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Chapter 69 - Chapter 69 New Lessons

As Azi told Nosuri that he was going to smack her weapon around, Nosuri paled and began to back away from the boy who seemingly had an innocent smile on his face as he shouldered an enormous great sword on his shoulder.

Nosuri had misinterpreted his words as a proposition to spar with each other. After seeing the abnormal strength and skills that Azi had in fighting and thaumaturge, Nosuri felt as if she had little chance. Before she could say a word in refusal, her brother Ougi had cut in.

"Excuse me Azi, but if you don't mind? Could we test my weapon first?"

Azi shrugged in agreement as he didn't have any objections. Sighing, Nosuri gave her brother a silent prayer of thanks which Ougi responded with a knowing nod. Azi then instructed Ougi to prepare himself to block one of his attacks.

He was going to perform a simple vertical downward slash, so all that Ougi had to do was block it with both his sabers.

Ougi nodded in understanding and drew his sabers. Azi then warned that Ougi should channel some of his magic energy into the sabers in the same way he would his body. Ougi did as he was instructed and was surprised by the result, he could feel that his magic energy was being absorbed by the 5 black square pieces on each of his saber's grips and noticed a light layer of magic energy permeating the sabers as a whole.

Ougi nodded to indicate that he was ready which prompted Azi to focus his magic energy into his whole body. Hefting the greatsword over his head, Azi then brought it down swiftly with a sufficiently large, but controlled, amount of force.

*Clang*

As their swords met, Azi's greatsword was stopped by the crossed pair of Ougi's sabers. In the next moment, a cracking sound could be heard but it was not produced from Ougi's blade break but was from one of the black square pieces on Ougi's sword grips.

Retracting his great sword, Azi impaled it into the snowy ground and slouched down to examine the black shards in the snow. Donning his goggles, he examined each broken piece and looked at Ougi's sabers.

After a few moments of silent contemplation, Azi said with pride on his smile.

"Looks like the runes are working properly. How do your arm's feel?"

Briefly stretching and moving his arms around, Ougi responded with a bit of annoyance in his tone.

"Normal but a bit numb, but I believe it's because of your unbelievable strength in your strike."

Azi nodded and explained about the details of what he had just tested. The black squares were another kind of disposable catalyst, their role was to act as a connection point between the weapon and a user's magic energy.

This was why Azi had used the gengiri carapaces, they could conduct magic energy better than the material of the saber's handles. If he had tried to inscribe the rune of reinforcement directly on the weapon, the handles would be ineffective in activating a desired spell's effect due to a lack of effective energy absorption.

There was also the downside of the rune decreasing the durability of the weapon.

Azi's idea was to indirectly infuse and inscribe a rune into their weapons with the gengiri carapace as an intermediary. This allowed for the retention of the weapon's durability as it used a roundabout way to attach the rune and would allow for the reinforcement rune to have sufficient magic energy to activate.

This method of indirect rune engraving was innovative but not new. Paper talismans that were attached to weapons to infuse power into them was a common practice. This was not widely used as its effects were not as impressive as the more advanced rune that could be directly engraved.

A thaumaturge's goal is to create numerous effects or potent effects from the use of a single advance rune or numerous simple runes in combination with each other.

An example would be Touma's staff which had runes that allowed him the ability to speedily cast fire or earth spells with high efficiency as the magic conduction was increased by the combination of runes.

Azi's simple reinforce rune only had the effect of prolonging a weapons durability as long as the weapon had a supply of magic energy, but it was temporary as the square pieces would break if brought to their limit.

After hearing his explanation, Ougi and Nosuri nodded in understanding and gave their thanks. They understood that Azi had done them a service that would regularly be charged at a high cost which made them worry about the price he was going to charge. This worry was dashed away as Azi only requested that they only had to pay him 5000 Minos and to keep Rulu safe.

Nosuri and Ougi happily agreed which got a congratulatory laugh from Kajima.

"Hahaha, congrats Azi. You have successfully handled your first customer face to face. While I'm concerned by how much you charged, I can forgive it this time as the situation involved Rulu. Usually, a service like that would be charged at 25,000 Minos. Hahaha."

Nosuri paled at Kajima's reveal of how much Azi's services would have actually cost but Azi placated her as he said that it was fine but wanting to be a "good" woman she insisted that he charge more. At one point, Nosuri's face had reddened and embarrassingly offered her body as repayment which made Azi almost cough up some blood as he thought Nosuri was trying to incite Shizu to kill him.

