Chapter 12: The Knight
Chapter 12: The Knight
Tomoe Meguri, the red-haired twintailed Knight of Sona's peerage, started to wipe herself down with a towel after yet another grueling training session.
Most of her time was spent sparring with the sturdiest woman of the bunch, Tsubasa Yura—Sona's Rook. Which ended up being a long, drawn out battle of attrition to see whether her offense would give in first, or Tsubasa's defense.
That Baka! She almost ended up breaking one of my babies again!
She pressed her lips together, frowning as she observed the state of the Tanto in her hand, the same one she had used during her bout with Tsubasa. The blade had been both dulled in the process, and experienced a great deal of chipping on some parts of its alloy.
Even if I try to fix this one up, it'll never be as good as new. I have no other choice but to retire it.
Even though her arsenal was vast, she treated each and every weapon that resided in it with utmost care. Losing one brought her pretty much the same grief as losing a long-time pet.
But once she arrived at the doorstep of her arsenal, her footsteps came to an abrupt halt. The sound of clattering from within arousing her suspicion as she leaned closer, placing her ear closer to the door.
Is the President inside? She's the only one other than me that has the key isn't she?
She opened the door, find herself met with the sight of a figure fiddling around with a large cluster of weapons on the ground—each of which she immediately assumed were from her own collection.
"Hey! What do you think you're—" But after a few seconds of frantically looking around the room, she noticed that not a single one of her children had been removed from their racks.
And that only confused her even further. If none of her weapons had been touched, then where did the pile of weapons on the ground come from?
"Hello," obviously, the person inside was none other than Takauji who had been let inside by Sona earlier. "Do you need something?" He asked her calmly, pretending as if absolutely nothing was awry.
"T-That's my line! What do you think you're doing in my armory?! Ashikaga-senpai!" Even if he hadn't touched anything, she wasn't aware that Sona had let him in since she was busy sparring with Tsubasa before she could be informed.
"Copying."
"...Copying?" Her gaze drifted to the cluster of weapons on the ground once more. "Hold on a second… You didn't create all those did you?"
"I did, but only a few of them are of decent quality." He reached down, somehow causing every armament he touched to vanish into particles of light-blue dust, leaving only a select few behind which he picked up. "Since you're here, I'm assuming you're the Knight of Sitri-san's peerage. Do me a favour and tell me how well-made these are," he tossed a Yari at her, which she caught in one hand while holding her chipped Tanto in the other.
"You could've at least said please," she huffed in response to his lack of manners.
However, she was undeniably curious about his ability to create weapons seemingly out of nowhere. Alongside wanting to know more about her senior turned Contracted Magician in general; the newbie who had actually managed to land a hit on Reya despite having no experience whatsoever.
Her gaze hardened as she ran her finger across the Yari's cold metal, capable of discerning that the sharpness was akin to one of her actual Yari's merely from touch alone—proving her expertise.
From her estimations, the margin of error between Takauji's projection and the original was probably only around 10-15% at most.
"How did you make this?"
"Tell me if it's good or not first, then I'll answer your question."
"It's definitely good, did you make it the same way you did those knives during your spar with Reya?" She inquired.
He nodded, "I did. As long as I know what the internal makeup of an object is, I can create it."
She smouldered, "And you just happened to know how all these weapons are made?"
"Perchance."
"..."
"More importantly, I need to ask you for a favour."
"Go on."
"I need you to teach me how to use a weapon." One of the passive skills he had obtained, "Sleight of Hand", was supposed to enhance his ability to learn martial art techniques.
Now seemed like a prime opportunity to put that trait to use, especially since it scaled off his Dexterity which was currently sitting at 116 thanks to the enhanced glasses he was wearing.
"A weapon? I assumed you were trying to be more of a spell-specialist like Reya."
"I can do both," he declared without so much as a morsel of hesitation.
At least he's got the confidence part down.
"Alright then, I suppose I have enough time to give you a crash course. Do you have a weapon in mind?"
He shook his head, "No. I don't know anything about weapons, you decide for me."
Didn't you literally just say you knew the composition of every weapon here? To save herself from a headache, she decided to let the matter slide.
"From what I could tell during your spar with Reya, you're a fan of fighting at range. So maybe that one will suit you," she pointed at an elongated, cylindrical object that was beige in color and appeared to be made out of some sort of hardwood.
A "Bō"—a popular wooden staff with an extremely lengthy history throughout all of Asia.
"Very well, I'll be in your care then." Much to her surprise, he didn't try to argue against her decision in the slightest. Proceeding to project the nearly 2 meter long weapon. "But before we start, let me see that for a second." He gestured at the broken Tanto in Tomoe's hand.
"This? What for?"
"Just give it here," he urged her.
I see the President's warning about his attitude wasn't in vain.
She reluctantly handed him the weapon, folding her arms as she awaited him to do whatever it was he had planned.
But that feeling of reluctance quickly transformed into awe. The chips in her Tanto started to instantaneously repair themselves, filling in with fresh alloy out of thin air.
