Meanwhile the meeting was happening with Gaël, Yuna and William. Ruby and Sophie were taken to the training compound at the back of the Esta Guard House. The Lieutenant there was giving the girls a rundown of the training the guards go through.

“Pay attention you two, I’ll be introducing your trainers so listen to them closely as you spar and hone your skills with your weapons of choice. Sophie, here is our highest ranking and most skilled Archer.” He gestured to his left, a woman there in light armour, she had an ebony bow and a quiver filled with arrows strapped to her back, two long daggers sheathed and strapped to her waist. She had a thin but curvy body with a modest chest, her hair was long, black and sleek with a tall ponytail to keep her hair from falling over her face. Speaking of which she had an eye patch over her right eye and three scars clawed vertically over her left eye. She gestured with a salute with her right arm across her modest chest, hand balled up into a fist. Her left arm was behind her back and her legs paced a part, feet parallel from each other. Sophie was clearly intimidated by this woman.

“Pleasure to meet you.” Her nerves were getting to her from how scary the woman in front of her was. The woman rolled her eyes at the clearly innocent girl that was in front of her.

“Same to you too, I hope you’re not here to waste my time babysitting you, I’ll drop you at a moment's notice if you don’t show any promise. I’m not getting paid for this after all.”

“I’ll do my best not to disappoint you.” This time Sophie was feeling more determined after hearing that, there was no way she would allow her sister to look after her the entire time. The woman in front of her smiled at this change of attitude.

“My name’s Serena, let’s move over to the archery hall.” That was the final thing before the pair left. Ruby watched this exchange before moving her sight over to the man on the Lieutenants right.

“I suppose you’re going to be my sword trainer then?” The man she was referring to looked to be some sort of scout. His face was masked with a dark visor covering his eyes. He wore the same armour as Serena, except it covered his entire chest, with a knife and a longsword strapped to his waist. He just silently nodded to Ruby’s question. The lieutenant took it upon himself to upon himself to speak for his comrade in arms.

“This guy’s code name is Wraith, due to a privacy policy I’m not able to disclose his identity to you. He’s forbidden from speaking as well, he’s a good teacher for you though. Due to your weapon of choice being of the lighter swords he has the closest weapons to you and he will be showing you how to use your weapon through active training.

“So this guy is some sort of assassin?”

“Somewhere along those lines, I’m unable to disclose any further details. He will be showing you how to use your sword.” At that moment Wraith drew his longsword, it was a thin blade, he brought it up to his chest and then stepped forward in a long lunge, he stabbed the blade into the air in front of him. Bringing himself back into his starting position, Wraith looked at Ruby, the message was implied to Ruby loud and clear. She stood in the same position as Wraith and clumsily stepped forward and stabbed the air. Wraith held his hands out telling her to stay like that. He then moved her leg forward so she was lower to the ground and then straightened her arm out. Twisted her head so it was looking straight forward and so it was parallel to the blade, this corrected her position. She then moved back slowly to the position she started in. Wraith motioned his hand telling her to keep going.

_________________________________________

“So you want me to hold the bow like this with my arm outstretched?” Sophie was sweating from not wanting to make any mistakes.

“That’s right, here, use my arrows and aim for the target closest to you. Draw the string back slowly until you start feeling the resistance not allowing you to move any further back, get used to that feeling so you don’t break the bow string. You will have to make a new bow if that happens.” She grabbed an arrow and passed it to Sophie. “Get a feeling of the wind blowing, arrows are light and can be manipulated in the wind quite easily throwing what would be a perfect shot off course completely even by the smallest air flow change.”

Sophie took the arrow and knocked it into a wedge that was crafted onto the bow when it was made with her magic. She pulled the string back slowly, unconsciously closing her eyes.

“Keep your eyes open, they’re your greatest weapon when it comes to the bow. Not the arrow that you’ll be firing.” Serena stated sternly. Sophie's eyes flashed open and at that moment her hand slipped from the string and the arrow was fired. The arrow hit the target, it wasn’t a bullseye though. It hit the second ring outside of it.

Serena moved forward to the target to take a closer look. She then turned to look at Sophie with a grin on her face.

“It looks like you have the talent. Maybe that was why your magic formed a bow when you created your weapon.”

Sophie had a big smile on her face with the praise she had received from Serena.

“Let’s carry on. I’m in your care”

“Good, I’ll be sure to drill the basics into you at the very least before the days out.”

