It was actually nice to not be engaging in a contest where power ruled supreme. The first handful of beetle battles were a bit unfortunate for John as he was unpracticed, but he quickly got the hang of things and managed to at least make the matches interesting.

  Technically, the combatants didn’t have to be beetles, but in the interest of not actually losing any bugs, they were one of the best options. There were some larger sorts like the praying mantis that were able to provide interesting results when controlled by humans, but the number of things useful on an individual level were limited. A mosquito would never be effective against anything with an exoskeleton, no matter how large it was.

  The Calamitous Swarm also didn’t have an unlimited selection. Certain bugs were permanently bound to their members, and they weren’t able to gather literally whatever they wanted- though recently they’d been able to cover most of the continent, finding new options. That said, they couldn’t always make a proper environment to raise all of them, and having individual enclosures for each particular type of insect was strictly impossible due to the sheer quantity of insect varieties, even if the sect could generally keep them from killing each other and thus keep those from a similar environment together.

  Maybe if they had some more cultivators from other elements, they could widen their variety of kept bugs. Though the Calamitous Swarm only really used a few handfuls for their actual combat, so the extras were just for fun.

  John maneuvered the mandibles of ‘his’ beetle under the front legs of his opponent. He honestly had no idea how his guy would naturally fight, and it didn’t matter. He just picked a method that worked for him based on the limbs he had available. He lifted, flipping the other one on its back. Then he climbed on top, clamping his mandibles around the neck. That was the best method to achieve a victory without killing anything unnecessarily, though it had to be maintained for a few seconds like a pin.

  If they were empowering their bugs with spiritual energy, John would have had different tactics. Then again, he would either win handily against lower disciples, or have to use other more kinds of spiritual energy against more experienced ones. He only had a limited quantity of darkness, after all. Perhaps enough to match an early Consolidated Soul Phase pure element cultivator.

  At some point, they would just be sparring through proxy, which would erase all the benefits of novelty and small scale control. So the rules were that spiritual energy only controlled the insects… a rule which most of the disciples followed well. A few thought that because they were using darkness element already, they could try to sneakily cheat just a little. Nobody was foolish enough to do it against him, but a few did it against fellow disciples. When they got caught- and they always would eventually- they received the harshest punishment imaginable. No more bug battles. At least, for a while. Being banned was one thing, but there was also social ostracization.

  Perhaps darkness cultivators were ‘supposed’ to cheat, but in that case they’d better not get caught. Personally, if John wanted to make optimal use of his abilities he just wouldn’t agree to any rules to begin with. If you were going to agree to something and then break the rules to win, you didn’t actually win.

  -----

  John was taking notes, both for his own future interest and also because he saw how engaged the disciples were with their training- and it was training. It was one more weight on the ‘cultivation should be fun’ side of things. Cultivation as military training only went so far unless disciples chose to learn on their own. Especially since it had to be maintained not just for a few years, but for a lifetime.

  Of course, the military style cultivation training did work well enough to raise the general power of a sect, but the exceptional talents were always enthralled by particular aspects. There was some possibility that deeper interests were inherent to a person, but John thought that exposing people to various opportunities served better at finding some manner in which people could excel. It seemed to be working well for the Six Elements Crossroads so far, their lack of a strict style not hindering them in the ways it might have.

  “Battles are good,” John commented to Bodana. “But have you tried races?”

  The swarm around her tilted with her head. “Hmm, you’re quite interested in this aspect of things aren’t you?”

  “It seems like there are more aspects of small scale control that would be valuable to learn.”

  “Perhaps. But races merely require an inherently quick sort. A fast flier. Certainly it would be good to have optimal control over wing speed or the like, but it can only go so far.”

  John shook his head. “That’s why you need something like an obstacle course.”

  “Flyers would still win.”

  “Perhaps. That would depend on the rules. You could exclude them, or require some sort of interaction with the obstacles. Passing through a tight tunnel might limit the size of things. You could have numerous different setups,” John explained. “Flying stunts, climbing, running… rolling.”

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  “Rolling?”

  “Well, most don’t usually move while rolled up, but you could create a downhill obstacle course for pillbugs.” The other option for rolling wasn’t so much movement based. Dung beetles rolled stuff up, but humans might not want to gather dung. Then again, humans came up with all sorts of ideas for sports, so coming up with some meant to be played by insects would be pretty easy.

  -----

  It was a shame that John couldn’t stay to develop bug based games indefinitely, but both he and the other disciples needed a variety of experiences to continue growing. There was much more to the darkness element than what the Gathering Swarm did- though theirs was particularly unique.

