I glanced at Aurora-san's shoulder. I would have honestly bet on her defeat if I was asked the outcome of a fight between a God's adept, and an Abyssal's Exalted. All the more so since she was only eighteen, and the exalted was definitely older by at least a hundred years.
She easily could have been killed, but she put her life on the line to save us. What she lacked in raw strength, she made up for in bravery and determination. There was a fire burning in her, a passion, and it stirred something inside me.
Given my haziness at the time, I didn't get a good look at her as she flashed before the enemy and protected us. But I wished I had. I was her senior in the guild and should have protected her.
For the moment, though, I was glad she had arrived early — not just because she saved our lives, but because now I had a better opportunity to get to know her more. My eyes kept drifting up and down the length of her legs as she marched in front of me. It was very hard not to stare as she climbed any incline ahead of me.
I was very used to women practically throwing themselves upon the most famous fighters amongst the guilds and militia. I had certainly taken advantage of that adoration many times over. Plenty of female fighters took advantage of that celebrity status, too, and tended to flaunt their bodies with provocative clothing.
But Miss Aurora-san was certainly different. Her clothing choice was quite practical, in fact. Her legs were fully covered, her top covered her front and back completely, the slight v-neck didn't plunge too deeply. Only her arms, one now painted with a horrific bruise, were exposed. I must admit I found her to be a bit of an enigma.
After we had been walking for an hour or so after the fight, Kenten decided that since we were now out of the forest, it would be wisest to camp and take a day of rest before going into a town possibly rampant with heretics. Before we arrived at the camping site, I moved close to her.
"I just remembered something," I announced. "I believe that it's your mentor who's training the Crown Prince of Sunsa, right?"
She nodded. "He didn't like the idea much, but agreed after I wrote him a personal request at Master's behest. Now at least he has someone else to shout at besides me. He still said that he didn't want to educate a kid that'd run to his father every time he disagreed."
"Not Sunsa's king's style to coddle anyone, even his own kid," I answered.
"Seems like the King of Sunsa said as much, too," Miss Aurora-san answered. "The good news is the High Priest told me that Saint Shen was getting along very well with His Majesty."
"Now that's rare. King Asami is not one whose trust is so easily gained."
"Well, as I said, I'm just happy Saint Shen found another disciple…"
"Are you afraid of him?" I asked with a grin.
"That's… that's not it at all. Just that I don't feel like I have become stronger since the early days where my parents would not teach me anything, and my mentor would teach me about our Faith," she answered, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
"I see… Say, amongst the forms of Ten Commands, is there a bow?," I said, thinking I would change the subject a little. "I have never met someone with a soul-bow outside of our temple."
"The Law of Arrow is an arcabow," she said, "but I am utterly unable to use it well for now, even less so with a shoulder in this state."
She eyed me suspiciously. "Why?"
"Well, Kenten put you under my charge, so I'm responsible for training you, right?" She looked at me speechlessly. I couldn't blame her. The last thing a Saint of Nature would normally do was to train members of other faiths in archery. It was simply too much of a pain. But she was my guildmate, and I had my own agenda, too.
"I guess?" she said. "The Shapeshift Sword is our baseline weaponry from the God of Mysteries. Mentor Shen also has an arcabow form. He's been trying to teach me archery, but I've never really progressed at it much…"
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Kenten pacing around in all directions, clearly determining an appropriate perimeter for the campsite. His face bore that resolute expression that told me he had made up his mind, and that meant he would be giving us all orders soon.
"I'm sure you've got some skills with the bow," I said to wrap up the conversation. "Maybe tomorrow we can go over some archery techniques. Sound good?"
"I'll try my best," she replied as she mustered a bright-eyed smile.
Kenten gave the orders, and we started gathering items for a fire. Miss Aurora-san did her own thing again: summoned a golem, put it to work, created a hot bath… This time, her bath was significantly smaller, so everyone assumed we had been uninvited. She wasn't in there very long either before she hopped out and toweled off. Once she had used some sort of teleport spell to change back into her regular outfit, I approached her just outside her tent.
I leaned toward her to kiss her again, but she winced. "Sorry, seems like today won't do either," she said with a tinge of disappointment. I smirked, saying it was for later, and she went inside her tent. I didn't see her until the next day as she stood guard with Chiki that night.
