-Demon Sheath-

[An Energy Manipulation ability.

Allows to user to store and retrieve weapons

within their soul.]

Jarou summoned a sword from his Demon Sheath per Nadred’s instructions. He seemed to know what Nadred wanted to show me first, as he got to work almost immediately. “Fyr’fer,” he muttered as he passed his hand across the blade of the sword, and as he did, fire appeared around the blade, similar to what Oroske had demonstrated a few days ago. Am I finally going to learn how to do stuff like that? I thought to myself.

“The suffix ‘fer’ comes from ‘enfer,’ which means to coat, or to cover. Enfer is often used to refer to our cloaks as well, while the shortened ‘fer’ is used for enchanting, or covering things such as swords and other weapons. Though it also works for clothing,” Jarou explained as he swung the sword around, demonstrating how the fire persists on the blade and trails behind.

He then demonstrated “Jarou’fer” on his clothes, which gained a stone-like covering around them. “Alright, pull out your sword and swing at me as hard as you can,” he said very confidently. I shrugged and quickly pulled my sword from my Demon Sheath, and verified he wanted me to go through with it. He nodded and posed with his arms straight out, inviting me to take the shot.

I went in full force with a horizontal strike. But much to my surprise, rather than sinking in slightly and forcing the target out of the way, I got a ton of feed-back through my arms as the sword was completely stopped at his cloak. The sword bounced off as though I hit a rock.

“Jarou, in case you didn’t figure it out already, means stone,” he explained very matter-of-factly.

“Not just that though,” Nadred cut in, “the more poetic translation of jarou means ‘strength of stone,’ as it means both of those. I’ll keep the tangent short this time, but a person’s name can directly affect their affinities. In Jarou’s case, he’s element is stone, but his aspect is strength.”

Jarou nodded, “If I had just used stone for the enchantment on my clothes, you would’ve easily broken through, but since I added in my aspect of strength, it was able to hold together.

“This is part of what Nadred meant when he said ‘advanced magic.’ Simply limiting yourself to the exact meanings of your incantations isn’t going to get you far, unless you have the endurance to cast extremely strong magic. So the incantation gives the spell its fundamental form, but beyond that you can add in extra commands to make it more specific, as you may have begun to notice.”

I kinda understood what he meant, since the spells seemed to move to where I wanted to target specifically. But I nodded and continued to listen anyway.

“So for example, a trick I actually learned from you,” he continued, switching his sword for a scythe, running his hand along the blade, saying the incantation “Sen’tur’fer. During the incantation, I gave it a command mentally for the sentem element to burst while swinging, like so.” He swung the scythe upward, the blade stabbing into the sky. As he began the swing, a burst of wind exploded, making it swing faster than it would’ve normally, which he demonstrated afterward. “It works with swords as well, and even your fists if you want.

“That’s the general idea behind it, it would be a good idea to experiment more with it on your own and figure out what works best for you and find your own ‘special moves’ so to speak,” he finished explaining. Then Nadred stepped in, “Exactly, it’s almost time for lunch, right Oroske?”

Oroske just nodded and headed inside, seeming to get what he was saying. “To expand on how it works, all you really need to do is think about how you want the magic to be cast, and what you want it to do. If it has attributes that can be an incantation, include that to give it a strong foundation, if not then just focus on what you want the spell to do.

“There is one other thing you can do, once you get your spells down to the point that you can dish out the commands quickly and easily, you can begin to assign a name to it. For a very basic example,” He turned to where the wood blocks were earlier, pointed a finger towards the ground in that general area and said “Time Bomb.” Roughly 5 seconds later, a large blast of fire exploded where he was pointing.

“The commands associated with that incantation are ‘fyr’tur,’ ‘in the spot I’m pointing at,’ ‘gather energy and wait five seconds.’ I made it a preset spell for the express purpose of teaching how they work. It will take time, but it can make every aspect of very complicated spells you cast often as strong as if they were regular incantations. And as time goes on, you’ll find spells and command combinations you use frequently become easier and easier to use, and giving them special names will make them even easier, and in many cases stronger.”

“I see…” I said, even though I wasn’t sure I completely understood what he was saying. I think I got most of it, but wasn’t quite sure how exactly it all worked.

Shortly after that lengthy explanation, Oroske called out from the back door, telling us lunch was ready. The three of us went inside and were greeted with the smell of fresh cooked beef. Oroske had made hamburgers, the beef patties set aside on a plate with all the toppings you may want. I skipped out on the toppings and just ate it plain, never really cared to try any of the toppings.

Once we were all sat down at the table and eating, Nadred broke the silence. “So how much have you taught Kuro about the actual hunting process and the outside world?” His question was met with a moment of awkward silence before Oroske responded, “Uh, not really?” Nadred just sighed before Oroske continued, “I figured I’d get him feeling confident with magic and sword fighting before we begin with all that.” “Alright well, better late than never I suppose,” Nadred said with another sigh, reaching into a bag he had brought with him.

