Blood Shaper

The handful of dates they got to go on over the next few days were very nice. They had dinner twice, once in the suite by themselves and once out at a fancy restaurant Eleniah recommended. Both dinners were great and the few other dates they had, including a shopping date and a tour of one of the palace’s art galleries, were wonderful as well. Those stood out to Kay as “dates” because they were specific events they’d planned out ahead of time specifically for the two of them, but everything else felt just as exciting in its own way. It’d been a rare day over the last several years that Kay hadn’t seen or spoken to Eleniah at least once so being together regularly wasn’t anything new.

What was new was the added facet to their relationship that changed contexts and added possibilities. A casual touch now had added meaning to it and trying to hold her hand would have been a little odd before this. Meals together, even ones that weren’t planned dates, had a new sharp edge to them, a clarity and change that made a routine experience something fresh and new. They were taking things slow on multiple levels, but already Kay was feeling a sense of rightness from their choice to explore this possibility.

To sum it up, Kay was enjoying dating Eleniah and wanted to keep doing it.

Eleniah stepped forward and threw a punch at Kay’s head. He ducked under it and tried to stab her with one of his punch daggers but she deflected his arm p with her free hand and brought down her fist from her missed punch like a hammer on his elbow. He took the blow, twisting his arm in the same direction to try and lessen the impact, and brought his other dagger up toward her throat. Eleniah twisted her neck and the blade nicked her instead of stabbing deeply, and a tiny trickle of blood leaked out.

Kay pulled back out of the way of her counter and tried to set up another approach. Working training patterns, he though they might be called katas by martial artists and weebs, into real combat was harder than someone looking in from the outside might think, and he didn’t have the most practice with the punch daggers. They were a good weapon that rounded out his skill set when it came to weaponry, but his use of them had fallen to the wayside until recently. Eleniah had pushed him to use them in several fights recently, including the one against the giant asura golem, but a lot of other times they hadn’t been as useful. Because of that, even after years of sporadic usage he still hadn’t gotten a Class for punch daggers.

The Skill was at level five, which should have unlocked the Class, but it hadn’t, prompting Kay to question what was going on. Eleniah had some theories, and now they were testing one of them out through rigorous training, also known as high level sparring. Kay feinted with one blade and brought the other around in a slashing move. The feint slowed her down by a fraction of a second but she was still able to block the slash. When she did that it left an opening for Kay to turn his feint into a real attack, and he stabbed forward again leaving another thin trail of blood leaking from her arm.

They danced back and forth across the training area, not using their full power but instead keeping themselves limited so that the fight was one of skill rather than Skills. Kay kept himself focused, making sure that he was constantly using both of his weapons in tandem, creating a storm of attacks with both daggers instead of using one and then the other. Eleniah constantly pushed him to be on the move and respond to her attacking him, never quite moving to finish him off even when she had the opportunity. They deliberately stretched the fight out to get the most time and experience out of it they could.

A flashing notification light appeared in the corner of Kay’s vision. He disengaged and jumped back, signaling Eleniah to stop. “I think that’s it.” He pulled up the message, trusting Eleniah not to randomly continue the fight.

[~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]

-Skill: Dual Wielding has reached level 5!

-New Class Available!

-Class: Novice Dual Dagger Wielder (Punch Daggers) Available!

[~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]

[————————————————————]

You have a new class available! Novice Dual Dagger Wielder (Punch Daggers)!

-Prerequisites: Punch Daggers Level 5, Dual Wielding Level 5

This is a Combat Class and will take up a Combat Class Slot if you take this Class.

Do you accept?

[————————————————————]

“Finally.” He muttered to himself as he accepted the new Class. He glanced at Eleniah who walked up next to him. “You were right, getting Dual Wielding and leveling it up got me a Class.”

“Nice, always feels good to be right.” She leaned against him, staring at roughly where his screens were even if she couldn’t see them. “I wonder if my theory about you usually using two daggers at once gave the System a predisposition toward you doing that was right, or if its something else I’ll never find out about. You should ask for me.”

“I can try, but I won’t guarantee it’ll tell me anything. When I’ve asked questions like that in the past its told me I don’t have access.”

“Huh. What Class did you end up with? I can probably guess but I’m not always right.”

“It’s a long one. Novice Dual Dagger Wielder (Punch Daggers), is what it’s calling it on my Status.”

She made a face. “That’s not terrible, but it is a pretty long name.”

“It might be worse in English, it’s six words long and two of those are in parentheses.”

“You should teach me English, then we can have a secret language together.”

“Cindy speaks English, and a decent amount of Otherworlders probably will as well.”

“She’s going to have her own duchy to run, she won’t be around forever.”

