[Disparity]

Tomorrow was the day.

Today, Cain and I were busy sparring. Him with a spear and me with my wakizashi and shield.

Yet, tomorrow was indeed the day.

The day that decided whether or not I'd have to go against the wishes of the devils. If I somehow lose to this Sage guy or whatever his name was, I was going to fight the fallen anyway.

I don't even know why I'm being so adamant about this. No matter what people say about me, I usually don't care. Their opinions are just that. Opinions. They don't matter in the end, so why should I care what others think of me?

But there was something about what Mittelt said that just gets under my skin. It wasn't the luck factor. I have no doubt that I'm an extremely lucky person. To have both the Pride ability and this specific Sacred Gear is beyond lucky.

That wasn't it, though. It was when she brought up that I was human. For one, why even do that? Does it really matter in the end whether I'm a human or not? And why did she say it with such obvious disgust? As if my existence was a stain on the Earth.

Something about it fills me with fury. A fog of rage that is hard to see through. Is that what I'm proud of? Being human?

Maybe?

...No, that doesn't make sense. Or, it does, but there's more to it. How the hell does this stupid system know more about me than I do?

Whatever.

No! Not whatever.

That's another thing. I think something went wrong when I came into this world or something. I've always been a nonchalant person from what I can remember, but I don't think it was this bad.

The other day, when Aika saw me practicing, it took a few hours for me to realize that maybe ignoring that issue wouldn't be a good idea.

Thankfully, she can be pretty reasonable when she needs to be. After a few texts, she said she would talk to me about it after next week. In person.

And at the time, it felt so natural. It felt normal to just ignore a problem that didn't upset my pride, threaten my freedom, or my life. Like it was a trivial thing that-

A spear suddenly soars through the air and pierces straight through my eye, my brain, and out the backside of my head. By all standards, I'm rendered dead in seconds.

I wake up with a gasp, looking around in slight confusion, before rolling my eyes and going back to sleep.

A familiar world of gray surrounds me again as I catch the tail end of Cain putting down another sword into the ground to signify my loss. A steel falchion, by the look of it.

He takes a moment to make sure it's firmly in the… void ground, before looking up at me. He chuckles at my frown.

"You really should've picked a longer weapon. Unless your opponent is even more unskilled than you or has a similarly short blade, you won't be able to get close." He lectures.

I roll my eyes at the advice he's given me every time I lose to his spear mastery. Which is every time he uses the spear.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I don't wanna pick up a new weapon yet until I've gotten to a good skill level with this one. Plus I can't decide between a naginata, a spear, or a trident." I respond.

"...Why a trident?" He asks, giving me a look that screams 'you're an idiot'.

"Because they look cool, why else?"

My grin is pretty wide as I say that, but his face tells me that he is most definitely a weapon nerd. I don't care how impractical of a weapon it is, it looks cool and I like it.

He rolls his eyes before a frown appears on his face in thought. A moment later, he speaks.

"You were distracted. More so than usual. Explain."

Should I? He's helped me so far, even without me asking him to. He seems like a pretty calm person. The only times he's ever even yelled at me is for training purposes.

"...Nah. If it gets outta hand, I'll come to you. But for now, I think I can deal with this myself." My answer makes him frown harder for a second before a huge smile appears on his face.

"Good, good. That's how a man should be! Asking for help is alright, but sometimes you've gotta deal with it yourself." He says sagely, nodding to himself.

"Right. Well, if we're done here I'm going to go rest for a-" My words are interrupted by the sound of a doorbell ringing from the outside world.

Who could be at my door? Aika said we'd talk next week and the devils were told about me training, so I don't know why they'd be here.

The fallen? No, they would just attack. Oh, the things I ordered online must finally be here!

"It's here!" I exclaimed before fading away and rushing to the door in real life.

[}-{]

After the kid was gone, Cain chuckled at his antics before turning his eyes to the little pest that was only visible to him.

Like every other day, he had to check. Raising his sword, he rushed it with a level of speed that eclipsed any feats he'd done before. His technique, speed, and power in that one slash were immeasurably stronger than anything he showed Katsuo.

And yet, the little shit that got on his nerves didn't even so much as budge.

He couldn't help but sigh at another failure to even scratch it. 'Eh, it was worth a shot.' He shrugged, putting his sword into the ground.

In response, it pulsated and glowed a light red color, seemingly taunting him. Although it had no discernible features of a living organism, it gave off a feeling that Cain could only describe as 'What did you expect?'.

If nothing else, it was smug.

Still, he had an idea of what this thing was. And the fight Katsuo was going to take part in was the perfect test to confirm his theory.

