“That child’s still out there swinging his sword? Did his parents never teach him prudence or something?”

The owner of the dilapidated training ground’s voice echoed in the rickety wooden shack he called an office. His newly hired assistant and only worker, Mikey, responded in a bemused tone “Why give up? His training mentality is unlike anyone I've seen, shouldn’t you be encouraging that kind of behavior?”

“I used to think like that too, back when he first showed up six years ago, but the first time his old man came around with him I learned why he wanted to work so hard.” The old man pauses, taking a long sip of the brownish bottle in front of him. Unable to handle the suspense, Mikey finally asks “well what was it?”

“This kid… has a cracked spirit heart. It’s a miracle he can even move around, let alone swing a sword.” The old man sighed heavily, placing the bottle back down on the wooden table and slumping back into his comfortable but worn chair. His eyes close, as his wrinkles furrow ever so slightly, accentuating the clear signs of his old age, before he speaks up once again.

“Can you go out and tell that guy we’re planning to close for the night?” The old man asks without opening his eyes, as his mind is clearly in other places at the moment. Mikey’s eyes are unable to hide the pity that he feels toward the child, and so he simply responds with a nod and affirmative grunt before making his way out the side door and to the large, sand-filled training ground.

In the middle between the shock absorbent dummies and the physical training equipment is a lively youth. His brownish hair flows with the wind as he swings his sword in the first form of the star-slashing blade, seemingly without regard to the rain or the hour at night. Beads of sweat fly off his body continuously, as he repeats the simple 3-movement attack over and over, not missing a single movement or faltering even once.

Seeing this, and remembering the owner’s words, Mikey can’t help but bite his lip, holding back his sadness. He walks closer to the main training grounds before calling out the youth, who finishes the final movement of his form before stopping and sheathing his sword, turning towards Mikey voice. Seeing this, Mikey hurriedly shouts out “training ground’s closing for today!” Before quickly turning back unable to suppress his tears further. As he sheds a single tear for the hopeless trainee, he cannot help but mumble to himself that it really is a shame that this kid was born into such unfortunate circumstances, and how if he had even a smidgen of spirit in him things would be different.

What he doesn’t know, however, is that up far far above him there is another man who utters the same exact words, which carry a very different meaning, and with them, very different consequences.

“Yes, it is indeed a shame.”

----------------------------------------

Argus takes a deep breath in, letting all the oxygen from the air around him flow through his tired veins at once, before letting out a slow, tired exhale. He wipes his brow of its sweat before

picking up his training sword and shoving it, alongside his training weights into his makeshift rucksack he has brought with him. He fiddles with the positioning a bit until he insures that the sword won't budge unless touched again, then picks the heavy sack up with and hangs it off his aching shoulder, as he starts walking off the sandy grounds.

His heart is still pounding heavy from the hours of exercise, but there is not even an iota of exhaustion on his face. To him, this feeling of tiredness, of his arms unable to move, of his legs about to crumple in at any moment, is a sign of his progress towards his eventual goal. Although he was born different, that does not mean he was born worse, as he keeps saying to himself.

Hard work can make up any difference.

He sighs, letting the cold winter winds feel up his lungs, serving as a refresher to his burning organs, each of which has once again been pushed to its utmost limit, like cold water on a third degree burn. He walks slowly, taking every second to take in his environment and sharpen his senses, closing his eyes to try to navigate off of his other heightened senses alone. Back when he started doing this, people called him crazy, but now, they just simply avoid his path. Not much of an improvement, but any change that isn’t for the worse is for the better, or so he’d like to think.

The light waft of fresh bread quickens his step, however, as he changes from his slow, silent footwork to a swift one, attempting to surpass the limits of his speed. His destination is still some couple of kilometers away, and that smell of bread is the indicator he’s marked as the changing point for practicing his different footworks. His steps turn light and airy, as he dashes and slices through the air in front of him, moving faster and faster with each passing second, as the sharp, cold winds bash and batter his face, like obstacles trying to slow him down.

Disregarding his stinging skin and tired legs, he pushes faster and faster, as houses and people alike turn into a blur on his sides. All that is on his mind is improving his speed, faster and faster, until he reaches his destination or his legs crumble below him.

There is no other option.