He pulled out a rolled up piece of paper and rolled it out on the empty space on the table, between our plates. “This is a map of Spire, which if Oroske hasn’t even told you about, is the name of our world.” The map had two large landmasses with a large gap between them with four small circles, one near the South end, one in the middle, one slightly North of that, and finally one near the North end. Nadred pointed to the one in the middle and said, “We are here, this little circle is our Clan’s city, Tsumi’din. Up here,” he moved his finger to the northern circle, “Is the Ishen Clan’s home, since there’s already another city called Ish’din, we just call it Ishen City to make it easy. Then down in the South is Incol’din, which you may have guessed is the home of the Incol Clan. Then on the East side, this big area, is the Human Realm, and on the West is the Demon Realm.”

“What’s the circle right above the Tsumi Clan?” I asked.

“Ah, very good question,” Nadred responded, “There are a lot of theories for it, the most popular one is that it’s what Spire was named after, you’ll be able to see it when you leave the city for the first time, but it’s a very large, almost tower-like mountain. All we know for sure is it’s a very important place for our Clan, as it has a very strong connection to the Aetherial Realm. I’m sure Jarou and I will probably be dragged along for your first outing, so I can tell you more about it then if you’d like.”

I nodded along and affirmed my interest in the subject.

And so Nadred continued his lecture.

“The reason I’m showing this map now, is that the simplest job we take on involves these Realms. In the year 1103, the Grand War between Humans and Demons met its conclusion. Five years later in 1108, the first Human-Demon Peace conference was held and they created what’s called the Border Law. The law dictates that without a Half-Demon escort from one of the three clans, Humans are not allowed within the Demon Realm, and vice-versa with Demons going into the Human Realm. And now, over 500 years later, the law still stands. So, the most common, and simple job you’ll take on is escorting people into the realm they aren’t normally allowed in.

“The Half-Demons are there for primarily two purposes. First is to keep the peace and ensure the people they are escorting don’t do anything illegal and are on good behavior. And second is acting as bodyguards. Usually the people you’re escorting are merchants and people who aren’t able to defend themselves particularly well, so whenever a wild beast or bandits or some other threat attack them, the Half-Demons protect them.

“Though for the most part, the other Clans take care of that as their roles are more protective and centered around policing their respective realms. That said, there is a city called Al’din near us on the Demon side, which has the largest and most farms in Spire, so we escort traders from them a lot.”

“I see, what about the other jobs we do?” I questioned, Oroske had mentioned stuff about necromancers and criminals and stuff like that, but nothing in specific.

Nadred nodded, seemingly gathering his thoughts, then continued, “Yes, so while escorting is probably the most common job we do, our real specialty is our Hunts. Each Hunt has different specifics, objectives, and reasons. But for the most part, the process is that someone identifies a potential target for us, and submits a request. Once verified and approved it gets posted on the job board in the city plaza,

and one of us Hunters accepts it.

“Sometimes, the request gets submitted and approved based on rumors with plenty of evidence, and it falls to the Hunter to actually identify the target on the job. Most of the time though, they just travel to the location, and either kill or capture the target depending on the specifics of the request.

“Hunters have a lot of autonomy and rights to make judgements on the fly. As such, sometimes you’ll have a job where they request you capture the target, but something will happen and you’ll instead have to kill them. In some rare cases, this can dock your reward, but most of the time the client is understanding and will pay the full amount anyway.” Nadred finished, a few minutes after everyone had finished eating. Of course, he was too busy talking to eat.

When Oroske saw this he checked the time using the clock on the wall, and gave Nadred a chance to eat and spoke up, “There are some other special jobs, but those are the most common. For the most part, the Hunt posting will have details about the target, and usually the targets are criminals, but occasionally we get just regular hits. We don’t accept jobs like that without good reason usually though.”

“Hmm, I see,” I murmured. I understood most of what they were saying, but I figured I’d understand better once I went out into the field.

Nadred finished his food and suggested we return outside to continue training. Oroske seconded it and we went outside once more.

Once outdoors, they had me practicing and trying out the spells Jarou had demonstrated earlier. I struggled for a little bit with applying the enchantments thoroughly and evenly enough. With the sword and fyr’fer, I moved too fast and the fire on the sword was very thin and not very potent. But with jarou’fer I moved too slowly and it was very thick, making my clothes very heavy with the stone coating.

I succeeded with sen’tur’fer however. Or rather, I almost did, the burst of wind ended up being much more powerful than expected and the sword went flying out of my hands, stabbing into the fence on the far side of the yard. Luckily no one was standing in the way.

---

We continued practicing and training until I was able to do the spells properly and consistently. By the time I was getting them right every time, the sun was almost setting.

“I think you know the basics well enough,” Nadred sounded satisfied with my progress, “Now it’s just a matter of training and learning more about the actual jobs we do, and you should be able to pass your Navy Cloak test once again and actually get experience with Hunting!”

“Exactly. Tomorrow, we’ll head outside the city and get some field training. Possibly even some combat experience against beasts or something,” Oroske said with a smile, “Would you two be interested in joining?” Nadred and Jarou both nodded.

“For now though, I think we should probably head home for the night,” Nadred said, looking at the now mostly set sun.

The four of us went inside and Nadred and Jarou bid us farewell for the night. We ate a small dinner and reviewed the events of the day.

It seemed my training was nearly complete, and I for one was getting really excited.