The day's training had bled into a dull, pleasant ache across Yuki's shoulders. After five hours of sparring with Shadow—more drills, more counters, more tiny lessons filed away—his muscles hummed like a worked bell. Sweat crusted at his hairline. The sun had fallen low enough to make the lake glitter like a sheet of beaten silver. Yuki and Shadow sat side by side on the grass of the clan pavilion, feet dangling toward the water, breathing easy.
"How does it feel," Yuki asked suddenly, leaning back on his hands and looking up at the sky, "to be able to look down on the world?"
Shadow glanced at him, expression unreadable as ever. "At my level? Look down? No," he said with a small, dry chuckle. "There are far stronger people than I. I am but a fish among sharks." His tone carried neither false modesty nor bravado—just a flat statement with the weight of truth.
Yuki let the remark float. He had asked the question not because he wanted praise but because he was trying to measure distance—the gap between the boy he'd become here and the men who held true power in this world. In his old life everyone felt enormous until you stepped outside your neighborhood. Here the scale was bigger, the pantheon of strength more various.
A grin spread over his face—sunlight, lake, a little wind teasing the grass. "Shadow," he said, "I want to go hunt magical beasts in the forest. Not the tame ones near the village, but deeper. I want experience—the kind you only get when something wants to eat you."
For a moment Shadow studied him. The guardian's jaw tensed as if he were weighing more than just words: the boy's mechanical stats, his recent surges of power, the odd line of growth that hadn't been normal yesterday and certainly wasn't normal for a child of this clan. "You think battling wild monsters will help?" Shadow asked.
Yuki narrowed his eyes with stubbled determination. "Training with you is great. I respect it. But it's limited. Real danger forces you to knit things together—movement, strike, breath—without a partner's courtesy. Monsters don't hold back. Their patterns aren't polite. I want to learn how to use my experience, not just count it like coins."
The guardian made a noise—part amusement, part begrudging respect. "You think you're ready to leave the safety of the clan?"
"If I'm going to be leaving soon," Yuki replied, "I ought to know what the outside feels like. We can't hide forever. The more I know, the less the world can surprise me." His voice took on a steadier edge; it was no longer a joke.
Shadow considered him for a long breath. He had always been the cooler head, the obstacle that sharpened Yuki's blunt edges. He also knew the clan's rules and the dangers of the wild—beasts with elemental venom, packs that hunted like coordinated units, things with teeth and teeth in the mind as well as the mouth. A small, dark thought—protective instinct, nothing more—nipped at him.
"Very well," Shadow said at last. "I will speak to the patriarch. But if he refuses, you will not go alone."
"That's fair," Yuki answered easily, then, less easily, added, "And Shadow—thank you. You and Father… you've always been more like brothers than servant and master, haven't you?"
For a single heartbeat Shadow's features stuttered. The question pried at a corner he had kept nailed down. "What do you mean, young master?" he asked, voice thin with cautiousness.
Yuki shrugged. "I don't know. It just looks that way sometimes—how you two speak, how you protect each other. It's… familiar." He tried on a smile to push the thought away. He didn't want to unsettle the man who had his back.
Shadow's shoulders eased. "It's a long story," he said softly. "I will return with an answer."
He left before Yuki could press further, his figure already blurring against the darkening hedgerow. Yuki watched him go, then turned his gaze back to the water where fish pierced the surface in lazy circles. There are things, he thought idly, only a fight teaches you. He felt impatient to learn.
"Why did you tell me that last part?" he asked the air—habit; he often spoke aloud to the System since it was the only witness that reliably answered.
There was a pause, then the System's voice threaded into his thoughts. It was not the neutral monotone he had first expected; today it carried an odd cadence, a male timbre that felt less like a machine and more like someone leaning in to speak privately.
> [There are some things you are not meant to know.]
"Even if they have to do with me?" Yuki asked, brow furrowing. He had the sense of a line he wasn't supposed to cross, and lines made him curious by reflex.
> [Host access restricted. Current intelligence level insufficient for full disclosure.]
