Chapter 6: Right on Track

Armored Dragon Calendar Year 413 – Claude, Age 8

—

[Claude POV]

The beastwoman arrived at the village on a morning that smelled of autumn.

I was practicing forms in the field behind Paul’s house when I first saw her. She moved with the predatory grace of a born fighter, her tanned skin and beast ears marking her as something far more dangerous than the ordinary travelers who passed through Buena.

Everything about her spoke of violence honed to perfection. The way she walked, each step economical and purposeful. The way her eyes moved, scanning constantly for threats even in this peaceful village. The muscles visible beneath her sparse clothing, corded and powerful, built through years of combat rather than simple labor.

Ghislaine Dedoldia. The name surfaced before I could stop it. Sword King rank. Former adventurer. Hired to protect Eris Boreas Greyrat.

Which meant she was here for Rudeus.

The knowledge came with fragments I couldn’t quite piece together. Rudeus, hired as a tutor for the Boreas family’s wild daughter. Him leaving the village. A redheaded girl with a temper like a wildfire.

I pushed the fragments aside. They didn’t matter right now. What mattered was the warrior standing before me.

Paul’s expression when he saw her was complicated. Recognition. Wariness. Old guilt, maybe—the history between them was written in the tension of his shoulders and the careful neutrality of his voice.

“Ghislaine,” he said, his voice carefully neutral.

“Paul.” She nodded once, her eyes already scanning the surroundings with a warrior’s instinct. “The boy?”

“Inside, learning magic.”

Their conversation continued, but I had stopped listening. My attention was fixed on Ghislaine’s movements, the way she held her body, the subtle readiness in every muscle. My mind was cataloguing details without conscious direction, analyzing her stance and finding… recognition.

The Sword God style.

This was the style as it was meant to be practiced. Every movement stripped of excess, reduced to pure efficiency. There was no wasted energy in the way Ghislaine held herself, no unnecessary tension. She was relaxed and ready simultaneously, capable of exploding into violence at a moment’s notice.

A pressure built behind my eyes. Not quite a voice, not yet. More like an instinct straining to break through. Whatever it was, it recognized Ghislaine’s stance—resonated with knowledge I possessed but couldn’t consciously reach.

I felt my stance shift without deciding to change it. Felt my weight redistribute into a position that matched Ghislaine’s more closely than anything Paul had taught me. My grip on the practice sword adjusted, my feet repositioned, my center of gravity lowered almost imperceptibly.

Then the sensation faded, leaving me slightly dizzy.

My body had moved without my permission again. Had assumed a stance I didn’t know how to maintain now that the instinct had retreated.

“You.” Ghislaine’s voice cut through my disorientation. She was looking at me now, her beast eyes sharp with interest. Those golden irises missed nothing, and I knew with sudden certainty that she had seen my stance shift. Seen the moment when something else had moved through my body.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Claude.” I forced my voice to stay steady. “Just Claude.”

“You train with Paul?”

“Yes.”

She studied me for a long moment, her expression unreadable. I felt exposed beneath that gaze, as though she could see past my skin to the strange presences that lived inside my mind.

Then she nodded. Approval, maybe. Hard to tell with beastfolk.

“Your stance is wrong,” she said. “But the instincts behind it are sound.”

Before I could respond, she had turned away, following Paul toward the house where Rudeus was studying. I watched her go, my heart pounding for reasons I couldn’t explain.

She had seen something. Recognized something in the way I moved. And whatever she had seen had interested her enough to comment.

—

Before returning to my training, I found myself drawn to the Greyrat household.

Zenith had given birth a year ago, and Lilia had followed shortly after. The house was different now—louder, messier, somehow more alive. Two baby girls had transformed the quiet home into a place of constant motion and noise.

“Big brother Claude!” I heard the moment I entered the yard, though of course the words came from Rudeus rather than the babies themselves. He’d picked up the habit of calling me that with obvious reluctance, mainly because I refused to respond to anything else.

“There he is!” I grinned, spotting the two small bundles in a wooden playpen near where Zenith was hanging laundry. “My beautiful princesses.”

Aisha cooed as I approached, reaching her tiny hands toward me. Norn, slightly older, was already trying to stand, clutching the playpen’s edge with a determined expression that reminded me painfully of her father.