  They had several stops to make in the Darklands, then they were back in the Stone Conglomerate. Rock based earth cultivators were everywhere, but just because they were common didn’t mean they were ineffective. Their styles were often straightforward matches of power, daring an enemy to try to break through their defenses first. Some could be mistaken for being slow, but truly slow earth cultivators usually didn’t make it very far. The exception was those who trained for siege warfare, where their opponents weren’t other cultivators but walls and towers.

  The Flinging Boulder Sect were such specialists. They made their home next to cliffs which they used as target practice- and John thought they actually had a fair chance of running out of cliff, if they weren’t also fortification experts. At the very least, they were able to fuse rock together to build up the cliffs after they knocked chunks out of them. They certainly had a handle on the physical part of things, but they didn’t do much with defensive formations that used free spiritual energy to bolster fortifications.

  Instead, they made much of their home underground, where invaders would have to fight through tunnels or dig them out bit by bit. Sturdy tunnels that would be difficult to collapse- at the very least cultivators would have to penetrate deep underground to potentially threaten them, with the threat of earlier tunnels being collapsed on top of them. John didn’t know if the Flinging Boulder Sect had actually needed to make use of any such tactics, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it had happened in centuries past.

  Their methods were perhaps the most straightforward. Find or make a sufficiently sized boulder and launch it. Some focused on faster attacks that would be more usable against people, effectively punching rocks at people. That scaled up to larger boulders that required a significant buildup of power to fling, all the way up to launching ramps manned by multiple people. They also had methods to create something like stone cannons, using counterforce from opposite pairs of cultivators to effectively build up pressure inside large stone tubes.

  When one cultivator then swapped their efforts, the other was already pushing with maximum power and could launch a moderately sized boulder a great distance- and at great speed.

  In terms of personal combat, they were about average. John found nothing special in that regard. They could block attacks and they could hit hard. Their best techniques simply took too much time or setup to be maximally effective against individuals.

  That said, John wouldn’t want to be part of a sect that made enemies with them. With their combined efforts a rain of rocks could prove quite dangerous to individual cultivators, and if they were ignored… well, they could probably flatten a city from a significant distance.

  The Six Elements Crossroads could learn from their techniques. Not just their earth cultivators, but also others. John saw quite a variety of clever modifications that different disciples attempted. Some worked better than others.

  Fire cultivators could temper ‘ammunition’ so that it was more durable. Earth cultivators could also spend extra time to achieve similar results, but a rapidly formed ball of rock was usually as far as their efforts went.

  Water cultivators could lessen friction where it wasn’t supposed to be, specifically on ramps or within launching implements. Air cultivators could do the same for air friction, though they couldn’t usually reach the full distance some of the projectiles would launch. They did have the ability to directly control pressure in the various forms of cannons, increasing the efficiency there.

  Sieges weren’t a field which John thought light and darkness cultivators specialized. Both sorts of spiritual energy could be used to simply push things harder, but that wasn’t any better than other methods. The best options he thought of were infusing the ammunition with light or darkness, blinding enemies on the other end. It would only happen after the attacks began, but anything to disrupt the enemy could be worthwhile. For those rare cultivators who could fuse light and darkness together they could create extreme destruction when the balance collapsed, but those were very easy to strike midair. It was still interesting to see that he could infuse the elements into a stone core for at least the duration of such a volley, however. If John had a proper light element totem, he might cause some serious damage. However, he didn’t- and he didn’t want to display too much of what he might actually be able to do, even in front of allied sects. He didn’t want to risk details spreading to future enemies.

  John thought they could have used this sect against the Black Peaks. Or if they were fighting something like a leviathan. In fact, they would be generally effective in large scale battles, since they could attack with near impunity from a large range. They weren’t tireless, of course, and they would either need to reserve some portion of their forces to make a frontline or have allies who could fulfil that role, but that was how everyone worked.

  No sect had such perfection that they wouldn’t be better suited with the right sorts of allies fighting by their side. Not even the Six Elements Crossroads that could provide most of that variety on their own- they could still take advantage of larger populations of specialists.

  John wondered if they would be good against enemy ships. From a port, maybe. From allied ships? Only if they were willing to carry hundreds of tonnes of stone with them. Ships were just at the right level of mobility that siege weaponry could be used against them.

  Precisely when war would come to the continent again John wasn’t quite certain… but he somehow doubted it would be never. If they were so fortunate that the planet never had conflict again, then at least the Flinging Boulder Sect would be really good at shot put. Maybe they should add that to the tournament. Making it more like the olympics instead of just battling would be good, but the number and type of events could be quite unbalanced for different groups, which could still be a source of conflict. It was still worth considering.