The meeting room was small, barely three paces to a side. The bench was barely wide enough to seat Heron comfortably, and the table in between trapped his legs. He was clad in casual clothes: a t-shirt that had a pretty flame design on it, tight-woven cotton that the locals called jeans, and a pair of soft sneakers. It was his attire after the arena match, and he guessed he shouldn’t be surprised that the woman in front of him knew who he was despite the concealing helm he wore during the match.

The woman, Ilvara Erdmann, had chin-length silver hair that was all swept over her left side. The right side of her head was shaved, though there was a stubble there. The hairstyle was called a right fade, and some parts of it were stylised to form patterns. He didn’t know what they symbolised though, but it wasn’t anything crass like gang signs. Her hair didn’t remain completely silver either, instead, varied colours streaked down the length as though they were watercolours down a canvas. When a particular streak hit the end, it vanished and a new one appeared at the roots. He was sure the hair was ‘chronian, but it didn’t look metallic at all.

On the table between them was a tablet. It had a Millennium State label on it and was about nine inches by twelve. The touch screen displayed small text, legalese that seemed to go on and on.

The woman also had a couple of drones hovering behind her, which he assumed were for her protection. She had an eager smile on her face, and her ‘chronian eyes flickered through a rainbow of colours as much as her hair did.

“So,” Heron said after he gave the document a quick scan, “you’re looking to recruit me into a special forces unit for Milstate?”

“Yes!” Ilvara chirped. “I’ve watched your battles, and I believe you have all that it takes to thrive under Milstate’s banner…”

She continued in the same vein, spouting benefits, remuneration, and rewards, but Heron’s gaze remained fixed on the tablet. He swiped his finger up and scrolled down to the listed benefits and duties, and he snorted.

Yeah, if he signed this, he would be nothing more than an indentured warrior. It was couched in nicer terms, of course, but being unable to leave the area he was assigned to without leave was nothing more than a nice way to imprison him. Not that he ever intended to sign on.

He held up his hand and said, “I’m not interested.”

“Wha-? But…” Ilvara gasped.

“I don’t intend to be a fancy slave. Good day to you,” Heron said as he wormed his way out of the bench and table, then slid open the door. But he paused. He didn’t want to burn any bridges and he didn’t want to make any new enemies that might inconvenience his lover. “If you have a better offer, I may consider it.”

With a nod, he left the meeting room, leaving the pretty Ilvara Erdmann with her mouth agape, clearly unused to being dismissed.

Hmmm, he may have felt a little attempt at compulsion or coercion, certainly not at a conscious level. But next to basically what amounted to something Yuriko just naturally did, no such attempt would ever succeed with him.

Still, the prospect of being given the path to delve into the next level was enticing. It was what they had been looking for. But he wouldn’t only do it if it meant remaining free.

A brief thought of signing, then simply doing what he wanted to occurred to him, but just as quickly, he discarded it. He was Yuriko’s Squire, and he wouldn’t stain her honour.

___________

A spurt of blobby fluid splashed from the dismembered stump that Yuriko’s sword created. The fluid would have been easy enough to avoid, either by dodging or by using her condensed Anima to block it. But she didn’t. It splashed against the sleeve of her coat, though the weave of the cloth prevented it from seeping through.

Yuriko poked the humanoid blob with her fingertip, the same one on the arm that got splashed. A Radiant mote coalesced on the tip of her nail, and it transferred easily into the blobby’s membrane. The mote ate eagerly into the creature’s body, and while normally, that mote would have been consumed by the other instead, this one resisted the siphoning and proceeded with its given purpose. Yuriko had infused a fragment of Intent into the mote, and that was enough to contend against the blob’s nearly nonexistent Will.

Yes, she decided to train.

Slash. Thunk.

She was surrounded by nearly a dozen blobby humanoids, and she had limited room to fight. Condensed aura would have protected her easily, but she had noticed that her melee skills and techniques had slipped. There had been no real reason to hone it other than exercise, considering that her Ennoia of Radiant Flying Swords allowed her to fight at a distance. But if she wanted to expand the Ennoia, she had to become better grounded with the Sword.

And why did she suddenly find this necessary?

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Finding out about Radiance’s inherent influences on her mind and the parallels she drew from looking at Damien’s life, had been chilling.

She slipped past a blobby’s punch, slammed her fist empowered with a Radiant mote, into its middle, jumped over another’s spear tackle, landing a stomp at its back, still empowered with a mote, and flipped over the current pack. Both of those she hit disintegrated as she attacked the rest from her new position.

She stabbed with her sword several times, though she did not infuse a mote of Radiant energy in her blade. She disabled the blobby humanoids, but they would only stay down for a few minutes even if they had been dismembered. She found out the hard way that underneath their skin, the slimy membrane that acted like skin anyway, there was nothing other than the viscous yellow blood. No concrete organs, no muscles, no bones. The yellow blood acted as all of those, and the membrane too. There should be a weak point, a core of some sort, but she had not found it. She couldn’t use her perception aura to look, since when she did, the things siphoned it up immediately. She’d only lost a thousandth of an inch so far, after the big blob and these little ones over the past five hours, but it was a loss that she needed to recover from.