“Heya, Norn. Heya, Aisha.” I scooped them up one at a time, cradling them against my chest. “Big brother Claude is here.”

“Put them down,” Rudeus complained, appearing at my elbow with a scowl. “They’re my sisters, not your toys.”

“Someone’s jealous.” I planted an exaggerated kiss on Aisha’s forehead, making her giggle. “Don’t worry, princesses. Your actual brother is just grumpy because he can’t beat me in sparring.”

“That’s not—I could totally—” Rudeus sputtered.

“Kyahaha!” Aisha laughed, her tiny hands grabbing at my face.

“Gah!” Norn added, which I chose to interpret as agreement.

“See? They know who the superior brother is.”

Zenith watched from the clothesline, her expression warm with amusement. Lilia, standing beside her, covered a smile behind her hand.

“Keep that filthy mouth away from my sisters!” Rudeus made a grab for Aisha, but I spun away with a laugh, keeping both babies safely balanced.

“What filthy mouth? I’m the most wholesome big brother in this village.” I tickled Norn’s belly, earning another delighted shriek. “Right, princess? Right?”

“You’re the most annoying person in this village,” Rudeus muttered.

Paul had emerged from the house at some point, watching our exchange with the resigned expression of a man who had given up controlling the chaos in his life. “Claude, stop tormenting my son.”

“I’m not tormenting anyone. I’m bonding with my future—”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”

I grinned at Paul’s warning tone. The running joke about me marrying his daughters had become a reliable way to make his eye twitch. “I was going to say ‘future sparring partners.’ What did you think I meant?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You have a filthy mind, Paul. I’m nine years old.”

Zenith laughed outright at that, while Lilia’s composure finally cracked into a genuine smile.

The moment felt precious. Ordinary. Two babies gurgling happily, a frustrated boy, exasperated parents—all of it normal and warm and exactly what life should have been.

I held onto that feeling even as the knowledge in my head whispered about what was coming. In two years, these babies would be toddlers. In four years, the sky would split open and scatter everyone I loved across the world.

But for now, in this moment, I could pretend we had all the time in the world.

I spent the rest of that afternoon making tiny sparks of colored light for the girls—safe, harmless magic that made them clap and squeal with delight. Rudeus watched with poorly concealed jealousy, occasionally muttering about showing off.

“Pretty!” Norn managed, her first clear word of the day.

“That’s right, princess. Pretty.” I created another shower of sparks, and her face lit up brighter than any magic I could produce.

These were the moments I was fighting for. These small, precious, ordinary moments that the disaster would try to steal.

I wouldn’t let it.

—

Ghislaine’s stay in Buena would be brief—barely three days before she and Rudeus departed for Roa. The official summons had already arrived, she was here to escort him to the Boreas estate where he would serve as tutor to the young lady Eris.

But in those three days, I learned more about the Sword God style than I had in years of training with Paul.

Not through lessons. Ghislaine hadn’t come to teach. Her purpose was retrieval, not instruction.

But a Sword King couldn’t help but move like a Sword King. Even in casual moments—walking through the village, speaking with Paul, waiting while Rudeus prepared for his journey—her body maintained the perfect readiness of a master. Every gesture was a lesson for anyone observant enough to read it.

I watched obsessively, cataloguing every movement I could catch. The way she shifted her weight when standing still. The angle of her shoulders when she turned. The subtle positioning of her feet that would let her explode into action from any position.

The Sword God style was built for speed and aggression. A single decisive strike rather than prolonged exchanges. Cut through the enemy before they could mount a defense. It suited my body’s instincts in ways that Paul’s mixed approach never quite had.

Paul taught a blend of all three major styles—the speed of Sword God, the defense of Water God, the power of North God. It was a practical approach, giving students versatility without mastery. But watching Ghislaine, I understood what pure dedication to a single path could achieve.

Every movement she made was an expression of the Sword God philosophy. Strike first. Strike hard. End the fight before it truly begins.

But it was one particular technique that captured my attention.

The Longsword of Light.

I didn’t know how I knew the name. It surfaced from the depths of my memory like a fish breaking water, bringing with it fragmentary images of a blade moving faster than sight. A technique that converted raw speed into cutting power, making the sword invisible to the naked eye.