His feet move one after the other, never missing a beat, as he runs as fast as he can towards the now visible shack-sized house sitting at a small clearing of the Vauldren Forest. Around him, the scenery rapidly starts shifting from run-down houses and shops to trees and shrubbery, as he swiftly and expertly moves through the dense trees, his eyes locked towards his destination. Now that he was closer, his acute senses were confirming the hunch that he had gotten a couple of minutes ago before he had started running.

‘Something’s wrong in the house.’

Without skipping a beat, he channeled all of his strength in his feet and launched forward towards the house, the sound of his body slicing through the wind was as if the wind was alive and shrieking from pain, though that wasn’t far off how it actually felt to him anyways.

Enduring the pain and steeling his nerves, Argus flew towards the small house he had called home for the last 15 years of his life, as the blood rushed to his ears, screaming at him to slow down before it chose to leave his body by itself. Still, he never relented.

The house was just in front of him, and the signs of struggle were as clear as day. The door, which used to hang loosely from its hinges, was now off of them completely, and lying on the ground in front of him, as if herald for the disaster that had struck. The weak smell of spirits was as pungent as a rotten corpse’s to Argus’s sharp nose, and with it accompanied the faint but obvious signs of temporal tempering, that which he had picked up through his studies of books on the spirit arts over the years.

After some small deduction, Argus came to the conclusion that it must’ve been the work of those White Claw bandits, who are famous for their brutal and straightforward approach at robbing and kidnapping and their enjoyment in taking human lives. He gritted his teeth, his mind racing to the worst possibilities, but he catches himself, as he starts circulating his breathing using the basic layer-breathing technique that he had refined over all these years.

After clearing his head, he starts walking towards the shack. His steps are light and don’t sink into the ground, producing zero sound even to his trained ear, and he moves extremely naturally and casually, so that anyone seeing him from the outside might think of him as just another kid walking home after a long day at work.

He gets closer, trying his best to strain his eyes to look through the pitch blackness of the house, but to no avail. ‘It seems that whoever did this must’ve had some darkness spirit users in their midst, which would explain the temporal tempering, as the person who can use total-blackout is certainly no ordinary spirt-caster. They must have isolated the house using a pocket dimensi- ‘ his thoughts are cut off by his sharp senses sending danger flares through his body.

Without thinking, he quickly pulls out the sword his mother had gifted him on his 15th birthday. He remembers the shine it had when she first pulled it out of its custom made sheath that included his name in an elegant font. Even now, that same shine gleamed on this dark, wintery night, as Argus swiftly unsheathed the blade and struck behind him, his blade moving in a perfect 180 degree horizontal motion.

The sharp clang of metal against metal reverberated in the quiet night, as before Argus stood 3 thin men, each holding their own well crafted sword, though after Argus’s precise strike, only two of those swords still had their blades attached to their hilts.

The man who attacked Argus first took a step back and furrowed his brows, as the top half of his blade lay flat on the grass beside him. After making a hand signal to his buddies behind him, the three of them took a step backwards before seemingly merging into the shadow around them.

Seeing this, Argus didn’t panic but instead closed his eyes, as his ears seemingly tilt in all directions, searching for signs of the three people. The technique these invaders used is careful, but Argus immediately noticed that they are over-relying on the effects of dark spirits, and forgetting the fact their disorganized footsteps on the forest grounds are as loud as a charging buffalo to Argus’s astute ear.

The game of cat and mouse continues for a couple of seconds before Argus suddenly spots a change. ‘These bastards… They’re planning to sneak into the house while leaving one person behind to keep me occupied.’ Unfortunately for them, Argus wasn’t planning on giving them a chance to.

Argus locked his foot into the dry soil before leaping towards the door, his trajectory aimed so that he would collide exactly with the one thug who thought it was a good idea to try and sneak past him. Just before the expected collision occurred however, he felt a suffocating pressure push down on his back, like a spirit beast pinning down its prey.

Argus’s breathing staggered, as he lost his footing and smashed face first into the ground. The weight on his back was heavy, as it was pushing him further further down, squishing and contorting his face until he felt his nose snap from the force of it. Over the sound of his pounding heartbeat, he heard the sound of cheering and the shout of one of the thugs he heard talking earlier.

“Brother Fangraff! Which gods have smiled upon us to have you come to aid in such a desolate place?”

‘Brother Fangraff…’ Argus’s mind was filled with rage as he connected the dots of what happened in his home while he was away. Earlier with all the sounds and smells of the forest he had failed to recognize it, but now with such an oppressive force on him his senses heightened and so what he feared most here had indeed occurred.

