Chapter 450

Paperwork, legalities and numbers consumed Arthur’s life for the next few weeks. Every day, he trained with his tsifu in the morning, pushing his skills to the maximum, working to better himself against other Tower Climbers and students alike. 

Thanks to the introduction of a bunch of new Climbers and with the reluctant agreement of his tsifu, the classes morphed a little. There were now more advanced classes for those who were looking to enter the Tower, classes that were led by the Climbers themselves who could contribute lived experience.

At the same time, a wider range of classes was added for those who asked to go to those classes. Everything that Arthur had found himself lacking, everything that he had found worthwhile – from the basics of camping to tracking and traversal of various environments, of moving in jungles and forests were part and parcel of the new training.

While that was fun, and necessary, and working out where their new headquarters was great – if exhausting, more for the team who made the visits to the various places before he got to see them – it was the rest of the paperwork that was a pain and a half.

He had to learn about contracts and law, had to have long documents explained to him over and over again by patient lawyers – correction, paralegals which were something different, but still the same as far as he was concerned, other than the important bit of being cheaper – before they made changes, to make sure that their ‘allies’ didn’t change wording to suit them better.

It kind of amused him, that all this paperwork – human paperwork, Malaysian paperwork – on what a sect was, was actually entirely superfluous to the way the Tower worked. He could, in fact, ignore the vast majority of what was being said and there was nothing that would impair him, at least in terms of the Tower.

Problem was, just because the Tower didn’t care, didn’t mean that they couldn’t impact him or his friends or the Clan in the real world. Or in the Towers. Breaking this kind of social contract, in the real world had significant downsides, including making it harder for him to work with any other Clan or Guild in the future, unless he planned just to stay in Towers.

Being an overbearing, arrogant fool was really only for the astoundingly rich and privileged. And even then, as the Sultan himself find out – you could only push things so far before people learnt about what you were doing and got pushback. Beating up your caddy, killing a rival lover, taking too many bribes or disappearing the wrong girl… it got around.

Still, for all his headaches, he eventually ended up with the contracts signed, the majority of the cores he had gathered sold. It meant he was running low fast, but training in the morning had included lessons on each floor and the monsters they were likely to expect in Penang.

It would be a different experience for sure, but he figured, given the estimates he had read over, it would take them a lot less time to get through. Maybe a few weeks rather than the months.

That, of course, meant that he had to deal with a couple of major things before he went though. The first, the damn gangs; especially at his apartment complex.

“So, you’re sure this is where the Mamak Gang are staying?” Arthur asked again, looking up and down the rather rundown bak kut teh restaurant. It wasn’t exactly what he would have expected, what with their name. A mamak stall, sure. Not some restaurant in the middle of a nearby, two storey shopping complex.

“Their boss’s mom owns the place,” Leia replied, arms crossed. “You sure you don’t want us coming in?”

“Just one person,” Arthur said. “You can hang out here, but I don’t want to spook them.”

“Spook.” Eric scoffed but he glanced at the others, meeting his girlfriend’s gaze and then Yao Jing who was on bodyguard duty today. “Who’s going in, eh?”

“Me.” Yao Jing tapped his broad chest. “I’m more intimidating.” A subtle flexing of his broad shoulders emphasized the point. After he had gotten back, part of Yao Jing’s responsibilities had been updating the workout at tsifu’s place, up to and including getting in new machines. The necessary machines required for a Climber were quite different, including incredibly dense plates which Yao Jing was happy to show everyone else how to use.

All of that work meant that the once big and broad man had stacked even more muscle mass, such that he looked like a mini-Hercules.

Arthur tuned out the arguments, mentally preparing himself for the confrontation. By the time he got his mind sorted, he found himself inside the restaurant, scanning the patrons. Being in the middle of the day after lunch hour, there were few enough people in there, most of them some variation of thug. Wife beaters, singlets, shorts and patched jeans were the clothing of choice. He noted a few weapons, mostly simple truncheons or heavy sticks, a couple of flashlights in the middle of the day and the ubiquitous parangs lying around the place; but overall, there were few enough weapons around for a gang hideout.

“Boss? Nei oi matyeh?” Short, the waiter who came up to Arthur asked, eyes wide as his gaze flicked over to Yao Jing.

“Mamak gang. Got to pay someone.” He tapped his pocket, though he actually had nothing in that pocket beyond his overstuffed wallet.

Rather than answer, the waiter scuttled away; leaving another pair sitting nearby to stand up and move towards the pair. Arthur turned to them, keeping his face neutral as he waited for them to speak.

“Who you paying for? You can give to us.” The one in the lead with a rather large mole on his right chin asked, brusquely.

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to explain it to your boss. So maybe just let me talk to him, and we’ll save ourselves a lot of time.”

“You don’t talk to the boss. You cakap with me, eh.” A finger came up to poke at Arthur but something in the way Arthur looked at him froze the other.

“Yao Jing, show him.” 

At Arthur’s command, Yao Jing shifted the workout bag on his side to the front, opened the zipper so that they could see the contents. The bundles of Ringgit, fresh and clean and straight from the bank gleamed, enough to cause all the others to suck in a breath.

“Now, that buy us a conversation?” Arthur asked, mildly.