The next morning, a thin fog rose around our campsite. Kenten had chosen a good spot that stayed a little warmer than surrounding areas, but now the cold was seeping back into everything. He instructed everyone to rest up for a while. We needed to make sure we were at full strength before we went into town.
I found Miss Aurora-san standing outside her tent, her shoulder completely healed after a full night of rest. Healing so easily was one of the more convenient gifts we god-touched received. When I greeted her, she gave me a half-interested smile. I was a little taken aback by her reaction, especially after having shared a kiss with her the previous night. Somewhat annoyed, I called her out on this. She looked at me as if distracted.
"Uh… Miwa-sama?" she asked as if I had just arrived. "Hi, how are you?" Her cheeks somewhat flared up to a slight pink. For a moment I wondered what was going on.
"I've been speaking to you for a full minute or two already," I said.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't really there," she replied. "I was trying to figure out a thing or two… Even if I did interact with you, my mind was totally elsewhere."
I remembered that Yoten had warned me that the members of her faith often seemed to space out, and that it could be difficult to have any kind of relationship with them. Not sure if we were going to have a relationship, but I was interested to at least have some intimacy with her.
"How are novices trained in your faith?" I asked her, striking a random question to get her attention.
"I remember hating those sessions," she laughed, as she looked at me. "Principally because Saint Shen was sleeping near me. He'd give me riddles and ask me what was the truth behind them. Until I'd figure these out, and then he would give me hints toward the rest, and so on until I could find an Earthly Truth."
She seemed to have been willing to say something else, but she refrained from saying more. Before I could press her, Kenten called me to ask about our best path toward the town, so I had to leave her.
When I later came back, I found Miss Aurora-san using her arcabow. To my surprise, she was imitating my gestures. "First he took that strange stance to steady himself…" she said before steadying herself. Once she had assured that her weight was well-balanced on both feet, she focused. "He pulled relatively slowly, between breaths…" So she did the same.
Those were my essential steps, but she added a step there. Each time she pulled the string closer to her face, she focused a bit more energy. The arrow slowly formed as she did that. Once the string was near her face, she closed her eyes.
She tried to figure out how I was taking aim. That part was instinctive, though. We'd receive that when we became god-touched of the God of Nature, so she would have to take another, more traditional approach. And she did: she calmed herself, gathered more, and more, and even more energy in her arrow.
Despite knowing I was there and watching her, she didn't stop training. She had summoned a golem that had the form of a god-touched, probably someone she didn't like much, and was trying to aim at it, but her arrow went straight at the bush behind it.
As the arrow struck, the bush was consumed in a sphere of hellfire, drawing everyone's attention. I could feel the heat from where we were standing. That was some ultra-condensed magic.
With a simple wave of her hand, she made the area look exactly like it did before she had shot the arrow, and she retried her shot… only to end with the same result.
"If you allow me," I said, coming even closer to her. "Your comprehension of our art, and how remarkably you do the first steps, is good, but your aim could use some work."
"Can I impose on you then?" she asked looking sideways. I found it somewhat cute that she seemed embarrassed to rely on me at that point, yet she still allowed me to help despite how unwilling she seemed to be.
She obviously focused on what I told her to better her archery. It took her several hours to manage something decent, but slowly her arrows got closer to the golem. I could tell she wasn't satisfied with her progress, but I was impressed. Archery is a complex task that requires you to shut out so much noise and hyper-focus on every micromovement. She was doing well.
"Aurora-chan," said Tenshi as he and Yoten approached. Aurora-san turned to look at him. I couldn't help but to notice her slight reaction every time Tenshi called her "chan," but she seemed to put up with it nonetheless. Tenshi looked at the golem for a moment, and he asked her how many of those arrows she had shot already.
"Around a dozen?" she answered, having lost the count apparently. "Perhaps a bit more."
Unlike Aurora-san, my arrows were physical, so I had the habit of keeping track of how many I would shoot. I corrected her: "It's the thirty-sixth." Yoten's face changed and asked if she wasn't tired.
"Well, no, why?" she asked, obviously lost. Yoten said that the least powerful of her arrows packed around a thousand eisen of magic, and she didn't budge. I hadn't realized that she had already spent thirty-six thousand eisen of magical energy, but the sheer idea made me almost lose my footing.
"That should be around five or six percent of my maximal capacity," she added.
This time, Yoten's face decomposed completely. It was obvious that she wasn't lying, and that explained why she used magic so much. As a Saint, I was amongst the more powerful of my faith, and I sported a hundred thousand eisen of energy at the height of my form. Yoten was considered a gifted saint with twice my capacity.
