Chapter 30 – Edge
The light charm on my desk flickered when I brushed it with my finger.
Not because I fed it mana.
Because the sword hilt sitting next to it hummed.
Good. Or… something close to good.
I picked the sword up by the handle, feeling the faint wrongness in the wood. Under the leather wrap, the grip wasn't solid anymore. I'd carved out a narrow channel through the middle of the hilt, all the way down to where the blade's tang disappeared.
Inside that little void was the problem I'd been chasing for days.
Crystal.
Copper.
And just enough insanity to be dangerous.
I turned the sword slowly, watching the way the charm's light stuttered when the hilt passed near it. Not off. Not on. Just the tiniest hiccup, like it was being nudged out of rhythm for a heartbeat and then allowed to settle.
The hilt was drinking.
Not from me.
From the air.
"Ambient mana drift…" I muttered.
In my old world, you couldn't just pull electricity out of nowhere. Here, mana just sat everywhere like fog, mostly ignored. Enchanters used circles and carved channels to convince it to move. I didn't have their training.
What I did have was:
– A charged crystal from my rude little acid-and-metal cell.
– A copper winding around it, tied into the steel tang.
– And the memory of field lines and arrows scribbled on too many notebooks.
I'd used the cell to force mana into the crystal earlier, over and over, charging and discharging until the whole thing felt… stretched. Like a muscle that had finally learned how to move.
Then I'd sealed it inside the hilt, wrapped in coil, and waited.
No direct link to my core. No spell.
Just crystal, metal, ambient mana, and time.
Now, after a few hours of ignoring it, the sword hummed faintly when I touched it—like a throat clearing.
[ System ]
[ New Phenomenon Logged: "Ambient Mana Drift Capture (Crude)" ]
[ Mana Circuit Theory – Passive Channeling Branch Unlocked. ]
The blue text floated in the corner of my vision, polite as always.
Passive channeling.
So it wasn't just my imagination.
I set the sword down carefully and focused, brushing my senses along the hilt. There was a small reservoir there now, a tiny, steady pressure. Less than what I could move in a single breath… but it hadn't been there before.
"Good enough," I whispered.
The whole point wasn't to build a perfect battery.
I just needed something that could work alongside me.
Spread the load.
***
I stepped out into the empty practice yard behind the dorms, my short sword in hand.
It was late enough that the shadows had gone long, the stone still holding the day's heat. Most students were either at dinner or pretending to study. Perfect time to try something stupid.
I rolled my wrist, feeling the familiar weight of the blade.
Aura flowed out of me on reflex, coating the steel in a thin layer of light. Reinforcement. I'd done it so many times it barely registered as effort anymore. The blade felt denser, more solid, a single piece of intent instead of metal and impurities.
That much was normal.
The hard part was what came next.
In my first lives, back when I was still impressed by every trick on the battlefield, I'd seen a handful of aura users do something more. Their blades didn't just shine. They sang. Edges that glittered like glass, cutting through armor and bone as if everything was already in pieces.
I hadn't had the words for it then.
Now, with too many years and a little bit of physics lodged in my skull, I could guess.
Vibration.
Oscillation along the edge. A controlled tremor so fast and so fine that anything it touched might as well be dust.
The catch was simple: it ate mana like fire ate dry straw.
I set my feet, aura wrapped tight around the short sword, and tried anyway.
Just a little pulse along the edge. Up the blade, down the blade. Like plucking a string and forcing the note to hold.
For a moment, the edge shivered. The air around it seemed to thicken, light distorting just a fraction.
Mana poured out of my core.
My chest tightened. A familiar warning ache gnawed behind my ribs.
"Too much," I hissed, cutting it off. Aura snapped back to a simple coat, my breathing already a touch rougher.
That was the problem. I could imitate the trick… for about a heartbeat and a half. Long enough to impress a recruit. Not long enough to matter in a real fight.
I looked down at the hilt.
The leather-wrapped grip. The hidden crystal. The copper coil under my hand, tied into the tang and the steel.
"Your turn," I said quietly.
Aura flowed again, a clean, steady layer over the blade. This time I kept it simple—no forced vibration, no tricks. Just reinforcement. The kind even a half-trained knight could manage.
