Dante is absolutely over the moon to be on an adventure with Kaito, he's making his own story like he's dreamed of doing. What would he get up to first. Would he slay a dragon? Would he save a princess, would he meet a girl that he saves from bandits.
Meanwhile Kaito's just happy to see how happy Dante is and he's back on track to his adventure. He was in Mozam for a week he could've spent training.
"Dante do you know places where we can find out stuff about treasure?" Kaito asks. "The best bet for any of that stuff would be the coalition, they have a huge network for stuff like this." Dante explains.
Kaito tilts his head. It's the second time he's heard that but he has no idea what it is. "What's the coalition?" Kaito asks. Dante rubs his nose, with his head held high. "It's where any good adventure needs to know, the coalition is where all the big guys hang together." Dante explains.
"It's like guild headquarters. That's where the five pillars are. I wanna visit it one day." Dante says. Kaito nods the sound of it intriguing his interest. "We can go there." Kaito says.
Tips. The five pillars are the top five guild leaders, they help hold balance but they all answer to one person at the top of the coalition, or the alliance the name varies on who you ask.
Dante pulls out their map and looks. "If we want to get there we have to get through a trades checkpoint, it's the safest route." Dante says.
Kaito nods. "Could you read the map, i'm not good at that." Kaito asks. Dante smiles. "Of course, it was one of our classes since gps navigating wouldn't work outside of barriers." Dante says.
Which he now fully takes in that he's outside of the crystia barrier,. There's no technology of any kind outside, the safety of the city is gone. There were monsters out here, actual monsters.
"Well at least lucky for us there shouldn't be any, high tier monsters out here." Dante mentions while flipping through his book.
Kaito tilts his head. "Tiers?" He asks.
Dante shakes his head. "How're you an adventurer but don't know about the monster tiers, it's how you know how strong they are." He says.
Kaito still looks confused so Dante sighs. "Out here we should only encounter low tier monsters, which they're dangerous yeah, but we should be able to handle them."
The monster tiers they have to worry about currently, are fledgling, and arcane level beasts, a group of D rank adventures will be fine handling them.
The journey to the trade post would take them a few days so he has time to adjust.
Luckily tonight they wouldn't have to do any hunting since they packed some food from Lilah's inn.
As time went on the light from the day passed and nighttime steadily approached. "Alright lets set up camp for the night." Kaito says.
"Right uhm, should I grab fire wood?" Dante asks. Kaito shakes his head. "Don't worry about it, I can grab wood you set the tent up." Kaito says.
Dante listens and in no time they get camp set up. By the fire Dante is drawing in a book. "What're you doing?" Kaito asks.
Dante looks up from his focus. "I'm sketching our campsite." Dante says as he shows Kaito the drawing. "Woah that's so cool!" Kaito says as he sits next to him.
Dante laughs nervously, "yeah I had a lot of free time back at home so I drew a lot." Dante explains.
Dante finishes his sketch and closes his book. "Hey Kaito before we go to sleep, could you teach me some stuff?" Dante asks.
Kaito happily agrees. He loves helping people out.
Kaito started with the fundamentals. He showed Dante how to hold a blade, not just with strength, but with intention. How to plant his feet, toes angled just so, so his stance would give him both balance and freedom. They went over the arc of a proper swing, how to feel the weight of the sword as an extension of the body rather than a burden. That first day was nothing more than the basics. simple, foundational movements repeated until they began to feel less foreign in Dante's hands.
Which Kaito made sure to reinforce him positively every single time.
The next day, after they'd traveled deeper into the wilds and set up camp beneath the fading light, Dante felt a restless itch under his skin. He asked Kaito to spar, not just drills this time, but something closer to real.
Kaito agreed, calm, but happy to oblige, but made it clear he'd only defend. His strikes would wait. Tonight was about letting Dante learn the rhythm of attack.
So they began.
Dante lunged and struck, mimicking the stabbing motions Kaito had taught him, but every attempt ended the same. A swift, effortless twist of Kaito's wrist, and the blade would be swept from Dante's grip. Again and again. Sometimes Kaito let him retrieve the sword with encouragement, other times he tossed it back himself with a quiet, encouraging nod. The hours blurred into a rhythm of clash, disarm, recover, repeat.
Truthfully since Kaito was also not perfect himself he was using Dante as a way to practice his disarms, they were both gaining valuable skills from this exchange.
