The trip through the Land of the Woods was long but mostly uneventful.

It took us about three and a half weeks to make it through the country entirely, and it was exactly what the name suggested trees and lots of them. There was a scary moment when we were about a day’s walk from the border when I sensed four Jounin level chakra signatures right on the edge of my range to the east.

We ran the rest of the way to the Land of Mountains, without a break. We had both had more than enough of fighting Jounin, thank you very much.

The run wasn’t as exhausting as I imagined it might be, my stamina seemingly held out pretty well. Karenbana seemed to be completely fine, my running speed was seemingly a nice jog for her.

The trees quickly thinned out, and after a couple of hours, the terrain began to become increasingly craggy. Stone, dark tightly packed dirt, and boulders seemingly dotted the landscape, broken up by the occasional dead tree. There were a lot of mountains, which wasn’t surprising given the name of the place.

Mount Koryū sat as a paradoxical existence of death and endurance, it towered hundreds of meters into the air, and even from here, I could see a massive cavern carved into the face of it, halfway up. A darker shade of grey and black, on a grey and black backdrop.

There was also an obvious gradient to the land, where the land started rich and fertile, trees growing strong and tall to the east, but the further west we traveled, the more dead the land became. Cracked earth, crumbled and dead trees, animal carcasses, and a complete lack of birds. I made sure to keep an eye on Karenbana’s chakra reserves to see when they started to dip, and as soon as they started to deplete, I turned around and headed back for a couple of hundred meters.

I scuffed a deep mark into the ground and then sat down.

“Karenbana, my dear, this is as far as you go,” I said cheerfully. “Any further, and your chakra will start falling again.”

“I didn’t even notice it,” Karenbana said nervously. “It's fine here?”

I nodded.

“Although if you start to feel weak, I’d start running east as quickly as you can manage.” I said wryly, “Better to not risk it after all.”

Karenbana sat down beside me and hugged her knees to her chest.

“You really don’t have Chakra?” Karenbana said quietly. “You’re not going to go up there and die, right?”

“Didn’t believe me, huh?” I said, amused, “I’m one-hundred percent sure I do not have chakra, I do however have another source of energy, I’m pretty sure it won’t affect me, but if it does I’ll notice immediately.”

Karenbana didn’t say anything for a moment.

“I thought you were lying about it,” Karenbana said honestly, “Sorry.”

I just laughed, and we sat in silence for a long while.

“What are you going to do now, Karenbana?” I asked cheerfully. “Are you going to retire somewhere? Startup a noodle shack? Get into gambling?”

Karenbana didn’t reply.

“Buy a fishing boat? Buy two fishing boats? Make them fight to the death for your amusement?” I rattled off, “Sneak in and take the Chunin exams at one of the main villages for a laugh? Hunt down the tailed beasts, create a single massive super tailed beast, and try to take over the world?”

I smiled faintly.

“Nah, that last one was too much, wasn’t it?” I said easily, “I always go overboard with these things.”

Karenbana still didn’t reply, so I nodded calmly and stood up.

“It’s been fun, Karenbana,” I called over my shoulder, “I’ll come back past here on my way back, it would be cool if I got to hang out with you some more.”

I tossed a wave over my shoulder.

“But if you do decide on retiring, no hard feelings,” I let out a breath, “I’ll see you around.”

Karenbana didn’t say anything, and I didn’t look back.

The walk towards Mount Koryū was a quiet one; eventually, she was outside of my sensor range, and I refused to turn around because I was afraid that if I did, I would see that she had already left.

Better to not risk it.

The mountain didn’t change much on the way; other than to slowly grow larger, the closer I came to it. It was dead silent, no birds, no insects, just the crunch of small stones underfoot.

I began to make out a large round tunnel right at the bottom of the mountain that was previously hidden in the blend of black and grey stones. It was pretty much pitch black inside, and I was suddenly glad that I had managed to create the Vision skill.

Stumbling around in that hell hole looked like it would be a terrible time.

I abruptly sensed something right in the center mass, possibly where that large cavern was located, the one I had seen from a distance. A solid length of Chakra about as long as my arm, tapered to a point. Above and behind it were five orbs of Chakra that glowed like miniature suns.

Green, red, orange, blue, yellow.

I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face, months of constant effort, crossing that fucking desert, getting into fistfights with genin, being turned into a bloody pincushion, desperately trying to not be killed by Jounin, and everything else in between. I had set out to find this god damned blade, and I had damn well done it, but Fuck going into the scary tunnel.

I walked straight up the side of the mountain.

The cavern was large and cut deep into the bulk of the mountains Stoney core, it took me almost fifteen minutes to carefully walk in far enough to spot some specks of bright color in the distance. There was an altar sitting in the middle of the cavern, a stone monolith, and I was sure that it was responsible for the Chakra draining effect because it was covered in sealing marks, marks that I had no chance of reading. Even when I Observed it, all I got was a bunch of scribble marks that might have meant something to a seal master, but nothing to me. Five thin gold rods stuck up from the altar and held the five brilliant orbs in the air, while two small curved golden arches held the blade above the altar.

The Dragonblade was cool as hell, it was almost as if someone had a hard-on for a kunai and scaled one up to the size of a small sword. It had two edges, three diamonds cut out of the middle of the blade, marked out with yellow trim, a ring where the orbs could be slotted, and a scaled green handle. There was a fancy orange knot of rope tassel hanging from the end of it.

