Kirunax
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Chapter 23
🕑 Added 2025-06-26 10:28:22 +0000 UTCChapter 23
A wooden staff smacked Chris’s training spear aside, and a swift kick to the gut folded him in half with a pitiful whine.
Now, my brother didn’t believe in pausing during spars. The moment Chris bent over, he was punished with a follow-up strike to the side.
“Damn, that’s what you two always do in the mornings?” Sophia asked, letting out a low whistle as she leaned against the wall.
Until now, Sophia had never caught one of our sparring sessions. They usually took place early in the morning before school, with the occasional extra session on weekends. Among the Wards, only Missy ever joined us regularly—she liked sleeping at HQ and joined us for supervision and her own training, though she never took part in the spars themselves.
We had to adjust our schedule a bit after Chris asked Shirou to train him. My brother and I kept our usual early morning sessions, but Chris’s training took place after the school day ended.
That’s how Sophia happened to walk in on us—much to Missy’s chagrin. That time slot overlapped with her personal training routine.
“Pretty much,” I said.
“I still think it’s too intense,” Miss Militia commented from the sidelines.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
While I’d never say it aloud, the woman was far too coddling for my taste. Back when Miss Militia still supervised our training, she constantly told us to “take it easy” and scolded Shirou for being too rough on me.
Ridiculous.
Intense sparring matches were excellent for building strength and stamina—not to mention sharpening reaction time, muscle memory, and pain tolerance. They were intense because combat was intense. Taking it easy in practice could mean falling short in the field—where failure meant death.
Shirou said as much. I agreed wholeheartedly.
Really, if she couldn't handle a little bruising, she had no business overseeing a combat program.
It was bad enough that Miss Militia forbade us from training with reinforcements unless we were supervised by a member of the Protectorate. Her reasoning being that while Shirou’s reinforcements increased his durability, mine did not, making it ‘too dangerous’.
That by itself wasn’t entirely unreasonable.
The problem was, she stopped supervising us immediately afterward.
Not that it mattered much. Building base fitness contributed to performance under reinforcements either way. But I couldn’t practice the execution of certain maneuvers without boosting explosive strength. And from what I knew about his abilities, Shirou’s performance was limited for similar reasons.
What did she think the Wards program was? Daycare?
If so, she’d clearly bought into the PRT’s own propaganda.
Shirou had wanted to ignore her orders but I objected. Reasonable or not, it didn’t change the nature of her authority—orders were orders. You either followed them to the letter or found a way around them.
Chris flew out of the ring.
“Dead,” Shirou declared flatly.
I sighed and reached into the box for another calculator. I’d made a habit of keeping a stash in the Wards’ training area.
Shirou was somewhat less brutal with me—likely because of my age—but that only meant he stopped short of breaking something. My mistakes were punished just as harshly as Chris’s. Even if, at times, it seemed like Shirou had a personal vendetta against the boy.
“It was just a kick to the gut. Unless it’s fatal, you push through the pain and evade, or counterattack,” Shirou lectured without missing a beat.
I knelt beside Chris to reduce the swelling. Missy joined me, with a towel and a water bottle.
I would have administered painkillers, but I believed that would rather undermine the lesson.
Dauntless, who had arrived with Miss Militia, shook his head. “You have to plant your feet firmly, Kid Win. Stand your ground. Your thrusts won’t have any force otherwise.”
Chris groaned from where he lay sprawled on the floor. The sound was muffled—mostly by the towel Missy was using to wipe his face like she was scrubbing a countertop.
Shirou shot Dauntless a glare. “Your advice is neither needed nor appreciated.”
For fuck’s sake.
“I am trained in how to use a spear, you know,” Dauntless said, mildly.
“You are trained to do a basic thrust from behind a shield,” Shirou replied flatly. “And even then, the last time you actually hit anyone was almost a year ago.”
Dauntless blinked. “You can tell, huh? I suppose you’re right. Ever since Arclance manifested a Blaster expression, I’ve rarely had to close the distance. These days, the charge is strong enough that melee’s mostly unnecessary.”
