The clashing of two metallic swords reverberated throughout the closed-space room, where Clara and I clashing our swords. And then, there’s Clara, who’s not moving an inch from where she’s standing while parrying every strike I attempt without even breaking a sweat—The difference between our strength is like heaven and Earth. Even though she’s the one on the receiving end, she still manages to overpower me with ease.

Then I kick out the ground to give me some lift, shifting my weight into my upper body then swinging my sword downward to which Clara parried it and hit me in the stomach with the hilt of her sword—I groaned in pain.

“Kuh—!”

Kneeling on the ground, clutching my stomach with a distorted facial expression agonizing the pain—It has always been like this ever since I started training. The person who always ended up in pain every day is me. Master Irene hasn’t taught me anything sword-related other than what she instructed a year ago which is swinging the sword, nor has she guided me in hand-to-hand combat, as Clara was the one who taught me everything, not really; I learned via copying her. And what's more, Clara has been taught by Master Irene, which is technically my senior.

I don’t have any problems with that, but all the things we did are sparring sessions. In all of those sessions, not a single session, Clara did tell me what my mistakes are or what I should do with those mistakes. That’s why I’m having a hard time understanding the fundamentals of how to fight someone, heck, nor even the basics. Like, how to punch or kick properly also, I don’t know how to swing a sword properly nor even the basic footwork. I learned all of that from the ground-up—And, learned by studying Clara’s movement in our sparring and tried to imitate it.

For real though, it’s hard to tell if I’m doing well or not if no one is pointing out my mistakes. Furthermore, the person who’s supposed to be teaching me doesn’t show at all. Master Irene would stay in her office all day and would visit me every time she can—Mostly, just to kiss me in the head. Like, she became my mother or something. I don’t know if she took me in for other purposes or did she really found something on me—I can’t tell.

Anyway, the day of my age ceremony is today, which means I’ll be able to acquire my spirit today too. That’s why I’m quite excited today. I wonder what kind of spirit will I get?

But before all of that, after my encounter with Lily, I’m certain that the world I got transmigrated to is the same world of the game yet so different. I don’t even know if I wanted to meet the heroines anymore because of my last encounter. It was a quite scary experience. I almost died at that time if it wasn’t for luck—I would be gone right now.

After the sparring session, Clara dragged my body to my room, exactly at my bed, then she left me alone.

“Uggh—! Why do I feel like Clara loves making me suffer? Like, come on, it’s my birthday, but does she really need to be that hard?”

I grunted while l walk myself to the bathroom to take a quick shower, as my body reeks of sweat. While going in, I removed all my clothes and saw my reflection in the mirror, where I could see myself naked. Throughout the months, my body gradually changed from skinny into muscular skinny my muscle mass hasn’t grown yet, plus my body is still undergoing puberty.

Oh, please.

After taking a shower, I went out of the bathroom and wore a faux leather hooded coat and sweatpants. Lastly, I grabbed the mask that Master Irene gave to me last time. Taking it, I recalled all the events that happened to me when wearing this mask—It’s a shitfest.

Heading downstairs, my eyes immediately caught the sight of Clara and Master Irene in their suits waiting for me, they’ll be accompanying me to the cathedral where the spirit ceremony will be held. The priest is the one responsible for helping the younglings on creating a contract, as their astral consciousness will be sent into the Aether for the process of contracting to begin like what happened when I was sent to the Void by Pix if my conjecture was correct.

“Happy birthday, Claude.” Master Irene embraced me.

“Mph, thank you.”

In honesty, at first, I’m super embarrassed by it but I got used to it, and it became a normal occurrence in my daily life. Am I lusting over it whenever Master would do it? Of course, my hormonal glands went full throttle every single time. I mean, who wouldn’t? A busty beautiful woman was embracing you like that, and you wouldn’t get excited? That ain’t a man if he wouldn't. In truth, I’m actually slowly making my moves on my Master, which’s quite a risky thing because one wrong move would be the end of me—Or I’m just probably overthinking it.

“Happy birthday, young master.”

“Thank you, Clara, but you should’ve gone easy on me earlier.”

“No can do, young master. It’s part of your training.”

“Right...”

Then Master Irene interjected. “Anyhow, Claude here’s my gift for you.”

Master Irene handed me a sword, a fairly long narrow, single-edged with a slight curve on the blade towards the point on the end. As for the hilt it's made out of black leather and a small diamond-shaped purple gem at the upper part of the handle embedded in the blade. She handed it to both of my hands, which baffled me because the pristine and sharpness of the blade looks sick. However, upon putting it in my hands, I almost dropped to the ground—I didn’t expect it to be this heavy!

“What the heck is this?”

“It’s a sword made from a meteor metal, isn’t it cool?”

“Meteor metal? What’s that?! And, why is this so heavy?”

“It’s a type of metal that came from the heavens, that’s why it’s one of the rarest metals to find because the meteorite of where it came from was one of its kind—It’s called an Assisi Meteorite. That’s why they called it Meteor metal.”

Why meteor metal, if they can just call it Assisi metal? That makes little sense to me.

After explaining, my quintessence started exuding throughout my arms, which made it easier for me to lift the sword. Upon picking it up, I started swinging the air with the sword, which surprisingly felt fantastic.

“Oh yeah, Claude. You can pour your quintessence on the blade to make it lighter and to active the runic gem embedded within the sword too. Try it.”

“How?”

“Just imagine your pouring water on it, or like the distribution of your quintessence on your body.”

“Oh... I see, I’ll try.”

Focusing all my senses, I gather all my quintessence and focused all of that on the purple gem instead of focusing all of it on my arms. Later on, the gem illuminated brightly, a while later, a streak of red lines manifested on the side of the black blade and a hieroglyphics—That I can't read. Swinging the sword once again, it became lighter, like a feather. While swinging it, a smile blossomed on my face like a child who got a new toy.

“So cool~!”

“Hahaha, you like it.”

“Yeah!”

“Happy birthday.” Master Irene said once again.

“Thank you!” And, I took the accord to embrace Master Irene on my own, as my happiness can’t be measured right now.

────────────

Then we arrived at the Polycarp Cathedral, we took a carriage on the way there. There’s a lot of families in here, escorting their children for their spirit ceremony, it’s the most celebrated thing for one’s person—Waiting outside of the cathedral. Of course, Master Irene’s face was well-known because she’s holding one of the strongest titles in the world, which is being a Saint.

Some of them even looked at me in confusion as their probably wondering why I’m beside her—Or to be precise, wondering why I’m holding a long-ass sword that’s even taller than me while swinging it. Because of that, I got an earful sermon from Clara and a smack in the head. She then handed me the sheath of the sword, to which I obediently followed.

Soon after, the ginormous wooden door of the cathedral opened heavily, which blossomed to us, the magnificent architectural wonder of the cathedral, a religious sacred ground for the people around the globe. Truth to be told, I’ve never entered a cathedral nor ever visited one or even seen one, which made this my first time.

A humongous basilica with large assembly halls. The halls were longitudinal, ailed, inundated by light from large clerestory windows. The floors and walls were richly decorated with mosaic and inlay designs, usually abstracts and floral patterns. Surrounding the cathedral was the blossoming greenery, sceneries of flowers and trees, giving a sense of unity to the surroundings.

Upon the opening of the door, a female with a white cloak who seems to be the priest was standing before us, holding a pectoral cross-staff in her left hand.

“Good afternoon, everyone. The Spirit Ceremony will be held inside of the cathedral. Please follow my lead. Thank you.” She then bowed her head slightly.