The smell of blood was in the air.

Brother Fangraff, also referred to as the “black claw” of the White Claws, is really just a man who loved power. He climbed his way in the most brutal organization in the forbidden zone by stepping on the heads of anyone weaker than him, and pandering to anyone stronger than him, all so he can enjoy more freedoms when it came to committing what the organization saw as petty crime such as robbery and the murder of peasants.

The scariest thing about him, however, is his affinity with gravity spirits. Through some strange act of god, this good-for-nothing hoodlum living in the middle of nowhere was able to find a spirit vein, and using it, was able to awaken his talent by eating the spirits and their energy. Although this technique, if you can even call it that, is far more wasteful than just absorbing them, it ensures there won’t be any disobedience between the spirits and him.

But to Argus, none of that is important, because this man, Alver Fangraff, killed his family.

He didn’t know how he was so sure of it. There were no blood stains on him, and he hadn’t gone inside yet to see what had happened, so there really was no way for him to know. That, however, didn’t matter.

The instincts he had relied on since his first day in Artoria had told him at that very moment,

This man killed your family.

Beads of sweat were falling off his face and onto the arid ground he was on. The scent of dirt and grass were filling his nose, obstructing his sharp sense of smell from picking up anything, his arms and legs struggled and flailed as he tried desperately to get up and break through the overwhelming pressure set upon him.

Finally, the men around him stop shouting, and he is able to hear Fangraff’s words for the first time.

“You’re telling me this small brat was able to slice your sword off clean?”

The sentence hangs in the air before he continues.

“The three of you are absolutely useless, losing to a kid with no spiricasting! If it was me, I’d have bashed his skull in by now, yet you're saying this kid’s strong? Go, get lost, before I decide you all will be joining him in the underworld. And don’t let me see you around White Claw again, you get me?”

The sound of swift footsteps can be heard running towards the town’s direction, followed by Fangraff’s voice once again, except now clearer than ever as it was directed at Argus, who was still laying on the ground trying and failing to escape the mounting pressure.

“Now then, you twerp. I don’t know where you got the balls to try to stand at the same level as even the lowest rank at white claw, but-” He places his foot on Argus’s back, pushing him further into the dirt, as he continues “I believe in second chances, so If you cry and beg me, maybe I’ll make your death merciful. How about it?” A huge, shit-eating grin crawls up the face of Fangraff, as he nudges his heel deeper into Argus’s back and moves it around, as if prompting him.

Rage fills Argus’s brain, which threatens to consume all the logical thoughts in his brain that tells him to do the best he can to survive. Those thoughts are the only thing that allowed him to live this long in a hellhole like Raontown, which doesn’t have a functioning law system or any enforcement. He knew what he had to say, and he knew that if he was able to distract this deranged man by pleading with him, he might have a chance to survive.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

He started pushing against the pressure around him, trying to break free from the heavy spirits that were binding him in place. Finally after his long, continuous efforts, Argus was able to break through the pressure just a little bit, and in a hoarse and weak tone, say the words that have been hanging off his tongue this whole time.

“Fuck off, asshole.”

Immediately as the words leave his lips, he feels a moment of satisfaction, followed by a sharp, numbing pain in his groin, corresponding with the pressure above him alleviating, as he is tossed on the ground where he lays motionless. his heart pounds a million times a second, as The shock from the hit sends tremors through his body, which starts to spasm violently due to the pain.

But it is not done yet.

Through Argus’s eyes, which are squinted in pain, he can see Fangraff towering over him, his foot raised up high. He screams something in an angry tone, but it all just sounds like muffled gibberish to my tired ears, as his foot slowly falls down, enshrouding my vision until all he can see is the imminent death in his future.

In Argus’s final moments, he recounts his short life until now. From the moment he had found out he had no affinity for spirits, to the countless days spent restless at the training ground to improve the only skill he had and cherished.

‘And all for what?’

His final thoughts were not those of anger or despair, nor were they of sadness or grief. All of his energy that he had still had in my aching body, which was breaking down by the second, was focused towards one thing.

‘What could I have done better?’

…

Silence.

A deafening, eerie, pitch black silence.

Argus had never really wondered what death was like, but it seems answers like this have a tendency to present themselves to him in the worst possible way. He took a deep breath in then sighed, letting the oxygen he had accumulated slowly leave his lung-

‘wait, wait, wait, what?’

