[Hot Patch]

  -Your NPC students can gain a maximum of 10XP times your total Dice in the Attribute or Skill you are using to train them in a day. You can stack different means of training to surpass an individual Attribute or Skill limit, but the Dice Pools must be completely different.

  -The longer unspent XP stays in an NPC's reserves, the greater the likelihood that it is reprocessed into organic gains during their sleep.

  -You may only buy Dice for your NPC students in Skills that you possess up to a number equal to your Dice in that Skill minus 2.

  -Making multiple rolls to train or teach an NPC student in a day may cause them to incur Temporary Willpower or Endurance Damage depending on the nature of the training. Your students will gain bonuses to resist these depending on their Trust and Respect scores toward you.

  -Appropriately themed training sessions provide a 10% discount rounded up to purchase relevant Skills, Attributes, or Feats if the purchase is made immediately after Experience is earned.

  -We’ve added some Items, Tokens, and Feats that interact with the new rules.

  [Hidden Quest Complete!]

  Force a Hot Patch.

  Reward: Each of your current students gains 30XP. Add to your Base Phoenix King’s Spa – Comes with a large sauna and group baths, both of which are equipped for different alchemical therapies. Enduring the staggering heat of the sauna with or without the aid of alchemical help can grant a wide range of benefits depending on the length of time spent inside and the frequency of visits.

  [Recurring Quest Found!]

  Your continued help in testing Arcane Rhapsodies: Legends of Love and Battle, Echoes of Fate, where Legends Converge and Destiny Resonates is appreciated. You will receive appropriate Rewards each time you force a Hot Patch.

  I read through the Hot Patch a few times with a mix of pride and irritation. While it felt nice to make the Producers sweat a little, and I’d assumed they’d patch teaching Feats, I didn’t expect it to happen before Annie even got here.

  “Boo. Couldn’t even let me have a day, could you? Whatever – shit’s still busted,” I said, waving away the notification and returning to my preparations. Only a hundred Experience a day plus whatever we rolled on the Dual Cultivation? Oh no. How would we ever manage. “You’ll be patching that again before I’m through. Also, God, please, I’m begging you to change the name, guys.”

  Dawn was just starting to grace the city, scattering the darkness to the sound of gull cries and the rumble of delivery trucks. I woke up early this morning, physically parched but emotionally refreshed by Maki's comforting weight pressed into my side. Not a lot had changed between us, I suppose, but it was nice all the same to be dating again. We already had a sexual relationship, already intended to spend our free time together, fight together, and maybe die together, but I don't know – I guess the label meant more to me than I thought it would. Having a girlfriend involved a level of intimacy and vulnerability that I'd not felt comfortable with for longer than I'd been on this show.

  It was oddly invigorating. After tucking Maki back in and leaving a note with some advil and water on her end table, I’d rushed off for Harbor Hill full of ideas. Many of them were criminal, most were ridiculous, but some were sensible, and that was an improvement for me. We take those.

  I planted my feet as best I could atop the exposed 2x8 floor joists of the first floor of my building and, making ample use of Terra Firma to stay rooted, hoisted my chain. The other end had been thrown over a ceiling joist and looped through the handles of my new Battle Bell, an invention that consisted almost entirely of objects I'd stolen on the way back from Maki's. Even with my superhuman strength, it took some heaving to raise it to be at level with my abdomen.

  The Bell was much like a punching bag except psychotic, absurd, and fully a hazard to be around when in use. At the center was a two-hundred-pound kettlebell mauled into the rough approximation of a ball, and surrounding the kettlebell were two incredibly large copper pots stolen from a high-end lifestyle store. They had been punched into half-spheres and then melted and squeezed together using Fire-Qi and my Eagle’s Talon. The resulting sphere, in turn, had been wrapped in weighted blankets and heavy ropes to make the final product. Eventually, I’d commission what I’d actually pictured in my mind when I’d come up with the thing, but this would do us for the week.

  I got under the dangling Bell and squatted it onto my shoulders so that I could loop and secure the chain around the neighboring ceiling joists. They definitely weren't rated to handle the force the Bell would generate when swinging, but I figured if I distributed the weight across three of the joists, it would be fine for now. It just had to stay standing for the week. At some point soon, I would invest in turning the first floor of my building into a real gym, but that rated lower on my priorities than keeping the Experience in reserve for another emergency like Annie's Awakening. Once we were successfully through our training arc, though, I would finally get some functioning utilities and walls in here. I loved my outdoor gym and my stupid, uncladded, floorless death pit of a training room, but at the very least, I needed locker rooms and somewhere I could teach my secret techniques outside the view of prying eyes now that I had more than just Annie as a student. Plus, winter was cresting on the distant horizon, and the cold could come on quick in Black Harbor.

