Three years later
Clang.
Drainda's blade split the air with a clean hiss, cutting neatly through the hardened bark of the reinforced trunk before Emrys immediately flowed into a lateral movement, then a return to guard with an almost unsettling fluidity.
Technically flawless.
He stopped, Drainda's tip motionless in front of him, and stayed silent for a moment, as if giving that familiar feeling time to settle in. That feeling of being a little too clean, a little too... polished.
"Again," he murmured, almost to himself.
Around him, the clearing bore the marks of the morning's training: clean, precise, almost surgical cuts scattered across the three trunks Dubs had ended up reinforcing specifically for him, drawing heavily on his own racial trait, precisely so they'd stop splitting in half at the slightest overly forceful blow.
Five years this had been going on. Five years, and Emrys couldn't say he was bad at it. He would almost have preferred that, in a way. It would have been simpler to understand.
His Observation Haki, active permanently for three years now, kept feeding him the world of colored particles surrounding him, the way it had without the slightest interruption ever since he'd stopped needing to think about it consciously. The three trunks. The training hut Dubs had eventually built for him a bit further off. The familiar warmth of the forge, barely perceptible even at this distance, somewhere behind him.
All of it, he perceived without the slightest effort. A single thought was enough to conjure a detailed map of his surroundings across nearly two hundred meters, without costing him a single drop of mental energy as long as he didn't try to push further.
It was his Structural Grasp that impressed him the most these days. He could now break down an object's exact composition in a fraction of a second, without even needing to think about it consciously, the skill having melted into his reflexes to the point of feeling almost as natural as breathing. His Projection, too, had become child's play: Gae Dearg, Rule Breaker, his bow, and so many others among the thousands of weapons slumbering somewhere in that memory borrowed from Emiya, all of it now appeared in his hand with the fluidity of a gesture learned since forever, provided he had enough magical energy to spare. As for Blink, ever since he'd cracked the secret of inertia, he could practically dance across a battlefield, changing direction mid-motion with a precision that left even Dubs speechless with admiration, on the rare occasions he bothered watching him train.
So why, damn it, does it always leave this bitter taste in my mouth?
He got back into position, breathed in deeply, and lunged again at the nearest trunk, this time chaining together a series of three strikes, each finding its mark with an almost insolent precision.
One step. Two. Three. His weight perfectly distributed, every shift in stance executed without the slightest hitch.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Three clean cuts, lined up with near-geometric regularity. Another flawless combination, another movement carrying that same fluidity he found effortlessly in absolutely every other aspect of his fighting.
And yet.
Emrys stopped, out of breath, one hand braced on his knee.
Okay. Let's take stock, because clearly something's been bugging me for a while now and refuses to be named.
He closed his eyes, mentally running back through each of his abilities, one by one, the way he'd already done dozens of times without ever really confronting the conclusion that kept imposing itself more and more clearly.
Observation Haki: excellent. Two hundred meters of passive range, deadly precision, a stamina that had nothing left in common with the kid who used to collapse after a few seconds, five years ago.
Structural Grasp: excellent too. Near-instant on any inanimate object, and even on living creatures, he could now extract enough useful information to spot a weak point mid-fight without wasting time.
Projection: excellent. Fluid, fast, versatile. He could summon half a dozen different weapons within seconds without the slightest hesitation, and that was only a tiny fraction of everything he could, in theory, draw from that memory borrowed from Emiya.
Blink: excellent, if not beyond. Mastering inertia had turned a simple movement technique into a genuine art form, something even the veterans at the front, if the rumors reaching this far were to be believed, would have had trouble replicating.
Armament Haki: fine, nothing more. Far behind the rest, honestly, but at least he knew exactly why. He'd always pushed it to the back burner, year after year, too busy polishing everything else to really dedicate himself to it.
And then there was the sword.
Swordsmanship: technically excellent. Maybe even more than that. Five years of training, five years of projecting dozens of different blades over time, each one leaving him, as an inheritance, a fragment of its original owner's life every time he summoned it. A wrist movement borrowed from some forgotten hero. A particular guard inherited from another. A way of pivoting the hips mid-combo, picked up who knows where, somewhere in that mountain of half-digested memories making up Emiya's mind.
He'd never had a teacher. He'd never needed one. From wielding Gae Dearg, Rule Breaker, and so many other blades besides, just for the sake of testing what they could do, he'd ended up accumulating, without even realizing it, a technical foundation worthy of a seasoned swordmaster.
Emrys opened his eyes again, staring without seeing at the three reinforced silhouettes in front of him.
However I look at it, it's not a skill problem.
He thought back to the feeling that had been with him for months, that vague discomfort he'd never quite managed to put into words until today. Every strike he landed was clean. Precise. Perfectly executed, by the book. He'd become a living manual, able to pull from a hundred different styles depending on the moment's needs.
And that was exactly the problem.
It doesn't look like anything. It looks like everyone at once, and so, in the end, like no one.