They cooled down and cleaned up while they chatted. It started with them talking about who other than Outworlders might be able to speak English, then they switched to talking about Kay wanting to find more powerful people to join them following the invasion they’d face, the it became a game about what kind of cool Outworlders they wanted to recruit for Avalon. It was just a game of pretend, but it was fun as they made up more and more ridiculous Classes for the imaginary Outworlders to bring to the table, powering up Avalon more and more until they were able to sweep over all three continents and unite the known world into one glorious empire. Then of course, the empire fell apart into warring factions after Kay’s untimely death, which Eleniah put forward as fact, and Outworlder versus Outworlder battles became the norm as they pitted their creations against one another in a never ending one-upmanship war. The game stalled out when neither one of them would give up on their final and most powerful Outworlder as they both insisted theirs would triumph over the others.

“My Ultimate Fisher of the Curved Moon with bring down lunar power on your Sky Splitter and erase him!”

“Not if my Sky Splitter splits the sky, removing the medium through which your moon beams have to travel through!”

Kay laughed and pushed away her dramatically shaking fist she’d shoved in his face. “Alright, we’re going in circles at this point. Let’s call it a draw and move on.”

“Never! The Sky Splitter, Baron of Someplace will never admit defeat! She serves the true will of his most august majesty, the Imperial Blood Emperor Kay! She is the true heir of his almost-divine will after his most embarrassing demise!”

“Fine.” Kay replied, rolling his eyes at her insistence that the imaginary him died a truly mortifying death.. “Then the Ultimate Fisher of the Curved Moon, Duchess of Someplace admits defeat and surrenders to the Sky Splitter, so we can go eat lunch.” At some point it became a thing to have their Outworlders become nobles too, and they were all the Baron or whatever of the realm of “Someplace” because they couldn’t be bothered to come up with names.

“I am victorious!” Eleniah crowed. She smiled teasingly at him and grabbed his hand. They started walking back into the suite to get the lunch Miri had told them would be ready around then.

“I still think my Duelist of the Planes should have lasted longer.”

“I get that it’s a reference to that game you told me about, but the whole thing got confusing with cards that are spells but also monsters and other things except the ones that are actually places that give you mana, so I killed him first so I didn’t have to listen to all of that again.”

“You fiend!”

They sat across from each other in the smaller dining room and waited for the food to be brought in. Miri arrived with some drinks and their starters a few minutes later, and paused to ask them if they needed anything else.

“Actually I do.” Kay responded, “I need you to tell me what’s going on with you. Eleniah says she know’s but won’t tell me and Alahna actually got annoyed with me about it the other day but hasn’t told me why. You’re getting me in trouble.”

Miri’s proffesional expression didn’t break, but there was a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “You’ll find out one way or another in a week or two, your majesty.”

“Depending on how things go we might no be here in two weeks. If this eldritch nanomachines thing gets wrapped up sooner rather than later I’ll need to start heading home to deal with my responsibilities there.”

“Exactly, your majesty, exactly.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

Eleniah waved at Miri to leave. “Stop teasing him, you’ve already built everything up for the big reveal.”

“You’re keeping secrets from me,” Kay accused her as Miri slipped out.

“She’s worked too hard to pull this off, and I don’t want to ruin the surprise if she wants it to be a surprise. I’m not sure why it needs to be a surprise at all, but other than that I support what she’s doing so I’m going to let it happen.” Eleniah speared a piece of the fruit platter they’d been served with her fork and brought it to her mouth. “You should try this, it’s very good.”

Lunch was, as always, quite good. Kay was working and would continue to work on resisting temptation and corruption, but having chefs make delicious food for you and not having to cook or wash dishes yourself was so nice, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to give that up in the future. He’d have to set up a retirement plan for himself if he ever passed Avalon’s throne to someone else, one that included a stipend for paying for good food. After the meal Miri swept in to clean up then came back to discuss their plans for the next few days.

“I spoke to those in charge of the ongoing hunt,” The maid told them, “And there’s an incoming ship scheduled to arrive sometime tomorrow that they’d like you to be on hand for. Outside of that there are no constraints on your time, although the day after that the negotiators would like your input on several items. Queen Alahna is pushing Isles’ side of things toward much closer relations with Avalon than I think most of our government was originally expecting and several proposals have been updated since then.”

Kay stared at Miri, not totally processing what she’d just said. He wasn’t sure if Eleniah had been doing it deliberately, but she’d dropped what felt like hints about Miri’s plan during lunch, and he was starting to have some real ideas about her end goal. Of course, if he was right, he didn’t understand how he was involved in it at all or why it was necessary to keep it a secret from him at all, which made him doubt the theory. Eleniah’s grin that he could see out of the corner of his eye made it seem even more like a setup, but who was he to deny his paramour’s entertainment at his expense.

“Miri, are you planning on-“

A royal guard burst through the door in full uniform. Everyone went for a weapon except for Miri, who sprinted away from the sudden noise and movement. “Your majesty!” The guard shouted, “One of the search teams found something, and Queen Alahna asks for you to come at once!”