Then, with my thumb, I slid the thin brass ring at the top of the guard into place.
The contact clicked.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the hilt warmed faintly under my grip, and a sound I couldn't quite hear slid along my bones. Not a note. Not a chime.
A feeling.
The edge of the sword… shifted.
My aura wrapped around it, and something in the core of the blade answered back. A tiny, regular tug, like the steel itself was breathing in very fast, very shallow breaths.
I hadn't told it to.
The crystal in the hilt was pulsing that stored energy into the coil. The coil was pushing a field into the tang and the blade. My aura, sitting there like a lazy blanket, got caught and pulled into a pattern.
Up the edge.
Down the edge.
Back again.
Not wild, not shaky. Just a tiny, relentless shiver along a single line.
Mana drain?
I checked myself, the way you check a wound on the battlefield.
My core was working harder than with pure reinforcement, yes… but nothing like the burn from before. It felt closer to holding a strong aura coat than clawing for a high-level technique.
The work was being done somewhere else.
"Oh," I whispered.
The sword didn't glow brighter. That was the strange part. The aura layer stayed thin, almost transparent. But the air around the edge felt… crowded. Like there was no space left between steel and world.
I slid my free hand down the flat of the blade, making sure my fingers stayed away from the edge. Even through aura, the steel hummed.
"All right," I murmured. "Let's see."
A wooden training post stood a few strides away, scarred by generations of students. Someone had painted a ridiculous face on it earlier in the week. Rion's handwriting, probably.
I took my stance. Aura steady. Thumb on the contact ring.
No special technique. Just a simple diagonal cut, the kind drilled into anyone who'd picked up a sword more than twice.
The sword moved.
It didn't feel heavy. It didn't feel light.
It felt… inevitable.
When the edge met the post, there was no impact. No jolt up my arm. No satisfying crack of wood resisting.
The upper half of the post slid down and thumped onto the ground.
I exhaled slowly.
The cut surface shone smooth in the late light. Not rough. Not fibrous. It was as if the wood had never been whole there at all.
I clicked the ring off.
The hum faded.
Aura dropped to a normal coat.
"Again," I muttered.
Contact on.
Blade hum.
This time I aimed lower, through one of the thick knots near the base.
My core braced instinctively for the mana drain that should come with forcing the edge that hard. It didn't.
The sword whispered through the knot. The post didn't so much break as come apart.
I stared at the spinning chunk of wood as it rolled to a stop.
My core had dipped a little. Not much. Nowhere near the amount it should have if I'd been manually vibrating the edge at that speed.
I looked at the blade.
No chips.
No nicks.
No dullness near the points of impact.
I ran a thumb very gently along the edge, aura dulling the danger just enough.
It didn't feel sharper.
It felt narrower.
Like the entire world had shrunk into a line too thin for my fingers to understand.
[ System ]
[ New Technique Formed: "Resonant Edge Conduction (Prototype)" ]
[ Note: Externalized oscillation detected. Structural reinforcement required to prevent failure. ]
[ Efficiency Increase: 63% (relative to user's prior attempt at high-frequency edge vibration). ]
"…I don't even know what that means," I told the invisible text.
Sixty-three percent of a technique I couldn't properly do alone. Pushed onto a crystal and some copper stuffed into a handle.
I hadn't reinvented enchantment.
I hadn't discovered some grand universal law.
I'd built a sword that hummed and cut the world like it was too slow to get out of the way.
That was enough.
For now.
***
By the time Tamara arrived, the sky was starting to dim, the first faint stars clawing at the blue.
She was at the far end of the training field, practice sword resting against her shoulder, uniform immaculate despite the heat. Her hair was tied up high, stray strands stuck to her cheeks from sweat. Even from a distance, she radiated stubborn temper.
"You're late," she said as soon as I was close enough.
"I said 'after class'," I replied. "You were the one who heard 'exactly when I'm ready.'"
She clicked her tongue and looked away, but the irritation didn't have teeth. It was almost… habitual.
Behind her, the field was mostly empty. A few other students sparred in pairs, but the center was open. Perfect.
"So?" she demanded. "What incredible secret from your 'mysterious father' am I learning today?"
I ignored the little jab and nodded at her practice sword instead.
