Old Monk's Rambling

Next morning, both me and Alvare were ready to depart, the village sent him off rather cold-heartedly, but I didn’t expect anything fancy, since well, yesterday was pretty eventful by itself. Just as we were about to leave, the village chief, I presume, approached him and said a couple of last words:

“Alva, young boy, you have shown great courage yesterday, be proud, just as your brother was”

“Thanks grandpa, for everything”

They must’ve been pretty close as soon after Alvare hugged him intensely, with both men started to shed tears

“Fool, don’t talk like you’re going on a suicide mission, You’re welcome to come back anytime, we will always welcome you with open arms”

The glint of their wet eyes shined brighter than the sun at this moment, without any hesitation, Alvare wiped his eyes and came to me with more confidence than he ever displayed “Let’s go”

As we were walking away from the village both me and him turned around a couple of times just to notice different people waving to us, Artetta riding on Buzzlock’s shoulders, or Ferro trying to pull off the “cool old guy” vibe raising his fingers slightly.

As we turned around for the last time, there was still one person who had something to say:

“ALVAAAAAA--” - The boy’s voice echoed throughout the whole forest - “ Next time… Next time I’ll come with you, so you better wait for me!” - it was none other than spade, I’m sure after such intense screaming he will not be able to speak for the rest of the day. I turned around to look at Alvare’s reaction, but all he did was smirk as we continued to walk forward.

The journey wasn’t exactly the most eventful, but after walking for about 3 hours, it was time for a break and some food, before I even set up a campfire he approached me about something

“Hey Saya, I have a request” - As soon as he said that, he instantly started to knee on the floor - “ teach me about that blue thing you summoned”

I really didn’t have an issue with teaching him, but we were way too formal so I thought I’d do something about it first “Sure, on one condition”
“I’ll accept any condition” - I’m sure he expected a whole monologue on how using this power to hurt people, well, while it’s not good It’s not my decision on what he does with it or not, I trusted in his judgement

“Let me call you Alva”

“Huh?” - My disciple said with confusion - “Is that it?”

“Yeah, I don’t really have experience with teaching formally so being on better terms with you is all I need”

“I see…” - He sounded a little disappointed, I don’t know what he was expecting. Maybe a rigorous training regime? - “ Thank you”

“Haha!” - I laughed proudly and started explaining straight away - “ Listen my disciple...:”

“I thought we agreed on Alva…”

“There was an old monk once,who lived in the mountains all by himself. He came up with this way of teaching so listen carefully. Every living being has something called Ishiki in them, sometimes called “Stone’s Flow”, some people are unconscious of their Flow, while others utilize it to their advantage. Basic teachings of Flow include hardening your skin, extending life expectancy and increasing efficiency of vital organs such as your heart or lungs.”

“That doesn’t explain what you did?”

“Give me a second i’m not done yet, people who have mastered their Flow can shape their own versions for how it is used, this is what I have done yesterday, I was simply able to form my Ishiki into the weapons”

“ Hmm…” - Alva sounded a bit confused but he seemed to have a general idea of what I meant

“ For one to create his own ability,they must shape it themselves like a statue, imagine yourself in front of a block of stone with a chisel and a hammer, all the details, the lips, the ears, the eyelashes, the person must craft what they want to achieve by themselves.” - A quick breath and I continued my explanation - “There’s really no natural factor in terms of creating your ability, however your natural deposits of Ishiki and ‘crafting’ skills are something you’re born with. You might have a vision in your head of how something should look, but you might not be able to achieve it yourself, at least not with hours and hours poured into achieving it.”

“Hmm” - Alva was focusing intensely, I think he wanted to jump a few steps forward, but I didn’t think that was a good Idea so I decided to focus on the basics for now.

“ All right, that basically covers it. There's some stuff I left out, because it will probably confuse you for now, but yeah, let’s get to your training shall we?” - Saying this really made me feel older than I really am

“All right!”

In terms of training there really wasn’t much to it, a lot of manipulation of Ishiki comes from how well you know your own body, it’s kinda like a muscle-brain connection. A person has to think of bringing their Ishiki out for it to actually flow around their body, providing the benefits it does. Due to Alva’s athleticism, he really didn’t have a hard time getting basics ready, but when it came to his ability he was a blank sheet.

Regardless, our break was over and we continued to march through the forest, with the current pace we should make it to Mea in maybe 2-3 days. There really wasn’t much to do during the journey, most paths we walked through were safe, and even the non-marked forest paths really didn’t bring any trouble either. And so our second break came, it was time for more teaching, at least that’s what I thought.

“There’s no way!” - Laughed

“No no, I’m telling you! All those bees chased us all the way to the village, and we didn’t even get any honey from it to check!”

At first all we did was talk about some childhood stories that Alva had, he smashed pretty much all of the Beehives in his local area with his older brother and Spade in search of gold that some old adventurer that was visiting the village joked about. Or how about once they all swapped with a contestant from the festival, all of them stole his clothes and tried to act as one person.

