Chapter 122 - Gossip

"Hey man, what's with that little sword you got there?"

Vern looked back only to clamp his eyes shut. WHY!? Why would anyone willingly wear such an abomination of an outfit?

Vern let out a deep sigh and did his best not to cringe. Lucian carried a majestic great sword on his shoulders—which somehow didn't seem off with his otherwise not-so-bulky frame. But those clothes? Yeah, they disgraced that great sword's elegance and the man’s otherwise handsome face.

A vibrant green and yellow checkered coat adorned by a purple accessories that made Vern want to never open his eyes again.

Lucian noticed Vern's stare, and a smiled blossomed on his face, "Hey, you're literally dripping jealousy. It's okay. You should stop. If you really want one, I can have my tailor make another one for you."

Vern held back the scathing remarks that were dancing on his tongue and shook his head before switching this terrifying topic and smirked, "Imagine having a sword so long you can't even sheathe it."

Lucian matched his strides and rebutted, "Hey! I asked Master Osric about it. There are a couple of scabbards for this one in the market. I just…don't have the money."

Vern quirked his eyebrows, "Didn’t you get the salary yesterday alongside the gem?"

He scratched his blonde hair awkwardly. "Enhhh, that was yesterday."

"So?"

"It's gone."

"How?"

"Beauty doesn't come cheap now, does it?"

No. I can't! It's rude! Vern chided himself, but his hand didn't listen, and he facepalmed. Ughh! However, he managed play it off as wiping his forehead and chuckled nervously, "Haha, right. Good for you." Not waiting for the man to start again, Vern pushed on, "Anyways, how are you carrying that thing around so easily? Is it a replica or something?"

Lucian replied, with a frown on his face, "What do you mean? Aren't you feeling stronger, too?"

Ah. Realization flashed across Vern's face as he nodded, "So you accepted the first infusion already?"

"Heh?" Lucian looked at him like he'd seen a dead rat, "You didn't?"

Vern shook his head.

"Why?"

"I am still weighing the options."

"Yeah, but why?"

Then, suddenly, came another voice, saving Vern from having to explain his rationale to the brute who had wasted his money on such an outfit.

"Hey, how're you doing, Lucian?" said a tall man wearing a sophisticated white vest that suited his slim frame and intelligent eyes as he patted the brute on the shoulder.

Hmm, I have seen him before. Vern stressed his memory and quickly realized he was one of the people he'd eavesdropped on before Captain Akira's speech. This was the one who didn't want to miss out on being the founders of the Vigil.

If Vern remembered correctly, his viewpoint was related to weaving lights or something. He'd seen the man playing with glowing lights on his fingers.

As they walked through the gilded corridor towards the dining hall, Vern was content to listen in on their perfunctory conversation.

Soon, however, he got pulled into it, too, as the light-weaver looked at him and asked, "And how might I address you, gentleman?"

Vern followed the etiquette of greeting between equals by dipping his head a notch and responded with a smile, "Name's Vern. How about you?"

"Ah, right." He clicked his tongue. "Nice to meet you, Vern. I am Arthur. Arthur Machen. I remember you from back on the rooftop. I thought I did great by not losing consciousness in that hell, but I heard you didn't even flinch."

Vern smiled politely and recycled the excuse Captain Akira had made for him, "Haha, don't be too impressed. I'm also a fundamentalist, so you can say I cheated a bit. After all, we're used to sights like that."

"Don't sell yourself short, Vern. Most of us nobles were also trained for situations like that. But you saw what came of it—a mere tenth of us managed to even get back up in time."

Vern just smiled as the waiter grabbed their attention. All three communicated their wants to the man and found themselves a table. Vern only asked for something light to snack on—no training with a full stomach.

Grabbing the hilt of duality, he rigidly pushed it to the right, and the whole sheath rotated on his back step by step with a clicking sound, allowing him to sit with the sheathe not poking a hole through the chair. Such were the advantages of making something yourself.