"Show me how you use your magic with your swings," I said. "The actual way you fight, not the nice academy form."
Her eyes narrowed.
"What, suddenly the country boy is too good for academy form?"
"Suddenly the country boy wants to see why you keep trying to force fire into a wind problem," I said.
She frowned at that, annoyed but also curious, then took a few steps back and raised her practice sword.
When Tamara moved, she stopped being a collection of complaints and sharp comments.
She swung.
A heavy downward cut, twist, horizontal slash, then a thrust. Mana flared at each motion, wrapping the wooden blade in a thick coat. The air just around it stirred, pushed aside by brute force.
It was good. Strong. Solid.
And wrong for her.
"Again," I said. "But this time, feel the air."
"Feel the—" She cut herself off, gritting her teeth. "Fine."
She moved through the form again. I watched the way her uniform shifted, the way loose strands of hair fluttered around her face when she turned.
Her mana wasn't smooth, but the air moved more than it should have for the amount she pushed. The strokes sliced little paths through dust, even when she wasn't trying.
"You're still treating wind like a shield," I said when she finished. "Like a wall you slam onto your sword."
"That's how they taught us," she shot back immediately.
"Then they taught you like you're an earth mage," I said. "You're not. Your mana already pulls the air when you move and you're fighting it."
She opened her mouth—probably to object on principle—then shut it again.
"What do you want me to do, then?" she asked.
"First, stop thinking about making it harder," I said. "Think about letting it follow."
I stepped a little to the side, drawing my own short sword. Aura slid over the steel in a thin, easy coat. I kept the ring on the guard alone; no humming edge for this.
"When you swing," I said, tracing a slow cut through the air, "your sword draws a line. Right?"
"…Obviously."
"Instead of dumping mana onto the whole blade, push a little ahead of that line. Just a breath. As if the air at the tip wants to keep going where your blade was going."
I sent aura out in a thin thread along the edge, then let it spill forward a finger's length ahead of the tip. The dust at the end of the cut swirled, following the path of my swing for a heartbeat longer.
Tamara watched, eyes narrowing.
"So you're… dragging the wind along?" she asked.
"Letting it be dragged," I corrected. "You're already cutting through it. Let it keep moving instead of trying to stop it."
She was quiet for a moment, absorbing that.
"Try again," I said. "Small slash. Think about the wind at the tip, not on the sides."
She set her feet, grip tightening. Mana gathered around the practice sword. I could feel her first instinct—to coat it thickly, turn it into a heavy glowing club—and then feel her force it back down, teeth clenched.
She exhaled, short and sharp, and swung.
For a moment her aura stumbled, fighting itself. Then a tiny thread slipped free, just ahead of the wooden edge.
The cut whispered.
Dust at the end of her stroke kicked up in a thin line, following her swing just a fraction longer than it should have.
Tamara's eyes widened.
"There," I said. "That's yours."
"It felt… lighter," she said slowly, looking at the place where the dust had twisted. "Like the sword wanted to keep going, and I just… stepped with it."
"Good," I said. "Again. Let it pull, don't force it."
We drilled it.
Short slashes. Little threads of wind. Her mana kept trying to clump, to grab, to turn everything into weight and pressure. Each time she managed to let the air slip free and chase her blade, the cut grew smoother. Her shoulders loosened. Her feet stopped digging so hard into the ground.
"Now your legs," I said once she could do it three times in a row without swearing.
"My legs," she repeated, skeptical.
"You like forcing your weight down," I said. "Planting and hitting. That's fine in armor. Right now you're small, fast, and stupidly stubborn. Use the first two before the third."
She glared.
"Explain."
"Instead of locking your feet, use a little wind at your ankles," I said. "Not to jump. Just to help your step. Let it carry you the way it carries your slash."
Her gaze dropped to my boots as I moved.
I stepped forward, not stomping but gliding, aura flicking briefly at my shins. The air seemed to slide under my foot instead of pushing against it. The ground didn't grab so hard.
"You're cheating," Tamara said.
"Yes," I said. "Do it."
She muttered something creative under her breath, then tried.
At first she overdid it, of course.
Wind flared too hard around her legs, almost blowing her sideways. She caught herself with an angry hiss. The next attempt was too little; nothing happened and she just stomped like usual.
