Chapter 36 Episode 36: A Gift…

Akira’s POV

[Weapon Upgrade: A-rank Mini Dagger → A-rank Sword.]

[The weapon has evolved in response to Host’s growth. Previous form insufficient for upcoming encounter parameters.]

[Spirit Well: Unlocked.]

[Bonded beast may now be stored within the Spirit Well and summoned at will. Summoning cost: 500 mana points. Bonded beast’s combat capability remains fully intact within the Well.]

[Healing Potion: Unlocked.]

[One potion may be summoned per encounter. Restores 40% HP on consumption. Single use per gate entry.]

***

My eyes skimmed through the message once more as I forced myself to wake up. The system’s robotic voice had woken me up as usual. It always had a thing for early mornings.

That was when the message struck me, it had said a weapon upgrade. My dagger was gone. In its place, lying across my side stable where I had set it down, was a sword.

The same blade in all fundamental senses... the same A-rank mana signature, the same weight that I was used to and had tightly wrapped in a cloth wrap.

But this time longer, broader. The hilt had been redesigned to accommodate the reach and grip of a weapon built for a different range of movement.

It was objectively remarkable. It was also going to be a huge problem to deal with.

I had carried the dagger for two months on the grounds and had dealt with how an A-rank weapon on a D-rank hunter was suspicious enough. A sword was not wrappable in cloth, any cloth even. A sword announced itself.

A sword was the kind of equipment that people noticed, commented on, and asked direct questions about in corridors, canteens and council reports.

I looked at it for a long moment.

Then my mind drifted to my new the Spirit Well, which was an entirely different category of consideration. A space visible and authorized by me alone. Where Gleam could be contained, stored and fed without any worries.

The housing unit visits, the ten-minute walks there, the handler who had started greeting me by name and leaving the late-night feed supply accessible... all of that simplified into a mana cost and a decision. She could be with me in the field. Infact, she could be with me anywhere.

Something shifted in our bond. It was warm and unhurried, and through it came her words, ’finally.’

"You knew," I said.

’I knew it was coming.’ A pause. ’The sword suits you better anyway.’

"The sword is going to cause problems." I replied snarling. Gleam never thought about the consequences most times.

’Most things are worth having. Regardless of people’s opinions. Those opinions won’t keep you fed’

That was true. Slowly going over her words in my head, I took out my training clothes, eager to test out my new weapon and marched straight to the guild. My destination, the fourth floor.

***

I had been working with the sword for forty minutes when he arrived.

I heard the door and turned to him. He was already reading the room the way he always did on entry, the fast comprehensive sweep that was too practiced to look effortful. I watched his gaze land on the sword and stopped abruptly. The question swimming in his eyes.

He crossed the space without saying a word and stopped two meters away before looking at the blade once again. His expression stuck at being neutral but the meaning behind it was far from that.

It was the focused attention of someone who had encountered something unexpected and was running it through to see where it landed.

"When?" he asked. I already knew what he was talking about

"I switched my weapon this morning"

"And the dagger?"

"Somewhere safe," I said. Unable to give him another reply.

He looked at the sword for another moment. Then he looked at me with that expression that always saw more than I had decided to show. "Who gave it to you?"

I was going to tell the same story. A family heirloom, the same as the dagger, the same cover that had worked on Vanessa and on the guild intake and on every direct question for two months.

I opened my mouth to reply but then there was an abrupt ’don’t’ from him. His expression serious. I closed my mouth.

"Don’t give me the crappy heirloom story," he said, still quiet. "I know that dagger wasn’t an heirloom. I’ve always known since the second week. And thsi sword, it’s the same source."

He held my gaze. "I’m not asking you to explain anything now. All I’m telling you that I know it’s not and you don’t have to lie. Plus I need to know what story we’re going with so I can be consistent with it."

I stared at him as his words sunk in.

We. He said ’we’.

The word sat in between us. I had not expected it and so didn’t have an immediate response to it. Kael waited with the patience of someone who had learned that waiting was frequently the most efficient approach when dealing with me.

"A gift," I said, when I finally found my footing. "Same story as the dagger. A gift from someone I can’t name."

"From someone you can’t name?" he repeated.

"Yes."

He looked at the sword again. A moment passed. "Alright then," he said. "Show me your stance."

