“Your arms can’t-” Zel began a question, but Vaceran interrupted with an answer.

“They’re spiritual constructs. I make them tangible when I do anything with them. Using them to wield a weapon would be a waste of energy and focus compared to just striking with the arms alone.”

Then, he countered with a question of his own, “Why’d you need to come here again?”

“You’ve seen the statues in the field, yeah? The biggest one’s missing a sword, and I happen to have one that fits, so…” she said with a smile. Zel then pulled out her Tablet and willed it to expel the Sister’s sword from storage, handle-first. Gigantic thing that it was, only the handle slowly floated up out of the vortex, to which Zel put the Tablet down on the ground, grasping the handle.

Planting her feet, re-igniting her Breath Engine, and Thundercharging every relevant muscle, she pulled the gigantic blade from storage and sat it on her shoulder, picking the Tablet up with one hand as if the sword was far lighter than it really was. She turned on a heel, and giving a two-fingered salute, she beckoned the armless vengeance-seeker goodbye: “See ya… Uff, see ya at the sect.”

The people’s attention was, piece by piece, plucked away from the Stone Battalion alone, towards the sight of a figure emerging from the fields, continuously emitting Fog and slight flashes of light, carrying a sword as tall as herself on her shoulders in a manner that appeared effortless in spite of the real effort she was exerting.

Step by step, over the course of several minutes, she swaggered her way down the northward road with a grin on her face, walking right up to the tankmen guarding the statues with a simple statement: “Got a wake-up gift for the big guy over here.”

They exchanged looks, and the taller of them said in a familiar voice: “Go ahead.”

It had hardened, matured in a manner of speaking, but it was… “Wait, were you the kid at the southern gate when we first arrived?”

He reached up to his neck, pulling down his mask with a hiss and briefly showing his youthful, brightly-smiling face before he locked his ominous visage back into place. Zel chuckled to herself and stepped past him, walking in front of the ten-meter stone guardian, his face youthful and his eyes glowing fateful lilac. It looked down upon her with what may have been curiosity, and when she stabbed the black and gold sword into the soil before its feet, stepping away, it gave the slightest of nods before grasping the blackstone hilt. What had been a huge greatsword in the Sister’s hands, and what Zelsys had had to put every muscle in her body to task in order to carry, was no more than an arming sword in the ten-meter stone titan’s hand.

Speaking no more and simply drinking in the attention, Zel walked away from the stone phalanx to reconvene with Zefaris, the latter quietly smiling at the exuberant display. They spent a portion of the early afternoon in the city, wiling away the hours in the not-quite-stuffed streets and exploring parts of the city they had never been to, both of them knowing this time was afforded to them solely because intense training demanded a proportionate amount of recovery time, both mental and physical.

In the north-western quarter, they came upon a museum that had clearly once been a church to Kama’tok of Blazing Fires, the old religious iconography left unmolested and even meticulously preserved in this shrine to human history. Even if it was barebones, even if the museum’s contents conspicuously cut off some four centuries back before resuming with millennium-old artefacts, it was still an enthralling experience for Zelsys, and in turn, the amazon’s nearly childlike curiosity towards relatively well-known historical items served to amuse Zefaris.

They were relics from lands few had been to in recent years, true, but the travelers and expeditions which had brought these things back had occurred centuries ago and these relics had been known for nearly as long, and despite their inherently exotic nature, they had grown mundane in the minds of those who had visited museums such as this one even once or twice in their lives.

“I understand why you’d be curious, but this much?” the blonde asked amusedly.

Her face pressed up closely to a piece of hieroglyph-carved stone from one of the southern continents, Zel murmured, “I’ve… No idea. Feels like these are from places I need to go, but I don’t know where the hells those places are or why they are important. Probably just one of my…”

Pulling herself away from the artifact, she finished: “...Ancestors.”

“I’ll… Go to one of these places once this whole mess is done with. Once the sect is stable. Can’t just sit pretty in Willowdale.”

Leaving the museum behind, they spent some more time on the riverside promenade before returning to the sect, both of them resuming their training as usual. One by one, a little over half of the new recruits trickled in, Vaceran and Mata Gano among them. Ozmir seemed to derive considerable enjoyment from giving them a tour around the sect, while Zelsys remained fully focused on trying to fully grasp the Core of Earthly Iron.

Even using as little energy as she could against the weakest Concussion Impact missiles Zefaris could muster, Zel felt her connection to the spirits grow tenuous well before she felt like she was anywhere near grasping “Bronze”. In the time spare she went over her entire repertoire, from Beheading Saw to Heartbreaker, Thundercannon, and even Thunderclap Sting, difficult to perform even now.

It wasn’t until late in the afternoon, when her connection had recovered slightly, did she finally grasp it with aid from Mercenary, when she asked him: “Just hit me with as many projectiles as you can, at least as strong as a proper punch.”

Though it took him a good couple minutes of fiddling with seals and drawing symbols in the sand, soon the Mercenary set loose a barrage of white-glowing magickal beams, just slow enough for Zelsys to see them coming. They pounded into her without relent, gradually pushing her back as she grasped for Graze Pulse whilst attempting to blend it with metallum, keeping her focus on the concept of “Bronze”.