Young Writers Society

Day 51

Since the...event, Ash has gotten a lot more talkative and eager to touch me. Since I’ve been unsure how to handle that, I left the issue alone, ignoring her contact. Apparently she mistook this as anger. So shortly after I de-summoned the wolf after I finished training with Vencer I was greeted by Harley’s black eyes, glowing in my face.

Upside down...

“Hello.” I muttered, looking up enough to notice she was being held up by a wrapping of ribbon like limbs.

"Hello." Harley said, her hat somehow sitting perfectly on her head dispute being upside down.

"How is your hat staying on?" I asked.

"Magic?" Harley said, more asking then answering.

I tilted my head to see who was holding her up, but I already had a good idea.

Ash.

“Why?” I asked.

“Just stare into Harley’s cute eyes and let it all blow away in the wind.” Ash answered, outside of my view.

“Let what blow away in the non-existent wind.” I said.

“You’re anger, let it blow away in the adorable~” Ash said, half singing. “Or make it windy. One of those.”

“Are you okay with this Harley?” I finally asked her. After the blessing, Brook still couldn’t talk, and Harley seemed to have a hard time forming sentences. Or maybe she just don’t like talking. Either way, it amazed me how little she reacted to being hung up like that.

“Don’t care.” Harley said.

“See, see~ Harley wants to help master too.” Ash added in.

“I’m not angry.” I said.

“You see that Harley? Your cute cured him already~” Ash said, quickly lowering and rotating Harley over to herself. Hugging the slow to respond monster.

“Horay?” Harley said.

“I never was angry.”

“Then why haven’t you been paying attention to me?” Ash asked.

“I’ve paid more attention to you then any of my other minions.”

“‘Gasp’” Ash said, rather then did, “Did you hear that Harley? Master hasn’t been paying enough attention to you.”

“Oh...no.” Haley muttered.

“Look how much you hurt the poor girl.” Ash said in mock sympathy.

“What do you want?” I said, figuring she was playing some sort of game.

“I heard you got a battleaxe that repairs itself.” Ash said, suddenly unbinding Harley and letting her go, Harley silently walked off unconcerned with the whole matter. “I want it.”

“My eye’s aren’t strong enough to learn the skill yet, I rather not loose the weapon until I can learn that skill.”

“You have a skill that makes it so you can’t loose weapons right?” Ash argued.

“I don’t know how to etch weapons yet without making them explode. So I can’t share that skill with you.”

“This one will fix itself, so that’s perfect.” She pointed out.

“I thought you liked archery.”

“I want some sort of close range self defense, I got the extra arms to get away with some mixing.” Ash raised her extra limbs, each of the four turning into a basic hand.

Huh. Well I guess if I can jump between weapons, Ash could as well. But since she can’t just call them out like me, I never thought about it. I suppose an extra weapon wouldn’t slow her down much since she could use both at the same time.

After a few seconds of silence I finally said,“Maybe I can pay my Vencer to do it for me later.”

Ash hugged me.

Hm…

“I’d like you to practice more shapes with those extra arms of yours, the natural skill that comes with them shouldn’t even be close to the limit.” I added on.

“I know, been doing that.” The ribbon like limbs wrapped around me. “I’ll have more ways to practice with the new weapon, thank you master.”

‘Does this count as handling her?’ I wondered.

Day 52

“Oh, I’ll do that for free.” The Enchanter Michelle, my Vencer said casually after I explained how Ash wanted the battle axe.

“Are you sure?” I wrote, surprised.

“I’m surprised you didn’t ask for anything sooner.” She shrugged. “I did say I’m your mom for now on. What mom doesn’t pamper her brat?”

“I wouldn’t know.” I wrote.

“Anyway, hand it over.” She said, the regenerating battle axe appeared, falling on the floor with a loud ‘clang’. The battle axe was a double sided set up that was quite massive at three feet, with a complicated array of decorations that made the two sides resemble the opened wings of a bird. Far too decorative for my taste, and probably far too unbalanced with all those decorations, but since it can fix itself, and Ash is quite strong, I don’t think it matters much.

“Bit big of a gift to give you’re girlfriend. Shiny though, girls like that.” She muttered struggling to pick it up, as a gnome the weapon was probably triple her weight, I helped her, lifting the weapon on a partly clear table. “Thank’s.” She said, patting the wolf’s head before laying an enchantment paper down, the skill [Tool Lock] rune on it, like always I didn’t even notice her pull it out.

“She’s not my girlfriend.” I wrote, admittedly unsure about the implications, but the accusation bothered me.

“Right, right.” She sat the rune on the battle axe and waved me over. “I want you to watch this, until you can start properly putting rune to paper, there’s no point in teaching this, but you might as well guess what I am doing.”