"Soon," he promised it. In response, it pulsed with feelings of exasperation and indifference, uncaring of his promise.

[}-{]

Taking my package and heading to my living room, I activated the barrier spell I stole from Mittelt as I set it down, looking like a kid at the candy store.

Inside the packages were a few items I didn't know how to obtain without just buying them. Obsidian, stingray skin, silk, and a few other things.

I managed to decipher the few magic spells I had stored away, and the result was pretty interesting.

[Spell Discovered: Illusion Barrier]

[Spell Discovered: Energy Construct]

[Spell Discovered: Energy Battery]

As it turns out, none of these spells actually gave me the skill associated with their branch of magic, and I think I know why.

Reconstruction and Deconstruction are the absolute basics of transmutation magic. There wasn't much thought put into creating them, since they were pretty much expected for me to know just by having the skill.

However, for Download, it has nothing to do with transmutation. It's just a convenient spell to have to make transmutation easier.

My theory is that it actually is its own branch of magic, but I just don't know anything about the fundamentals. Just like how I don't know anything about magic theory for barriers, or constructs.

To gain the skills necessary for those branches, I'd have to be taught how the branch itself works.

But that wasn't really relevant. Just an idea that I had.

These spells would help me with my current project. Creating a weapon. And a shield, I guess. But mostly the weapon.

I took apart the Light Sword and Light Gun and found out that it was made of some pretty cheap materials. I thought I'd get some magical alloy like mithril or maybe some gold from how it looks, but no.

It was just steel, brass, marble oddly enough, and those two spells. Energy Construct and Energy Barrier.

With those, I could create the ultimate slashing weapon with my current subpar knowledge.

Taking all the pieces, I use Deconstruction to take all of them apart to their molecules. The pieces floated in the air, waiting for my instruction as I visualized what I wanted it to look like.

Hardwood and Black stingray skin for the Tsuka, or the hilt. The silk is used as a wrapping on the handle.

Cast iron from my unused cookware for the Tsuba and the Fuchi. Or in other words, the handle collar and the handguard.

Meanwhile, the brass from the exorcist weapons is used solely for the Seppa, or the space in between the blade and the handle.

The handle is square-shaped for simplicity, and because I think it looks nice. Speaking of nice, I consider adding steel to the mix for accenting but decide against it as it would make it heavier for no reason.

The main part, and the one that will be the hardest to create, is the blade. The blade is 50cm while the handle is only 20cm.

Large enough to keep unarmed people at bay, while short enough to be used in small spaces.

I take the obsidian and flatten it as much as physically possible. A fact that most people don't know, is that obsidian is one of the few materials that can still function at a width as thin as three nanometers, making it one of the sharpest things in the world.

And that's exactly what I plan to use it for. A mono-molecular blade. One that should theoretically be able to cut anything.

And finally, the Saya, or scabbard, is made of hardwood as well.

'A beautiful blade.' Cain comments as I finish its construction.

And it is. I wholeheartedly agree.

However, I'm not done.

I unwrap the handle and deconstruct parts of the hardwood to implant steel in its place. The implants, however, are in the shape of two custom magic circles. One is the Energy Battery, and the other is the Energy Construct.

The battery is attuned to only absorb the Ki of the user when I allow it to do so. And to prevent it from being used by anyone other than me, I've added a function to absorb as much as possible immediately from any users besides me.

Basically, it'll try to kill anyone but me.

The second spell, the construct, is to fix a fatal flaw with the weapon itself. See, humanity has known about the sheer sharpness of obsidian for a very long time.

The issue with that, however, is that because it's so thin it becomes brittle. Even if it could easily cut a steel pillar in half with a perfect cut, it would then fall apart right after.

So to fix that problem, I created a construct that takes up the exact same space as the blade, down to the molecule. Using Ki as the energy source, the blade stays unbelievably sharp while now becoming as durable as the density of the user's life force.

Then, I used the Illusion Barrier spell and the Energy Battery spell on the scabbard so that the blade isn't ever noticed by anyone who isn't in the supernatural, even if I blatantly have it out.

I don't know any dimensional storage spells so this will have to do for now.

And finally, it's done.

I think I'll call this…

[Divergence (Epic)]

-----

A/N: Wasn't sure about the name of the blade, but I like it.

That guy who said I should create a mono molecular blade, that was literally one of my plans since the beginning of the story. The light sword just gave me the idea to make it a bit better, since making it more durable with just science is too expensive.

Of course, he could've just kept reforming it when it broke, but I already wrote the chapter so fuck it.