"See you later~!"
Aika waved back to her friends that she hung out with after school before turning around to go back home herself, 'No classes tomorrow...'
Five minutes into walking, however, she turned in a different direction and came near a house whose owner she had been avoiding recently, 'She's still not back?'
Thanks to her enhanced learning and curiosity that she couldn't contain, she'd always come close to Benihime's house without actually doing anything. Each time, she heard her cursing at something and came to admire that she had been doing that every day, 'It has been more than a week. Did she move out? Does it have something to do with the current weird atmosphere around the town?'
Aika didn't know when it started, but there was an inexplicable change in the air surrounding the town, not from its everyday normal counterpart, but from those who were moving within the shadows. Because of that, despite showing that she was doing fine, she was feeling incredibly anxious and would approach Benihime in an attempt to clear her suspicions. However, her parent's faces would always come to her mind making her unable to do anything further.
And when she'd finally managed to gather her resolve, Benihime suddenly disappeared leaving her with no other options, 'Should I just ask that lady? But I haven't been able to detect her for some time and the 'security' around us has considerably thinned with the remaining ones spaced out quite far.'
Aika turned back and aimed for the park, 'In the first place, I can't really expect them to give me an answer because they're protecting us.'
While thinking of ways on how to tackle the anxiety she was feeling, she reached the park which she found herself coming to every day and reminded her of a certain day when she came across a green-haired woman and pale blonde man enjoying their time on one of the benches. That day, she didn't know what came over her when she saw the two of them flirting and decided to stalk them despite seeing them for the first time.
She initially thought it was anger, but it's much more complicated than that. Aika didn't follow them until the end because she didn't like what she was seeing and decided to go home that day while listless. Ever since then, she would go back to the park whenever she had some free time, but she never saw them again.
Sighing to herself, she checked the time and noticed that she only had an hour before the sun sets, 'I shouldn't be wasting my time here.'
Turning in another direction, she walked to the edge of the town and she knew that there were no people and cameras watching her, she began running at the speed that was inhumanly fast, silently weaving through the concrete jungle and reaching the nature where she's covered from everywhere. In a reasonably wide clearing, Aika stopped and saw the familiar fallen trees that she herself did, 'Now that I'm done confirming my physical abilities, I should try if I can do something...err special or magical. But how do I go about it?'
Aika tried chanting absolute random things without any shame and even did some weird poses, but nothing came out of it aside from hitting her pinky toe on a small rock and cursing the world for no reason.
"Damn it... Do I really have nothing? Maybe I should get a wand or a sword...? Hmmm... a sword?"
Another strange feeling took hold of her when thinking about the sword, 'Now that I think about it, when I tried Kendo a week back, it felt strangely familiar. Now that I know that the records that Mom and Dad showed me are fake, I shouldn't have any experience with swords. Because I'm afraid that they'll find it strange, I pretended not to know how to wield it and that was a lot harder than anything I tried.'
Aika stood up and dusted her skirt, 'I should get a sword. Maybe I'll discover something new.'
She was about to go home for now but she stopped on her tracks when a certain thought entered her mind, 'Maybe a sword will come out if I imagine one?'
Without any hesitation, Aika raised both of her arms and shouted, "Come, my personal blade, and cut all of my enemies~!"
Nothing came out.
"Yeah right... What the hell was I expecting?"
But as soon as she dropped down her arms, she felt something leave her body, and a six and a half foot long nodachi suddenly emerged from thin air on top of her head, dropping down and hitting her forehead, "Guh!"
Aika scrambled to catch the nodachi with both of her hands and panicked a little bit, "What!? Something really came out!?"
Although, before she could think anymore about it, a sudden headache assaulted her, so bad that it brought her down to her knees and scraped her skin, "GGHHHH... AHHHHH!!!!"
Her voice echoed but no one arrived to help her. Thankfully, the headache only lasted until sunset.
Aika sat up while groaning, '...What was that...?'
But after her mind cleared up sufficiently, she found new knowledge that she didn't know before.
Aika silently grabbed her nodachi and disappeared with a Flash Step.
.
.
.
After eating her dinner, Aika made some excuse and locked herself in her room.
Burying her head in her blanket, Aika asked herself, 'Seriously... What's going on? Why do I have this kind of combat knowledge? Although I wasn't able to regain any memories of my personal life, I know for sure that the sword didn't give that to me, instead, I trained for them... Just what happened in that blank year?'
Aika recalled her parents' reaction and thought, 'They really knew nothing... If they did, that wouldn't be their only reaction knowing how overprotective they are.'
The next morning, she went out early and came back to her spot while carrying her nodachi and using Flash Step the entire way.
Although she was very tempted to pull out the blade, Aika calmed down and closed her eyes before taking a deep breath. In an instant, a new world was presented to her and she instinctively knew what she was 'looking' at, "These are... souls?"
From birds, insects, and fauna, to the earth itself. Everything contained a soul. And these souls were emitting excess that she was naturally breathing and refreshing her mind. Not content with what she was experiencing, Aika tried expanding the sphere of influence and got a bigger view of the world.
Without opening her eyes, she tried navigating through this world of souls and was able to do so better than her normal sight. Aika ran around without getting tired as the energy she was expending would return to nature and then nature would give it back. Although there was some physical stress, she didn't mind and wanted to continue experiencing this exhilarating feeling. It's as if something missing from her had been returned.
It was several hours later that Aika finally felt content and reopened her eyes, "...That was amazing."
After resting for a bit, Aika finally wanted to pull out her nodachi and swing it around. But before she did, she thought that she'd scan the surroundings as far as she can using the world she's seen earlier without getting lost in it, "Yosh!"
A hundred meters around her, there was only nature. Half a kilometer, the clarity was reduced but she can still tell what was what. Finally, there was her limit of a kilometer, but the edge was too blurry to gain any meaningful information. She was about to close her scan when a strong soul suddenly brushed past the northern edge, 'What was that?'
Curiosity took over her and hid her presence before carefully approaching the north. There she saw the familiar green-haired woman that she saw at the park but this time, her ears were longer, "...An Elf?"
But that muttering was a mistake on Aika's part as a ball of fire suddenly went flying in her direction, "Who's there!?"