Chapter 3: The Protection Racket
Jake sold three buns by noon.
This was, by any objective measure, a disaster. But Jake had spent his first evening in a new world eating pork buns for dinner and his second morning selling them to people who thought "steamed bun" was a spell component, and he'd learned something important: in a market full of spirit stones and flying swords, an ordinary bun was about as exciting as a tax form.
The three buyers were: a laborer who thought the sign was funny, a cultivator's apprentice who was hungry and had copper to burn, and a woman who bought one, bit into it, said "it's just a bun," and bought two more anyway.
"Just a bun" was, Jake had decided, going to be his motto.
At 11:45, he put down his steaming paddle, wiped his hands on his apron, and checked his stats:
THOUSAND STRIKES BODY — STATUS
Level: 3 HP: 120/120 Defense: 4 Pain Resistance: 3 EXP: 100 Next Level: 200 EXP needed
One hundred EXP. Two punches from yesterday. He needed one hundred more, and he knew exactly where to get them.
Down Merchant's Row. By the fountain. At noon.
Jake took the chrysanthemum out of his apron pocket, looked at it, and tucked it back in. Then he walked three stalls down to where Lily was arranging jasmine on a display of river stones.
"Hey," he said. "Quick question. What happens if I don't pay Big Mike?"
Lily looked up from her flowers. "What?"
"Five silver a week. That's the fee, right? What happens if I don't pay?"
Lily set down a stem of jasmine with the careful deliberation of a person who was trying very hard not to say something she'd regret. "Jake, I already told you. He hits you. He hits you a lot."
"But what if I want him to hit me?"
The words came out before Jake could soften them, which was saying something because Jake's usual approach to softening was already pretty minimal. Lily stared at him. Behind her, a glowing blue flower wilted slightly, which Jake chose not to interpret as a sign.
"You want Big Mike to hit you."
"Not in a weird way."
"There's no normal version of that sentence."
Jake leaned against her stall. "Lily, yesterday Big Mike punched me twice. I healed. I felt better. I slept fine. In my previous life, my back hurt every morning from an office chair. Here? Two punches and all my problems were solved. He's like a chiropractor, except he accepts pain instead of insurance."
Lily's expression cycled through several emotions — concern, confusion, a brief detour through something that might have been horror — before landing on the particular brand of exasperation that Jake was beginning to realize was her default state around him.
"He could break your bones."
"I heal fast."
"You said that yesterday. You also said you'd been dead. Jake, are you actually — are you well?"
"I'm fantastic. I'm a bun vendor in a world where people fight with lightning. I have a cart, I have a flower, and I have a very large man who wants to punch me on a regular schedule. Lily, I haven't been this excited about a Monday since 2016."
Lily opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. Jake was learning this was a pattern with her — the three-stage mouth cycle of someone processing information that refused to be processed.
"I'm not going to stop you," she said finally, because Lily was honest and stubborn and knew when a conversation was over. "But when he breaks your arm, don't come crying to me."
"I'll come crying to you with both arms, because they'll both still be attached."
Lily threw a jasmine stem at him. He caught it and put it next to the chrysanthemum.
At noon, Jake walked to the fountain.
He didn't bring money. He didn't bring a weapon. He didn't bring a plan, because plans implied the possibility of things going differently than expected, and Jake knew exactly how this was going to go. He'd been punched once before, in an alley, unprepared and confused. This time, he was going to stand in the open, in daylight, in front of witnesses, and make sure it happened right.
Big Mike was exactly where Lily said he'd be — near the fountain, leaning against the stone basin like it owed him money. Two smaller men flanked him, both carrying the specific posture of people who had been hired to look dangerous and were committed to the role. One was missing a tooth. The other was missing a personality. They were, Jake thought, the world's worst bookends.
Mike saw him coming. His brow — that massive, load-bearing brow — narrowed.
"You," Mike said.
"Me," Jake agreed. "Jake Turner. Bun vendor. You punched me yesterday. It was great. I'd like to discuss renewing our arrangement."
Mike straightened up. When a man who was six-foot-five and built like a siege engine straightens up, the surrounding air gets nervous. "Where's my money?"
"Which money?"
"The five silver."
"I don't have it."
Mike's eye twitched. It was a small movement, but on a face that size, it registered like a seismic event. "Then why are you here?"
