“Haaaaah…”

I sighed with a happy expression while I left my room and entered the living room, seeing the old man reading what looks to me like a very old book while sitting on his favourite armchair. The title was in a language I didn’t know. Will I have the chance to actually learn more languages as well?

Uh~! I could also then talk with the beauties around the Wor-...

…

This old fucker had too much influence on me that it hurts now. But never mind this disturbing fact. I was actually really happy. And that had a simple reason.

While sleeping, I had a dream. But a normal dream. Just me being a blacksmith in a fantasy world with my beautiful wife that had dirty blonde hair.

The old man looked at me while I was busy remembering every detail of my dream. Or to be precise, the detail when it was nighttime. hehe…

"Did you sleep well, boy?"

"Like a log!"

True statement! My body never felt so refreshed after a good sleep. Hitting that old man in the head with that rock must have been very satisfying.

The old man closed his book and took his glasses off while standing up. With a quick glance towards the outside, the old man started to talk in a relaxed way, making my mind ease a bit.

“Great. I guess it is time for you to understand your ability a bit more. Our schedule will be going for 75 days straight starting at 7 am with ten hours of ability training, four hours of sparing with me and 2 hours for yourself. How does that sound?”

I pondered. In my head, I was jumping up and down from hearing that I could finally use my ability. Hahahaha! It was refreshing to know that you could finally use something you weren’t allowed to. Like finally being able to run in a race when all you could do was to walk slowly. But what I was wondering was…

“Why the spar? Didn’t we already have done that more than enough?”

“We will spar for that long because what I realised while watching you fight with your blade is that you do not have all the experience you’d usually have when training for years with a Kilij. This means your ability most likely doesn’t give you instantaneous fighting ability but just some basics while amplifying your understanding to the highest limit. And besides, your ability is about weapons and not just your current blade, am I right?”

“Yes.”

That was right. Just remembering the scene at my awakening with all these weapons floating around me, I understood what the old man meant. And besides, most of my time, I will be honing my ability. And as far as I understood it, it wasn’t a fighting ability per se.

“So since I already figured the true nature of your ability out, I thought I took the time and prepared something. Follow me.”

‘What? Oh shit… don’t tell me… oh god, please let it be what I think it is and not another torture device!’

Walking behind the old man with hesitant steps, I soon found myself in front of a hut. Another, smaller hut. So it is what I think it is! Great!

“This is the place where you will be mostly training your ability. With what I think your ability is, you’ll soon sleep here more than in the hut. Now come on! Enter!”

“I should… enter first?”

This old man didn’t put any traps inside it, right? Maybe if I used a tiny bit of Will, I could check if there are any traps. Let's se-!

SMACK

“Do you have no trust for your master? There is nothing that will hurt you more than myself so just enter already.”

“Oh! So you acknowledge that fact.”

“What was that?”

“Entering!”

I immediately went for the doorknob after seeing that the eyes of a certain old man light up dangerously. I better not start planning my funeral so soon…

Entering the little hut, I was immediately greeted by the smell of metal and a slight heatwave passed me, making me breathe in a bit more air than I usually needed. But this was exactly as I expected.

A forge. And not just a simple one. But a forge with multiple hammers, that seemed to have multiple weights, hanging on the wall, a storage-like room filled with every kind of materials and most importantly all these different working stations like the forge itself, different anvils, grinders with different sizes and materials used.

My eyes lit up subconsciously. I didn’t know why but this was like a dream come true! Oh, wait. It may actually be a dream come true as my dream today was of me being a blacksmith. Hammering down on hot metal, grinding sharp weapons, mixing different metals to create alloy perfect for each weapon.

I subconsciously was getting more and more fired up even though at first, I hoped that I would get a battle ability more but this was fine. For one, I could be independent, not having to rely on the weapons of other people. The fact that I didn’t just understand weapons in their making but also in their usage could mean that I had something between a crafter ability and a battle ability.

This was fine. This was in fact perfect. Having some way to train without straining my body like when I was fighting has its own perks. Right?

There was a problem though. And that is that I didn’t know how to forge a weapon. Well I understand the logic behind it but I never did it before so even if I wanted to attempt it, my product will probably break immediately.