However soon enough, maybe due to the darkness of the night, the conversation turned around, and neither of us were laughing anymore

“So hey, why do you travel? Is Job at the capital really that important to you?”

“Hmm?” - I initially didn’t think I heard what he said, but soon after it reached my brain - “No not really, you don’t mind me rambling a bit do you?”

Only response i got was a silent look therefore i decided to continue

“You know, people always have goals in life, be it becoming the leader of their village, finding a great treasure, or protecting what’s important to them. I’ve always been jealous of them. Sure I had some goals here and there when I was younger, but there really isn’t something that I can proudly say I wanna do, something that I wanna commit the rest of my life to, something that would make me say “I was able to do this and I’m proud” you know?” - I looked at Alva for approval and although he stayed silent I felt like he understood what I meant - “ Even my ability, it doesn’t have a name you know? It’s not even created by me. All I did was recreate it. I’m scared, scared that for the rest of my life I might not give it my all because I don’t have a clear goal, and get a mediocre result that will be forgotten after I pass…”

It got a bit personal real quick, the fire was burning really loudly, almost deafeningly

“Is saving the village all you plan to do?” - I asked hesitantly

“Maybe…. I love all these people, seeing any of them hurt, it just pains me, the curse of the sword, I think what I truly want to do is get rid of it” - The determination in his eyes really made the sentence believable - “After that? I’m not sure either, still have some time to think”

“I see… Alva, I know you only agreed to go with me to Mea, but how about going to Lusque with me? I’m sure such a big city will have some sort of person that can help you with the sword”

“Honestly I thought the trip was already going to finish there haha!”

“I know it might be rude of me, but how does the sword even look?”

“Oh that? Wait a second”

Alva reached behind his back, the sword was mounted on back of his pelvis, and was covered with thick bandages

“Honestly. I’m kinda worried about the sword” - he continued as he was unwrapping the weapon - “I know I won the trials and everything, but is it really recognized as a win? What if the curse is still activated?”

“If the curse was activated we’d be statues already” - I tried to lower his anxiety but it honestly didn’t seem to help. He was soon done unwrapping the weapon

“Huh?” - I said in confusion

“ ‘huh’ what?”

“Is that it? Can you even call this a sword?”

Now, I’m not personally bothered by size of things, but with all the description of this weapon I expected a scimitar maybe saber-like blade that’s around a torso length, but what I got instead was not even a sword, but a knife, with a circle one could put their finger through on the hilt. Though size-wise the ‘sword’ was rather a disappointment, the black blade that looked like it was made of thousands of grains was pretty impressive, it might’ve had golden coating but it was too dark to tell

“Whatever, I’m sure we’ll find someone who knows something about it! Anyway, it’s getting pretty late, let’s pick up the pace tomorrow I’m pretty excited” - I said as a responsible teacher

“Yeah…”

Next day’s journey was as uneventful as the first one, with the occasional stops during the travel Alva was slowly starting to release his Ishiki pretty well, though he still had time to go, on this day i was awoken during the night by weird sound a tree branch making same noise over and over, as if something was hanging from it, regardless, this is pretty much how rest of the journey went. A rather boring day, teaching Alva during break times, waking up during the night to weird sounds, rinse and repeat.

Finally! Mea! In our sights the entrance to the city has finally shown up, since the city was placed around a cliff and mountains, it was rather easily defended, as only one side had to be reinforced. The large metal wall was not as beautiful as I heard it was, with patches of different colour metals used around random points of the wall as if it just got attacked, and there was no one skilled enough to fix it.

Mea was famous for its large mine that hosted many beautiful gems, it was also what originally gave them the idea to use the carts for transportation too. But enough about its story centuries ago, what we needed now is to enter the city and use the train system. We had a bit of a leeway, since we sped up our pace from day 2 onward, and I spent less time in Rez than intended, but I’d rather spend the extra time in the capital than here.

We approached the main entrance just to be greeted with, well. not the most pleasant greeting :

“Ey! Entrance closed, boss not letting anyone in”

“Hey buddy, we’re just going to use the train station and we’re done, we won’t cause any trouble” - Alva reassured the guard

“No is no, now get out”

It seemed like Alva really wanted to say something to him, but I just grabbed his shoulder and shook my head, there was an old elderly couple near the entrance I thought we’d ask them what’s happening

“Hello miss!” - I put on my cheeriest voice - “Do you know what is happening to the city?”

“Bandits”

“They’re occupying the city right? Holding them hostage?”

“The mine”

Wow I never knew such simple answer were this frustrating

“They’re using the mine?”

The old lady just nodded, before I was able to turn around to look at the guard again a small child pulled from behind the old lady and said

“A-As long as they’re in the city, everything is closed, that’s what they said” - it seemed like the child was traumatized by something, I thought of patting her on her head and thanking her, but after seeing how scared she was i decided going to her eye level and thanking her whole-heartedly “Thank you!”. The girl blushed and went behind the old lady again, I turned to Alva and it seemed like both of us knew what needs to happen

“Well, looks like a new thing to do, at least we won’t get bored right?”