"Because you said you'd come back if I didn't pay, and I want you to come back. Specifically, I want you to come back right now, and I want you to hit me."
The fountain burbled. A bird sang somewhere. One of Mike's bookends looked at the other one.
Mike stared at Jake. Jake stared at Mike. The staring went on long enough for a small crowd to gather — merchants, passersby, the old woman with the radish-demons from yesterday, who had apparently been telling this story to people and now had an audience of her own.
"I'm going to explain this once," Mike said, in the careful tone of a man who was used to being understood through volume rather than vocabulary. "You owe me five silver. You don't pay, I hit you. That's how it works. You don't ask to be hit. You don't want to be hit. You pay, or you get hit. Those are the options."
"Those are great options," Jake said. "I'm choosing the second one."
"What?"
"The second one. The hitting option. I'm choosing that. Specifically, could you do the left hook from yesterday? That one really hit the spot."
Something happened to Mike's face that Jake hadn't seen before. It wasn't anger — Mike ran on anger the way cars ran on gas. This was confusion. The kind of confusion that comes when a man who has built his entire identity on fear encounters someone who treats his fists like a loyalty program.
"I'm not going to—"
"If it helps," Jake said, "I'm not going to pay you. Ever. Not because I'm broke — I mean, I am broke, that's also true — but because I genuinely prefer the alternative. You are, and I mean this sincerely, the best thing that's happened to me in two lifetimes."
The crowd had gone very quiet. The fountain burbled louder, as if it was trying to fill the silence.
Mike looked at his bookends. The bookends looked at each other. Neither offered useful input.
"Fine," Mike said.
He hit Jake.
The fist came in fast — faster than yesterday, with more conviction, the fist of a man who was not just delivering a message but writing the whole letter in uppercase. It caught Jake square in the chest, and the impact lifted him off his feet and sent him skidding backward across the cobblestones. The steamed bun in his apron pocket — his emergency bun, the one he'd been saving — flattened against his ribs with a sad little squish.
Jake hit the ground. Rolled. Stopped.
And then the blue screen lit up like a slot machine:
STRIKE RECEIVED
Attacker: Big Mike Cultivation: Foundation Building, Early Stage Damage Dealt: Significant +50 EXP
EXP: 100 → 150
Fifty. Just fifty. Not enough. Not yet.
Jake stood up.
The crowd gasped. Not a theatrical gasp — a real one, the involuntary sound of a hundred people watching a man get hit by a truck and stand back up with the same expression he'd had going down, which was smiling.
"Good one," Jake said, brushing dust off his apron. "Solid form. Good rotation. But you didn't follow through with the hip. Want to try again? Maybe with both hands this time?"
Mike's jaw tightened. His fist was still extended. Jake watched the calculation happen — the same calculation that had happened in the alley yesterday, but slower this time, with more witnesses, with more to prove.
"Pay the fee," Mike said, quieter now.
"No."
Mike hit him again. Right hook, this time. The fist connected with Jake's jaw, and the sound it made was the kind of sound that made nearby horses flinch. Jake's head snapped sideways, and for one beautiful moment, the world tilted — sky, cobblestones, the worried face of a merchant, sky again.
STRIKE RECEIVED
+50 EXP
EXP: 150 → 200
LEVEL UP!
Level 3 → Level 4 Defense +1. HP +20. Pain Resistance +1.
The warmth hit him like a wave. Not just healing — growth. He could feel his skin tightening, his bones settling, the slow, invisible thickening of a body that was learning to take punishment like a craft instead of a catastrophe.
Mike stepped back. His breathing was heavier than it should have been. Foundation Building cultivators didn't tire from two punches — but Jake had noticed something. When Mike hit him, Mike's knuckles reddened. Not from contact with bone. From something else. Something Jake didn't understand yet, but that made him deeply, irrationally hopeful.
"One more," Jake said.
"I'm done," Mike said.
"You're not done. I can see it in your eyes. You want to hit me again. You're a professional, Mike. You don't leave a job half-finished."
Mike looked at Jake like Jake had just recited poetry in a language Mike didn't speak. "You're insane."
"Maybe. But I'm also not paying you. So either you hit me, or you walk away and come back tomorrow. Either way, I'll be here."
Mike hit him.
This time it was a combination — left to the ribs, right to the jaw, the kind of rapid-fire delivery that suggested Mike was done talking and had switched to a language his fists spoke fluently. The left hook caught Jake below the ribs and sent pain lancing up his side. The right caught his jaw and rattled his teeth.