“You also have a shield,” Shirou pointed out. “Chris doesn’t. Before he learns how to thrust properly, he has to learn to stay light on his feet, evade, and land a hit at all. Doubly so since his new weapon can tase a target.”
He folded his arms. “So until you actually learn how to use that spear, keep your advice to yourself.”
Miss Militia muttered something under her breath—something about Armsmaster.
Dauntless turned to Chris. “New weapon?”
“Yeah,” Chris said, accepting a water bottle from Missy. “I got the idea while taking readings on Arclance, actually.”
His tone was already picking up—lightening as the healing formula worked its way through the bruises.
“Well... it was a gun at first.”
Shirou stepped out of the ring and placed his staff on the rack beside the striped shinai and my own metal facsimile of Mage Blade.
“I’m done for today,” he said, already heading for the showers.
“Actually, brother—I have a question.”
I left Chris and Missy behind and went to grab my bag. Normally it carried towels, toiletries, and a change of clothes. Today I’d brought something else in there.
“Can you explain how this thing functions?” I asked, pulling out the weapon Shirou had conjured in Armsmaster’s lab.
“Hey, since when do you have a sword?” Missy called out, jumping to her feet.
The blade was a bit too short to be called a proper sword, in my opinion, but too broad and heavy for a dagger. It had a strange purplish sheen under direct light—metal shimmered with a faint, barely noticeable glow.
Ever since Shirou created it, I’d been testing its mana stacking property. The weapon clearly had storage capacity, but I couldn’t determine how much. Though unlike Type 95, I could tell it was definitely limited.
Also, its retention rate was atrocious—most of the mana I pushed into it bled away. I’d wasted far more than I managed to store, though perhaps the fault laid with me rather than the sword.
Either way, there was one issue I couldn’t get around.
“I can tell this dagger stores my energy,” I said, “but I can’t actually do anything with it.”
Unlike with Type 95, the mana inside the blade was unresponsive. I couldn’t even touch it—no connection, no flow.
“Läßt,” Shirou replied.
“What?”
“Channel your energy into the Azoth Sword and say ‘Läßt.’”
That’s what he named it? I still wouldn’t call it a sword—but fine. Whatever.
“Lässt.”
The moment I spoke, something shifted. The barrier between me and the stored mana dropped away. I could feel the reserves clearly—like the current had finally been routed correctly
I spun reflex enhancement formula using the stored mana.
It worked.
Actually, it felt very smooth. Like an orb assisted casting.
Experimentally, I spun flight formula in conjunction with a fresh calculator. I launched into a tight loop around the room, accelerating through three full rotations before the calculator gave up and I dropped on my feet. Almost ten seconds of uninterrupted flight.
Before this, I’d maxed out around four or five seconds, depending on the amount of turns and changes in acceleration.
“Azoth Sword functions as an amplifier,” Shirou said. “It should be able to strengthen your formulas.”
“Strengthen how?”
“You’ll have to experiment to figure out what it means for you exactly.”
“I see.” That was useful.
Very useful.
“Why German, though?” Missy asked, raising an eyebrow. “That was German, right?”
It was.
“Because when making cubs with a hyena, one should expect them to start whooping,” Shirou said calmly.
We all stared at him.
He adopted a more thoughtful expression. “I suppose ‘läßt los, was man liebt’ just felt like a suitably poetic epigraph for a parting gift. Though personally, I strongly suspect there was some subconscious paternal guilt influencing the wording. There are all kinds of irony to that blade.”
“…Huh?” Missy blinked.
She wasn’t the only one looking at my brother like he’d spontaneously grown a second head.
“It’s nothing,” he sighed. “Powers. Tinkertech. Whatever explanation you prefer.”
Right, I thought. That explains everything.
Of course, I knew he wasn’t going to elaborate. Whether there was a genuine sense to that blabber or just Shirou being a cryptic pain in the ass, I knew that tone. He wasn’t talking.
