. Kat just waved at Sue, gesturing her to make her point first. Sue gave a little nodded and continued by herself, “I suppose I can see that happening… but what exactly is the winning tactic for Bodeir? Care to share?”

“Just charge forward,” said Bing, enjoying the shocked faces on the rest of the group. “No seriously, if he just… ignores her traps and puts everything into one big initial charge? Bodeir can probably take Lian out before she properly gets her things set up. Every moment he wastes doing something else, is time she can spend prepping curses,”

“Why did that one armed guy spend so long watching Lian yesterday?” asked ‘Lily’.

“I’d guess he was trying to get a sense of what type of curses she specialised in. If she was able to set up a good rebound curse, and he just charged straight in, she could use it to throw him straight out of the arena. Plus, he might not have known what kind of curses she specialised in. A valid tactic against many of them is to just stall them out,” explained Bing.

“Really? I can’t see how that would work against Lian,” said Kat.

Bing nodded and said, “Oh yes, it wouldn’t work against Lian at all… but some curse masters essentially bring in a bunch of half finished but powerful curses, spend their qi activating them, and then blast anyone who charges right at them into smithereens. The weakness of that strategy is that you have to hold them semi-active, you can’t release them in batches at that point. It’s all or nothing. You also have to let them take as much as they want… or the curse could backfire.

“Lian instead, likes curses that build up. They take little starting investment, but their power compounds over time through various different means. Maybe Lian uses momentum, maybe she uses time and lets them gather ambient qi, or qi from her competitor. You saw her using those dots as charge points for her acupuncture curse, taking the damage from each blocked strike and attacking various points on the swordsman’s body with that same strength. Of course, if he had just ignored them, they’d have exploded after a certain amount of time, so it’s not like he could just leave them all sitting around either.

“Lian made sure the explosive part was really obvious. Didn’t disguise it at all, in fact, she made it MORE obvious they were all essentially tiny bombs to try and encourage the exact poor behaviour the swordsman displayed,”

“Curses seem really powerful… is there anything that really counters them?” asked Sue unsure. It seemed odd that such a skill could be so powerful.

“Oh yeah, of course. The biggest and most well-known weakness is that they loose massive amounts of effectiveness on higher Rank targets. Sure that’s the same for everything, but for curses? You might as well not even bother. You can’t really jump Ranks with them no matter how skilled you are… unless you’ve got your target like… unconscious and weakened in a basement and at that point if you just want them dead you could’ve slit their throat in whatever prep time you needed to load them up with curses,” explained Bing.

Of course, she pointedly didn’t mention all the reasons you might still want to apply a number of curses to a rival once you had them in your clutches. Killing them was certainly not the only option. Servitude, impotence, tracking, plenty of things to embed in their qi or body as punishment when you couldn’t quite get away with the political ramifications of killing them.