She rested her finger against the rune, and everything started to glow, a line of color following her finger as she traced the rune. Same thing as I’ve tried doing over and over, pushing in mana as I saw her do, only for the weapon to explode, when I try holding off, it always fails to work. After only a minute she was done, the complex rune etched into the metal perfectly.

“There we go. Want me to wrap it?” She said laughing slightly. I quickly pulled it back into my armory. “Now that, that’s done, I want you to read some things.” She pulled out five enchantment paper’s runes already carved in them. Most of the time enchanters start with these five skills, practicing them to perfection. Since you have that cheating skill of yours that lets you learn faster then others, I figured we’d work with the skills you already have. So far all you’ve rune-d out was [Flail], [Cleave], and [Charge]. Your other skills are way too complicated for an amateur.”

“Then why make me work with them?” I wrote.

“Sorry to say it, but I over estimated you.” Michelle said, sighing. “Now study these and lets see how much you learned from the hard stuff.”

The skills she gave me were [Minor Speed], [Minor Defense], [Minor Mana regain], [Minor water breathing], and [Minor dodge]. All weak skills with almost negligible effects and no potential for ranking up. My [Scitis Eyes] learned them easily. I spent the rest of the time repeatedly drawing out these runes. While I failed a lot at first, by the time I de-summoned my wolf, I had drawn out those skill runes successfully at least ten times.

“There’s the speed I was wanting to see.” Michelle said, waving me goodbye. “I’ll try weening you into more powerful runes tomorrow.”

Ash was quite happy with the new weapon, but depressed when I told her that she’s going to be training with it against me for the next few days.

Day 53

I was handed the skills [Hard Shell], [Hard Blade], and [Hard Axe], all of them skills focusing on raising the damage resistance of items, the shell one was for armor, and the hammer and blade one, obviously for Axes and blades. All skills I couldn’t rank up, but still useful to someone like me who burns through weapons and armor so fast. I was able to draw runes of them after half an hour, and she made me keep drawing them after that until I could draw them out it in a few seconds.

As the day was ending and all the adventurers stopped coming in, Gabi showed up, carrying a massive stack of books. She seemed frustrated with me about almost abandoning her, but said she was getting bored at home. I had to offer to go out with her in a few days and buy her at least 50 books before she started to calm down.

Bribery is quite effective against anger it seems.

We talked about a few things and she told me where she lives before she had to go, leaving on quite an interesting note when Ash handed her something. The Elf turned a few shades redder and rushed out of my dungeon. I wasn’t able to tell what she was bothered about but the book said something about pirates. Ash refused to tell me about it, simply smiling, saying it was “girl stuff.”

Huh.

‘I didn’t think Ash could keep secrets...’ I thought.

Day 54

Fourth Prince William, visited today with his sister, second Princess Victoria, and a man named David, apparently the princes sword play instructor. Prince William explained that he had been spending his time training in sword arts in order to better handle his level grinding with a sword instructor from his families army, one who worked under his sister. They didn’t stay long enough for me to get a feel on his sister’s personality or David’s, but Prince William came to tell me where he was saying, a house that was recently build next to that book store he took me too so long ago. He also wanted to know what preference I had in weapons, wanting to have me train.

Admittedly I have no idea, weapons break so often for me that I never could stick to anything long enough to figure that out. So I told him that I have a preference for Pole Arm’s, a crowd control weapon I’ve burned through quite a number of. Khopesh a useful weapon that allowed me to do all sorts of tricks that a normal sword wouldn’t allow, yet sadly they break easily. Then finally the greatsword, which has allowed one of my more powerful moves, building up momentum with the massive weapon and using that to cut adventurers in half.

Sadly this move often breaks the greatsword.

He said he knew several trainers for those weapons and offered to have them teach me.

I rather not owe the human anything, but I feel that it a bit too late.

Oh well, I accepted.

Day 55

I was handed a skill called, [Vorpal Sword], a skill that can’t be ranked up that controls the ‘volume’ of a weapon hitting something. I couldn’t raise the sound by much even at it’s max, but I could almost mute the sounds of contact entirely. Vencer handed me that skill, telling me to master the art of drawing it shortly after I learned it. I got a working version just barely within the time limit. I was annoyed, but Vencer praised me for figuring it out so fast.

Though I admit my focus was quite split that day, while that was going on, Anna and Alex came to visit, so my [Fourth Eye] ability fell into effect, allowing me a full view even though my eyes were closed.

“Oh, hello.” Ash said, snuggling against me at that time.

“Are you guy’s busy?” Anna mumbled.

“Master’s training in town with that Enchanter, but if you want to talk, I’d be fine with it.” Ash replied.