STRIKE RECEIVED +50 EXP
STRIKE RECEIVED +50 EXP
EXP: 200 → 300
LEVEL UP!
Level 4 → Level 5 Defense +1. HP +20. Pain Resistance +1.
SKILL UNLOCKED: Tough Skin (Passive) Minor damage reduction. Host's skin is now 15% more resistant to physical damage.
Jake lay on the ground for a second. Not because he had to. Because the warmth was everywhere — not the trickle from before but a full-body hum, like stepping into a hot shower after a long day. His jaw ached, then didn't. His ribs throbbed, then settled. When he pushed himself up, he could feel the difference — not dramatic, not flashy, but real. His skin was tougher. His body was harder. He was, by any measurable standard, a slightly more durable person than he had been ten seconds ago.
He stood up. Smiled.
"You done?" he asked.
Mike was staring at his right hand. His knuckles were bleeding. Not a lot — a scrape, a split — but enough. He had punched Jake Turner three times, and Jake's face had done more damage to Mike's hand than Mike's hand had done to Jake's face.
"What are you?" Mike asked. It came out quiet. Almost scared.
"I'm a bun vendor," Jake said.
He reached into his apron, past the flattened emergency bun, past the chrysanthemum and the jasmine, and pulled out a fresh steamed bun from the cart's steamer. Still warm. Still perfect. He held it out to Mike.
"Here. For the trouble."
Mike looked at the bun. He looked at Jake. He looked at the bun again.
"You — I just hit you. Three times."
"I know. That's why it's for you. Payment for services rendered." Jake pressed the bun into Mike's massive hand. "Pork filling. Ginger and sesame. Try it."
Mike held the bun like it was a grenade with the pin pulled. His two bookends had edged several feet away, as if the bun's proximity might be contagious. The crowd was silent. The fountain burbled. A single petal from Lily's jasmine drifted past like a nature documentary narrator trying to add production value.
Mike took a bite.
He chewed. Swallowed. Stared at the remaining half of the bun with the expression of a man who had just been ambushed by something he hadn't expected to feel.
"It's good," Mike said, like an accusation.
"Thank you."
"I hit you."
"You did."
"And you gave me a bun."
"That's how business works."
Mike looked at the bun. He looked at Jake's face — unmarked, unbruised, smiling — and something shifted behind his eyes. Not understanding. Mike was nowhere near understanding. But the beginning of the beginning of the idea that maybe Jake Turner was not a person who operated on the same rules as everyone else.
Mike put the rest of the bun in his mouth, turned, and walked away. Not quickly this time. Slowly. The walk of a man who needed to go somewhere private and have a long think about the choices that had led him to this moment.
The bookends followed, giving Jake a wide berth.
The crowd dispersed. People muttered. The old woman with the radish-demons cackled and told the story to three new people in the time it took Jake to straighten his cart.
Lily was standing behind her flower stall, holding a jasmine stem so tightly it was bent in half.
Jake walked back to his cart, sat down on the stool, and checked his stats one more time:
Level: 5 HP: 180/180 Defense: 8 Pain Resistance: 7 EXP: 300 Skills: Tough Skin (Passive — 15% physical damage reduction)
He smiled. Not the manic smile from yesterday. Something quieter. The smile of a man who had a plan, a cart, and a chiropractor who charged in punches instead of dollars.
Lily appeared beside his cart. She sat down on the stool he'd vacated, crossed her arms, and looked at him with the intensity of someone who was putting pieces together and not liking the picture they formed.
"He hit you," she said.
"Three times."
"And you gave him a bun."
"I did."
"And you're smiling."
"Consistently, yes."
Lily leaned forward. "Jake. What is wrong with you?"
Jake looked at her. The chrysanthemum was still in his pocket. The jasmine was tucked beside it. His cart steamed gently in the noon sun. Somewhere down the street, a man with bleeding knuckles was eating a pork bun and questioning every decision he'd ever made.
"Lily," Jake said, "in this world, I finally know exactly what I'm good at."
She waited.
"I'm good at taking hits."
Lily stared at him for a long time. Then she shook her head, went back to her stall, and did not speak to him for the rest of the afternoon.
But she left a jasmine stem on his cart when she thought he wasn't looking.
He was looking.