He thought back to his very first Projection. To the very first time he'd materialized Gae Dearg, in the most absolute of emergencies, and the way an entire stream of knowledge had poured into his mind without him asking for any of it. Diarmuid Ua Duibhne's technique. His mastery of the spear, his reflexes, down to the exact way his wrists needed to pivot to chain a parry and a strike into a single motion.
That day, wielding that spear, he hadn't felt any of that clinical cleanliness that inhabited him now with Drainda. There had been something fierce in every one of his movements, something primal yet refined, that wasn't seeking perfect form, only the result. Kill, or survive. Nothing else mattered.
He'd felt that ever since, with every Projection he'd made since. Each one had a different style, yet all of them aimed at the same outcome: death, or survival.
But Drainda...
Emrys lowered his eyes toward the black blade in his hand. He couldn't see it, but he could all too easily picture the white clover engraved above the guard, watching him with silent irony.
Drainda belonged to no one. It had never belonged to anyone. It was his very first creation, the very first thing he had ever brought into being of his own will in this world, before he'd even understood half of what his own power actually entailed. And maybe that was exactly why he kept stubbornly returning to it rather than any other borrowed blade: because it was his, and that should have been enough to give it a face, a soul, a way of striking that belonged to no one but him.
Except he still hadn't found that face.
"Damn it," he murmured, a bitter laugh nearly escaping him. "That's the problem. That's literally it."
All these borrowed techniques, all this perfection gathered through successive Projections, still amounted to costumes he put on one after another without ever truly inhabiting them. A movement from Diarmuid here, a guard from another hero there, assembled into a technically flawless patchwork that told nothing about him. No rage. No raw determination. None of that ferocity he had felt, if only for an instant, that day in the meadow, facing the five mages, when he'd had no choice left but to fight for real.
A technique with no personality. A perfectly sharpened blade that never truly bit, because it had never once had to, for real.
Emrys sat down heavily on one of the rocks bordering the clearing, letting Drainda rest against his shoulder, his mind racing.
Ineed real fights. Real opponents. Not tree trunks that don't move, not red demons that charge straight ahead and that I can take down from a distance before they even get close.
He thought of the dozens of red demons he'd already taken out over the past four years, almost all of them the same way: a quick analysis, a well-placed arrow, sometimes two to finish the job. Efficient. Clean. And absolutely useless for improving his swordsmanship, since he almost never found himself actually needing to cross blades with anything.
Even his Armament Haki suffered from the same problem, deep down. How was he supposed to effectively reinforce his body in combat if he never found himself in a situation where he actually had to take hits, where failure would carry an immediate, real cost rather than just a scratch on a reinforced trunk?
I can't stay here forever.
The thought hit him with brutal clarity.
Dubs had given him everything. A roof, training, endless patience toward a blind kid who'd literally fallen out of the sky into his quarry. But Dubs wasn't a fighter. He never had been. All his strength, all his mastery, was concentrated in his blacksmith's hands, in his ability to forge weapons capable of turning the tide of a battle, not in the art of fighting itself.
He can't teach me swordsmanship. He never needed it himself. All these years, I've grown on everything he could teach me indirectly, patience, rigor, understanding materials, and I even picked up a bit of forging from him. But on this, on the one thing that actually matters when I end up in close combat... I've stagnated like crazy. I've got no one to push me past my limits.
Emrys stayed sitting there for a long while, letting that realization fully settle in, weighing down on his shoulders with its full force.
Five years. Five years he'd lived here, safe, sheltered from the war still raging somewhere beyond this forest. Five years growing steadily stronger, more skilled, all while knowing full well, deep down, that this protective cocoon had its limits too.
I'm stronger than before. Much stronger. But I'll never be strong enough if I keep hiding here, hitting pieces of wood and hoping it'll be enough.
He got up, sheathing Drainda, which immediately scattered into particles of black light, and let his gaze, or rather his haki, drift toward the forge, where he could sense Dubs's massive silhouette hard at work on his latest commission.
It's time to leave.
The determination rising in him had nothing to do with the blind urgency that would have once pushed him, years ago, to charge headfirst into danger without thinking. This was something calmer, more mature, the result of five full years spent understanding who he was, what he was capable of, and above all what he still lacked to truly live up to everything he'd promised himself he'd accomplish.
He gathered his things scattered around the clearing, cast one last glance, so to speak, at the three trunks bearing cuts far too superficial for his liking, and set off toward the forge, each step a little more certain than the last.
Along the way, he thought back to all those times Dubs, without ever saying it outright, had hinted that he knew this day would come eventually. Little remarks dropped here and there over the years, seemingly offhand at the time, that made complete sense now. "A blacksmith can sharpen a blade, kid, but he's not the one who teaches you how to use it." Or, more recently: "You're starting to have the build of someone who shouldn't just be hitting wood anymore."
He'd always taken those as simple remarks, passing observations, without ever really giving them the attention they deserved. In hindsight, it looked more like a man quietly preparing someone for a departure he'd seen coming for a long time, without ever wanting to rush it.
The time for safe training was coming to an end.
What remained to be seen was how Dubs would take the news.
Knowing him, he'd probably just answer with a. Hm? Okay.