Not wanting to seem unnecessarily pompous, Vern started the conversation this time, "Did you two go on any missions yesterday?"

Lucian hoisted that massive sword off his shoulder and leaned it on his chair's edge as it creaked in agony. "Hah, that's where I met Arthur, actually, but it was anti-climactic."

The black-haired Arthur nodded with a smile of his own and added, "Indeed. That's how we got acquainted with each other. Though, I didn't expect him to be so good at handling that massive sword already."

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"Well, not like I got to use it much. It's meant for cracking open skulls, not doors."

Their food soon arrived, and Vern chuckled, "Sounds like you all had a fun time. Was it a simple cleansing mission?"

Arthur shook his head, sipping what looked like wine, "Not really. We were sent to investigate a string of murders in the high society."

Vern raised his eyebrows, "Isn't that something better left to Kingsmen and Police?"

Lucian was too busy with the pastry to reply, so Arthur leaned in close, whispering, "Not in this case. Apparently, the ones that died were Observers, too."

Vern frowned, "So the murderer is an Observer?"

"We…aren't sure. Even Lady Antonia, who was overlooking the mission yesterday, hasn't reached a conclusion. The witnesses claimed that the victims suddenly started mumbling incoherently and flailing around before they fell dead soon after."

Hmm, this was only getting more baffling. "Aren't those just the signs of losing oneself to the whispers?"

Arthur's face brightened, "Exactly! That's what I pointed out, too. But Lady Antonia believes there's more to this than what meets the eye. So we ended up scouting thes prior cases, too. To no avail, unfortunately."

Lucian jumped in, grumbling as he finished his plate, "I still don't know why we wasted so much time chasing dead nobles."

Vern sighed exaggeratedly, "Now even brutes think they know better than Captain Akira."

"Ehh, haha, I didn't mean to slander captain, really." Lucian stuttered, looking all around him, "He's very good."

"Mhm" Arthur hummed in ascent and leaned back before taking another small sip, "Prince Akira has a clear picture of everything that's going on in the city. So, I definitely trust him more than myself in these situations. Also, he's the last person that would favor nobility over the well being of the city itself."

Lucian nodded to Arthur's words with repeated nods.

Weren't you the one that was just grumbling about it?

Soon, however, Arthur placed his glass on the table and rested his chin on his palms—intertwined like a mastermind's—before he eyed Vern, "I suppose you had a far more interesting day than either of us? I've been hearing interesting things since this morning."

Vern finished his own plate of biscuits and settled back, trying to adjust to the discomfort of sitting with the sheathe on his back. "Hmm, what did you hear?"

"Hmm, let's see. It was something along the lines of you defeating an amalgamation of subjectivity pollution that's equivalent in power to an Observer with two shades, all by yourself."

Vern replied, taken aback, "That's a bit too detailed. Who told you that?"

Lucian interjected, "He…what?" However, Arthur didn't respond to either of them and fell into an introspective trance, "So it is true…?"

Lucian looked back and forth between Vern and Arthur, "Hey, what's going on? You really defeated something like that?"

Vern didn't want to boast, but he had no qualms about bashing Lucian. The man deserved any amount of hurt to his ego for the torture he inflicted on Vern's eyes. So Vern shrugged, "Well, I managed it without this 'short' sword right here. Imagine what I can do with it. You great sword should be scared."

Lucian's eyes suddenly turned wild, and he stood up, a fierce aura all around him. "Fight me! Right now!" he implored, excitement and anticipation clear on his face as his veins bulged, "Come on, man! I really need to fight someone of my own strength. Master Osric beats me up one-sidedly, and it doesn't help me gauge my strength."

Arthur looked at both of them, an intrigued glint in his eyes. Vern, however, stared at Lucian like he was stupid, "Our training starts in a few minutes. You really want to go in there, half dead?"

"Haha, very cocky! Very cocky."