Yuki snorted. "You're not a simple system, are you? More like… a consciousness planted in my head." The words slipped out half-joking, half-audacious. He felt the idea, felt it make sense in a way that a database couldn't explain.
There was a soft, almost amused sound from the System. It sounded like a chuckle without breath. He had never heard anything like it. "You are the first host to challenge my parameters directly," it said. "This will be… entertaining."
"Entertaining?" Yuki echoed, amusement crawling up his spine despite himself. "If you're a consciousness, say something useful. Help me plan. What's safe? What's not?"
> [Plan: Hunt target within one hour travel. Avoid groups larger than three unless traps are set. Beware of hidden venom glands and corrosive exhale. Recommended approach: scout, bait, isolate, execute. Vanishing Palm effective at close angles. Vanishing Movement for repositioning.]
Yuki grinned as the System delivered tactical pointers like a training manual. "You do have useful things in you," he mused, delighted.
> [Function: Tactical Support — Basic. Advanced functions locked pending host parameters.]
"Locked, huh?" He loved the way a sealed door always felt more tempting. "Okay. Then let's start with what we've got." He rose, the decision already a warm, humming thing inside him.
He found Shadow waiting at the edge of the forest, cloak pulled up against a breeze that smelled of damp earth and pine resin. Hayate had given the nod—formal permission, delivered in a tone that meant: do not bring disgrace. Shadow's jaw was a line of quiet commitment.
They moved through the trees while birds called like distant bells. The canopy closed above them, green and murmuring. The forest was a world of sound: leaves whispering, a branch falling in the far distance, the sudden rustle that marks a small creature taking flight. Yuki's heartbeat ticked out a rhythm he had learned to trust.
They stalked for an hour with no sign of anything but older tracks and the odd scuff of a boar. Then the air shifted: a scent like iron, a high petal of tension. The forest opened into a clearing where a beast—bigger than a horse, scaled like mossy bark, with eyes like lanterns—reared. Its back was a ridge of armored plates, and when it inhaled, steam rose like breath from a furnace.
"Beast type: Mireback Scaling," the System whispered. "Aggro range: twenty meters. Vulnerability: undercarriage. Behavior: charges in diagonal bursts."
Yuki's hands flexed. This was it—the kind of thing that could take a man clean off his feet if he misread the signal. He closed his eyes for a fraction, feeling the muscle memory of a hundred tiny, remembered fights—his old life's bar brawls translated now into strategic strikes.
He moved first, using Vanishing Movement to blink from one shaded fern to another. The beast swung a heavy head; its plates met air where Yuki had been, not where he was. He surged forward, a Vanishing Palm streaking toward a gap between the plates. The blow landed with a sharp, satisfied thump.
The beast reared, roaring steam and bile. Shadow was already at its flank, blade flashing in a practiced arc that pinned its momentum. The two of them worked an old duet—guardian and student—each movement considered, each strike backing the other.
It was messy. It was loud. It was exactly the sort of learning no dojo could teach: fear that pricked the skin, the animal's panic, the need to adapt on a live, breathing equation. Yuki's techniques held, but they were not miracle cures. There were missteps: a bruise opened along his ribs, a thorn nicked his palm. He tasted copper and the hot, clean ache of honest work.
When the beast finally toppled—its breath slowing, its eyes glazing—Yuki did not leap in triumph. He sank to his knees instead, chest heaving, palms bloody and brilliant. Shadow crouched beside him, the guardian's expression soft but proud in a way he rarely displayed.
"You did well," Shadow said simply, before vanishing.
Yuki laughed, ragged and full. "That was perfect. I can feel it—my experience actually matters." He licked a split lip and found it tasted like victory and salt.
He set the creature to rest under a tarp, marked its hide with a sigil only trained hands recognized—so others would know the beast's territory had been challenged. Walking back through the trees with the day reddening behind them, Yuki felt something settle into his bones: a trust in his body, a friend in Shadow, and a system that, for all its boundaries, could still teach him how to survive.
He was not invincible. But he was learning. And for now, that was everything.