Chuunibyou.
“Is there a way to improve its energy storage efficiency?” I asked instead. “The conversion rate is atrocious.”
“You’d need to attune to it,” Shirou said. “Even then, don’t expect drastic improvement unless you’re particularly gifted. This type of tool isn’t actually intended as a battery, and can only function as one because of its make.”
“And attunement means…?”
“Cover it in your blood while channeling energy.”
“Absolutely not!” Miss Militia cut in, appalled.
Shirou shrugged. “Other bodily fluids work too.”
Yeah, no.
“I’ll stick with blood, thanks.”
“Tanya, this is insane!” Miss Militia snapped.
“Would you prefer I fellate it?” I asked dryly.
Chris choked on his own breath.
Missy froze and made a strange expression. Something between uncomfortable and a horrified realization.
Miss Militia looked scandalized—visibly reeling—but forced herself to rally. “Tanya, there’s no need to go to such extremes for a minor power-up. How are you even planning to extract blood? Are you going to cut yourself?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t see the problem. It wasn’t like I planned to do it in public.
“No!”
Once again, it seemed Miss Militia genuinely believed the propaganda—that the Wards program was a safe, nurturing environment for children to learn how to responsibly use their powers.
Right. That’s why Shadow Stalker had recently bragged to me about fighting Behemoth.
I glanced at Sophia, who was watching our conversation with interest. She looked like she was enjoying the show with something like an approval written on her face.
And wasn’t that a revelation.
Sophia seemed to wanted me to praise her, so I complimented her bravery, all while quietly reeling inside.
There was also the matter of Protectorate forces being tied up guarding the prisoners—leaving increased pressure on my team to cover the gaps.
The changes in our patrol routes made the PRT’s expectations perfectly clear.
“If bleeding on a sword improves my effectiveness, I’ll do it. Readily. I can easily heal any cut afterwards. Any advantage should be used in the field.”
“I don’t see Image approving you carrying a sword,” Miss Militia said, reaching.
My Mage Blade was infinitely more dangerous than any sword, and my brother was a walking arsenal of medieval murder tools. But I understood optics, even if I disagreed with them.
Without comment, I tossed the ‘Azoth Sword’ to Shirou.
He caught it, paused thoughtfully, and began reshaping the blade—silently this time, unlike the loud crackling mess he’d made of Chris’s halberd.
I allowed myself a smirk. He understood me perfectly, without needing to ask.
That smirk evaporated the moment I saw what he’d made.
Thin and about the length of my hand and forearm. The handle remained, but lost its guard. At the tip was a chank of amethyst the size of my fist, encased in a thick, gleaming ring of purplish steel.
“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind, brother,” I said flatly.
“What were you expecting?”
“A ring. A bracer. Maybe a handguard. Not a magical girl wand.”
“There are limits to how far I can alter this kind of tool without compromising its function,” Shirou replied calmly. “This Azoth Sword is constructed from ground gemstones alchemically infused into steel, with an amethyst core at its center. Disrupting that core with further Alteration would destabilize the structure.”
He rotated the wand slightly in his hand.
“There’s also a lattice of lesser jewels embedded along the shaft. They have to remain in precise sequence. Trying to compress them into a ring or circular focus would ruin the alignment.”
“Alchemically infused?” Chris asked. He slipping on his visor at some point, and was fiddling with the computer on his wrist, directing it towards the wand.
“Think of it,” Shirou said, “as a process of continuously displacing steel and gems until you get a substance with the properties of both.”
“So... like teleporting two things into the same space?”
“Closer to transferring different aspects of one object into another,” Shirou clarified. “Spatial coordinates technically count, but there is an element of degradation to displacement. It works much better with materials than devices.”
“Huh. My Alternator Spear doesn’t degrade when I teleport components in and out.”
“That just means you’re working under different principles.”
Shirou tossed the wand back to me. “In any case, this is a nice, non-threatening magical girl wand. Azoth Swords were never meant to be a melee weapon anyway. It also fits your costume. Add a few frills, and you may well become a sensation with the Japanese population. Why, I was never much into magical girls, but you could easily call it your way of honoring your heritage.”
