"Try it."
The spear landed at Ashen's feet. This one had no inscribed face, meaning.. It must be a normal spear with no opinions or any particular vendetta against his ankles.
He picked it up carefully, almost like a child approaching a stranger preaching harmlessness. Then he raised it.
The moment the shaft found his grip, an instinct awakened.
It wasn't a new sensation, exactly… more like the absence of one. Ashen figured out soon enough that there was no resistance. To his delight, he didn't need to negotiate between hand and weapon.
His mind reached out, and the spear was simply there, an extension of himself as natural as his own arm, responsive before the intention had fully formed.
When he moved, it moved. When he adjusted his weight, the spear adjusted with him. The air around it felt different… was it… cooperative? maybe almost eager to move alongside him.
[Spear Slash ↑ (Masterful-)]
He went through the forms without thinking about going through the forms. In fact, He didn't have any thought whatsoever in this moment.
[Spear Parry ↑ (Masterful-)]
The notifications chimed one after another, but they sounded distant in his head. Ashen barely registered them.
[You have gained an Extra Skill.]
He was somewhere else entirely… moving through stances he hadn't consciously selected, the spear carving clean arcs through the morning air while the rest of the world held itself politely to the side.
Then, as if he felt himself slowly surface from deep water, He came back to himself slowly.
He stood still for a moment, breathing.
Then he checked his status.
[4. Abilities]
4.3 Other Skills:
— Spear Thrust (Masterful+)
— Spear Slash (Skilled+)
— Spear Parry (Skilled+)
— Heartforge Cycle (Skilled+)
— Clean (Skilled+)
— Spear Harmony (Entry+)
The Grafted fighting style was gone. The foreign architecture was finally purged from his muscle memory and replaced with something that belonged to him: Spear Harmony.
Ashen lowered the standard spear and looked at it for a moment. Then he bent down, picked up the mischievous spear from where he'd set it aside, and straightened.
Edward watched him with an expression of mild disbelief. "You have already graduated from that one. There's no need to hold onto it."
"I know." Ashen turned the familiar shaft in his hand and cast a smile that was suspiciously identical to the inscribed smile. "Thanks for the demonstration, coach. But I'd rather tame this one."
"..."
Edward looked at the smiling face on the spear. Then he looked at his student.
"You do you," he said, eventually. At least he tried.
The silence held of a breath, then: "Take a break today."
Ashen turned. "...Come again?"
"Tomorrow you'll begin a new training phase. Free up your schedule for at least two weeks. It requires your continuous presence."
"..."
Ashen's eyes narrowed, and the blood drained slightly from his face.
"...Teach." His voice sounded careful. "If you're telling me to take a full break before it starts... and that it runs for at least two weeks..." He swallowed. "How bad is it?"
Edward smiled.
"Yes," he said.
'...Fuck.'
"Don't think too much about it." He was already turning. "You have today. Enjoy it." He gestured toward the hill at the mansion's back. "Come. Why don't we see how the lasses are getting on?"
"Haah." Ashen exhaled through his nose and fell into step behind him. "Sure thing."
⛧ ⛧ ⛧
When they arrived, they were greeted with the prelude to an explosion.
A brightness gathered above the far end of the practice ground, warping the air around it into something dense, while Alice stood at the center of it with her eyes closed and her lips moving rapidly.
Seraphine was crouched off to the side, watching with her chin in her hands. From her almost bored face, it was clear that she had witnessed this sight more than a dozen times already.
She noticed them arrive first and waved once without getting up.
Edward came to a stop at a reasonable distance, and Ashen positioned himself beside him.
…The brightness climbed.
⛧ ⛧ ⛧
Seraphine went first while Alice was still settling her mana back down.
She stood in front of Edward with a composed posture she'd recently developed. The new tricks she had learned seemed to do wonders to her confidence.
"I have a new one," she said.
"Show me."
She turned toward him fully, drew a slow breath, and pointed a finger at him.
"God takes the souls at the time of their death,and those that do not die during their sleep."
Mana kept gathering and compressing on her fingertips, as if a bullet was getting ready to shoot.
"...He takes your souls by nightand knows what you have done by day."
"Then He keeps those for whom death has been decreed,and returns the others — until their appointed time,raising them again so that their term may be fulfilled.
...In this are signs for those who reflect.
In Your name, O Lord —I die, and I live."
The glow that rose from her hands as she cast was different from her usual healing light. It was warmer in color but quieter in radiance. Mana bullet shot up and collided with Edward.
Edward closed his eyes.
"..."
When he opened them, his expression was thoughtful…
"The principle is stasis," he said. "The body continues to function at a baseline level regardless of structural damage received. Fatal injuries can be ignored. Basically… the body refuses to acknowledge the final consequence until the duration ends, or until the brain is destroyed." He turned the feeling over behind his eyes for another moment. "The limitation is correct. And the construct is stable."
He looked at Seraphine. "More than stable. I can feel your understanding of human anatomy in the architecture of this… where you've placed the anchors, what you've chosen to suspend and what you've left running." He paused. "You didn't lean entirely on the emotional side to carry it. The knowledge is there, doing its work underneath. That's the right balance for a spell this complicated."