But that kind of output didn't come without the both of us being physically hindered. I would never be as strong physically as Kenten, and nor would Yoten. We both had other ways of handling our enemies, such as speed and storms of spells.
"Is that normal for adepts of the God of Mysteries?" asked Yoten, trying to understand.
"No… I'm a bit special, I think," she said contemplatively. "I guess having so much magic, I should be physically weaker than humans. However, that's not the case; I'm as strong as any other adept. Being the Shard of Truth, I think that my capacities are different."
That was possible. Shards were a sliver of a god's soul directly sheltered inside a god-touched at the time they became an adept. Even when they weren't awakened like mine, the godly energy would slip in the holder's soul, and different results could occur.
In my case, as the Shard of Wildlife, my animal transformation was tenfold stronger than any other Saint of Nature. Yoten was the Shard of True Cast, and I had yet to see him fail at any incantation, even those he'd try for the first time.
"That means something as the Shard of Truth requires this much energy..." said Yoten. Aurora-san seemed to reflect. She nodded positively and said that she had encountered situations in missions for her god that dried her of nearly all of her magic. She came through, but just barely.
She seemed unwilling to say more, and we didn't insist for the moment. But I sure as hell would ask someday what mission could demand so much magic. What kind of monstrosity did she face? Or was that some fallen of her own faith that she had to kill? I couldn't guess an answer on my own.
Toward the end of the afternoon, she had finally managed several hits on her target. I smiled at her and was sincerely impressed that she could catch up to a decent level this fast. She returned a small smile and said she was glad to get better at using one of her soul-weapon's main forms.
As my training progressed, she seemed to comprehend her mistakes and how to correct them. This girl didn't look like much if you stumbled upon her in the street, but after barely two days, I was dazed by how you really can't judge god-touched as if they're regular humans. She was a worthy member of our guild, truly.
Those realizations did little to calm me though. I felt attracted to her even more than the day she arrived. Her lips were moving, but I heard no sound. Images of that battle came back, and I tried my hardest to focus back on what she was saying. But that was impossible. At the thought that I could have lost her without even raising a finger, I had completely lost focus on her training. I could feel a drop of sweat roll along my face. The winter was biting to the bones, but I was sweating.
She suddenly stopped speaking. Her smile turned into something like a frown, and I realized that I must have made a strange expression due to my realization of her doings these last couple of days. She came toward me and waved her hand before my face. I was awestruck. I never knew that you could be awestruck like that.
My hand reached for her face, and my lips joined hers. She didn't push me back and I lingered on that kiss longer until she parted from me and with a worried face, asked me what was going on.
"Sorry," I answered, realizing that it was the second time I took her lips without much of a clear consent on her side. "You're so... I was awestruck. You know? My own head wouldn't focus anymore, and I… I feel like an idiot."
Everyone had gathered to look at us, but I ignored them. I had no more words that I could speak, and that was simply the reality I was faced with. At that moment, Aurora-san occupied my whole vision. I could have been backstabbed there, and I wouldn't have even seen it coming or reacted to it.
Aurora-san had a puzzled expression, and I wasn't even able to tell what she was thinking. Then she smiled, and her arcabow dematerialized. With her hand on my face, she made a small nod as her eyes directed my gaze to a tree. That landed me back in reality. We went to sit. There was thankfully some time left before dinner.
The others dispersed, going to make preparations for the evening meal. Ino had been talking about some sort of recipe he had in mind for making the perfect roast, but that meant he needed help with spices. Thankfully, the others left to go help.
"Miwa-sama, that's so not like you… what's really happening?" she asked.
"Aurora, do you realize it? There's only so much a man's heart can take. I..." she shut me up with a finger, and her lips came to mine.
I wasn't going to complain. I did feel completely speechless and strengthless. She was hugging me tight against the tree. Her hands resting on my chest, her body looming over mine. As my senses recovered, I noticed her breath was faster. Her aura was slightly visible, its warmth creating a haze in the cold air.
No need to be a genius to understand the situation. I had stirred up her desire. Whether it was to calm down, or to quench her thirst for me, I couldn't really tell. I wanted her all the same, perhaps even more. Her kiss felt like she was trying to devour down to my very soul. I would gladly have offered it, but she parted from me, and for a moment I wondered why, but I suddenly sensed it.