The shock from the realization had jolted Argus awake, as he eyes slammed open, he was greeted to a truly majestic scene.

He was on a mountain, far above the ground, the clouds, and all other things that dwell below the vastness of the sky. Just with his eyes, he could determine that this mountain is easily the largest thing in the kingdom, no, the continent for sure, as it stretched to the point where just looking down its immense slope made Argus feel nauseous.

Taking a step back from the ledge and turning around, Argus could not help but involuntarily gasp at the sheer beauty of the mountaintop behind him. A row of elegant, red-leafed trees lined the main road, which spiraled down a small downhill and into a simple looking wooden house.

Behind the trees sat two fountains, each with its own type of decoration, and with it, its own guardian statue at the top.

The left fountain emanated a fierce aura, and it was covered in a type of bright red flower he had only heard of before, called ambrosia. Putting aside the extremely rare herb, the fountain’s guardian statue was the thing that truly shocked Argus, as atop the statue sat the mystical Fire Lizard.

Although its name did not befit its status, the fire lizard was, in fact, just that. A 30 meter tall, 70 meter long behemoth capable of scorching entire towns down to the point where not even the ashes of the ashes remained. While the beast itself died at the fissure of the continents, its legacy very much lives on as a symbol of war.

On the other hand, the right fountain was the epitome of serenity. Just by looking at it, Argus could feel his worries fading, his anxieties fading away, and his previously drumming heart rate slow down. This fountain was decorated with a purplish-white, tall flower he had never seen before, but it exuded a powerful and sweet fragrance, which was so strong he could taste it from afar.

On top of this fountain sat an equally as mystical spiribeast which had its own unassuming nickname, simply dubbed “Frog of the Swamp.” This frog was actually notorious for a completely different reason as the Fire Lizard, as it was the first spiribeast ever discovered to have developed human speech.

The story itself has probably been mixed and muddled over the generations until it is a shadow of its former self, but the basics have always been the same. A group of elders were trying to discover a cure for the king of their empire and ended up happening upon a normal looking swamp in their conquest. What they found there was not a flower, nor an herb, nor an all-powerful fruit, but rather a frog the size of a dwarf, which busily ran around the swamp to and fro, completing various tasks for its caretaking.

After following the frog for a while, the caretakers finally went and approached it, where it then greeted them and made them a cup of mystical tea, which is said to have sharpened their senses and made them regain some of their youth. The elders were stunned, and asked the frog about what it had used for this, when it said it had just imbued some of the water spirits with spirits of health for this tea. The elders then took some of the tea back as a gift from the frog and gave it to the king. After which the details of what the tea did was murky, but it somehow ended with everyone living happily ever after.

As such, this swamp frog became the symbol for wisdom, representing a boundless wealth of knowledge which lives inside of the spirit realm.

Finally, after taking in the incredible scene in front of him for what felt like an eternity, Argus steeled his nerves and started walking on the winding path towards the house. The rocky path, which seemed smooth at a distance, was instead rocky and uneven, and his worn out training shoes were feeling the brunt of it. The small, jagged stones cut and scraped his ankles, leading to a very unpleasant couple of minutes as he slowly walked through this seemingly ever-growing path towards his unknown future.

Pushing through the pain and exhaustion, Step by step, Argus eventually landed in front of the wooden house, which sat dully in the middle of the summit, in contrast to the bright and beautiful scenery around it.

Nevertheless, Argus knew instinctively that whatever reason he was in this place for, it sat just behind this rickety wooden door. His instincts, which he had gone out to train with his father since he was little, were screaming at him that whatever was behind this door was incomparable to him. It felt even more powerful than when he had once seen the “Genius of the Continent”, who was also conveniently the son of the most powerful man south of the fissure.

Pushing the unnecessary thoughts to the back of his mind and grabbing the door knob firmly, Argus slowly pulled the door towards him, unveiling a simple, bland interior, which fit perfectly with the house's exterior appearance. He was about to take a step in when a shiver down his spine sent his 5 senses all into full alert, as he heard a voice, calm and deep, like a whisper in his ear.

“I’ve been expecting you, kid.”

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The hearty laugh of a man far past his prime echoed inside the poorly isolated wooden house, bouncing off the trees and walls alike, feeling up the clearing with a sense of joy.

“You gotta learn to restrain your killing intent, kid. If you keep it up like this your hair might fall out before mine does.” The deep voiced man said before returning to his fit of belly laughter.