And with that Ruby and Sophie’s arduous training had started.

_________________________________________

Some time later, Yuna and I had left the office and made our way to the training courtyard to let Ruby and Sophie know I was leaving without them for the day and that I would be back for them tomorrow.

“You don’t have to worry about us. We were going to request if we could stay here and learn how to fight so that we may be useful to you in the future in case you need any kind of back up in fights.” Ruby spoke up this time, Sophie adamantly nodded along as she was speaking. “If possible, could you teach us how to use fire magic?” I was incredibly pleased to hear about this and I was more than happy to comply.

“Okay you two, similar to how you form your weapons, I want you to try and feel for the mana in your chest, it should feel like another extension of your body that you can manipulate. Close your eyes if you need to, to help you concentrate.” With that being said, the pair of them closed their eyes and tried to feel the same feeling they did when they made their weapons.

“Once you grasp that feeling, reach out with your hands and push the mana to it but this time imagine a flame.” I could see their divine power in their soul. It must be something I unlocked recently and I saw that light moving along slowly in Sophie's right arm but quickly in Ruby’s left arm. The fire formed in Ruby’s hand first. She seemed to have the better talent for magic. “Keep going Sophie I can see your magic flowing through your arm. Push a bit further.” Her forehead was sweating, and I could see that she was straining but she pushed her light further until it reached her hand. What came out of it wasn’t a medium sized flame like mine or Ruby’s though. The fire was huge, we all had to jump back. “Okay girls, open your eyes.” As they did so, The pair of them screamed.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no, what’s with this huge flame that I have? Why’s it like this?” Sophie was panicking big time. I closed her hand to break her concentration and the flame disappeared.

“Calm down, your fire is not going to hurt you. You’re immune to it thanks to your blessing that you’ve been given by our Goddess. This just means that you lack control but you have huge potential in the future. Also Ruby I can see that look in your eye. You have stronger potential due to you having greater control. It’s not recommended to use a flame as big as Sophie’s unless you plan on burning everyone here alive. Only the three of us are immune to these divine flames.” Ruby perked up a bit when I told her that. Little did everyone know that Amaterasu was feeding me this information and told me how to stop the fire from going out of control.

“You two will do the same training I do in the morning, I want you to create a fireball and as you breathe in and take in the air. You will enlarge the flame and as you breathe out, the flame will get smaller. Sophie to control your fire. I want you to try and make it as small as you possibly can. Like this.” I proceeded to show her my own smooth fireball that looked like the sun. Around the same size as hers and then shrank it down to the size of a golf ball. “This will be your goal, okay?”

“Okay.” She calmed down and nodded to my request.

“And Ruby. I want you to make your wildfire you formed there and try to contain the flames so that it’s nice and small like this ball. This will be Sophie’s next step after she manages to shrink her flames down and manages to control it. The last thing I want to mention is that the major key weakness to this power is your emotions. Anger specifically, you must not get angry. The angrier you are, the more you lose control of your magic, coincidentally the more powerful your flames will get as well. So be sure to not lose your tempers, if you’re ever feeling frustrated. I want you to find something that makes you happy and relaxed, do you two understand?” The pair of them nodded and with that I said my goodbyes to the pair of them, internally thanking Amaterasu for her guidance.

‘Not to worry my dear, those two will be very powerful in the future. It’s still too early to grasp the full potential of their power but their blessing marks will turn from black to their respective colours once they are complete.’

‘Change colour? What colour will my blessing turn when I’m complete?’

‘Yours? It will turn Orange, and you will get the mark around your eyes like myself.’

There wasn’t much to say to that, I had my goal and I thanked my Goddess again for letting me know what the end result will look like. Yuna walked up to me as I walked away from Ruby and Sophie.

“That’s an interesting training method you have there. Must be handy being able to use magic without having to use any runes or chants to assist you.” I could hear the hint of jealousy in her voice. I sheepishly scratched the back of my head and defended it the only way I knew how.

“Well our magic forces us to train our muscles as we practise, on top of that we’re restricted to fire alone or some compound variant of fire when we try to use other elements.” This did not uplift Yuna’s thoughts at all though. Even with the thought that the flames could grow stagnant if we got lazy in our training. We could peak early if we didn’t persist and not be able to grow to use the full extent of the Goddesses power.