The camp wasn't half as safe as we thought it was. All over it, I could sense enemies. Chiki arrived, covered in blood, she was about to prepare a healing, but he said he met a few humans on the way. "Didn't they come just in time?" asked Chiki with a smirk.
"Hmph," I grunted. "I'm going to settle that tab."
Aurora-san called the Law of Dagger and jumped at an enemy. "I'll take care of this one," she said, attacking an adept of the Abyssal of Massacre as Chiki jumped away from an exalted that rushed at him. I turned to slam my sword at an enemy coming my way. This one was human, and as he discovered, our strength was worlds apart.
One-on-one, those exalted of abyssals wouldn't have stood a chance against us. But there were several of them, and they seemed to be trained. There was just one catch for them. Unlike the Holy Guard, each and every one of us specialized in massive attacks against large numbers of foes, so this fight landed squarely in our playground.
As I sensed several adepts rushing at her, I worried about Aurora-san. Her shoulder was healed, but still… I saw her lower herself and spring up behind her enemy's sword. He jumped backward, but she followed suit, spinning to his side to attack his back. That guy went down without even scratching her. The second managed to jump away, but she did a flash step and landed right behind him.
Chiki suddenly fell on an abyssal-touched of the Abyssal of Massacre. "Oh, so you're the one who sent the guy who died yesterday?" he asked, his voice assuming a darker tone than usual. The idiot in front of him boasted that his men would hunt us down anyways.
Chiki's eyes glimpsed Aurora-san's shoulder, and he muttered that he'd set it straight. The man probably never saw an angered Saint of Death, or else he would have denied having anything to do with that other exalted. As I returned my attention to my own fight, a familiar voice elevated, dominating the sounds of clashes with fierceness.
"Ten Commands to annihilate the enemy, Ten Shapes to lay naught but total destruction, and one Divine Law to assert my victory. Thee who once laid waste to heaven, and which I was bestowed to triumph against the Abyss, awaken to thy final form, and unite to annihilate the evil, Ragnarok!"
I felt Ten Commands' power build up and saw her dodge until it had evolved. I didn't register the name she had called on until she slammed it on the ground and it propagated an extremely violent magical wave spiking the ground all the way to our camp, but avoiding where we were standing.
All the enemies below the level of Saint that stood close to her got so injured that they couldn't even stand. As for the Saints, they had to use great energy to defend themselves. That blow arrived just in time, though, because another wave of enemies jumped at us.
"I am Aurora, Shard of Truth of the Faith of Mysteries, and a member of the Sanctuary Guild," she said pointing her sword at the enemies coming at her. "Come at me. I'll show you the power of Sanctuary."
Chiki's face became even darker. He dematerialized his soul-sword and materialized his scythe. From his aura, a slightly dark grayish mist surrounded him. Getting serious, eh? I thought. I was up for that, indeed. I called upon my familiars Kintama and Fuwama, who appeared by my sides.
I heard Aurora ask Chiki if those were my familiars. He nodded and answered that our familiars' powers were both elemental and divine, and their physical capacities were much, much stronger than any other familiar. Yup, divine animals are dangerous.
I was only faced with exalted enemies, but they had come in great number, so I remained prudent. Still, I looked Aurora-san's way just in time to see her jump forward at an enemy, her sword out. The enemy tried to escape, but the sword turned into a spear and still caught him. My familiars tackled one of the exalted by the sides and shred him to pieces.
As her spear turned into ulak daggers and slashed behind her, I used the flat of my sword to parry an exalted who jumped at me. She teleported right on the back of one my enemies, and slashed him down. She did a flash-step, and another enemy's sword swung in the air. Some of my clothing was still slightly ripped by his blow, but I too, had dodged in time.
Kintama took on this one. In the distance, I could see a storm forming. Yoten seemed to get impatient. Chiki had also begun to expand his mist. It was high time that I did something about the number on our side.
I focused and my body felt warm. Kintama and Fuwama came to a defensive stance and protected me until my double pair of wings appeared. I immediately took flight and called on my soul-bow.
Before any of the enemies could move, I used a multiple arrow spell and showered the whole area around Chiki and Aurora-san in arrows filled with my divine energy.
To those heretics, the effect was the same as a purification. They wailed in pain, agonizing. A second salvo finished off the injured ones. This, however, used quite a lot of my energy as I hadn't recovered totally from the draining effect of the enchantment in the forest. So I was forced to land, while one of our enemies went up in the air.