In front of the elder sat Argus, his eyebrow twitching ever so slightly in annoyance as he stood there calming his senses, a clear look of impatience plastered on his face.

His source of irritation? A man, looking to be in his mid 70s, who stood with a truly outrageous build in front of him. He wore a traditional swordsman’s coat representing the lowest rank in the civilian’s army with no shirt under, as well as large baggy pants, making him look like a pretentious, ignorant swordsman fresh out of the academy.

Despite his ragged looks, through his open coat was revealed a perfect physique, with strong, visible muscles hidden under countless battle scars which lined his chest and arms. The old man also stood at a modest 8 meters if Argus had to put a wager on it, and combined with his unruly build, it seemed like he could easily pass as a half-giant.

There was no doubt this man was human though. After all, though he had not realized it yet, Argus had seen this man before, and plenty of times at that. This man, at least the way his parents had always framed it, is his great-great-great-great-and-some-more-great grandfather, also known as Vaeltaja, though back then, he often went by a different name.

The Pinnacle.

This man, Vaeltaja, had been the first and only one in the recorded history of Artoria to reach the pinnacle of the sword, the state in which the sword and the body are one and the same. He stood above the entire world when it came to his individual strength, far above any who had taken up the art of combat, even if they had practiced from the day they came out of the womb.

Nevertheless, to Argus, this was just an annoying old man with a terrifying aura, and since he figured he’s already dead and probably can’t die again, Argus wasn’t all too scared of this man causing harm to him.

In a slightly annoyed tone, Argus asked the still-laughing old man “so, why exactly am I here?”

The old man’s laughter finally came to an end, as he turned towards Argus, a smile still large and looming on his face, and said “you sound a bit ungrateful for a brat who was about to die, don’t you think?”

Argus’s face turned from slight annoyance to slight shock, as the old man’s voice was powerful enough by itself to send his heart rate shooting back up to where it was previously. The underlying hint of intimidation in his voice suggested the fact that the old man wasn’t one for patience.

Quickly correcting himself, Argus turns to face the man before bowing slightly and saying in a more respectful tone “I apologize for my behavior, honored elder, but my question still stands. Why is it that you have brought me here?”

The old man let out a chuckle once again before telling Argus “No need for such formalities, just call me gramps” he said, the intimidation seemingly gone from his voice now. “Now then, as for your question, it is because you were about to die.”

Argus’s face, which had previously changed from annoyed to shocked, now wore on it hints of confusion. “Well… Yes, I was indeed. But why am I not dead is my question.”

“Ah well that, you see, is a different story.”

Argus sat silent, his gaze telling the old man of his curiosity, and so the old man continued.

“Quite simply, you have yet to realize your talent, and were about to die off and kill off my 3000 year bloodline with you.”

“Kill off your bloodline…” Argus was mulling over the man’s words, before the realization had hit him like a lightning bolt to a clocktower.

“Wait! Are you-”

“Patience, Child, the story will all come together in due time.”

The man walked over to an unnaturally large chair, which fit perfectly with his similarly unnatural frame, before seemingly sinking into it, as he started off the tale of his life.

“Although my introduction’s a bit late, I assume you already understand who I am by this point. What you might not know is that 3000 years ago, I went by the name of Vaeltaja. This was far before the discovery of spiricasting, when the heaven’s spirits still roamed the earth unbounded by the greed of man and beast alike. Back then, it was your prowess with martial arts that truly solidified your status in the world, and in that regard, I truly stood at the top. It all started about 3014 years ago when the great Chorra the thir…”

Argus tried his best to beat down that exhaustion from his body while listening to the old man’s tale, as he blabbered on and on about dynasties, kings, his journey, the many foes he faced and so on and so on and so on. Although inside it were some incredible pieces of lost history, which some scholars would be sure to kill for, but at the same time, dying was surprisingly tiring on his brain. Eventually, the old man’s slow words became a systematic rhythm to which his eyes slowly dozed off, his brain drifting with them to the realm of dreams.

----------------------------------------

Vaeltaja watched his grandson with his round, glistening eyes, as his chest slowly rose and fell, sitting on ground below him. His brownish hair was calmly swaying along with the wind, his arms and legs limp while he fell into a deep slumber.

“This kid’s full of surprises, isn’t he?”

The hoarse voice of an aged woman sounded behind Vaeltaja. She continued “to be able to hold out against multiple variations of sleep spirits… Just how strong is his willpower?”