“Still, it’s super inconvenient, even if I do have Tsukuyomi’s blessing and the ability to use his power. I still have to have runes on my weapons and I have to use chants to use the spells he taught me. I have to practise speed casting for the spells to be useful. Either that or have them active before I go into battle.”

“Will you need time to prepare before we investigate the mansion?”

“I will indeed, but not much. I have most of my runes in the scrolls and talismans I have on hand. Only enough to get some protection set up. My magic is stronger at night and closer to a full moon, but that’s just gone by. I should be still pretty strong but my power is starting to diminish as time goes by. So we will need to wrap this mission up as soon as possible before I grow too weak to fight.”

“Sounds like you have some temperamental magic you have there.” I laughed, she didn’t like that tease one bit.

“Like you’re one to talk, you have to keep your damn emotions and breathing in check lest you burn your closest loved ones to a crisp.” She wasn’t wrong there at all. The amount of times while training Amaterasu taunted me through insults, low blows and downright annoying behaviour, did cause me to nearly burn down the forest more times than I would have liked to admit. There was no way I would ever admit that though. It was downright embarrassing.

‘Awwh, are you getting embarrassed there? Remembering all the times I played with you lovingly?’

‘Lovingly? You mean the amount of times you kicked me in the balls, threw dirt in my face and insulted my masculinity? Do you still wonder why I will not touch you in the bedroom yet?’ She instantly retracted her warm feelings, shutting her up instantly. She will not be coming back from that one for a while. She hated the fact that I didn’t make her feel desired.

“Anyway, how much time do you need?” I got back to Yuna quickly before she thought I started spacing out.

“I’ll need it until the sun goes down. I’ll meet you here so I would recommend getting some sleep at your inn as we’re going to be up all night.” I gave her suggestion some thought.

“It’s still morning time right now, so we still have plenty of time left during the day. I’ll be spending this time watching over the Sister’s training for a while longer.” Yuna nodded acknowledging my plan.

“I’ll see you close to evening time then, see you soon.”

“Yeah, see you later.” I waved Yuna goodbye and made my way back to the Training Courtyard and Yuna melded into the shadows as she left.

The sister’s noticed me coming back and ran over to me. Sophie spoke up to greet me.

“You’re back already? We thought you were leaving.”

“I will be leaving later on, my team mate needs time to prepare as our mission is going to take place tonight. So for now, I’ll be watching over your training. I’m awfully curious about the soldiers who are in charge of looking after you while I'm gone.”

“The feelings were mutual then.” A scarred woman with an eye patch and a masked man walked up to me. “We were curious who this priest of Amaterasu would be that would take in such great talent to be their Guardian, I never would have expected it to be someone as young as yourself.” The aura of killing intent was oozing from these two. They were definitely eyeing me with critique, doubting my abilities. “I don’t care if you have William’s backing, you’re going to have to prove yourself to us that you’re capable of protecting them when the time is needed. So how about a sparring match?”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“One at a time or both of you at once?” I too was very curious and I wanted to measure my abilities against the warriors of this world. I wondered how strong they were. Serena liked my question, a smug grin grew. The guards surrounding us and watching this exchange were whispering among themselves but I couldn’t hear anything though.

“You’ll be going against both myself and Wraith here.” The whispers grew even more.

“Alright then, lead the way.”

“There’s no need, we will do it right here in this courtyard in front of everyone so prepare yourself.” Without a second thought I clapped my hands and imagined a perfectly balanced weapon, what formed when I outstretched my hands was a 7ft long staff this time, I’ll be practising my bojutsu training that Amaterasu taught me. This was just a sparring match so I didn’t want to severely hurt them. This power shocked everyone as the staff formed in the fire that was created by me.

“No chanting? Or runes to be seen anywhere.” One of the guards I managed to hear was saying to his comrade. Serena and Wraith responded in turn themselves, they didn’t say anything. Serena took out her long bladed knives and Wraith drew his sword and knife, and held them in a cutlass stance.

I grabbed my stuff, spun it around a few times to test the weight and length and smiled at the fact that it felt perfect for me. I positioned myself in the with my legs bent at my knees, facing my body to my left, my left hand at the base while my right further up.

With all of us ready, there was no further discussion. Wraith made no time at all, he immediately went for a lunge but much faster than he taught Ruby earlier. It reached me in no time at all, I dodge to the right moving the staff vertically to my left as Wraith tried to bring his sword across, shifting the blade from a stab to a slash. With the blade blocked, I kicked forward into his stomach and knocked us both back to give us some room. Both of us landed on our feet.