  I dragged over a loose sheet of plywood to use as a floor. While I could use telekinesis to cling to the joists, I wanted to know how this would feel for my students. Sinking into a horse stance, chest inches away from the Battle Bell, I pushed it hard, sending it swinging with a God-awful racket, the loose two-hundred-pound iron ball inside making an abominable clanging that the blankets and rope did little to muffle. As the massive weight came rushing back, I held my arms wide, braced my core muscles, and caught it with my gut and chest.

  It went exactly as I’d hoped for. The blow to my body was hard enough to nearly wind me and sent me rocking back on my heels, feeling the vibrations of the still chaotic kettlebell within through my bones. Perfect – I sunk in the 20XP to make the last of Black City Kung Fu’s ‘starter’ Feats – those meant to lead students to where I was now.

  

  [Minor Feat] Bell Battle Contemplation

  Learn Force by letting it batter and break you. By pushing an extremely heavy bell and catching it with your body again and again, until the brutal repetition has left nothing else in your mind, you may align yourself temporarily with the greater concept of Force. After spending a session like this and enduring a roll against Damage and fatigue, you may temporarily add 2 Dice to Telekinesis until your next Recovery Check.

  The Major Feat version would allow me to keep the extra Dice for the rest of the day, but that was good enough for now. With that last Feat, I had spent a whopping total of 445 Experience.

  It would, I suppose, behoove me to break that number down a bit.

  In the course of my adventuring, I had pieced together the Art I needed to survive. But as proud as I was of my style, I could admit that it was a bit of a mess. The issue was that Black City Kung Fu was too inescapably a part of me, James Li. It was still as loud, flashy, and as over-the-top as I'd always intended it to be – I mean, even its stealth/assassination Stance was in your face obnoxious – but there was too much of it that had been born from random and Quest-related Rewards. Annie could learn to replicate most of what I could, but that was due to a mix of her having a similar background and luck, and even she had no way to ease into the Telekinesis aspects of my build. So, I'd come up with a web of Feats designed to guide the average student to mastery that tied the four current pillars of my Art together: Treachery, Force, Fire, and Sexiness.

  Sexiness, you say? But James, weren’t you attempting to keep that sort of gormless perversion out of your heroic and noble Art?

  Yes, I answer, I was. I was struggling in vain against it like a tattered sail flapping in a storm.

  Frankly, it was past time to nut up and accept that I lived in a hentai universe, especially after the events of Friday night. Maki was right; the sex cults, and more broadly, the lascivious hijinks that had infected every part of my life, were the consequences of my own actions. To ignore them was the same as running away from them, and James Li didn't run from anything – he tactically retreated. But seeing as that was becoming increasingly impossible, I was leaning in, baby! If the Underworld's ecosystem had doomed my legacy to perversion, then I was going to make sure that my Black City practitioners were the sharks of these horny, horny waters.

  For Treachery, I’d happily adopted two of Kas’s Feats, Deceptive Duelist and Liar’s Fist, which was the only Major Feat included in the category of starters. It had low enough prerequisites that I felt comfortable taking it. Deceptive Duelist let you add 1 Die to any attempts to trick an opponent you were fighting one-on-one. Liar’s Fist was equally as simple on paper, though would be much harder to teach without the system’s assistance. It forced opponents to roll against your ability to feint when preparing a Defensive action. Normally, the way it worked was that if you didn’t Attack in favor of just Defending, you rolled unopposed and added any Successes to your next attempt to dodge or parry. Thus far, every enemy I’d fought had favored relentless offense, but I didn’t want a cool, suave dickhead to show up and make a fool of me. I’d be damned if I was going to be the season one Naruto to some asshole’s Sasuke.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The third Treachery starter Feat, Sightline Awareness, was my own creation and meant to be a stepping stone to Style Maker. It wasn’t an actual prerequisite, of course, but I was thinking of a future where Black City didn’t have a grandmaster with a system backing him up. The technique would sharpen the eyes, with or without out-of-context abilities.