He was an adept of the Abyssal of Deceit, and his wings were a materialized illusion. I was about to shoot an arrow at him, but Aurora-san launched an attack... from above. She had teleported just above him, and during her fall, teleported safely back to the ground.
The fight was back to the ground. She waved her hand, called another Law of her sword, and a ribbon appeared. Both Chiki and I almost stopped at this sight, and I definitely saw a few enemies laugh. Her ribbon illuminated, and she swung it.
It wasn't as strong as the arrows she had fired earlier, but the number of spells that rained down left a pool of blood and crippled foes around her. Chiki's Aura of Sentence got ahold of all those souls, refreshing his energy and finishing off all of those adepts instantly.
Some had tried to escape by teleporting in the skies like she did earlier, but spells could go upward too. Magically speaking, activating spells like the ones from her ribbon was much less tiring than casting spells, but I had to commend that she was able to specifically avoid Chiki and me. So she obviously had to control a few of those.
This time, though, her breath was ragged. Yeah, she was only an adept. No matter how big her magical pool was, she was physically limited. Chiki swung his scythe and jumped to land near her. Meanwhile, she had gone back to using her orb. "Rest now," Chiki ordered. "The rest, we'll take care of them."
Ragnarok was a powerful weapon. It had been used to bring the fallen gods to their knees, so the gods could purify heaven. The Divine Emperor himself once wielded Ragnarok, before his divine imperial sword was bestowed upon him by the Will of Universe.
Such power in the hands of a mortal was definitely a proof of trust from the gods, and that demanded respect. It was obvious that Aurora-san had received it to face heretics, as this time, it had protected her properly against the miasma.
But I felt that it wasn't an item she could call on freely. While using magic didn't seem to wear her out, harnessing the power of Ragnarok seemed to be more than her body could handle safely for long.
Chiki threw her at me, and I used my aura to protect the both of us while I dismissed Kintama and Fuwama. Chiki's Soul Disconnection spell separated the souls of the standing enemies from their bodies. They fell on the ground like cloth dolls.
It required a certain amount of energy, but we had taken enough of them down for him to cast it at its top strength. Nothing could stand that spell safely except for me, who was wearing a symbol he wrote on the Saint Guard to protect us.
After the last enemy was slain, we went back to the camp. The grass had a scarlet color. Aurora-san changed her soul-weapon again, and a staff appeared with Ragnarok at its end. She purified the place quickly. Kenten had Fuin and Tenshi finish totally purifying it. Aurora-san sat down, and her face was feverish. No wonder, this fight had pushed her very hard.
"You did well," said Chiki. "But I never would have guessed Ragnarok was in our world." His eyes went toward the sphere on her staff. The name made everyone turn his head toward the staff's head.
"Ragnarok doesn't exist per se," Aurora-san said. "It's an ability. To call ragnarok you need to know the truth behind its existence, and it was revealed to me by my God. This sphere is merely the materialized form of the energy that you summon when you call on Ragnarok. But I am no god, so I can only call on a portion of its power and then only maybe once or twice a week," she added.
"That must have been a great honor," said Kenten, speaking for all of us.
She leaned on her back from the fatigue and said that at first she refused it, for she didn't think she could handle having such powers and still act wisely. Making a weird face, she then added that she was reassured the very first day she used it. It showed that this power was not meant for humans, and it would always drain her of physical and mental energy.
Aurora-san looked completely empty of any physical vigor. As the others nodded their heads knowingly, contemplating this new information. I walked over to her and helped her to her feet. Reluctantly, she let me help her back to her tent, where she turned to kiss me.
"Maybe next time, there will be fewer interruptions," she said, forcing a weak smile.
"Next time," I agreed.
When I rejoined the others, they were still speaking in awe of Ragnarok. It didn't take long, however, before they were all wishing Aurora-san had enough energy left to summon another hot bath.
"Can't you do it, Yoten?" asked Tenshi.
He was met with a grunt. But Yoten contemplated the small bath left from the previous eve, and he said we should heat it. We went to pick firestone, whose energy would indeed heat the bath she had made. "Do you think she minds if we use it?" asked Ijil, nodding and not waiting for a response before he entered in.
The bath was really only big enough for one person at a time, so I didn't wait around for my turn and decided to just go to sleep without it.