The old man started to talk again, ignoring my last minute worries.

“I see you getting fired up but before that, I want to test something out.”

“Oh and what is it?”

CLANG

And right before I knew it, the old man pulled out a lot of different weapons out of nowhere, filling the area before the little hut with weapons of different kinds and sizes.

“Wh… what is that for?”

“We will test out your understanding of weapons first. By seeing what your limits are at the moment, we could technically create a plan for you to train your ability and get used to it. So take any weapon and tell me what you can get from it. Information, skills, boost. Anything you feel.”

Alright. This seems simple and painless enough. I looked at the amount of weapons lying on the floor and randomly took one of the many out.

It was a dagger with a golden handle and thin lines over the blade. Balance was okay-ish for the blade part to be a bit longer. Grip making the grip a bit longer may be able to give the weapon more possibilities.

Wait… where did that come from? How the hell do I understand this? It wasn’t like I had a lot of daggers in my hand before but this information was as if coming from the dagger itself. The library in my mind only responded to the things the dagger said about itself and gave me the information accordingly. It felt weird though.

Communication with an inanimate object is something I’d believe to be impossible unless its on the level of computers. But I guess something like this shouldn’t surprise me.

“The balance is about 7 mm off but doesn’t disturb much, the grip could be a bit longer and using a bit of lighter metal that dilutes the other metals in the alloy of this blade, I should be able to make it lighter and more suited for faster combat with a bit more reach since the one who made it had the idea of better reach with this dagger.”

“... what was that?”

“What was what? I just told you the things the dagger told me and made conclusions with it.”

Why are you looking at me like you just saw your fortune multiply? Wait… why are your pupils turning into dollar signs? This isn’t a cartoon and yet your greed has already manifested itself, old bastard!

The old man was slightly trembling while alternating his gaze between me and the dagger in my hand. His eyes were wide open, as if shock was his only possible expression to show.

“So you say that dagger is talking to you? How?”

“Not directly. It is more like I can feel a basic desire to become a better weapon from it, which then gets translated into the why and hows inside my head. My guess is that my body and brain can automatically determine what is wrong with the blade. But the thing with the alloy was my guess since I feel like I could work better with it if it was a tad lighter for a dagger. I don’t think I’ll be blocking a lot of attacks with it to begin with.”

The old man put his hand infront of his mouth while crouching as if he was almost on the verge of tears. But that didn’t fool me. I knew he was on the verge of laughing out loud as if he just won the lottery. That’s the type of person he is.

And right on cue, the old man jumped up with laughter being the only thing leaving his mouth. Damn… never realised he was that loud…

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! You damn brat! If the person that made that blade knew what you said, they’d be fuming. In fact, any artefact smith that knew what you just said would jump on you with the urge to kill you. But your ideas are mostly on spot. So you can understand how to improve a weapon. Here, try this one.”

The old man handed me a weapon that looked to be a scythe. It was dark blue and if someone looked close enough, it was as if one was looking at the endless nightsky filled with stars.

But the moment I even touched the weapon, my head started to hurt like hell. It was a piercing pain that only ended the moment I let go of the weapon. Small tears fell down my cheeks and my muscles tensed after that experience. It was too much.

The old man took the weapon out of my hand immediately and held me by my shoulders so I’d not fall down in that instant. His eyes were filled with worry and I could see my reflection in his eyes, telling me why he was so worried.

I was pale as I could be. My complexion was very bad and my eyes were devoid of light at that one moment. And honestly, that pain made me think I was dying.

“Boy! What happened? How are you feeling now?”

“T-t-too … m-much…”

“Too much what? Calm down, boy. Slowly breath in.”

I am grateful that he was holding me steady while I was shaking to the boots. With slow breaths, I tried to calm myself down. It was unbearably difficult to do so. The old man’s hand was glowing slightly while hovering it over my chest and I could feel my breathing become more stable and my mind slowly calming down as well. So it seems the old man was using his Will to move my lungs…

“Here, boy. Drink.”

GULP GULP GULP

I was almost drowning myself with the water the old man gave me. My hands stopped shaking and my muscles relaxed the more time passed. But what never left my mind was that moment.

“Tell me… what happened?”

“Too much information…”

“Information?”