Vaeltaja let out a delighted chuckle, his smile turning from happy to a slight smug smirk. With his eyes never leaving the young man’s sleeping stature, he says to the woman behind him “this kid… Is the first one to inherit my heart.”

“Your heart?” The woman seems intrigued.

“I’m sure you are plenty familiar with spirit hearts, being an accomplished spiricaster yourself, but have you heard of spirit hearts cracking?”

The woman nods, a slight solemn expression seeping onto her face. “I had a friend who had his crack in his late 40s. It's a worse fate than death, I tell you. Poor bastard couldn’t even breathe right since that day, with the constant relapsing and all.”

The old man’s smirk grows wider with every word. “So it seems weird this kid can’t spiricast then, right? Contrary to the normal symptoms of a crack, his body is significantly stronger than even most spiribeasts.”

The woman’s face turned a slight frown with realization, before turning her head from the boy to Vaeltaja. “So what's the big reveal here then, Mr. Pinnacle?”

“This kid can’t spiricast no because his heart is cracked, but because he never had a spirit heart to begin with.”

The woman's frown quickly turned into shock from the realization.

“So he…”

“Has a sword heart.” the old man finished her sentence for her.

Before that fact could fully sink in, the eyes of the youth, who was sleeping steadily on the floor while they were conversing, started to open. The woman saw this and quickly disappeared, leaving Vaeltaja seated in the exact position he was when the boy fell asleep originally.

Vaeltaja's smirk, however, was the one thing that changed between the two scenes, as his big grin reflected his thoughts so obviously even a blind man could see them.

At this moment, Vaeltaja had nothing but anticipation for the young boy in front of him, as he couldn’t help but mutter under his breath, a hopeful tone creeping into his voice, “maybe he can finally be the one to return what was once lost.”

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A few minutes prior…

‘My brain feels hazy’

Argus awoke in a state of confusion, as if a fog had settled into his brain, clouding his thoughts and movements. His eyes felt relaxed, as if his muscles had given way under his exhaustion, making his eyelids feel sluggish and difficult to move. Instead of trying to force them, he sat still and tried to observe his surroundings. His ears, which were still as sharp as ever, noticed the quiet sounds of conversation where he inferred he remembered the old man sitting previously.

“...heart?” A female voice sounded quiet and confused.

The male voice responded in a quiet, but noticeably smug voice. Unfortunately, Argus was only able to make out short snippets of it.

Realizing what was happening, Argus decided to keep his eyes closed for just a bit longer, in case he could learn some useful information that this old man might still have in him. A few minutes of worthless conversation pass and go, as Argus’s ears are still twitching ever so slightly to try to catch the words.

Finally, he is able to understand one of the old man’s words, who seemed to have been telling something to the woman. Tilting his ears as hard as he could in hopes that it could help his hearing, but to no avail. The only snippet he manages to catch is “...has a (sword?)…”, as the final words are swallowed by the foggy silence around him. Finally, as he realizes he won’t be able to get something, he slowly opens his eyes, feigning as if he has been sleeping this whole time.

The scene in front of him unfolds into the same scene he had seen beforehand, except now the old man’s grin has turned smug and smirk-y, as if plotting something. As the fog dispels around him, he can now more clearly hear the old man’s voice as he says “well it seems like my story was a bit too long winded for someone.” The smirk still clearly on his face.

Argus simply does a sound similar to a morning grunt before stretching out his arms, then standing up and stretching out his back and legs. He hasn’t trained in about a couple hours now and is feeling the consequences of it, as his muscles which are so used to aching at this point of morning are still in tip-top condition, causing him to feel uncomfortable. Nevertheless, he bears through it as to not show disrespect to this devious elder before him. The elder in question, seeing him do his morning routine, chuckles, before losing a bit of his smile, and saying in a more serious tone than Argus has previously heard.

“Well then, now that you are well rested, we shall get down to business.”

Argus, whose mind had been all over the place a second ago, sat back down on the chair in front of the old man before changing his expression to an equally serious one, and asking “the business of why am I here?”

“Precisely. Although the details themselves are quite the laundry list of items, none of them concern you too much except for one fact.” The old man pauses, letting Argus take a breath before continuing on,

“Argus Wayfinder, I, Vaeltaja, god of wind and freedom, the pinnacle swordsman, am here to dub you my successor.”