It was like some kind of awesome Materia blade jacked straight out of a final fantasy game.

I observed the orbs. Fire Orb (Legendary)

Wind Orb (Legendary)

Earth Orb (Legendary)

Lightning Orb (Legendary)

Water Orb (Legendary) No description, strangely enough. Dragonblade - The ancient blade of the Genryu. Cuts through most things. Capable of cutting through Chakra. Each attack absorbs the targets Chakra. Unbreakable.

That’s more like it.

I reached out and plucked it off the altar without fanfare, before looking around suspiciously, but nothing happened. I reached out and inventoried the Fire Orb, but still, nothing happened. I inventoried the rest of the orbs, one after another.

This was a lot easier than I expected it to be, honestly.

I thought I would get chased by dragons, or the monsters from the games would be here, or the two dragon siblings would pop out and attack me. It was like all the difficulty was getting in here in the first place; the only defense the damn blade had was that nobody with Chakra could approach the mountain without dying.

I suppose that was enough in a world where everybody had Chakra.

I had completely bypassed it all because I didn’t use Chakra, magical bullshit at its finest. Anti-climactic sure, but I could deal with that, but if the sword hadn’t been here, I would have been devastated. So I had my fancy sword now, that I had no idea how to use, and I had about thirteen months left until I had to kill a pair of immortal assholes, what could go wrong?

I took a few quick swipes with my new sword, and it felt legendary. Not really, it felt exactly how I would have expected something of its size to feel, but it was still pretty awesome.

Quest Completed.

Acquire the Dragonblade.

Reward

Dragonblade

"Fuck you." I said sullenly, "I should have known."

I stared down at the altar that was sucking all the Chakra out of the environment for miles in every direction before staring at the sword in my hand.

I had a duty as the single best sword fighting man that would ever walk the face of the planet to save this poor land from this dastardly altar.

So I stabbed the altar with the blade, and it immediately exploded.

I dumped most of my Mana into reinforcing Iron Hide and its probably the only thing that saved me, because I was sent skipping backward through the cavern like a pinball, shattering the stone with every impact until I abruptly found myself in the open air and tumbling through the sky.

I dumped a quarter of my remaining Mana into a heal to get me back to full and then tried desperately to stop spinning. I didn’t really manage to slow down or correct my flight at all, I just kept on tumbling towards the ground uncontrollably.

Despite the spinning, I did manage to notice the ground coming up towards me at an incredible rate, so I waited until the last moment before dumping the rest of my Mana into Iron Hide.

I smashed into the ground beneath me and cratered it for several meters before I bounced up into the air and then smacked bodily onto the ground ten meters away.

I felt my health dip down a quarter from the last impact and just laid on the ground staring up at the mountain. I dropped into Meditate immediately as the top half of the mountain, about level with where the altar had been suddenly shattered, before exploding again and sending tonnes of stone in every direction.

That was the stupidest thing I had ever done since arriving here; All my Mana was gone, Iron Hide had cleaned me out entirely, I was heavily injured, and it fucking hurt.

I stayed flat on my back in agony and just watched as the stone rocketed away in every direction, overshooting my position by hundreds of meters, and somehow leaving me miraculous unharmed as it rained down onto the ground behind me in an unending thunderous roar of noise and vibration.

Another second shockwave raced out of the mountain furiously before it hit me hard enough that I was flipped over twice more before smacking onto my back. The shockwave raced onwards for miles and launched all the debris another couple of meters away.

I stayed on the ground simultaneously, Meditating and dumping all of my Mana into a continuous sequence of healing until everything stopped hurting, and the world finally stopped shaking.

Then I stayed on the ground for even longer than that.

I waited almost fifteen minutes before I finally managed to talk myself into getting up off the ground. I stared around at the rubble that was scattered everywhere, and at the hole where I had landed and swallowed before I spun on my heel started walking away from where the mountain used to be.

I’m fairly sure this was going to attract the attention of every ninja, possibly even countries away. I had better not stick around for long, or I was sure I would end up regretting it.

I belatedly stashed the Dragonblade in my inventory, no longer wanting to look at the thing that I had almost killed myself with.

Hours later, I felt Karenbana’s chakra signature, exactly where I had left her, and I felt something twist in my chest when it sunk in that she hadn’t left me here.

I was incredibly surprised that she was still there, even more so after the mountain had exploded. I would have thought she would have assumed that I had died in the explosion.

I hadn’t been lying when I told her she was my friend, but I had honestly thought she would leave when she had the chance, and I wouldn’t have blamed her in the slightest. I had put her through a lot of shit in the last couple of months, and that ‘three Jounin named Janin’ nonsense was some of the worst of it.

If she had decided it was safer elsewhere, I would have understood, but Karenbana had waited for me. I honestly didn’t know what to say to her to express how much that meant to me, so I fell back onto old habits instead.

“Karenbana,” I said flippantly. “I’m not paying you to sit around on your pretty ass all day, you must be the laziest bodyguard on the entire continent, we have work to do you know?”

I walked past her without further comment.

I felt her slowly turn to stare at me before she suddenly blurred towards me at obscene speed. I hid my smile when she tackled me to the ground from behind.

“What the fuck was that?!” Karenbana demanded. “What did you even do!?”

I tried to wrestle my way free of her grip to no avail

“What kind of dumbass bodyguard tackles the client!” I cried outraged, “I want a refund!”

I shit you not; she fucking hissed at me.