小嫂子的味道

It was finally the day Reshi had judged me worthy of wielding the Requiem sword, and I'd to say I was as nervous as I was when I first found myself in this cave.

Five years had passed since, and I was nineteen years old now, but not much had changed. The flame of vengeance I had burning inside me had not extinguished or faded, it was still burning as bright as it ever was, or maybe even more than before.

I woke up the first thing in the morning, washed in the pond, and after changing into the only other set of clothes I had, I headed toward the klauth room. Reshi was nowhere to be found, so I guessed he was already there.

When I arrived in the klauth room, I saw that I was right. Reshi was there, standing in front of the klauth's skeleton with his hands folded behind his back, he was waiting for me.

I walked up to him and quietly stood beside him. Neither of us spoke anything, and I stared at the skull of the klauth before me. Then, after a minute or two of dead stillness, Reshi spoke up.

"On the day you arrived here, you asked me why I was living in a place like this, away from the rest of the world. Right?" he asked, referring to the question I'd asked him five years ago.

I nodded.

"If you look at it one way, I think both you and I have mutual feelings toward the war that's been going on. I decided to close myself off from the rest of the world because of this never-ending war. The world I once lived in, the world I loved, the world which loved me, this war has destroyed and ruined everything. What remains is just a world full of corruption and people lusting for power.

"I was fed up with all that. I tried to do everything I could to stop the world before it destroyed itself, but I failed, and the five kings plunged the world into it and burned the placid world it once was.

"When there was no longer stopping things, I gave up and locked myself in this cave, away from the eyes of the rest of the world. I'd lost all hope and just wanted a place to die peacefully and leave everything. But this sword wouldn't let me do even that. So…" he looked in my direction.

"Will you grant this little wish of mine and free me from the chains that bound me in here?" he asked, his voice dull.

I faced him and nodded. He reached out his right and cut the air in half like he'd done before, from the gap that formed he pulled out the Requiem sword. The gap closed itself and his gaze fell on the sword, his eyes locked, and he admired it for a whole minute before looking up at me.

"Make good use of it," he said, and handed me the sword. I took it from him, and for the first time, I got to know how it felt holding the sword that'd killed a klauth. I'd always wondered about it on the nights I couldn't sleep due to too much training.

"Pass your mana through it. After that it will be truly yours," he instructed.

I followed his advice and directed my mana toward the sword, letting it flow inside the sword. Soon I sensed that the sword was sucking my mana as there was a pull that attracted my mana inside the sword.

The pull disappeared in a few seconds and the sword's blade glowed in black, it was pitch-black, like a starless night. A wave of darkness erupted from the blade and surrounded me.

The darkness spun around me and I felt something tightening in my body. It was comfortable and soft. Too soft to be a cloth, and if it was, then it was the smoothest cloth in the world.

The darkness stopped whirling around me and disappeared into nothing, what came next blew my mind. My clothes had changed.

Pure black clothing covered my body, my legs, and my arms, and gloves were covering my fingers.

Along with that, I wore a cloak made out of nothing but shadows. I touched it with my left hand, and it was soft, and strong too. This was the outfit the sword had given me, and it remained my battle outfit for the days to come.

"You are good to go," Reshi said as he looked at me and nodded to himself. "The sword has accepted you, and now it is yours. Finally, I can die."

I looked at the sword, and then at Reshi. It was obvious, I didn't know what to do now. For years, I have trained to reach this very day, the day when I would get the sword and set out to kill the kings. Now that the moment had passed, I didn't know what to do next.

Maybe Reshi picked up on this, as his next words were proof of that.

"There is one last thing you have to do before I can allow you to leave this cave." he stated.

"What is it?" I asked.

He lifted his right hand and pointed at something with his index finger, I followed his trail and my eyes widened a bit when I saw what he was pointing at. The skeleton of the klauth.

"Just like you cut that boulder back when you started, you have to cut this klauth before you leave," he announced.

"You mean this klauth!!?" the words spilled out from my mouth on their own. No matter how strong I've become, it was still the remains of a klauth. A creature the whole world fears. "It's impossible," I said.

A wry smile appeared on Reshi's face. "You've said the same thing before, but you ended up cutting the boulder quite easily. Why not give this one a try too?"

I sighed. Knowing there was no escaping him.

"Fine, think of this as a gift from me before I leave," I said, but most of those words were meant as a distraction for myself so that I could stop myself from overthinking the matter.

I turned toward the klauth, my right hand in which I held the sword dropped as I walked toward the skeleton. I let my mana flow and activated the technique which these days you know as 'magiken'.

A black flame enveloped the blade of the sword, and soon it was covering it entirely. My pace increased, and in no time I was running. I directed mana in my legs and kicked the ground, launching myself in a high jump.

But no matter how high I reached, I couldn't possibly jump higher than the klauth's height. So when I was at the point in the air from where I could no longer go any higher.

I raised the sword, held it with both my hands, and slashed it down hard while in mid-air. The power I felt at that time was incredible. A crescent of shadow was launched from the sword's blade, and it increased in size as it closed the distance between itself and the klauth.

The crescent of shadow collided with the klauth's skull, and the resulting shockwave shook the entire cave. I landed on the ground with one knee bent to reduce the impact, then I stood up and looked forward to where the skeleton was.

There was a huge cloud of dust and the ground was still rumbling as it would during an earthquake. When the dust cleared, what I saw was the damaged skeleton of a klauth.

My attack did not destroy the whole skeleton, it was impossible to do that at my current level, but I had split its skull into two parts, it was divided right between the eyes.

I turned to look at Reshi, amazement dripping clear on my face. He met my gaze and smiled a smile that said, 'told you so'.

I returned his smile and then shifted my gaze to the sword, "Does it have a sheath?" I asked.

"Just think about it."

Imagining it was not difficult, but soon after I felt some weight at my waist. Upon looking, I saw a pure black sheath attached to my weight. I slid the sword into it, it was a perfect fit.