The ultimate expression of the Sword God style. A strike so fast that the blade became light itself.

Ghislaine never demonstrated it. Perhaps she couldn’t. Perhaps it was beyond even a Sword King’s abilities—reserved for the true masters who had transcended mortal limitations. But the concept lodged in my mind and refused to leave.

Speed. The secret was speed. Moving the blade so fast that it became a beam of light rather than a physical object.

But what if I approached the problem differently? Not pure speed, but something that mimicked the effect through other means?

I began experimenting in my private training ground.

The clearing had grown over the past two years, evolving from a simple practice area into something more elaborate. Multiple training dummies stood at various distances, each marked with the vital points I had learned to target. Weapon racks held practice swords of different weights, allowing me to train with varying resistance. A small shelter protected my notes and experimental materials from the weather.

This was my laboratory. My sanctuary. The place where I could push my limits without fear of discovery.

Warriors used something called Touki—battle aura, fighting spirit, life force shaped into power. I had seen glimpses of it in Paul’s movements during our most intense sparring sessions, a faint shimmer around his blade that made his strikes heavier than physics alone could explain. Ghislaine radiated it constantly, her very presence carrying a weight that had nothing to do with her physical size.

Touki was what made the Sword God style possible. Pure physical enhancement, drawn from the warrior’s own life force rather than external mana.

I couldn’t access it. Not reliably. The knowledge was there, buried in fragmentary memories, but my body didn’t know how to produce battle aura consistently. So I had been experimenting with an alternative—using mana to achieve similar effects.

The first attempts were clumsy. I burned through my mana reserves in seconds, achieving nothing but exhaustion. The sword moved slightly faster, perhaps, but nowhere near what I was imagining.

I tried again the following night, pushing myself harder. Each failure taught me something new, refining my approach through painful iteration.

The problem, I realized, was that I was treating mana like fuel. Pouring it into the sword and expecting speed to result naturally. But mana wasn’t fuel—it was energy, raw and unstructured, waiting to be shaped by will and intent.

I tried adjusting my approach. Instead of flooding the blade with energy, I created channels. Paths that the mana could flow through in a specific direction, adding momentum rather than simply adding power.

The theory came from somewhere deep inside, from knowledge I didn’t consciously possess. Someone—something—had understood these principles far better than I did, and fragments of that understanding surfaced when I reached for them.

Better. The sword whistled through the air with noticeably increased speed. But still not enough. Still not the blinding flash I remembered from dreams.

I experimented with different mana flow patterns. Tried concentrating the energy at the tip of the blade rather than distributing it evenly. Tried releasing all the accumulated energy in a single burst at the moment of the strike.

Each modification brought me closer to something, though I wasn’t sure what. The technique was evolving through trial and error, guided by instincts I couldn’t fully understand.

Then, on the second night—the final night of Ghislaine’s stay—my frustration peaked, and something shifted.

I had been training for hours, my mana nearly depleted and my muscles aching. The training dummy before me was scarred from a hundred failed attempts, the wood splintered and cracked where my strikes had landed.

I felt the instinct rising again. That other presence that sometimes took control of my movements. But this time, instead of fighting it, I let go.

The surrender was strange. Like stepping back from my own body, giving something else permission to move it. I felt my grip on the sword change, my stance adjust, my center of gravity shift in ways I couldn’t have directed consciously.

My body moved without my direction. Mana flowed through patterns I hadn’t consciously created, gathering at the base of the blade and then releasing in a single explosive pulse.

The sword screamed through the air.

For a single instant, the blade was invisible. A line of light cutting through the darkness.

The training dummy split in half, the cut so clean that the pieces didn’t fall immediately. They hung in the air for a moment, as though reality itself hadn’t yet registered what had happened.

Then they tumbled to the ground, the wood inside perfectly smooth, unmarked by splinters or rough edges.

I stood there, breathing hard, staring at what I had done.

It wasn’t the true Longsword of Light. The speed had come from mana, not from pure physical ability. But the effect was similar. A strike too fast to see. A technique that could end a fight before the enemy knew it had begun.

And I had no idea how I had done it.

The instinct had taken control, moved my body in ways I couldn’t replicate consciously. Whatever knowledge lived inside me had guided the mana through patterns I didn’t understand.

