Chapter L: An Oath Under the Od I

Shizukana Gake, Heian Kingdom

Month of the Tortoise 24, 172 ,328 DE

Before I have the kitchen door fully open, Aoi slams into me at a full tilt. "Pervert Master! That mean, old man wouldn't let Aoi see Pervert Master! He kicked Aoi out and told her not to come back until he called for her!"

Sitting at the kitchen table with Mika-chan, Aoi's sister Sato Maki stares at me with a cold look in her eyes. The scent of her animosity fills the air.

Outside of Sato Maki's line of sight, Mika-chan frowns at her. Because of her past, Mika-chan seldom lets anyone other than me see her disapproval of others, but she seldom tries to hide it from me. She realized a long time ago that I always knew when she did not like someone, and Sato Maki's hostility toward me probably only fans the flames of Mika-chan's dislike.

"Did you settle things with your family?"

"Grandmaster Jones told Aoi's parents to let Aoi go to Tree-chan Master. Grandmaster Jones told Aoi's parents, Tree-chan Master can protect and train Aoi better than anyone in the world."

Narrowing my eyes, I give Sato Maki a cold stare. "Are you planning to get in Aoi's way?"

Sato Maki looks down at the floor. "I'm not insane. I won't oppose Grandmaster Jones."

"Come with me. My airship is ready. I'll take you back to the old tree."

Letting go of me, Aoi stares angrily up at me. More than ever, she looks like an enraged chipmunk. "Don't call Tree-chan Master old! Tree-chan Master is young and pretty!"

"Yeah, yeah. Get your ass moving. I'm taking my airship out for a test flight."

Running to her Sato Maki, Aoi hugs her sister. "Aoi loves Maki. Aoi will come back when Aoi is strong."

Sato Maki returns Aoi's hug. She hugs her sister so tightly, the thick muscles in her forearms stand out. "Be careful. I don't care who is protecting you. I still don't like you running off into the Demonic Wildlands."

Once the sisters let go of one another, Aoi grabs a pack bigger than herself and almost casually tosses it to me. Her strength improved significantly during the time she was with the Great Tree.

"Help Aoi. Aoi can't carry both bags." While speaking, Aoi grabs another pack just as big as the first and slips her arms through the straps.

"Beast, I don't care who you have behind you. If Aoi gets hurt, I'll kill you." The naked hatred in Sato Maki's eyes matches the hatred filler her scent.

"Do you hate me, or do you hate the idea of Aoi becoming stronger?"

With mild anger rising from my Soul, I meet Sato Maki's hate filled stare. In just a few seconds, fear mixes with the hatred in her scent, and she lowers her eyes. She does not give any answer to my question, but I think she hates the idea of Aoi becoming stronger more than she hates me.

Bringing Aoi onto the Silver Princess , I drop her pack in the corridor next to the hatch and point toward the bow. "The bridge is that way."

I do not notice any changes in the engine room, but the gas system in the superstructure looks completely different. With the exception of the gas storage tanks, Old Man Jones replaced the rest of the system, everything from the pumps to the gas bags. He also added a new extraction system to separate the lift gas from the air. At a quick glance, I only understand about half of the sigils visible on the components.

After activating the new gas system, I exit the airship and remove the mooring lines. The Silver Princess immediately starts to rise, and I have to leap into the air to get back into the hatch.

When I reach the bridge, I find Old Man Jones, Vorn, Aoi, and Brigitte standing or sitting apart from one another. Aoi's stares is are already fixed on the hatch, but both Vorn and Brigitte's attention appears to be focused on Old Man Jones.*

As I move to the control station, Old Man Jones looks at me. With his one human eye slightly narrowed, he seems to be searching for something in my face.

"Hey, old man! That gas system isn't like anything I've seen you make before."

From Old Man Jones' scent, I am pretty certain he is feeling smug. In the past year or so, he has seldom brought out anything that I did not almost immediately understand. He slaps me on the shoulder with his metal hand. "It's nothing special. You should be able to figure it out. It's constructed entirely out of Mana-based equipment."

"Shitty old man."

"Shitty obnoxious brat."

Engaging the Silver Princess' propellers, I turn the nose toward the Demonic Wildlands. The airship responsiveness and the speed of its turn catch me off-guard, and I am not the only one surprised. Brigette springs to her feet from the bench she was sitting on and spins around to stare out the window.

"What did you do to the Princess ? She's turning almost twice as fast as before." Shock raise the pitch of Brigitte's voice.

I look at Old Man Jones. Neither the Sky Iron armor plates nor the sigils I installed would do anything to improve the airship's performance. If anything, the armor plates would make it perform more sluggishly. The old man must have done something. I notice some sigils on the beams of the superstructure, but they were not anything I recognized.

Old Man Jones shrugged. "I just changed how the airship interacts with force. Neither gravity nor inertia will have a mush effect on it."

The others on the bridge look at Old Man Jones in confusion. The words "gravity" and "inertia" are not words from Ningen no Gengo or Sprache. They come from a language used by the ancient War Masters. Both modern languages have words with more or less similar meanings, but the words Old Man Jones used are technical terms used by Artificers in the past.

"Those sigils on the superstructure frame didn't look like they had anything to do with force."

Old Man Jones switches to the language gravity and force come from. "They don't I patterned the beams in the frame to alter the properties of the metal used in the airship's frame and increased its connection to the Eidos. The idea of its interaction with forces is bleeding into the Eidos. It may cause you some problems if you have to repair battle damage, but you should be able to figure out a way to deal with it. You are a Triune."

