I nodded at Hana, giving her my encouragement.

(You got this.)

She did not look any less nervous.

Still, she shifted her gaze to the weapon in her hands. A look of determination bled into her widened eyes.

(Okay, but if this goes wrong somehow, I’m blaming you.)

(But you picked the-)

Hana shut her eyelids, putting all of her focus into the task at hand.

For about four or five minutes, nothing happened. There was no glow of mana, no movement, nothing.

The blacksmith and I looked at each other, not sure what to make of the situation. This was a much longer process than both of us had anticipated.

Hana, still closing her eyes in full concentration, didn’t seem to be discouraged. Rather, she was nodding her head now, seeming to understand… something. Who knows what. None of her thoughts were currently bleeding through to me.

Then, all of a sudden, the blade began to surge with mana, light blasting from the edge of the blade like it was lit aflame. The mana was a deep, dark, and ominous purple, and it oozed with sinister and malicious power.

"What in the devil is that?!"

The blacksmith immediately started to scramble backward into his stall. People standing nearby whipped their heads around, trying to find the source of the chilling feeling that crept down their spines and planted goosebumps on their skin. Worried mumbling began to creep into the air, and I knew it was only a matter of time before someone called a guard.

But still, I waited.

The segmented blades of her unique sword remained motionless, even as an immense amount of mana surged into them. The air around us seemed to hiss with the sheer force of her magical energy, yet she remained in complete control.

For most people, even the slightest hint of panic would send their mana spiraling out of control. Empowerment users would find their bodies jerking and twitching involuntarily, while mages would see their spells detonate prematurely. Spellblades, on the other hand, would be subjected to the horror of watching as their precious weapons cracked, twisted, and disintegrated under the strain of mismanaged mana.

But Hana’s odd sword did none of those things. Her focus was undeniably perfect, her face stone cold.

And eventually… her sword began to reflect that.

Slowly, the segmented blades began to move, and not rigidly like the blacksmith’s demonstration had been, no. That was a far cry from what I witnessed.

Each segment flowed seamlessly into the next, rippling like water and undulating like a serpent. The tip of the sword moved around like it had eyes of its own; its gaze frigid and unfeeling. The segments continued to stretch and extend, probing the surrounding atmosphere like the antennae of an otherworldly creature.

But just as quickly as it had stretched, the wire slacked and relaxed once more, as if recoiling from an unpleasant sensation. The serpent slowly retreated, its pieces realigning themselves as the magic wire wound back into place. Within moments, the sword had returned to its original state, its metallic surface glinting in the morning light.

Hana’s mana dissipated, and then, as if time had been holding its breath, the air around us stilled.

Her eyes snapped open, and she breathed out only a light exhale, not hinting at any sort of magical exhaustion. Her gaze was still fixated on the sword, eyeing it with admiration after her test run. Not quite sensing the change in the atmosphere yet, Hana immediately began talking, clearly taken by the feeling of moving the blade around. In fact, she was obviously giddy.

"That felt amazing! It was like... my body actually extended out and into the sword, like it became part of me. How did I do, sir? Did it look as cool as I felt? Or did I just look dumb and mess up? My eyes were kinda closed, so I couldn't actually see it..."

Trailing the last few words of her sentence, she turned to face the blacksmith, who was now as far back in his stall as he could be. A cold sweat had started to bead at his forehead, and he was still a little spooked, but his expression was nothing like what it was when he initially had been subjected to Hana’s frightening aura.

Before, he had been terrified. Right now, he looked a bit more relaxed, put at ease by the girl’s enthusiastic tone and bright manner of speaking. The people around us seemed to feel about the same.

Sure, her mana had been frightening. But these people were no strangers to terrifying power. They were citizens of Wolfhaven, a place filled with all manners of powerful people and surrounded by monsters just as wicked. They quickly got over it and went about their business once more, only a few still glancing back to look at the seemingly frail girl.

"Well, if that wasn’t the best display of control I ever done did see," the blacksmith started, clearly trying to shake off the last of his goosebumps. "That was quite impressive, missy. Now where’d you learn to control mana like that? You perhaps an elite of some sort?"

Hana shook her head rapidly, quickly denying the idea of being any person of import. The irony was not lost on me.

"No sir. I couldn't make the sword move at all until I thought of mana as... chi. Bodily energy that flows in everyone. It's a really prevalent concept in my culture."

Hana took a few moments of pause. She looked almost a little bit sad.

"When I was a kid, I took tai chi. My mom would say it helps you become a little bit more aware of your own chi, supposedly. Though I never expected that information to actually help me."

(I guess she was right.) Hana briefly stared at the floor.

The blacksmith stroked at his chin, absorbing the information.

"I see. And this tie chee, it’s a magic trainin’ method?"

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"No sir. It's a martial art, technically."

The blacksmith looked genuinely surprised, almost as surprised as I was in the moment.

(You never mentioned that you had done martial arts before.) I thought.

(Trust me, tai chi is not what you're thinking it is.) She thought in response. I wonder what she could've meant by that, but I supposed now wasn't the time.

"A martial art you say? Well I’ll be damned. Guess this old coot has a lot more to see in this wide ol’ world!"

The man broke into a deep and hearty laugh, his face lighting up like a child witnessing magic for the first time. In that instant, it was as though the man had shed the weight of years of routine and monotony. When he finished, he looked back up at Hana, eyes watering.

"Well miss, you can have that there sword. It was never goin’ to sell anyhow, and this experience has rekindled a fire in this old man’s heart. I think that's more than enough payment for me."

The man walked back to the front of the stall and pointed a thick, calloused finger at Hana.