As I thought, if it's an object I'm already capable of projecting then I can fill in any missing pieces from a broken, existing object without needing to create an entirely new one.
He tossed it back to her, Tomoe's shock heightening as she was handed the realization that even the blade's sharpness had nearly been fully restored.
My baby has been revived! She hugged the Tanto affectionately, realizing that she had done so in front of Takauji a moment too late.
"Ahem," she cleared her throat. "Thank you."
"Consider it my down payment."
Tomoe led him down to the opposite end of her arsenal, opening up a sliding door that led into what looked to be a Dojo, reminiscent of the one Murayama's Kendo Club used.
"The first thing you need to learn is how to actually hold the staff, what you're doing right now is a common mistake most beginners make." She had grabbed the original Bō to demonstrate proper technique for him, "Don't ever hold it in the middle, doing so will only limit its range. Instead, hold the bottom with your left hand, and place your right about an arm's length above it."
"Like this?" He mimicked her posture and stance.
She hummed approvingly, "Like that. Now I don't have enough time to teach you the basics through theory alone, so I'm going to have to make use of an alternative." She seamlessly twirled the staff in her hand, pointing one end of it at him. "I'm going to adopt a more practical method."
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"There you are! Where on earth have you been—" Murayama paused upon seeing her brother walk through the front door with a stack of books in his hand, something about his appearance bringing an immediate halt to the rehearsed reprimand she had been storing as a result of him leaving before making breakfast. "Woah! What the hell happened to you?! You look like you got thrown through a woodchipper!"
He groaned, "Your analogy isn't inaccurate."
His face and arms were covered in deep, gruesome looking purple bruises. Alongside the rest of his body that was covered by his clothing—making him appear like he had been mauled by an entire classrooms' worth of people.
He hurriedly threw himself on the couch, letting out a much more pained groan as he gripped his shoulder.
I refuse to believe what she put me through was teaching, that was clearly targeted physical abuse.
"Could you go grab me an ice pack or something?" There wasn't a single muscle on him that didn't ache with the ferocity of a thousand suns, each and every movement he made felt like someone was digging a hot knife into his flesh.
"First tell me where you were this morning," she folded her arms and wore a spiteful grin.
Even if he was all beat up, that didn't excuse him for making her have to leave the house first thing on a weekend to grab breakfast outside.
"Forget it," he rolled his eyes and stood up, heading to his bedroom with the intention of getting started on the books on barriers and teleportation circles Sona had given him.
"This also has something to do with Shinra-senpai and Himejima-senpai doesn't it?" She narrowed her eyes, uninterested in letting him go without getting an answer. "You've been acting strange ever since they visited, so don't even think about telling me that nothing's going on."
He pressed his lips together, an irritated expression crawling up his face. "When you wake up one day and notice something different about yourself, that's when I'll tell you everything."
She blinked slowly, "I quite literally have no idea what that's supposed to mean."
"Unless Mom was getting busy behind Dad's back, you'll understand it soon enough." He closed the door behind him, causing Murayama to throw her arms up and scoff—completely fed up with her brother's secrecy.
Maybe I should just do some detective work on my own, there's no use pressuring him like this if he's just going to remain tight-lipped the whole time.
If you wanted something done right, then you should just do it yourself.
Takauji sat down on his desk and set aside the stack of books temporarily, opening up the screen as he remembered to check something important—the stats he had gained from sparring with Reya, and from training with Tomoe.
[+16 STR (21 → 37).]
[+22 VIT (32 → 54).]
[+19 DEX (58 → 77).]
All my stats are starting to reach 50, it's just my Speed and Strength that I need to work on. Although, training with Hairo is probably going to solve both those problems for me. So I shouldn't brood on it too much.
But gaining stat increases wasn't the only benefit his work had yielded.
[Skill Awakened! — (Neutral) Mana Shield; conjure circular-shaped constructs of Mana that are fixated to your palms, capable of blocking both physical-based and mana-based attacks from an opponent.]
[Skill Awakened! — (Dark) Shadow Gun; fire a compressed projectile made from Dark Mana at your opponent, landing your shot will cause their vision to blur for a brief period of time.]
Isn't that first skill what Reya used to block my knives? No, there's probably some sort of difference in how it operates when applied with Mana and Demonic Power. Also, I wonder if I could skill splice it into my uniform?
Shadow Gun was pretty easy to understand, being yet another skill that encouraged him to fight at a range, and also was somewhat similar to the pellet of Demonic Power Reya had used in their spar in the sense that it was a compressed, bullet-like projectile.
I'd really like to get that targeting spell she used, maybe I'll ask her about it sometime in the future.
For now, he had a long day of studying barriers and teleportation circles ahead of him.
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Them stats are coming in, and also those skills. I'm learning a lot from the original MoD on how I need to pace the MC's power progression, to avoid growing him too fast and writing myself into a dead-end. So I hope that shows throughout this rewrite.
If you're a fan of the series and want to read ahead, as well as support me go ahead and check me out on my p*treon.
p*treon/Accel14 (Up to 15 Advance Chapters are avaliable as of now.)
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Code: wNzT9AEsaz