Well, considering the rate her reach was growing, a bit more than an inch an hour, the loss of that much reach had been returned in less than a minute. But while it hadn’t had that much impact, it was nonetheless painful and annoying.

So she couldn’t tell where the things weaknesses were, but Radiant motes did the job. She didn’t infuse them into her sword because if she did, the Ennoia of Radiant Flying Swords would almost immediately express itself in her swordsmanship. She was trying to get a feel for completing the Metal Style, and she was on the verge of getting an insight.

Still, each blobby humanoid, once fought, didn’t really alter their style. One shifted into a wolf-kin form, another into a snake-kin. No matter how much she fought and cut them apart, they did not show anything new. The variety across the entirety of the horde was incredible, and she might think, endless, but each individual was limited. So, after cutting them apart, she disintegrated them using beams of Radiant light.

There were always more on the way.

Fluffington was napping on her back, protected by having most of his body inside the backpack and only his face sticking out. She wrapped her ponytail around the flap, keeping him protected, but a while back, he had been having the time of his life running amok.

Plop plop plop.

More blobs came out of the pustules. Yuriko smiled to herself as she watched them morph into their humanoid forms. She had barely travelled a hundred paces from where she was originally ambushed, but that was fine. Sometime in the next few hours, she might have to take a break.

She didn’t need to, actually. Back in the Chaos Sea, while she was headed towards Rumiga, she hadn’t slept for days. That was when she was freshly Actialised, and now that she was in Transformation, she felt she could keep going for however long she wanted to. She only slept because it was a habit, and establishing a routine was healthy. As it were, when she and her lovers tumbled on the bed, she spent most of the night making love instead of sleeping, and she never found any detriment to a sleepless night the following day. The same couldn’t be said for Heron and Gwendith, though, so they took turns while the other slept.

Gwendith's pain and trauma were slowly healing over with continued exposure, not that Yuriko and Heron ever pressed her over it. Gwendith did things at her own pace and she was more than happy to let her lover do it. Still, progress was not linear, and at times, Gwendith could barely stand the sight of Heron’s bare skin, or she would involuntarily tear up when he was deep inside Yuriko. Most times, Heron would stop and exit, and Yuriko would comfort Gwendith.

Yuriko clicked her tongue at her body, which had become aroused as she dwelt on her memories. Her Mien controlled her hormones and she was back to battle readiness even before the blobs attacked.

She danced around them, pulling on her sword dances and the Four Phases to guide her. While developing Metal Phase was important, she also needed to know where it stood with the rest of her arsenal.

Fire was explosiveness. Water was, well, flowiness. Air was speed and agility. Earth was steady footwork and defence. Where did Metal stand?

She had focused on the ability to sense metal around her, and it was useful as a replacement or a complement to her perceptive aura. But what if her foes didn’t carry any metal? What if they used spells? Or if they fought with their bodies like beasts often did? Would Metal sense do anything for her?

She read, in Bresia and here, that a person’s blood had a little bit of metal in it. Iron and copper for humans, and some bits that were different for other races. Her Metal senses weren’t fine enough to detect such minuscule amounts. If they carried coins, then she could sense those. Here in Dragon Fall, most people had ‘chronian gear and no actual coins. The Autotab, watch, and visor were made of such alloys so she could detect those.

But on second thought, the sense was too passive a use. If Metal would be added to her style, it could not be just that. It had to be active, something she could practice and apply, as well as combine with the rest of her arsenal.

She danced and sliced. Cut and stabbed. Once the things had fallen to bits, she blasted them with Radiance.

Her Anima suffused her sword. It had to, otherwise slicing through the blobs’ corrosive insides would have destroyed her weapon after the first attack. Expanding her Anima over her weapon was easy, and it was just like how Animus techniques were used. It had the same effect too, except her Radiant infusion tended to add that energy to her weapon as well. She had to suppress that part because metal weapons that had Radiance covering it tended to become molten slag soon afterwards.

Keeping her Anima coating the weapon wasn’t ideal either. The blobs could siphon that as easily as her perceptive aura, and it was always irritating. So, a few hours back, she attempted to merge her Anima with the sword.

The straight sword she used was a local product. It was made from hardened steel and was probably one of many processed and forged by machine rather than a weaponsmith. It showed how messy the internal grains were, and how fragile it was when she exerted too much force. This was actually the third such weapon she purchased since the first two had broken when she used it too hard and forgot to coat it with Anima. Even then, too much force shook the internals.

And so, when she infused her Anima into the weapon, and not just coated it, it made a big difference. For one thing, it allowed her to resonate with Metal automatically.

And so, she slipped into enlightenment without even noticing it.