He smirked.
I caught the wand and weighed it in my hand. It looked juvenile—something a cartoon princess might twirl before shouting an attack name—but it had a solid heft. No edge but all steel, and more than capable of cracking a skull. Practically a mace.
Missy studied the wand a thoughtful expression.
So yes—unfortunate aesthetics aside, it was a good tool. As in, it was conveniently less lethal as a weapon than Mage Blade.
And even if Shirou was clearly trying to get a rise out of me, he wasn’t wrong. It fit the theme of my uniform far better than, say, a shovel.
Miss Militia hadn’t given up yet. “We still don’t know if this thing has any adverse effects on the user. Tinker devices go through a rigorous approval process. You’ll need to submit blueprints and a finished version to the Protectorate’s Tinker evaluation board.”
I frowned. “Are you suggesting my brother would give me something that’s harmful to my well-being?”
My tone stayed level. The implication was not.
“He might not know,” she said defensively.
Shirou’s expression cooled. “First of all—what blueprints? It’s a sword with an amethyst core. The only technology involved is literally ancient. Second, unless it’s Tanya using it, the Azoth Sword is no different from any other blade. Your board won’t be able to activate it, let alone test it, because they don’t have her powers.”
He crossed his arms. “There’s no reason to send any of my work to your board unless all of it is suspect. In which case, feel free to tell Armsmaster he has to give back all those nano-fabricators I made for him. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”
Hah! Looks like, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like their competency questioned!
“Wait—Armsmaster has nanotech now? You can make nano-fabricators?” Chris perked up, eyes wide with sudden interest.
“Not unless you have a working example for me to replicate,” Shirou replied.
“Awww…” Chris slumped, clearly disappointed.
I could see why Chris would be disappointed but Shirou was actually improving rapidly with tinkertech. There’d been a noticeable uptick in success while replicating Armsmaster’s designs. He’d started out slow—uncertain, even—and his first few fabricators had failed. But by the end, they were solid.
It was possible he’d eventually reach a point where he wouldn’t need the originals at all. Chris might get his toy after all.
I was glad that Shirou had finally started engaging his peers in a positive manner. I suppose finding someone who could keep up with his technical expertise and shared his interests was all that he needed.
A good first step. I’d have to thank Armsmaster for nudging him toward tinkering.
Now all that remained was teaching Shirou how to be polite.
But back to the matter at hand.
“Dauntless,” I said, “your spear falls under the PRT’s classification for empowered objects, correct?”
He nodded.
“Totemic capes follow a different evaluation process, if I’m not mistaken.” I wasn’t.
“I go through a new round of power testing every month,” Dauntless confirmed quietly, “and whenever there is a new power expression in my gear.”
I turned to Miss Militia.
“There you go. I’ll book an appointment with Dr Miller. The effect this tool has on my abilities is no different from the boost Dauntless gets when he adds a new charge to his gear.”
I gave her a measured smile, that made the woman flinch for some reason. She must have realized that she was losing this argument.
Why Sophia tensed, I had no idea.
“I’ll also speak with Image about this new family-friendly addition to my equipment. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled with aesthetics. Director Piggot will certainly appreciate the added efficiency, especially given recent strategic shifts. Even if the improvement is marginal, it’s still measurable.”
Miss Militia looked like she was scrambling to recover. I pressed the advantage.
“In the end, this is no different from Kid Win manufacturing armor for Gallant. According to PRT guidelines, Tinkers are not only allowed—but encouraged—to equip their teammates.”
She had no comeback. My argument was structured, policy-based, and airtight.
She conceded with silence.
Comments
HeroOfTime4298
The more I read this story, the more I want to read this story. It’s just that good.
Green0Photon
Tanya just needs a calculation sword or something, or be able to use the azoth sword as a calculator. It would be very funny to effectively have Tanya rely on the magical girl wand