“I told you he’d still have been focusing on that.” Alex said, walking into the room enough to notice Harley was staring at them. “H-hi.”

“Hello.” Harley said.

“Oh, another one can talk now.” Alex muttered.

Anna didn’t seem to notice her brother’s comment and said. “Sure, we never really talked with you much.”

Ash got off of me, “I remember getting some chairs from Master recently, please wait a bit.” She rushed into her minion room.

“Was she always that talkative?” Alex asked his sister.

“These guy’s grow up really fast, I wouldn’t be surprised if she starts talking in limerick’s next time we see her.” Anna said with a shrug.

“So who are you?” Alex said, turning back to Harley.

“Harley.” Harley offered. “We met...before. Forgot?”

“See, these guys change fast.” Anna said, patting her brother on the shoulder.

“No, I didn’t forget… I just didn’t recognize you because you changed so much.” Alex said quickly.

Ash finally left her room, carrying four chairs in her extra limbs. “Isn’t she just adorable?” She said, while walking out.

“Uh.” Alex replied, unsure how to respond.

“I guess? The eyes and teeth are kind of throwing that off. Like she’s gonna eat me.” Anna replied.

“Rude” Harley said, sitting down in the chair Ash pushed her near. Anna and Alex decided to sit down as well. Ash patted Harley’s head before sitting down herself.

“Now, what were you going to talk with master about?”

SMACK, I suddenly felt my summons head slam into the ground.

“What are you getting distracted for?” Vencer said, holding her hand, clearly having hurt herself hitting me.

“Sorry, Vencer.” I wrote quickly.

For most of my training after that I was fully focused on rune crafting, until I felt Ash ruffle my hair.

“See?~” I heard Ash say, as I started to spread my awareness with [Forth Eye] again. “When he’s training he doesn’t notice anything.”

“If you’re sure...then what do you want to ask that you don’t want to talk to Zeno about?” Anna asked.

“Well I tried~ But he thought I was just pushing him for something.” Ash said. “See the thing is...”

She then proceeded to tell in detail exactly what she did to me in that bath so many days ago, and how I’ve been ignoring her ‘advances’ since then. Throughout her tale, I could actually see Anna and Alex change from three different shades of red, while Harley seemed to just go ‘ah’, like she just realized something, but didn’t seem sure what she realized.

“I though only old creeps did that.” Anna said after Ash finished.

“What?” Ash said confused.

“Um, Ash.” Alex said, “Where did you learn about that? Or was that something you just knew?”

“Oh it was in the pile of books Gabi brought over.” Ash said casually. “She freaked out for some reason when she realized I had it, but I convenience her to lend it to me.”

“Violently?” Alex asked.

“Of course not, Master would have gotten angry at me.” Ash said, like she was slightly offended at the idea.

“And what was the book called?” Alex muttered.

“Alice Halfaway in: quest for the pirate booty.” Ash said after a few seconds of thinking.

“Oh I haven’t read tha- o-oh...” Anna stopped herself, glancing over at her brother. “Anyway, you’re a bit too young for that sort of book.”

“Didn’t want to hear that.” Alex groaned.

“Did I do something wrong?” Ash asked, sounding confused.

“Well I don’t think Zeno would even know what you did to him.” Anna said. “He probably doesn’t know how to react to how you’re acting. Or that...” Alex said.

Ash tilted her head down, an awkward silence filled the throne room. “Did I hurt master?” Ash asked after almost a minute.

“I wouldn’t say you hurt him but...” Anna said.

“What do I do?!” Ash suddenly yelled.

SMACK, I suddenly felt my summons head slam into the ground once again.

“Sorry, Vencer” I quickly wrote.

“Don’t make me used a mace on you.” Michelle said, clearly annoyed, holding her hurt hand. “Your stupid dog skull hurts.”

After the training with Vencer ended and I started to look around with my real body Ash was gone and Anna and Alex seemed like they were about to leave, we talked a bit but they said they had to do something so didn’t stay long, they seem to have still been a few shades redder then usual, so they might have just felt awkward given how detailed Ash was before.

Hm.

I suppose I should monitor Ash’s reading more, but now that she can refuse my orders that would be a pain.

The rest of the day Ash talked very little which was odd to me, more so the fact she actively avoided touching me when ever possible.

I wonder what Anna and Alex told her to do...

Beyond that before I went to sleep I had Ash and Harley fight using only their extra limbs, while Ash had more experience, Harley’s limbs were designed to fire off magic, so there was a bit of a balance in their fight. Since they seemed to figure out more when fighting each other, I told them that for now on they were expected to train against each other purely using their extra limbs.

Ash seemed happy to have escaped training against me.

‘Am I really that harsh?’ I wondered.