"Think of it as… smoothing the ground," I said. "You're not trying to fly. Just let the air catch you at the end of each step so you can slide instead of dig."
It was a stupid explanation. It worked.
She tried again, this time focusing only on the moment her foot landed. A small, quick pulse of wind. The dust barely lifted, but her boot slid that little extra fraction.
Her eyes snapped up to me.
"There," I said. "String it with your swing."
She exhaled.
This time she let the wind catch both blade and step. Her practice sword cut a line through the air, and her body followed a heartbeat more smoothly, boots almost whispering against the dirt instead of grinding it.
It wasn't perfect.
But it was hers.
The next few passes, she forgot to be annoyed.
Her cheeks flushed from effort, hair sticking to her forehead, eyes bright as she chased that light, gliding feeling. The mix of sword and wind stopped looking like something she'd memorized and started looking like something she owned.
I caught myself smiling.
She noticed, of course.
"What," she said, breathing hard, "are you grinning at?"
"I was just thinking," I said, "if you'd stopped relying on the academy's idea of 'proper noble swings' earlier, you'd be terrifying by now."
She scoffed, but her mouth twitched.
"Keep talking like that and I might start believing you," she said, then hesitated. "The… direction thing. It's easier than I thought, once it actually moves with me."
"Because it's wind," I said. "It likes moving."
Tamara looked at me for a moment, something softer and sharper mixed in her eyes.
"You're infuriating," she said quietly. "But you're useful."
"I'll take it," I said.
She snorted, but there was no heat in it this time.
"Fine," she said. "Useful boy. If you think you're done just telling me what to do—"
"I'm not done," I said.
She lifted her chin.
"—then prove it," she finished. "Fight me."
I blinked.
She gestured with her practice sword toward the center of the field.
"Use your real blade," she said. "I'll use this. Aura, magic, everything. You said I was fighting my own wind. Now I want to see the difference."
"You just learned how to make your feet slide without falling over," I said. "You want to fight now?"
"There's no better time," she shot back. "Unless you're scared."
I sighed.
She smiled, just a little, like she'd gotten what she wanted.
"…Fine," I said. "A light spar. First to clear hit. No aiming at faces."
"Agreed," she said. Her eyes flicked to my sword. "And no excuses when I beat you."
We took our positions.
Tamara set her feet like I'd just forced her to practice: not rooted, but ready to move. The air around her ankles already stirred, her aura a thin line along her practice sword's edge instead of a clumsy lump.
I drew my short sword, aura flowing over it in a clean coat. The brass ring on the guard rested under my thumb, silent.
I did not owe her an explanation for what I'd hidden inside the hilt.
"Ready?" I asked.
She nodded, eyes bright, cheeks still flushed from training.
"Start," I said.
Tamara moved first.
Wind kissed her boots, helping her glide across the packed dirt. Her opening slash came in low and fast, a test as much as an attack. The air followed her blade, the line of pressure extending just a touch farther than the wood alone should reach.
Good. She'd listened.
I stepped aside, letting the edge pass by with room to spare.
"Too honest," I said. "Again."
She snarled, but the motion that followed was cleaner. A cut, a pivot, wind at her ankle pulling her to the side, then a thrust. The point darted forward, more dangerous now that her feet weren't fighting her.
I parried, steel meeting wood with a solid smack. I didn't let the ring move. Not yet.
We fell into a rhythm.
She attacked, testing each little thing I'd just beaten into her muscles. Cuts that carried wind, steps that slid. Her mana still spiked at odd times, but the structure was better. She was sharper, faster, more… herself.
And she knew it.
"Stop blocking so lazily," she snapped after one exchange. "You're making fun of me."
"If I were making fun of you, you'd know," I said. "Again."
Her lips twitched despite herself.
She lunged.
This time, when I parried and pushed her blade aside, I let a little more pressure slip through. Her wind caught, dragged her a half-step farther than she'd planned. She adjusted with surprising quickness, foot sliding, turning into a tight pivot and a backhand slash.
She was learning while we fought.
Of course she was. She being taught by Viester's son.
"All right," I murmured. "Let's give you something to aim at."