I tried to repeat the technique immediately. Failed. Tried again. Failed again.

My mana was nearly exhausted, and the presence that had guided me was gone, retreated back into whatever corner of my mind it called home.

But I had felt it. For one moment, I had been more than myself. Had touched something that was beyond my normal abilities.

And I knew, with bone-deep certainty, that I would find that presence again. Would learn to call upon it intentionally. Would master the skills that lived inside me without my permission.

Because the disasters I remembered were coming. And when they arrived, I would need every advantage I could claim.

—

The morning of Ghislaine’s departure, I found her waiting for me outside my father’s smithy.

She stood motionless in the early light, her massive sword strapped across her back, her beast ears twitching slightly as she detected my approach. There was no aggression in her posture, but no warmth either. Just the patient stillness of a predator who had all the time in the world.

“Show me,” she said without preamble.

I didn’t ask how she knew. Beastfolk had senses beyond human capability. Perhaps she had heard the training dummy shatter from across the village. Perhaps she had smelled the mana burning in the night air.

“I can’t control it,” I admitted. There was no point in lying to someone who could probably detect deception through my heartbeat alone.

“Show me anyway.”

We walked to my training ground in silence. She moved without sound, her footsteps leaving no trace on the forest floor. I found myself unconsciously trying to match her stealth, adjusting my own movements to minimize noise.

She noticed, of course. One ear flicked in my direction. Amusement? Her expression gave nothing away.

The clearing showed the evidence of my night’s work. The split dummy lay in pieces on the ground. Other dummies bore the marks of failed attempts—deep cuts that hadn’t quite achieved the speed I was seeking.

Ghislaine examined the split dummy with professional interest, running a clawed finger along the cut.

“Mana-based,” she said. “Clever and dangerous, yet inefficient.”

“I know.”

“The true Longsword of Light requires no mana.” She straightened, her golden eyes fixing on mine. “Touki. The sword becomes an extension of your life force, not your magical reserves. Pure physical speed enhanced by fighting spirit—that is what makes the technique work.”

She ran a claw along the split wood. “What you did was a cheat. A shortcut. Mana burns out. Touki sustains. In a prolonged fight, your approach would leave you exhausted while a true practitioner could strike a hundred times without tiring.”

“I know that too.”

“Then why pursue it?”

The question caught me off guard. I had expected criticism, perhaps even dismissal. Not genuine curiosity about my motivations.

“Because I can’t produce Touki reliably,” I said slowly. “The knowledge is there—I can feel it—but my body doesn’t respond the way it should. The skills I possess come and go without my control. If I can create something functional through mana enhancement, even if it’s inferior, it’s better than waiting for an ability that might never stabilize.”

Ghislaine studied me for a long moment. Her expression remained unreadable, but something in her posture shifted slightly.

“Can you do it again?”

I took my stance, gripping the practice sword with hands that refused to shake. Reached for the presence inside me.

Nothing. Just my own clumsy abilities, nowhere near the speed I had achieved the night before. The knowledge that had guided my mana was gone, leaving only the memory of what I had accomplished.

I tried anyway. Pushed mana into the blade, attempted to recreate the patterns I had felt the night before. The sword moved faster than normal, but it was a pale shadow of what I had achieved under the presence’s guidance.

Ghislaine studied me for a long moment. “You have potential,” she said finally. “But potential without control is worthless. Train. Learn. When you can call upon that speed at will, you might become something worth fighting.”

She left without another word.

I watched from the forest edge as she returned to the village. Within the hour, she and Rudeus departed for Roa—the Sword King escorting the boy who would become tutor to a young noble. He looked back once toward the village that had been his home before the road curved and took them out of sight.

Sylphy found me later that afternoon, her eyes red and swollen. She didn’t speak—just sat beside me in the clearing and stared at the empty road. I couldn’t offer her comfort. We both knew he might never return.

After she left, I stood alone, staring at the ruined dummy, and made a silent promise.

I would learn control. Would master whatever strange abilities lived inside my mind.

Not for pride or recognition, but for survival. For the people I meant to protect when the world ended and began again.

The path ahead was unclear, but the destination was certain. I would become strong enough to matter when the disasters came.

Whatever it took.