This time Serena caught me off guard and tried to go for my neck from behind. I ducked down and swept her legs but she just backflipped away gracefully. She was like a professional gymnast.

“Too slow.” She sneered, in the same breath she spoke she sped toward me at an increased pace but I could still see through her attack. I spun my staff around, caught her blade strike, jumped up fast enough to dodge Wraiths attack who had tried sneaking up for an assassination attempt on me. As I came down for the descent I swung at them but barely missed as they both rolled away.

“That’s enough!” William called out to the three of us. “Serena, Wraith, do his abilities satisfy you now? Not bad if I say so myself as he’s only been training for less than two months with the Goddess herself.” I looked at him surprised and William caught it.

“Yuna told me of your arrival into this world when Amaterasu came back.”

“There’s no such thing as privacy in this world, is there?”

“Not when the Sun Goddess is concerned, no.” Serena and Wraith looked at each other and called out to William.

“For two months, he’s not bad, still rough around the edges when it comes to technique. We’re glad that he’s trained his body as well as his mind. So with that we will follow him if he becomes the new Lord, no offence to you but I will never follow another weakling again.” I turned around and gave the pair a bow.

“No offence taken. I realise that I’ve got a long way to go before I can consider myself a proper leader. In both combat and diplomacy. You two are plenty strong to help Ruby and Sophie as well. If you train them with their weapons. Amaterasu and I will train them with their magic. Does that sound good to you?”

“It does, thank you for the sparring match. Speaking of which you didn’t use any of your magic during that match, why did you not use all of your abilities?”

“It wouldn’t be a sparring match then, besides I wanted to measure my own combat abilities without magic and to see how I did, like you stated earlier, there were moments where I was too slow and now I know where to improve.” I replied with a soft smile on my face.

Serena liked that response, Wraith walked over to me and offered me a handshake and just nodded his head.

“Do you not talk?” I was confused.

“He’s under an oath of silence, I’m sorry but we cannot divulge further.”

“Interesting, but fair enough.” My curiosity was satisfied. I nodded my head back to him and took his hand for the hand shake. His grip was firm and I could clearly feel his trained strength.

“Welp, I’ll be sitting down here to watch your Ruby’s training. So feel free to continue whenever.” I sat on a bench at the edge of the courtyard.

‘I’m still not happy with what you said to me before.’ I rolled my eyes at her statement.

‘Was any of what I said wrong though? Do you really expect any man to jump into bed and rock your world after you demean them?’

‘It was only for your training to control the side effects of our magic, I never really meant what I said and I didn’t like what I did either.’

‘Listen, do you remember that one date I had when I was younger and ended up running away that night? Even if what you did was for the greater good, It’s not like it’s going to get me in the mood. Even in bondage sex which I highly doubt that even exists in this world, you still get after-care.’

Amaterasu went red in her face, she was glad that Gaël couldn’t see her at that moment. After taking a few deep breaths, she owes Gaël a lot right now for sacrificing his whole life for her and he’s not even able to currently enjoy his new life because of the situation in this town.

‘As much as this pains me to say, I’m sorry about the way I treated you during training, you are very special to me.’ She sent an overwhelming amount of love to me and I could feel it smothering my entire body, her apology was definitely genuine.

‘I’ll forgive you, I don’t mind if you do that kind of training in the future, as I can see that it’s necessary, just treat me better afterwards, okay?’

‘I promise I will’.

“Gaël can you even hear me right now?”

“Oh William, sorry, I didn’t notice you. I was too deep in my own thoughts there.” William had come and sat down next to me to talk to me, for what? I don’t know.

“What was it that you wanted to say to me?” I asked him out of genuine concern as I felt bad for what looked like to be ignoring him.

“I was asking you about what you thought of Ruby and Sophie’s training and I was also curious as to why you were sitting here, I would have imagined you were going to prepare for the mission tonight.” I didn’t notice at all because of my conversation with Amaterasu.

“It’s still morning time right now, I’m not going to be here for long. I'll go buy some supplies for the night. After that I’ll get some sleep as I’ll be up all night. According to Yuna, she’s gone to prepare her magic for tonight’s mission.

“And you don’t need to prepare your own magic?”