"Just promise you’ll come back and check my wares at another time. I have a few more ideas in this noggin of mine, and you can be my worthy test subject. That sound like a good deal?"

Hana’s eyes lit up, clearly excited at the prospect.

"Of course!"

The blacksmith retracted his finger, his face bright with satisfaction.

"Well isn’t that just fine and dandy then."

Taking the sword and exchanging a few short goodbyes, we left the blacksmith to his business, a big smile plastered across his face. As we left, we could see a small crowd beginning to gather around his stall, attracted by the spectacle, and now browsing his wide selection of odd weapons.

I shrugged to myself.

(Free shit. Nice.)

Hana lightly punched my arm.

…

For the remainder of our shopping, things went by much quicker. We selected a standard iron breastplate, leather leggings, and chainmail for Hana’s armor. Pretty standard stuff, nothing too special. We (Hana) also purchased another few sundresses that she liked, as well as more than a few spares of underwear.

Some of them had flowers painted on them, some embroidered with intricate designs, but every last piece of her clothing was white.

Though she seemed to be impartial about the armor, she wouldn’t budge at all on the clothing style, saying it was her "signature look". I couldn’t really disagree, to be honest. I just hoped she was okay with how much of a pain cleaning all of those would be.

What I could disagree on, however, was while we were shopping, she was adamant on spending her time practicing.

Now don’t get me wrong, I loved practice. Practice was awesome and useful and a great use of time.

However, she seemed to be going about it in one of the most ridiculous and socially unacceptable ways I had ever seen.

As soon as she had received the segmented blade from the blacksmith, she had immediately gone back to practicing with it, this time with her eyes open, which seemed to actually give her a bit more trouble.

She held it out in front of her with one hand like it was festival food; like a skewer that she had recently picked up from a food cart, and bore holes into it with a rock-solid stare. The mana she coated it with was toned down in intensity, not enough to scare nearby customers with its aura alone, but more than enough to make it move around.

Perhaps this girl was more socially inept than I thought.

For a moment, I wondered if her being homeless had anything to do with this kind of behavior.

'Nah, that doesn't make any sense, surely.'

In any case, the purple mana's effect's on the townspeople was significantly less than before. Of course, this didn’t mean people didn’t take notice of the giant moving sword that wiggled perpetually in the air, but nobody bothered her, much less refused her patronage. Whether or not that was because they felt threatened, I’d like to leave up to the imagination.

As proud as I was of her for immediately hopping on the train of improvement, I was frankly a bit embarrassed, as I was hardly ever the focus of attention in any sort of capacity back at Alonzia; or anywhere else for that matter. The stares made me uncomfortable, but Hana seemed to be completely oblivious to them.

That, or she just didn’t care. I was leaning towards the latter reasoning.

"I can stop if you want."

Hana, reading my mind again, offered to spare me of the slight embarrassment.

"Nah, it’s okay, don’t worry about it."

Of course I wasn’t going to make her stop doing what she was doing just because I was a little uncomfortable.

We really didn’t have a moment to lose. Every moment she spent training was a step closer to our goal. There was no guarantee that my power was as absolute as it seemed to be, so I could use another tough party member as soon as possible. I also wanted to be the first to see her innate talents come to life, as it was clear she had an inherent understanding of mana that many did not.

It was a sight to behold, and watching it was probably much more fun than the complex thinking it took to practice it.

It was one thing to pick up mana control quickly, it was another to be leaps and bounds above everyone else, including me, from the very start.

She had said that she learned to control ‘energies’ from this tai chi technique, and since I wasn’t familiar with it, I didn’t question it. Complex mana control was something that required a level of tact that I and many others simply didn’t bother to learn, and for good reason. If she had figured a good way to make it less of a pain to learn, more power to her.

Many preferred to use mana in quick bursts, concentrating and expending rather than learning exact technical usage, because it produced quick results and worked almost one-hundred percent of the time. Even most mages were like this, concentrating mana outside of their bodies and expelling it with magical force.

But she wasn’t like that.

She didn’t cut any corners at all, attempting to search every nook and cranny of a technique to understand it to the utmost degree. I could just feel the way she mentally combed through the technique as she walked, now able to control the sword with relative ease, her focus no longer entirely needed. Her thoughts occasionally bleeding into my mind were proof of this.

Combined with her discipline, this way of learning things that would normally take people an extraordinary amount of time would certainly be expedited. I was very curious as to what kind of discipline Hana had in her previous life to immediately start going into such devout training. After all, discipline was a thing that was taught and made into a habit, not an innate talent. If there was anything I learned from martial arts, it was certainly that.

And that it was really, really hard to keep up.

"..."

(I had some really strict parents,) Hana started, after contemplating for a moment whether or not to say anything.

Hana had been reading my thoughts again, even while carrying her living skewer in one hand.

Slowly, her thoughts began to bleed into my mind.

I could see faint images of characters written on pure-white pieces of paper. I could make sense of none of it, and I had never seen parchment that unnaturally clean before. Everything about it seemed sterile, clean, organized, and far more uniform than any sort of documents I'd ever read. The only thing I could make out was the faint shape of pills, much like the ones alchemists made, only there were tons of them, and they all looked exactly the same. I could only imagine how skilled the alchemist in her world would have to be to make medicine like that.

If this was her apprenticeship, it certainly seemed complex. She confirmed that with her next thought.

(This is just an easier and more fun version of studying. Much fewer components to worry about, too.)

She looked up at me and smiled. The tip of her segmented sword seemed to nod up and down, agreeing with her thought.

(I enjoy it. It’s fun, different, and I can immediately see the fruit of my work.)

The hero smiled to herself.

(I could get used to training like this for a long time.)