The next morning, everyone reacted with excitement when Duncan told them his decision. However, they seemed to have different reasons for their enthusiasm.

Cinder pumped his fist into the air and yelled, “Vacation!” before surging out of his seat at the breakfast table and running out of the room to who knows where.

Pheobe immediately started smiling and muttering to herself about training programs and fighting analysis. She sounded like the coach of an Earth sports team getting ready to go into a film study session. Duncan was pretty sure she was trying to come up with a plan to help Phevona beat him in a duel. She was consistent; he had to give her that.

Phevona, who hadn’t yet left for her own training, beamed over at him. “Awesome! Finally, someone else for Dad and great-grandmother to focus on instead of me. I’ll finally have some peace.” Duncan couldn’t help but look from her to Pheobe and back. When she realized what her mother was doing, Phevona just sighed. “We are going to have to fight it out eventually. I don’t hold a grudge, but she won’t let it go. Besides, it’ll be fun to fight you again. I may not hold a grudge, but I still want to beat you.”

The last to react was Neta. “Excellent. Welcome to the family, Duncan. I usually tell my new students that they will likely regret their choice, but something tells me you’ll be able to handle my normal training methods without much issue.”

Duncan smiled at her.

“Which means we will have to put you through an enhanced version of training. So, I think I can still say you might regret your choice.” Then she was gone, leaving Duncan, Phevona, and a still muttering Pheobe at the breakfast table.

Duncan’s smile faltered.

***

Orneta O’Leon was excited. It had been years since she’d had anything meaningful to do when not traveling the realms. One might say being the matriarch of clan Kunora was meaningful, and a younger Orneta would likely have agreed. Now, though, she didn’t. Almost everything was run by the clan’s various officials these days, and Orneta was only needed for some of the more important events and decisions. That or a true crisis, but there hadn’t been one of those in decades.

Now, she finally had something to do. Duncan Tell had already been forged into an adequate sword by the mother he briefly mentioned to Cinder, but Neta never settled for adequate when she had such high-quality metal to work with. Doing so would be a disservice to the boy and herself.

So, she would melt him down and forge him into something new. Something magnificent. Magnificent and dangerous.

She had used her [Bladesmith] Subject to forge thousands of swords over the years. However, she was always the most proud of the swords she forged through training and instruction. It was them that were truly precious to her. She had too few of them. Duncan would be the next.

And this time, she would get to do it with little Cinder, possibly the greatest sword she had ever forged. They hadn’t been able to craft together since he’d chosen [Monster Chef] as his non-combat Subject, which she was still upset about. Now, though, they would finally get to forge a sword together.

Orneta O’Leon was excited. She stood at her office window, looking out toward the apprentice training yard. She could feel the magic coming from Duncan’s training with enchantments. She turned to look at her desk, where she saw a small pin that might be worn on a uniform. It was the very pin Duncan had worn when he arrived on Kuno.

“No wonder that Mayfield brat sent him my way,” she said.

***

It had been months since Duncan had arrived on Dintarnum. He started every day bright and early with a run up the mountain path Cinder had told him about. At first, it had been a great way to warm up, especially with how fast Duncan ran.

He met many people on the path, most of them other kids without a Subject who were there to train like him. Well, he didn’t actually meet these kids. It was more like they glared at him while he passed them all. Competition and all that.

Then, about two weeks into his training, Neta decided to start tagging along. It turned out that tagging along actually meant forcing Duncan to give her a piggyback ride up the mountain while somehow increasing her weight over time. Now, it was less of a warm-up and more of a rigorous training session.

Despite the increase in difficulty, Duncan decided he liked the change. No one glared at him anymore, which made sense. The first day the other kids saw their clan matriarch riding piggyback up the mountain was Duncan’s favorite day in Dintarnum to date.

After his morning run, Cinder was always waiting for him in the training yard with a new enchanted item for Duncan to try. Where the elf was getting so many different enchanted items, Duncan didn’t know. The variety was vast, though. Wayne would have loved it.

There was everything from a sword enchanted to throw low-powered elemental attacks with a slash to a pair of boots that let him skate above the ground like he was surfing a wave in the ocean. Each new item meant something new to master. This usually meant more sparing with Cinder.

Duncan found these sparing sessions challenging but also incredibly fun. The lack of mana on Earth meant charging enchanted items like this was extremely slow, relying solely on the internal mana regeneration of professors with a Subject.

For that reason, the Academy rarely provided the students with anything that required a high mana charge. Wands had mostly been the privilege of nobility since they often had people with a Subject return from Dintarnum so their kids could attend the Academy on Earth, as was law for anyone originally from Earth. Luckily for Duncan’s sister Marie, Donna could recharge and create wands for her.

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Now, Duncan was on Dintarnum. The entire realm was full of mana and Subject holders. Enchantments and mana were how this realm had achieved what Earth only could through science and electricity, and even more besides.

Each new piece of equipment broadened Duncan’s understanding of what was possible and gave him some ideas for potential Abilities once he had his combat Subject.

Cinder was an incredible trainer. Whenever he introduced a new item, he gave Duncan multiple examples of how it could be used in a fight. He never gave too much detail, though, letting Duncan get used to coming up with new applications for each item on his own.

However, Duncan learned not to blindly trust the elf when Phevona’s warning about the family’s love of pranks turned into prophecy. The illusory bugs that had tried to crawl up Duncan’s legs looked very real. He decided to bide his time until he could get the man back with something appropriately devious.

After a few months, Neta started to join in on the training session. Cinder had focused on the application of Abilities in combat through enchanted items. Neta focused on swords. Nothing but swords. She gave him new forms to master. They were many and varied. Some focused on evasion and deception; others focused on pure aggression and precise applications of extreme force. Others were utterly different.