"But not wrong."

"Ughhh!!! I just wanna fight something!"

"Hmm, well, how about we ask our mentors and see what they think about fighting each other?"

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Vern nodded at Lucian in farewell as he pushed open the door to the training hall from the day before yesterday. Or was it yesterday since he slept here past midnight?

"Good eveni—" Vern choked on his greeting as he looked on in awe at the spectacle in front of him.

A red glow shone like a beacon in the center of the hall, emanating from Mistress Amelia herself. Her palms gripped the handle of her scythe behind herself—one close to the blade, the other close to the faux pommel.

However, like a string being pulled taut to the extremes, her upper body was twisting forward while her legs stretched back alongside the gleaming crimson blade, primed with so much energy it seemed the scythe would break at any moment.

As her cape and ponytail billowed wildly, gusts of air rippled out of her body. Looking at this, Vern's chest tightened, but he couldn't tear his eyes away.

Rows upon rows of armored mannequins stood in front of her—filling a good third of the room, but she continued to pull at the ends of the string tighter. So much so his hair stood on end just imagining the terrifying strength charged in that attack.

If that hit him, forget the energy in the mix; the sheer physical alone would turn him into minced meat. And in that moment—

Snap!

The hand keeping the blade's end taut let go, and pivoting around her other palm, the scythe shot out like a blur, swinging in a wide arc. The saturated crimson on the blade's end released like a gash, in reality, itself, dying everything bloody.

It was so bright he almost missed the carnage it would wreak on the mannequins.

Sizzleee. The metal disintegrated at the mere touch of that reddish hue that advanced at a relentless pace. Srrrrr It burned and churned. However, that's when something bizarre transpired.

Mistress turned around with all that momentum, and the scythe suddenly extended beyond its usual length before she hooked back at the arc of energy that had disintegrated the first row in that mere instant.

What? Vern looked on in puzzlement, but she hooked the blade of the mechanical scythe into the red energy, and bafflingly, she managed to…tug the energy back?

Paaah!

Like a balloon, the energy suddenly burst as red droplets exploded everywhere, burning the very ground like some acid, but not as potent as before. Soon, it evaporated like water under the sun, and Mistress's sigh echoed all throughout the room.

She contracted the scythe and latched it on her back before sitting on the raised platform supporting herself with her hands.

Vern finally walked up to her and asked, "Hello, Mistress. Is that a new attack you're working on?" That's what it looked like to him.

"Mhm," she nodded, wiping the bloody droplets off her face, "I am having a little trouble at the last step. Anyways, it has direct implications for you as well."

Vern swallowed his follow-up questions and tilted his head with a questioning gaze.

She answered him in kind, "I'll be practicing for the next seven days myself to harness the power of my recent infusion. So, I went ahead and asked Akira to exempt you from participating in any missions for the week."

"Oh…" Vern gasped, feeling a bit of apprehension but also excitement as he tried to figure out how that changed his plans.

"If you have anything important to attend, you're free to finish it today. Tomorrow onwards, I want you here twelve hours a day."

"…" Vern was dumbfounded. His mind quickly whirled through the implications, and he rapidly assessed it from all angles, including the opportunity cost of training day and night.

Soon, however, he arrived at a singular answer. This was a rare opportunity. Yes, he had ten other things to focus on, but none of them were going anywhere, and nor were they urgent.

Balance wasn't about never being extreme. As 'never' was an extreme in itself. It was about knowing when to embrace them. This situation was it.

He was sorely lacking in everything related to physical combat, including intuition, form, coordination, and experience. For an average human, seven days could never be enough to comprehensively learn the art of combat.

They wouldn't be enough for him either, but his perception offered him a tool of learning unlike anything else. He didn't want to become a master anyway. He just wanted to not be held back by his frailness in this terrifying world.

I need this! Everything seemed to clear up, and he rested his hands on his chest and bowed deeply, "Then I will be in your care, mistress."