I cannot decide if I should thank or curse the shitty old man. In the end, I do not say anything.

Under my control, the Silver Princess accelerates to a speed of almost one hundred and fifty kilometers and hour. We rapidly close in on the Great Tree's meadow, and I slow the airship.

"Look out! A giant tree!" Brigitte's surprised yell echoes hollowly inside the bridge.

After a moment, Brigitte realizes no one else has reacted to the Great Tree's sudden appearance, and she look around in confusion. "All of you knew the tree was here?"

Looking at the Great Tree, which still rises more than two kilometers above the airship, Old Man Jones and I ignore Brigitte. Aoi looks at her with an expression of curiosity, and Vorn gives a faint shrug.

"The Great Tree was barely a meter tall when Life planted her." Old Man Jones' quiet words sound more like him talking to himself than to us.

Vorn and Brigitte look at Old Man Jones with curiosity plain to see in their expressions, but he does not appear to notice. As the Silver Princess descends toward the meadow, Aoi continues to stare at the Great Tree in rapt fascination.

With the airship reaches an altitude of less than twenty meters, Old Man Jones glances at me, and speaks in the same old War Master language as earlier. "Drop the anchors. I modified them to make their gravitation attraction adjustable. You control with Mana channeled from the control panel. At maximum attraction, they can easily hold this airship's mass in place during a hurricane."

The control panel has two switches, which are clearly marked as the anchor controls. Grabbing one between my thumb and index finger, I sink my awareness into the switch. I can feel the pattern implanted by Old Man Jones. With just a moment's observation, the pattern's function becomes obvious. The switch itself has three states: lower, raise, and off. When I move the switch to lower, I hear the clattering of the anchor chain running out of the winch at the bow.

After the anchor hit the ground, I put the switch to off and separate a thread of Mana from my Trinity. The process proves more difficult than I expected, but in just a few seconds, the gravitation attraction of the increases exponentially. After I repeat the process with the rear anchor, I use the winches to draw the airship close to the ground.

"Come on, Pervert Disciple. Let's go talk to the old tree."

"Tree-chan Master is not old! Tree-chan Master is young and pretty!" Despite shouting and looking like an enraged chipmunk, Aoi follows right on my heels.

"Tree-chan Master?" Brigitte's soft question reaches my ears from the bridge, but neither Old Man Jones nor Vorn replies to her.

"Old Tree, show yourself!"

"Obnoxious Wolf! Do you want real punishment?"

Despite the Great Tree's "voice" sounding inside my Mind, I sense the presence of her projection behind me.

"Tree-chan Master is not old! Tree-chan Master is young and pretty!"

"You sound like a parrot that only knows how to say one thing."

I turn around, and the Great Tree's projection raises one eyebrow. "Your awareness is more sensitive than I realized."

"You know what I am. Why wouldn't you expect my senses to be keen?"

With a confused expression, Aoi turns around. "Who are you-. Tree-chan Master!"

"You should lean to speak with your Mind. Obnoxious wolf." While projecting her thoughts into my Mind, the Great Tree frowns at me.

Aoi slaps my arm. "Did you do something to Tree-chan Master!?"

"Old tree, you're gonna raise this crazy girl right and protect her from the idiot trash until she strong enough, aren't you?"

The Great Tree's projection nods solemnly. "Of course. Her Bloodline has a strong connection to plants. She will become a great Alchemist under my tutelage. If she has the will to walk a hard path like you, she might even become a Triune. She has the potential."

The Great Tree's projection looks toward the Silver Princess . "The descendant of the Great Bear following you around could to it as well. It would mean casting aside the perverted Yuan Qi. But he would still be capable of practicing his Beast Blood Cultivation while sealing the aspects of Trinity.

"The Beat Realms lie outside the Shadow of Yggdrasil. Lord Death sleeps and Mother Life cannot protect them. This is a Wolf Realm, but all the Great Beasts exist to fend off the corruption of the Primal Powers. The Blood of the Great Bear, uncorrupted, sleeps within the child called Vorn. He can be of help to you.

"But the Blood of the Great Bear has been corrupted in another. Weak of Body, Mind, and Soul, she sought Power to dominate those around her. She has forsaken the purpose of the Great Beats, the guardians of the Beast Realms, as Chosen by Mother Life. She gave herself to Chaos for Power, but she was too weak become a proper vessel. You must slay the corrupted child bearing the Blood of the Great Bear. Slay her before she becomes strong. If she becomes strong, Chaos can use her as a gate to invade this world, to invade this Realm. Though weak, she is a greater danger than the Dragon Gods or the Daos."

"Do you know where she is?"

"Somewhere to the south. Chaos is Chaos. It has no fixed form. It hides itself well. By Mother Life's will my life is tied to this world. The Dragon Gods Seal on the pattern of this Realm limits me as much as it does the Great Beasts. You are a Great Wolf, maybe the last Great Wolf in this Realm. You carry swords once wielded by the child of Mother Life and Lord Death. Hunt, Wolf. Hunt and slay this corrupter of Beasts."

As I listen to the Great Tree's words, a shiver of anticipation runs through me. Hunt. I was born to hunt.

I nod. "Take of the crazy girl, old tree."

The Great Tree's projection glares at me, but she does not say anything more.

As I head quickly toward the Silver Princess , Aoi stiffens behind me. "Pervert Master!"

I glance over my shoulder. "The old tree will protect and teach you, Aoi. Grow strong."

"Pervert Master! Aoi loves Pervert Master!"

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