Duncan devoured each one with more enthusiasm than the last. When he grew comfortable and competent with a new form, he would start incorporating it into his spars with Cinder. Here, he found that, unlike the style he’d learned from his mother, much of what Neta taught him was designed with an enhanced body, Ability use, and monster fighting in mind. Some motions made no sense with the current reach of his sword, while others were impractical when used against anything with less than four legs.

Some forms were even meant to be used with a different type of sword altogether. When he first pointed out that a form didn’t feel as though it was meant to be used with his current sword, the same one he’d chosen on his first day of training, Neta let out a short laugh. “Ha. You are correct. I just wanted to see if you’d figure that out for yourself or if I had to spoon-feed it to you like I had to with that one.” Her finger pointing straight at Cinder, who was preparing the latest enchanted items for the next spar, made it clear who she meant by ‘that one.’

This realization led to another addition to his training. New sword types. Sabres, rapiers, hook swords, duel-wielding short swords, great swords, katanas, and more. The new forms and the plethora of different sword types almost gave him more than he could handle. Almost. His love of the sword pushed him past every obstacle as he learned form after form and sword type after sword type.

He was by no means mastering these lessons, as Neta and Cinder were fond of pointing out with every imperfect strike and every misplaced step. He was, however, improving every day at an incredible rate. Never once did he regret his choice to stay on Kuno.

After his training sessions with Neta and Cinder were finished each night, he and the four O’Leons ate dinner together. Here, he learned more about the family that had taken him in.

No other O’Leons had shown up over the months, which was expected, according to Phevona when he had asked her. Cinder had an older sister who constantly traveled the realms with her team. There was even a whole other branch of the family led by Neta’s younger brother. His wife was from another permanent realm, so he had moved there, and that was where he and his descendants now called home.

No one ever said anything about Cinder’s parents, one of which would likely be Neta’s child. Having his fair share of family complications, Duncan knew better than to ask about them. They did talk about Neta’s husband, though.

“Grandpa was the best chef in all of Kuno,” Cinder had explained to Duncan one evening while the boy was helping him prepare the night’s meal. “He’s the one who got me into cooking in the first place. I even copied his non-combat Subject, [Monster Chef]. Most of the Abilities focus on improving meals using ingredients from monsters.” Cinder was smiling more broadly than Duncan had ever seen him, and he’d seen the elf smiling more often than not since they’d met. “Grandma is still annoyed I chose his non-combat path over hers. It was apparently a bit of a competition between them when I was younger.”

Cinder’s face fell then, giving him a slightly morose look. “He died in a particularly nasty sub-realm about 45 years ago. He saved his whole team, including grandmother. She’s never told me the whole story, just that he died a hero.”

Hearing and telling stories like these was the start of Duncan’s true acceptance into the O’Leon family. Every meal, he learned more about them. He laughed at Pheobe and Cinder's stories of their craziest realm delves. He listened to Neta complaining about some of the more obtuse clan officials giving her more work than she wanted. He compared training schedules and lessons with Phevona, who was learning a lot from her master.

He even told them about his own family. He compared his slightly goofy dad, Matthew, to Cinder since he had also been the family chef. He talked about Marie’s ability with magic and her goal of being the primo of her class like him. He explained how excited Wayne would have been if he’d been able to see all the enchanted items his big brother had been taking for granted recently.

Thankfully, none of them mentioned that his mom, Donna, and the mother who had supposedly trained him to use a sword didn’t seem to be the same person. However, Phevona did point out one thing Duncan hadn’t thought of when he explained that Donna had gone to Corvelin before returning with her Subject to teach at the Academy on Earth.

“If she’s been to Corvelin, why wouldn’t she have warned you about how awful it can be there?”

The question had caught Duncan off guard. He had no idea why she would have kept it from him. Knowing her and how much she worried, the only things that made sense were that she either didn’t know how bad it was or was somehow forced not to reveal it. The thought of the latter made Duncan’s blood boil for a couple of days.

The months passed this way. He woke up. He ran up the mountain while giving the clan matriarch a piggyback ride. He trained with new forms, swords, and enchantments. He ate dinner. He lived. He grew closer to what was quickly turning into his second family. Every day was like this. He never left the O’Leon estate except to run the mountain path.

Eventually, however, things had to change as he grew more proficient in everything Cinder and Neta taught him. He needed a new challenge. He knew it, and his masters knew it.

Seven months after he arrived in Dintarnum, on a warm summer day, Cinder was not waiting for him as he jogged into the training yard, Neta still clinging to his back while humming a tune he’d heard countless times during their trips up and down the mountain path.

“Where’s Cinder?” Duncan asked, hunching over to let the tall woman off his back.

“We won’t be doing your normal training today,” she replied, straightening up to her full height. “Follow me.” Duncan had no choice but to do just that as she left the training yard. Duncan soon realized they were moving toward the armory full of swords where he had gotten the various types of swords he’d been training with. It was the same one Cinder had brought him to on his first day of training.

Instead of entering the armory, Neta continued past its entrance. Instead, she continued down the path to another doorway built into the side of the mountain. As soon as they entered, Duncan noticed two things. First, Cinder was there, smiling just inside the entrance. Second, it was definitely another armory. But instead of swords, it was filled with everything else.

Enchanted item after enchanted item lined the rows of shelves that filled the space. There were even stairs off to one side that led both up and down. How big was this place?

Just inside the door, in front of the first line of shelves, was a long table. On the table was every enchanted item Duncan had been training with over the past half year.

“Time for your first monster hunt,” Cinder was grinning at Duncan’s confused expression. “Now, pick your gear.”