  

  [Minor Feat] Sightline Awareness

  While in combat, as long as you can see an opponent's uncovered eyes, you gain +1 on rolls to both determine their intentions and disguise your own.

  Adding qualifiers and drawbacks to create stronger Minor Feats had been my little inspired stroke of genius. I didn’t need to rely on Sightline Awareness or Bell Battle Contemplation, but they were great ways for my students to punch above their metaphorical weight class. The less Experience I spent making the Feats, the less training it would take for others to learn them.

  Speaking of my glorious Battle Bell and its unhinged related Feat, I’d bought one Feat from the catalog and invented another for the Force Pillar as well. Creating a path to fully supernatural abilities had been a struggle to conceive, and while the Contemplation let someone use the Telekinesis Skill without buying Dice, realistically, I couldn’t ask my future students to source enormous bells. Also, I guess it could kill you, so it was probably best if we treated the moving meditation like a semi-forbidden technique going forward.

  The safer and more reasonable thing to do was to teach techniques that would foster the correct mindset and inner Qi balance for Telekinesis. After all, I couldn’t kill or chase away too many students, or the style would never get off the ground.

  

  [Minor Feat] Wave Breaking

  You have learned to weather a charge without being moved. Feats that give an opponent a bonus for or after charging you are less effective, and you may add a Die to resist any attempt to be pushed or knocked over.

  The Force Armor tree was based on passive tactile telekinesis – a mix of Wave Breaking and battling the Bell for hours would be a good way to get a student into it. Turning your mind and body entirely toward resisting Force would, with time, lead to a deeper, more metaphysical understanding of the broader concept. That was my thinking, at least.

  Fa Jin Hips, my own invention but based on Baguazhang, was a much more straightforward way of onboarding someone into developing Lance Pressure. It also helpfully let me contribute towards the Sexiness Pillar without compromising my sense of aesthetics.

  

  [Minor Feat] Fa Jin Hips

  You are capable of generating tremendous explosiveness through internal rotation of the hips alone. You may make an attempt to hip or shoulder check someone even when heavily restrained. When able to move freely, you may add a Die to do so.

  If that didn’t have unspoken uses in the bedroom, nothing would.

  For the Fire Pillar, I created a single, easy tree off of my already purchased footwork Feats to lead students down, albeit one that ended with another forbidden technique.

  

  [Minor Feat] Flickering Flame Contemplation

  By emptying your mind and intently observing a candle flame for an extended period of time, you can learn to embody its chaotic movements. After successfully completing a session of this Contemplation, you may add 1 when Attacking or Defending for the rest of the day, the specific bonus chosen at the start of your meditation. The length of time required for this depends on your mental state and the frequency with which it is performed.

  [Minor Feat] Candle Shadow Dance

  You have learned to embody a candle’s unpredictable and entrancing flickers within your natural movements. Opponents suffer a 1 Die penalty when attempting to read or judge your movements. Outside of combat, you may add 1 Die when attempting to seduce someone through dance or a similar physical effort.

  [Minor Feat] Cinder Soul

  Set your soul aflame. Cast your fears into the fire. You may take 1 Point of Murderous Damage and 1 Point of Temporary Endurance Damage to gain 1 Aura and 2 Elemental Control (Fire) Dice for a single scene.

  I wasn’t teaching Annie the Cinder Soul until Maki was present to witness and potentially mitigate any unforeseen circumstances. Honestly, even after inventing the technique, I was split on whether it was something I’d teach to anyone but my senior student. Cinder Soul felt like something I should ink the instructions for onto a scroll so that I could get murdered for it in my elder years by a young upstart, thus kicking off a years’ long pursuit of vengeance for a future scion of Black City Kung Fu. For that, I loved it. But still, spreading the technique beyond a select few closed-door students seemed reckless, even for me. That said, I couldn’t imagine someone using the Cinder Soul more than twice without developing a natural ability for Fire Qi.

  Finally, I bought the only explicitly Sexy starter Feat from the catalog the Producers had added after the first Patch. I was mixed on it, half looking forward to teaching my hot students the technique and half dreading it coming up in a spar against me.

  

  [Minor Feat] Pleasure Point Strike

  Once in a scene, you may make an unarmed Attack to try and strike an opponent's pleasure point. If successful, you do no Damage but make your opponent orgasm. You may only spend Extra Successes with such an Attack to strengthen the ferocity and length of the orgasm.