Dante's arms ached. His fingers trembled from the repetition. Sweat dripped down his temples, soaking into the collar of his shirt. Still, he kept coming.
Kaito liked Dante's vigor, it reminded him of his countless clashes with Kaid that would end exactly like these, he couldn't help but smile and be excited to help Dante become better.
By the end, his knees buckled. He collapsed onto his back, the cool earth greeting him like an old friend. His chest rose and fell in jagged, uneven breaths, each inhale sharp, each exhale edged with the sting of frustration. His muscles screamed, not just from exhaustion, but from the weight of wanting to be better, to be enough. But for now, all he could do was lie there, staring up at the darkening sky, his body burning and his pride bruised.
And yet… he was still trying.
Kaito sat on the ground next to Dante passing him water. "You alright Dante?" Kaito asked. Dante nodded meekly, taking the water from Kaito dumping it onto himself.
"It's just kinda frustrating, feels like i'm making no progress!" Dante shouts. Kaito understands the feeling, he too is always searching for ways to improve. "If we all could just pick up something, and already be amazing at it, there wouldn't be a point of doing anything." Kaito says.
The philosophy comment coming from Kaito shocking him a bit. "Are you really as stupid as you let on." Dante questions, sitting up despite his aching muscles.
Kaito smiles as he shrugs. "I just say whatever, pops in my head." Kaito answers with his same old honesty. Though that's what intrigued Dante the most about Kaito.
But still he seems like such an easy person to read, but during combat that couldn't be further from the truth, no matter how he tried to innovate, Kaito could always answer perfectly like he knew Dante's move before Dante himself did.
Was he that obvious in what he would do next? So far everything he's picked up about Kaito, honest, simple, easygoing, contradicts with the way he fights, Kaito was just such a weird guy.
In the morning of the third day when the sun was high in the sky. The two of them continued on the road. They continued moving careful enough that no monsters came into contact with them.
Until Kaito saw a weird looking plant on the ground and tried to pick it. Wondering what kind of meals he could make out of it, but the plant was no mere plant. It was a snapper and it grabbed onto his hand. Which caused Kaito and Dante to stomp the thing until it let go. Even after that, Kaito still dropped it in his bag.
Dante couldn't ignore the since of hunger he started feeling. In the wyld there was no shortage of monsters yes, but the number of those monsters that were safe for human consumption was low. Eating just anything granted a number of possibilities. Most of them ended in the death of whoever was dumb enough to eat a random beast.
While he was upset over his hunger. An arrow fired right in front of him stopped him dead in his tracks.
"Stop right there!" A man shouted as he a stepped from the thick treeline surrounding them. "Give up all your treasures in the name of Benny!" The man shouted.
As Dante reached for his blade the man raised his hand. "I don't think that's a good idea." The man said as he pointed towards the tree line.
Kaito scanned it with his eyes, he counted twelve archers. A glint in the tree line made him adjust the count to sixteen.
"Ain't tryna kill ya, just want any money, extra clothing." He says.
Dante looks towards Kaito, "what do we do?" He asks but it seemed like Kaito was ready to start fighting. Dante places a hand on him. "Let's not do that, you can probably dodge arrows, I definitely can't." He says.
Kaito listens and sits as three of them go through their bags, never breaking eye contact with the leader. All the tension is broken when they open up Kaito's bag and find a bunch of random sticks, an assortment of different pebbles, and a bunch of random junk.
Dante looks over at him. "Why're you carrying a bunch of trash!?" He asks.
Kaito looks offended, "it's not trash they're all cool!" He yells.
The bandit leader laughs before taking a look at Kaito's book. "Well now what's this?" He asks.
Kaito raises his hand at that. "You can't have that."
The bandit leader raises an eyebrow at this. "Something important?" His gaze grows intense. Before turning away happy with what they got so far. "Well whatever, you can keep it if it's so important, after all we're just after money and goods, not what you treasure. Just surviving not evil." He says.
The other bandits walk away hands full of their money and all the extra clothes they had. "Bye bye now." He says as they disperse.
Dante's head droops. "Can't believe I've only been gone for barely a week and already got robbed."
Kaito smiles. "They were pretty nice though!"
In the afternoon, they had arrived at the trade checkpoint. Dante celebrates. "Sweet we're here!" Dante celebrates.
Once they step in there's a man already there waiting. "Why hello there valued customer! May I interest you in our wares?!" He says with a salesman charm.