Seraphine stood very straight, which was the closest she came to showing she was trying not to look pleased.
"Good," Edward said, simply.
She beamed.
⛧
Alice had finished resettling her mana by then and stepped forward when Seraphine moved back.
Then she started to chant. And simultaneously, behind her eyes, she started to calculate.
"I decree—"
'Hydrogen isotopes under compression… deuterium and tritium forced into proximity… the fusion threshold…'
"My destruction will not kill a soulunless for a soul,or for corruption in the land.
It is as if I had killed all mankind.And whenever my destruction saves one —it is as if it had saved all mankind."
'...temperature requirements, confinement, neutron release cascading through the secondary stage…'
"I will certainly send destruction upon his people,and it shall remain among thema thousand years minus fifty.
Then the Flood's carnage shall seize themwhile they were wrongdoers."
'...critical mass…'
The sky went white.
Then the wide sound arrived. A pressure front that pushed against the chest and made the air feel briefly thinner, followed by an expanding column of heat that climbed above the hill in a roiling wall and kept climbing, the top of it flattening and spreading outward in a terrible, familiar shape, but it was small, compressed, and visibly strained at its edges.
The mana ran dry and clamped down hard on the scale before it could reach what it wanted to be.
Still.
Ashen was aware that his back was wet.
He turned slowly to look at Edward.
"Teach." He kept his voice even. "What did you do to them?"
Edward was quiet for a moment, watching the column begin to dissipate.
"Uh." He scratched the side of his face. "My dear student." A pause. "It's not really me, here."
"...What?"
"...Your women are just that freakish."
Ashen looked back at the column. Then at Alice, who was standing with her hands folded in front of her and her expression carrying the mild frustration of someone who had just been interrupted mid-sentence by running out of breath. Then back at Edward.
He had no response.
'That was a hydrogen bomb… right?' Ashen asked himself in disbelief.
Edward stepped forward, raised his eyes, and the column compressed, as if he were pressing something between his palms, folding inward on itself until the churning mass had reduced to a dense point of light. He held it there for a moment. Then it was gone, taken by the wind like ash.
He turned to Alice.
"With the mana of a Second Step, that spell… uninterrupted, would destroy this entire territory." He evenly announced. "The architecture is sound. The calculation was clean. What you're missing is purely a resource problem." He nodded once. "Good."
"I understand." She already knew this, but she was always restless to try more explosive spells that were out of her league. Maybe it was her chunibyo self making a comeback this late after her teenage years…
"You are both…" Edward glanced between Alice and Seraphine, a smile behind his expression was making a reasonable effort not to show. "The most talented students I have taught."
Then, he quickly added, "Don't tell Cornelia I said that."
Seraphine pressed both hands to her mouth. Alice blinked once, which was her version of the same reaction.
Edward turned back toward Seraphine before the moment could get away from him. His tone returned to its usual register.
"However. I notice you have no attacking spells."
Seraphine lowered her hands. "...I know."
"Is that preference, or aversion?"
She considered it honestly. "A bit of both, maybe. I know where I'm strongest. And I know that there's always someone covering the attacking side… someone who would step in front of anything to do it." A pause, and a rueful note entered her voice. "So I thought the smarter use of my time was to become good enough to fix him afterward."
She glanced at Ashen.
He gave her a look that was managed to be both fond and exasperated.
"I understand the logic," Edward said. "I don't entirely disagree with it. But I want you to understand something."
He gave her a moment.
"A good man is not particularly a harmless man. A good man is a dangerous man who has that under voluntary control." He held her gaze. "The same applies to good women."
Seraphine nodded slowly. 'Maybe it's about time I do something showy like Alice…?''
She also understood the principle her teacher was trying to convey.
"Also," she added, with the slightly careful tone of someone shifting topic, "there's something else that's relevant." She looked at Ashen. "Is it all right if I mention it?"
Ashen nodded, understanding what she was alluding to.
"Ashen and I share a bond through one of my skills. When it's active, I can draw on his physical strength." She said plainly, without particular ceremony.
Edward turned to look at Ashen.
The look lasted approximately two seconds.
Then he turned to Alice. "And yours… the profiling skill. It's modeling his techniques."
"Yes," Alice said.
He looked between the two women.
Then back at Ashen.
"So." His voice was entirely neutral. "Let me be certain I understand this. One of you is absorbing his fighting techniques while the other is borrowing his physical strength."
Alice nodded.
Seraphine nodded.
Without any particular shame.
"...What a wholesome relationship." Edward exhaled once through his nose. "As long as everyone is agreed and there are no unwanted side effects, I have no objections." He turned and began walking back toward the mansion. "You can go. And tell that lass Lucia not to be late on your way back."
"Yes~"
"Thank you, teacher. See you tomorrow."
He waved once, without looking back.
Ashen watched him go. Then he looked at Alice and Seraphine.
"Is this finally our alone time?" he asked, smiling suggestively.
"It seems so." Alice licked her lips once.
"Hehe…" Seraphine laughed shyly.
⛧ ⛧ ⛧