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. Shadow Alley Press Mailing List WANT TO KEEP UP WITH all of our great books? Then visit Shadow Alley Press and subscribe to our mailing list! If you’d like to support eden Hudson (and get access to exclusive content and cool stuff), visit her Patreon page. 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