  The Alan in me would cringe anytime I saw it on my Character Sheet, but I couldn’t tell myself I was serious about including Sexiness into my Art without at least one explicitly sexual starter Feat. At least it would be hilarious to make an assassin jizz their pants during a fight. That was precisely the sort of disrespect I wanted to cultivate in my students. There was no resistance roll, either; you either missed or you landed the hit and made them cum, and that was low-key broken.

  I caught the swinging Battle Bell with telekinesis and brought it to a stop. The building kept creaking worryingly for a few seconds after. Hm. Didn’t love that. Maybe I’d order a few palettes of plywood for tomorrow. The cross-bracing a subfloor would add might be necessary to keep the building standing, and I could make Annie palm strike the nails through the sheets to harden her hands. Oh! I’d get lath strips as well! Making the girls plaster the walls with their bare hands would Mr. Miyagi their wrists for kung fu, getting it even would train their dexterity, and the chemical burns from the plaster of Paris would toughen their skin.

  Did I have time to hit up an herbalist before Annie got here? Mugisha's gift basket had been extremely generous with the healing herbs, but he'd given me mostly African and South American reagents. I'd spent 60 Experience getting my Alchemy Dice to 5 and all five of my Base Upgrade Tokens to add a very nice Alchemy Lab to the apartment, but the system had rooted my knowledge in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Learning to specifically turn Mugisha's reagents into a skin-hardening lotion would take some experimentation, and ideally, the girls would be plastering before school on Wednesday.

  With some high-quality Dit Da Jow, I could probably mix something up with what Mugisha gave me, though. I texted Ma to see if she’d bring me a package from Madame Wong’s or Doc Nguyen’s today or tomorrow. As a good son and paragon of filial piety, I really ought to have introduced her to my senior student by now anyway. Currently, I wanted to get a session in with Smoothie before Annie arrived.

  That had been the other chunk of Experience I’d spent – getting to where I could create a Feat to teach Smoothie as I would a person. The cost of being able to train any animal of any type was prohibitively expensive, but the system had plenty of room for specialization.

  

  [Minor Feat] Cat Whisperer

  You have a preternatural ability with cats of all sizes. Gain a bonus Die when interacting with felines.

  [Minor Feat] Herding Cats

  Cats prefer your presence over the company of most beings. You gain a Guaranteed Success any time you attempt to summon or call a cat to you.

  [Minor Feat] Beast Specialization: Felines

  Through talent, skill, or animal kinship, you have learned a deeper form of communication with your favored species. You may buy Beast Master Archetype Feats but can only apply their benefits to cats that you are friendly or on neutral terms with.

  [Major Feat] Cats in Hats

  What’s wrong with that? Through a pigheaded disregard for reason and common sense, as well as a preternatural familiarity with felines, you have learned to apply your regular teaching and training Feats to cats with only a penalty of 4 Dice to your Pool.

  It had been a healthy investment. I’d needed to buy Etiquette of all things to 3 to make Cats in Hats, and probably needed to buy another now with the Hot Patch rules. Doing nothing to address Smoothie’s kitten instincts prior to teaching him Martial Arts was a recipe for disaster. His randomly charging my ankles and toes was cute currently; it would be considerably less so once he could cut steel with his claws.

  Fuck it, that thought was enough to make me sink another 20 Experience into a fourth Etiquette Die, temporarily flooding my mind with Robert’s Rules of Order and step-by-step instructions for various styles of tea ceremony. Spending a total of 50 Experience on a mostly useless Skill hurt, but only teaching Smoothie the bare minimum of human etiquette felt insanely insufficient. He was still a cat – he had to have at least 2 Dice in the Skill for me to see any benefits, right?

  I made my way back downstairs and was greeted by the little orange psychopath at the door. He purred loudly as he rubbed against my legs – don’t be fooled, though, this was only temporary. Smoothie had been noticeably more affectionate since I’d bought Herding Cats, but violence occupied too much of his brain for the sweet treatment to stick for long.

  “What’s up, young blood? You ready to learn how to be a dapper little gentleman?” I scooped up my kitten with one hand and started peppering kisses into his fur. He meowed indignantly. “Oh man, this is going to be the greatest cat video the internet has ever seen. You’re going to be more famous than me, Smoothie.”