The next time her blade came in, I met it cleanly.
Steel to wood.
Aura to aura.
And as the blades touched, I slid my thumb over the ring.
Click.
The hilt warmed. The familiar, almost inaudible hum crawled up my arm. My aura along the blade tightened into that thin, relentless vibration.
For her, nothing changed.
From her side, it was just another clash.
Tamara poured mana into her practice sword, wind wrapping the wood, hardening it. Her teeth were gritted, eyes locked on mine, determined not to be pushed back.
For a heartbeat, we balanced.
Then the world decided to get out of the way.
There was no loud crack. No explosion of splinters.
Her practice sword simply parted where my edge touched it.
Not shattered.
Not smashed.
Just… cut.
The upper half of her weapon slid down in slow motion, aura still clinging to it, before the light tore and faded. It hit the dirt with a soft thud.
Tamara stumbled, momentum thrown off, but caught herself before falling. She stared at her hand.
At the truncated length of wood still in her grip.
At my blade, resting lightly against the side of her broken guard, aura calm and thin, as if it hadn't just erased something that should have withstood a dozen such clashes.
The hum faded as I clicked the ring back, monoblade edge quieting. I stepped back and lowered my sword.
"Clear hit," I said.
Silence stretched between us, filled only by the soft buzz of the distant light charm.
Tamara slowly lifted the broken practice sword. The cut surface was smooth. Too clean. Not even a rough fiber left where the edge had passed.
Her eyes flicked from the break, to my blade, to my face.
"How," she demanded, voice low and sharp. "That— I reinforced it. You saw. It wasn't some cheap school stick, that's—"
She cut herself off, jaw working.
"How did you do that?" she said finally, more tightly. "You didn't use more aura than before. I would have felt it."
I met her gaze.
There were a dozen words I could have said. About humming edges and stolen mana and tricks no first-year should be playing with. About all the years and lives it had taken me to even think of trying something like this.
None of them were for her yet.
I let a little smile slip onto my face instead.
"It's not the time for you to know," I said.
Her eyes widened, outrage and something like interest flaring together.
"Not the—" She took a step forward, broken sword still in hand. "You arrogant—"
Then she stopped, really looking at the broken weapon again. At how close my blade had been to her fingers. At the fact that it hadn't gone any farther.
She exhaled, slow.
"…You could have taken my hand off," she said quietly.
"I didn't," I said.
"Obviously," she snapped, flustered, then hesitated. "Still. Idiot."
She looked away, ears going faintly pink.
"You're hiding things," she muttered. "But you kept your word. You showed me my own wind, at least."
I shrugged.
"You did the work," I said. "I just pointed."
Her shoulder relaxed a little at that.
"Tch," she said, looking back at me with a complicated expression. "You're impossible."
I waited.
"…Fine," she said at last. "You win. For now. Don't go showing that—" she gestured vaguely at my sword, "—whatever that was, to just anyone. If the instructors see it, they'll either steal it or lock you in some tower to dissect you."
"Good thing I have someone warning me about academy politics, then," I said.
She sniffed.
"Someone has to," she said. "And since you're apparently determined to drag me along with your nonsense, I'd rather not watch you get dragged off in chains."
It was as close to "I'm on your side" as she could get without choking.
"I'll keep that in mind," I said.
She glanced at me again, eyes lingering a little too long this time. Then she looked away, pretending she hadn't.
"Next time," she said, "we're sparring with two proper blades."
"That sounds expensive," I said.
"You break mine again, you're paying," she said. "Useful or not."
I couldn't help it. I laughed.
Her mouth twitched, like she was fighting her own smile.
"Go," she said, shoving the broken sword into my chest. "You owe the yard a new post and me a new practice sword."
"Put it on my tab," I said.
She rolled her eyes, but she didn't disagree.
As I walked away, I could feel her gaze on my back for a moment longer than necessary before she turned toward the armory.
I rested my hand on the hilt at my side, feeling the faint, sleeping weight of crystal and steel.
I didn't know what, exactly, I'd made.
I only knew that when I let the edge sing again, even Tamara's wind would have to find a way around it.
And that for the first time in a long time, someone was looking at me not just as a strange boy with a sword—
—but as someone they wanted to catch up to.