We spent two hours on it.

The sword was different from the dagger in ways that mattered for technique, distance management, a weight distribution requiring adjustment in footwork to compensate for the change gravity.

Kael looked at it the same way he approached everything in the training room, without commentary on what it meant or where it had come from. Just the work, the corrections and the one-word assessments that arrived after he had watched long enough to have something accurate to say.

At the end of it, my arms knew the difference between the sword and the dagger in every way that mattered, and Kael was standing at the fence post looking at me with an expression that meant he had made a decision about something.

"When someone asks," he said, "tell them I gave it to you."

I looked at him in shock.

"The guild will have questions when you log it in the mission equipment registry," he said. "An A-rank sword on a D-rank hunter is going to generate a huge flag. If it comes from me, it will be questioned and then closed." He held my gaze. "Tell them I gave it to you."

I stared at him.

"Kael," I called out softly. "You’d be covering for something you don’t have an explanation for."

"I do have an explanation," he said. "I gave you a sword. That’s the explanation."

"You didn’t give me a sword."

"I’m telling you that I did," he sparked before reeling himself back. Almost as if he was on the verge of losing control. "Is that a problem?"

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Looked at the sword in my hand and then back at him. Still standing at the fence post with his arms crossed.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it solves the problem," he said. "And because I don’t want you spending the next week answering questions about where it came from when you should be training."

I held his gaze for a moment as he held mine back, steady and unhurried. The training room was quiet and the sword was warm in my hand in the way the dagger had always been warm.

"Alright then," I said.

"Good." He pushed off the fence post. "The grip adjustment needs work. A sword is like an extra length of your arm. Don’t just see it as a weapon. View it as a part of your body."

We then went back to work.

***

I found out about the registry flag three days later.

Sena had mentioned it in passing in the canteen, the offhand quality of someone delivering information they consider secondary to an actual conversation.

"The equipment registry flagged your SWORD," she said, between spoonfuls of soup. She laid her emphasis on the "A-rank weapon, D-rank hunter. The review board opened a query."

"I know," I said.

"It was closed same day," she said. She looked at me sideways. "Vixar signed the closure form. Personal gift, standard authorization, no further review required." A pause. "He signed it himself. Not his assistant . Him."

I said nothing.

"You knew he was going to do that?" she said.

"Yes."

She looked at me for a moment with the assessment running underneath it.

"A-rank sword," she said. "Personal gift from Kael Vixar. No explanation required." She went back to the soup. "That’s not nothing, Renshi."

"I know," I said.

She didn’t push it further, which was one of the things about Sena that I had come to rely on. She knew when she had said what needed saying and when to let it go.

I ignored her rambling and focused on more pressing stuff. I imagined him signing the closure form himself. Reiss handled most of Kael’s administrative processing, efficiently and comprehensively, and the fact that he had done this one personally rather than shifting it meant the decision had been deliberate.

He had put his name on a closure form for an A-rank weapon he had no explanation for, in his own handwriting, without being asked.

Something warm moved through my chest. The same warmth that had been there since the corridor, the stairwell, since he said we’’ and meant it like it was a fact he had already decided rather than a thing he was proposing.

The warmth was there but underneath it was confusion, because I didn’t have an idea for why someone with his standing would absorb that kind of administrative exposure for a D-rank hunter.

I thought about the phone in my jacket pocket. The link possibly running quietly between his device and mine.

I thought about the stairwell and his arm around my shoulders in the dark of an empty building.

Moreover, I thought about the word ’we’.

The confusion was still there. My mind still didn’t fully account for it. But underneath the confusion, running warm, consistent and impossible to route around, was something I knew, even if I hadn’t decided what to do with it yet. I raised the cup to my lips as I finished my tea.

"Sena," I called.

"Mm."

"The soup is still terrible."

She looked at me with that sharp assessment and something underneath it that was warmer than said assessment.

"Yup," she said. "Tell me about it." She smiled as she continued.

We sat in the canteen and I watched the guild moved around us and somewhere across the city the phone in my pocket was linked to a device in Kael Vixar’s pocket, the sword was in my gear bag under the table and the Spirit Well was sitting quiet in the bond with Gleam settled inside it like something that had found exactly where it was supposed to be.

I didn’t have a word for the warmth yet. But I am pretty sure I was done being confused.