After further placation, Azi told Nosuri to repay him by sparring with him and hunting monster with him when he was next available. Nosuri agreed and was able to recompose her reddened face that looked as if she was going to explode from embarrassment.

The group then spent their afternoon chatting with each other as they ate an impromptu picnic lunch made by Rulu. Azi and Rulu both asked Nosuri and Ougi about their travels as mercenaries and Kajima added his experience and knowledge to add more context to Nosuri's stories.

Azi learned about the other nations in the Empire which were Kujyuri, Enma, and Izuru. These were considered the western nations of Yamato. The capital city named Yamato made up the center of the empire and had the most land out of all of the nations.

To the east were the merchant and naval nations of Shaho and Nakuro. Shaho was governed by a Great General by the name of Soya and he headed the great naval fleet of Yamato. Shaho and Nakuro had an amicable relationship as both were seafaring nations whose main lifestyles were that of sailors, fishermen, or merchants.

These two nations were wealthy from their trade and were self-sufficient, but lacked the ability to easily travel to other nations by land due to the mountainous paths that made the journey too costly. Nosuri described how she was able to visit the nation thanks to the emperor's gift of the great ship that Great General Sayo is in charge of.

Nosuri described the ship as large but incredibly fast as the trip usually took 2 weeks by regular boat standards, but only took a week with the emperor's gifted ship. Nosuri described the ship to Azi and Rulu, who had glimmering eyes of curiosity as they desired to see it for themselves one day.

Rulu was entangled in her thoughts of what such a majestic ship would look like while Azi was thinking about the kind of technology behind the ship that made it so fast and large.

Nosuri then continued and shared about the kinds of monsters she faced in Shaho which Kajima added to as he helped to describe them in more detail.

One such monster was a lizard-like creature that could breathe fire and had hard red scales that were tougher than refined steel. They were called a ryuu but were mainly called earth dragons. These earth dragons got Azi's attention as he found the idea of a fantasy dragon as something incredible to see.

The adventurous part of his mind peaked at the thought of fantastical creatures.He wondered if the earth dragon's meat tasted any good and if the scales had new qualities he could use in his handicrafts.

When it was late into the afternoon, a couple of familiar villagers came to Kajima's house. As they approached, they shouted out to the group.

"Hey! AZI! Welcome back!"

The greeting came from Saki who was running towards Azi while being followed by Elder Sung. As Azi looked over, his vision suddenly changed to black as Saki had run up and lifted him up into a tight hug. While Saki did not have as much strength as Shizu, Azi felt a bit uncomfortable as he didn't like being treated like a child.

"Oh you are so adorable! I can see why Shizu likes to hold you so much. You are just so huggable!"

This was a common occurrence since Azi met Saki, she had the same inclination for small and huggable creatures like Shizu. When Azi went to meet Elder Sung one day, he was assaulted by Saki's hugs thanks to Shizu giving her permission and since then this was the usual way that Saki would greet him.

Azi sighed and just let Saki continue her antics as he thankfully knew what was coming next.

*Bonk*

Saki suddenly released Azi as she rubbed the back of her now sore head. Elder Sung, being a strict teacher to her apprentice, had bonked Saki on the back of her head with her cane to stop the girl's overly expressive actions.

"What was that for Elder Sung?!"

"Have some tack girl. Azi already has a fiancé, so hurry up and find an actual man that is single or do you expect to somehow steal his heart from Shizu."

Saki argued that polygamy was legal, but Elder Sung retorted that it was up to Azi which prompted Saki to ask Azi if she could marry him. This made Elder Sung facepalm herself as she could not believe how shameless her apprentice could be.

On the other hand, Azi flatly denied Saki's confession as he retorted that he didn't like people who blabbed about the daily lives of others. He still had a slight grudge against Saki for telling Elder Sung about his sleeping arrangement with Shizu.

Azi's denial of Saki's confession got a laugh out of Elder Sung and Kajima, but Saki easily recovered from her brief doubt of depression as she had a cheeky smile on her face as she spoke softly to Azi.

"Oh my, such dedication. Shizu must be in good hands."

Azi blushed at her words as it brought up the memories of what he had done to Shizu's chest the night prior with his own hands. This caused everyone to laugh at Azi's flushed face as he looked as if a pouting child due to his appearance and stature.