“Yea… I think that weapon was too great for me and while it told me everything of itself, I could feel like what it said was more… humane… like it was conscious… but the information came onto me like a broken dam, drowning me in it and my brain was on the verge of collapse… how strong is that weapon?”

The old man was silent for a moment while helping me to stand up straight again. His silence did tell me that this was a very powerful weapon, but how powerful was only something I could guess…

“[One of a Kind]...”

“Ah I see… it was [One of a Kind]...”

Ah that was it… no wonder… that… weapon?

My hands started to tremble as my mind finally registered the words the old man said to me. And with an enraged look, I started to scream at the old man.

“Hold it! Did I hear that correct? A [One of a Kind] weapon? And your stupid ass wanted to make me understand what was wrong with it, am I right?”

Now the old man was kneeling in fron of me without lifting his head. You better be kneeling, you fucker. Just because of your greed, you made me go through that shit experience!

Looking down at the old man, I was filled with rage. I didn’t even have the heart to enjoy this scene. And neither did I care. Repriminding this bastard is my top priority!

“I said! Am! I! Right!”

“...yes…”

“And what did you expect?”

“... that you could tell me it’s flaws so I could get someone to make it better…”

“Haaaaaaah… stand up…”

The old man hesitated at first, which I totally agreed upon but having my master kneel infront of me with his head down honestly didn’t feel right. And we still had tests to do.

“Stand up, old man. We have to end these tests so I can start training on my ability. And stop looking at me like that!”

The old man raised his head, looking at me as if I was his saviour, which I found highly irritating. But no matter what, I had to end this.

“Alright… Let’s continue with what we were doing.”

“Thanks for coming everyone.”

“No problem. I felt like this was meant to happen any time.”

“Same. But I’m very curious here. Why did you call us at this time?”

“Exactly. Don’t you think this will make us look more suspicious?”

A round table that seemed large enough to house twelve giants, with every seat taken by a human. Some wore masks, others prefered not to. The room filled with the scent of expensive wine. People were talking with each other vividly.

Of course, that was the pretentious way to act in front of each other. Everyone knew yet no one bothered to say it out loud. The small talks and questions piled up the noise in the room, only to be drowned by a man with long dark orange hair.

CLING

The sound of glass being lightly struck vibrated through the entire room, gathering the attention of every individual in this room. The man with his strong gaze confirmed this one more time before starting to speak.

“Perfect. First of all, I’d like to thank everyone for coming. I hope everyone had a pleasant time while coming to my humble estate. Before we begin, I’d like to ask every one of you a simple question.”

Everyone’s gaze was focused on the man with the wine glass in his hand, twirling it around while looking at everyone one by one. The mood in the room intensified the moment he took a little pause after his speech.

“Is everyone ready with their preparations?”

Everyone gave a little nod with some looking prideful while others curious where this man wanted to go with the conversation. But everyone understood what this man was talking about.

“Good. by now, the association already figured out that we did some preperations. But if everyone hid their true preparations and gave a false front, those little wannabe heroes won’t notice that we will act before they can even foresee it!”

With everyone agreeing to the words of this man, he himself was slowly filled with the feeling of power. It felt good when your plans work in your favour and this man was intoxicated on this very feeling.

“We will begin with the next step about three weeks from now. Act with caution and don’t make a move unless absolutely necessary. The information network of the Association is too good to miss out on any blunders. And any trail will lead to fail.”

The seriousness on this matter can only be described with the tense expression of everyone here. No one wanted to make a mistake to be only found out five seconds later by the Association. The man once confirmed his statement reaching everyone before going onto the next matter.

“But for now, we have to deal with one thing before proceeding with our plans and I believe by now, everyone has heard of it. I’m talking about Akira Hashimoto.”

The moment that name left the mouth of that man, the room was filled with enraged shouting and pure killing intent that could make any awakened veteran cry immediately. The dark oranged haired man tapping on his wine glass again, gathering the focus of everyone once again.

“I understand the hatred of everyone. Believe me. There are three things I’d be telling everyone. The first thing is that we found out that Akira has stopped helping the Association for about a week. The second is that Akiko has been seen in New York City, working at the Association branch of the USA and lastly, the last sight of Akira was inside my territory. And with that being said, I’d like for the cooperation of everyone here. And I believe I do not need to explain why.”