“No, I don’t need to.” I flashed 3 balls of fire in front of him and made them grow as large as basketballs in the air. I spun them round really quickly and manipulated them at high speeds without making them touch each other. Shortly afterwards I shrank them down to the size of golf balls and caught them in my hand, dissipating the magic.

“I see, that’s quite wondrous magic you have there.”

“I am, I can use this fire to enhance my own physical capabilities, fire them at my targets, heal my allies and finally use my fire to create my weapons. Later on, I’m going to go buy a strong, man-made Spear if possible.”

“Why don’t you purchase a Spear from us then? We have the best weapons in town.”

“Do you not have a black smith?” My curiosity had peaked at that point, why would the Military in Town sell the weapons instead of the smithy, that didn’t make sense to me.

“We do have a Black Smith, but he sells us all of his weapons to us as soon as they’re made. They come straight to us by order of the Lord, we have too many weapons in the armoury, if we sell you one of our weapons. We can pass it onto the Blacksmith to help his business.” William had whispered this to me, out of his Guards ears.

“Is this some kind of secret?” I whispered back to him.

“No, it’s not that, just any talk about the Lord’s misdeeds tends to fire the soldiers off in a rant and rampage and I’m just trying to keep the peace.” Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I understood. I decided to take him up on his offer and he asked me to follow him.

_________________________________________

“Here is our armoury.”

I entered and saw Weapons as far as the eye could see. Yep, this Landlord was one paranoid, these were basically confiscated and for use by the Town guardsman only.

“Is the Adventurers Guild even operating right now?”

“It is, but as you can see, not a single Adventurer would even be able to go out and fight right now. The only requests they’re allowed to take in this town are picking herbs. The dungeons nearby are managed by the guards so anyone who wants to earn a decent living has to become a guard of the town and swear allegiance to Winston Jr..”

“He’s really stagnating this Town’s development and growth, I’m going to change that. The reason I have to become an Adventurer is to boost Amaterasu’s reputation.”

“I’ve noticed you’ve called our Goddess’s name so casually, does she really not mind that?”

‘It’s only you I allow to call me by name so informally, a lot of people who still revere me are a lot more respectful.’ She reminded me.

“According to her, I’m the only one who’s able to call her by informal means. Everyone else will have to address her respectfully.”

“That must feel nice to be related to her in that way, I know I certainly wouldn’t be able to get away with it. I’ll get you the best Spear we have in stock for you, could you please wait a moment.” With that he turned off to the back of the room.

‘I wonder what kind of Spears the Blacksmith makes and I wonder how good they are.’

‘The Blacksmith in this town is good but he’s no Divine Blacksmith. What is it you people like to say in your world again? He’s about average?’ I was disappointed to hear her say that, I guess it was too much for the starting town of my adventure in this world. It wasn’t too long until William came back with a large wooden case. He walked over to a table that was close by, not wasting any time and walked over to the table. He then pushed the case towards me, opening it. What caught my eye was anything but average to my eyes. It was a large Halberd, the Staff was 7ft long, with a huge axe on the end and the blade extended the spear by an extra foot. It was beautifully crafted, smooth to the touch. I picked up the Halberd and felt its weight, it was around the same weight I was used to with my other spears I created. I then moved over to a wide open space on the other side of the room and gave it a few test spins, ending the combo with a stab.

“Do you like it?” William had a wide smile on his face.

“I do, how much for it?” I was genuinely afraid that this would end up taking all of my money from how well crafted this Halberd was.

“2 Gold coins and it’s yours. You can take it to the Blacksmith and he will perform maintenance on it, the costs will vary depending on the damage of the Halberd.” I sighed from relief when I heard that. I pulled out my pouch and passed the 2 Gold coins to him.

‘This is a very expensive purchase you have made. I hope you take good care of this Spear.’

‘Halberd, Amaterasu, it’s a Halberd, not a Spear, Spears don’t have Axes on the edge of Staff.’ She didn’t like being corrected, but she accepted it. Must be a habit of being a Divine Goddess. Maybe I should let her get away with being incorrect sometimes in the future.

“Thank you for the purchase, I’ll be sure to get this to the Blacksmith we have in town, he deserves it for working so hard. He was hoping this would go to a good owner.”

“I’ll have to introduce myself to him when this is over. I’ll be sure to hand him and everyone else their tax money back while I’m at it.”

“Speaking on behalf of the Citizens in this town. We would all appreciate it.”