Chapter 15: Chapter thirteen – On the road again

Coming back to my full senses, I looked around, noticing the others packing away their tent. I guess I had been in the trance for at least a whole night, but my progress suggested longer. I had finished the blade, and with a trigger enchantment and the dagger and dahong palay held nearly touching, the blade morphed into a longsword similar to an Oakeshott type XVIIIb, but a bit wider along the whole length. It was a hexagonal ground for most of the length, then when it got closer to the tip, it turned into an extended diamond. The blade had a fuller about half the length, and was pretty thick for a sword, almost 5 mm along the upper portion. The tip was relatively thin, all the better for thrusts. I separated the blades again, and sheathed them. 

Once everyone got packed up, we headed out, riding at a trot. The Isaktigs were surprisingly stable, and didn’t bounce us around, also helped by the saddles, they made for a very comfortable mount. We stopped again around lunch time, having had a much quieter journey. This time, we ate, then I asked Ziket for help regarding guards and strikes. They were more than happy to give advice, and we spent perhaps an hour too long practicing before we were threatened out of our bubble by the two others. 

We all got back to moving, the others having fed all of our Isaktigs, and the conversation turned more personal. The gravity and space affinity one was named Iden, and the creation and gravity was Feyn. Iden seemed to be the leader in their collective relationship, very outgoing and strong-willed, but also very protective. Feyn was pretty shy until they got mad - then they blew up - but I had not seen that quite yet. They were also very caring and empathetic with the others. Ziket was like a mix, strong willed, a bit introverted, and very protective and caring. 

I told them of my parents - Xcero, who hated being around strangers, but loved anyone they knew, Nix, who was similar to Iden in most ways, and Syn, who was quiet and calm, but loved to have fun with the people they knew and loved. Even Refur, who was like a fun companion to me throughout my years, and a relentless trickster besides, still would do everything in his power to help if you were hurt. 

The conversation went on like this, them telling of their respective parents, their town, me telling of my city and work, showing off the phone, things like that. Once we stopped for the night, I got Ziket to agree to a training session again, and we went late into the night. I had gotten a lot better, remembering all the forms and videos that I had seen, and putting them in practice again really does wonders for regaining proficiency. I was never that good though, so I got a lot better than I ever was very quickly. I also learned that the main benefits of the longsword are really just weight and reach, it is actually a bit worse for chopping, but far better for lunging and stabbing. I practiced a lot with lunges, some feints to make it look like I was going to slash, but stabbed instead, and a lot of redirection. This was a big one in swordfighting, as if you move the blade too far, you give another opening for the opponent on the other side. You need to get it just far enough that the blade will miss you, and not further, though if possible, you should get the blade further off center of your opponent. Fighting beasts is much harder, as there is a lot of natural, flexible armor, and they don’t have a convenient weapon to push out of the way. The longsword still works better for Beasts and Monsters, with the added weight and length leading to more reach and less risk. 

After they settled down in their tent for the night, I cleaned up a bit, then fell asleep as soon as my head hit Arktis’ side.

The next morning, we had to part ways almost immediately, them going down a fork to the town they were helping, and me going the opposing way down to the capital. The rest of the day passed in mostly calm nature sounds, and I almost drifted off a few times, only catching myself as I almost fell. The first few times this happened, I thought nothing of it, just relaxing sounds calming me, but as it kept happening, I started to get suspicious. I made some foam earplugs, and put them in. My bouts of tiredness stopped happening, and about an hour later, nearly night by then, I decided to try to fake out whatever had been doing this. I pretended to fall all the way asleep on Arktis’ back, leaning forward in an attempt to lure out my adversary. It worked a few seconds later, as I heard a muffled singing coming my way. 

As the creature came into view, flying over the trees, I saw what looked like a massive bat with a horrifically fanged human face, short black fur, and bright red claws on the wings and feet. The creature was a Flaggermus, seemingly a variation of the normal ones that just looked like normal giant bats. As it dove down, I pulled out my dagger and swapped it for my sword, pointing it up into the bat’s face. The bones were shockingly tough, and the blade slid across its face, until it caught in an eye socket and sank in. The Flaggermus died with a look of shock and fear on its face, making me shudder on Arktis’ back for a moment. As I got off to deal with the monster, Arktis came up to me while doing a cute sort of whine and pushed her head at me, nuzzling my chest. I smiled a little shakily, and rubbed her head and horns, then thanked her and got to work.

The Monster was quite large, almost as tall as me standing up, and a roughly 4 meter wingspan. The bat was surprisingly light, and had very strong bones as I was taking it apart. They were very tough, and I couldn't even cut them without getting the blades to their sharpest and slicing them across. Even that only left a small mark, though whacking the bones with a blunted blade cracked it, and twice shattered it. I had thought to make the plates into armor, but with their tendency to shatter, that would be an awful idea. The meat was very tough to cut, and would probably be much harder to stab through than what I did. The skin and fur also was very hard to cut, and even from the side, it resisted quite a lot. I guess I was very lucky to get it in the eye, or else I wouldn’t have been able to easily kill it. 

Thinking back to when I grabbed those little metal bars a month and change ago, I pulled them out of one of the deeper pockets of my bag. I had meant to make an analyzing spell, and had already written the spell out, I just needed to get the right runes to make it. I had a prototype rune finished at around midnight, and casted it for the first time. It actually worked quite well, Showing properties and physical form down to the atom, but showed some very weird particles that didn’t look anything like molecules. They looked like crystals, only the crystals were full sized and shrunk down, and grew on all the molecules. At the tips of the crystals, they expanded into a bunch of needle-like protrusions, just far enough away to connect with the molecules around it. Using the rune on a piece of steel I created, there were none of these crystals on it, though there were tiny nubs starting to grow. 

Then I used it on my regular blade, and the nubs were just about full sized, though they lacked the needle things on the end. I took out a drawing of my CAD rune, and spent the rest of the night editing and testing it to include the weird crystals. In the morning, I sharpened a bit of one of the metal chunks, and looked at that, seeing the crystals lined up and sharpened along the edge, even though there is no way that anything could have sharpened those. I tested the edge against my dagger, and watched with a sinking feeling in my gut as the metal easily scratched quite deeply into my sword. Luckily my armor wasn’t the same metal as my weapons.

We got on the road again, and arrived at Hovestad near lunch, but only got in near evening. The first thing I did after stabling Arktis was scout out a good blacksmith, then find a Merchant’s Guild branch. The next day, I would be getting business done.

You are reading story Verden – Rise in a new life at novel35.com

You can find story with these keywords: Verden – Rise in a new life, Read Verden – Rise in a new life, Verden – Rise in a new life novel, Verden – Rise in a new life book, Verden – Rise in a new life story, Verden – Rise in a new life full, Verden – Rise in a new life Latest Chapter