Everyone knew exactly why that man asked for their help. Akira was just a monster on the battlefield, being able to destroy armies of Awakened by himself. But that was also the reason why some didn’t understand why they were taking actions so hastily.

“Why so sudden? Does it even make sense to haste with that when we already have our hands full with our original plan”

The man smirked at the remark of a man with a very wide body build and a small orange fox mask over his face. He expected questioning so he didn’t mind with explaining.

“The reason is simple. The mad man is also known as the immortal Warhead. And the only reason why he was called as such is now currently in NYC while he himself is in Berlin. We can not lose any more time and have to find his whereabouts. By my estimations, we can get to him about three weeks from now with the utilised force of everyone here.”

A small pause and everyones expression changed. If before the room was filled with noble people that wore the faces of educated, well mannered people, then now it was only filled with the expressions of bloodthirsty men and women with the only thought of getting to this despicable man.

The man with dark orange hair had the ends of his mouth slightly raised at the sight in front of him. This was exactly what he hoped for.

“Then I think we have ourselves a deal.”

“Haaaaah… I’m tired”

“Not surprising with the amount of weapons you examined today. Quite impressive. Here.”

I slumped down on the ground with a tired sigh leaving my mouth. The old man handed me a bottle of water while having an impressed expression on his face. Quite gratifying to see someone like him being impressed.

“Thanks… do we still spar today? Or do I get a rest and we start our 75 day plan tomorrow.”

“To be honest, I was thinking of letting you focus purely on your ability for 15 days straight after seeing your performance. Maybe it will help you get used to your ability much faster.”

“Wow! That’s a first but thanks.”

The old man letting me get used to something comfortably? That must be a lie. Something must be up and he knew that I knew.

“Well~ I have something to do outside that is none of your business. But hey! You get to enjoy your free time alone!”

“How important?”

“Very important!”

The old man was nodding with his eyes closed as if my question was a dumb thing to ask. But I knew what was up. I’ll see where this will go to though. Might as well have some fun with him.

“Something like that is so important?”

“It is and you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh let me guess…big?”

“Yes.”

“Tight?”

“Yes?”

“Curvacious?”

“Yes!”

A vein bulged on my forehead. The hell is so important about that that you even leave your one and only talented student here hanging!

“Get your perverted ass out of here, old man! I thought you had something really important to do!”

And as if rebuking the fact that what he was going to do wasn’t as important as he made it out to be, his gestures were extremely exaggerated. Get your finger out of my face!

“What you mean ‘I thought you had something really important to do!’? This is important, my boy! You will one day understand how right I was and will be begging me for forgiveness for the offence you made this day.”

“Oh shut it! I don’t want to end up as a perverted old man like you! That would be shameful!”

“At least I am getting something. Not like someone who starts to stutter when only thinking about a certain ’blonde haired angel send by the heavens’!”

Hey! First of all, it’s send by the heavens and desired by all man and second of all I do not sound like a very desperate, sorry person!

…

Maybe I am a bit desperate but not a sorry man!

“Just shut it and go, pervy old man! Because if you excuse me, I have something really important to do.”

“Alright alright! I’ll be going! Anything you want?”

“Some games, snacks and a couple of books about smithing and novels wouldn’t be bad.”

“Oh great that you reminded me of that… Here!”

The old man turned around and slowly walked away after throwing a thick notebook towards my face which I caught before getting hit by it. Why was he giving me this?

“It’s some notes of what I learned about smithing from others. Might be of help to you for your start. Now I’ll be going. See ya, boy!”

And just like that, taken by the wind was a perverted old man hungry for something I do not want to think about. Still, this notebook was very detailed by the amounts of little notes it had. Some were the pointers of others while some were his own ideas.

“Heh… guess he isn’t that much of an asshole if he gave me this… now…”

Looking towards the little hut in front of me, I couldn’t help but gulp loudly. My heart pumping my blood faster, my brain becoming more active and my muscles tensing slightly. This step into the forge was my first true step to start with my ability. Everything else was just preparations for this very moment. And even if everything of me was too excited to be calm, I knew that I was ready.

“Let’s start with the main event, shall we?”