The study was at the far end of the west wing.
Yuma and Enji followed the domestic staff member through a long corridor of pale stone walls until they reached a heavy wooden door left slightly ajar. The man knocked twice and stepped aside.
— Come in, said Kazuho's voice from inside.
Yuma pushed the door open.
And stopped.
The room was large. Really large. Way larger than anything he'd expected from a study.
Weapons everywhere.
Mounted on the walls in carefully crafted supports — longswords, short blades, double-headed axes, spears whose tips caught the light at sharp angles. Others displayed behind glass cabinets lining the walls — artifacts that gave off a subtle glow even through the panels. Shields. Gauntlets. Objects Yuma didn't recognize and found interesting for exactly that reason.
He stepped inside slowly, his head turning in every direction.
— Close your mouth, Enji said quietly as he walked past him.
— I'm not doing that.
— You're absolutely doing that.
At the far end of the room, in front of a large window with half-drawn curtains, Kazuho and Haruki stood talking in low voices. They stopped when they heard the two boys come in.
Kazuho turned around. His gaze moved from one to the other with that way he had of evaluating people without ever looking like he was doing it.
— Come sit down.
A round table occupied the center of the room, surrounded by four dark leather armchairs. They all settled in. Haruki crossed his arms with his usual nonchalance. Kazuho placed both hands flat on the table.
A few seconds later the door opened quietly.
A young woman entered — hair pinned up, white apron over dark clothing, a tray balanced in each hand with the ease of someone who'd practiced the motion for years.
— Elise, said Kazuho with a slight nod.
— Sir.
She set the trays on the table with silent precision. Hot drinks in ceramic cups. And appetizers — small golden bites, mini skewers, something fried and fragrant whose smell hit Yuma completely off guard.
He looked at them.
Then looked at them again.
His fingers drifted almost imperceptibly toward the edge of the tray.
— Help yourself, said Kazuho without looking at him.
Yuma didn't hesitate for a single second.
He grabbed one, put it in his mouth, and his eyes widened slightly.
Then he took another one.
Haruki let out a small sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh, his gaze turned toward the window like none of this concerned him.
Elise gave a quiet bow and disappeared.
They stayed around the table for a while. Yuma worked through the appetizers methodically, trying each one in a specific order he seemed to have decided on internally. Enji drank his tea. Haruki watched the room. Kazuho waited.
When the trays were half empty and the rhythm at the table had naturally slowed, Kazuho stood up.
He walked to the large window and looked out — the garden, the arena at the back, the marks still visible in the stone.
— I wanted to see you for a simple reason, he said without turning around. To congratulate you.
His voice was calm. Direct. Not the kind of hollow compliment people hand out for courtesy — the kind you give when you've seen something with your own eyes and feel the need to name it out loud.
— What you did in that arena for two weeks… very few people would've held on. Even fewer would've actually succeeded.
He turned around.
— So. Well done.
Yuma and Enji said nothing. But something in their shoulders loosened slightly.
Haruki cleared his throat.
— There's also something else.
He leaned his elbows on the table and looked at both of them with an expression Yuma hadn't seen on him before — something unusual for Haruki. Almost uncomfortable.
— I owe you an apology.
Silence.
— When Reishin told me what you two had pulled off on your way here — the grizzly, the sanctum, all of it — I didn't really believe it was as serious as it sounded. I figured it was… embellished.
He paused.
— I was wrong.
Yuma looked at him.
— It's fine, he said simply.
— No, said Haruki. That's not the kind of thing you brush off. So I'm saying it clearly — I'm sorry.
A brief silence. Then Enji nodded once.
— Accepted.
Haruki settled back into his usual expression as if the moment hadn't happened.
— Anyway. I'm the one who convinced Father to give you something to mark the start of your journey. One artifact each.
Yuma sat up straighter.
— For real?
— Think of it as an investment, said Kazuho, moving back toward the table. I'd rather send you into the world with the right tools than watch you figure it out empty-handed.
At that exact moment the door opened again.
A domestic staff member came in, apologizing as he entered, cheeks slightly flushed.
In his hands — Yuma's gauntlets. And his sneakers.
Both of them were giving off a faint steam.
— My sincerest apologies for the interruption, sir… but these pieces of equipment have been overheating for a while now. We found them in the changing room and… honestly, it's starting to worry us.
Yuma frowned.
— They're overheating?
— For about an hour now, yes.
Kazuho stood without a word. He reached into the pocket of his work belt — which he wore even outside the forge, apparently — and pulled out a small copper-framed monocle magnifier. He moved toward the equipment now set on the table, brought the lens close to one of the gauntlets, and narrowed his eyes.
He examined in silence for about thirty seconds.
Then his expression shifted.
— Tell me… who gave these to you?
He was looking at Yuma.
— Mr. Tetsuya. A man from the village where I grew up.
Kazuho straightened slowly.
And burst out laughing.
A deep, genuine laugh that came from the gut.
Everyone stared at him.
Haruki raised an eyebrow.
— Father?
— Tetsuya, said Kazuho, catching his breath. Tetsuya Kurowabe.
He shook his head with an expression that mixed surprise, amusement, and something that looked a lot like nostalgia.
— He was my master. When I was roughly your age. He's the one who taught me everything I know about the art of forging and artifact creation.
Enji sat up.
— Your master?
— The finest artifact forger I've ever met. And the most unpredictable one too.
Haruki was slowly uncrossing his arms, looking like someone who was mentally recalculating several things at once.
— You never told us about him.
— There were reasons for that. But that's a different story.
Kazuho put the monocle away and pulled the tools from his work belt — fine-tipped pliers, a miniature engraving instrument, something that looked like a mana needle. He settled in front of the gauntlets with the focus and precision of a surgeon.
— The issue, he said while working, is that these artifacts weren't designed to absorb the amount of mana you're feeding them. They accumulate beyond their regulation threshold and the overheating is the natural consequence.
He adjusted something inside the left gauntlet with the needle.
— I'm opening the release channels. That should handle the immediate problem.
— Absorb? said Yuma. They absorb what exactly?
Kazuho set his tools down for a moment.
— These artifacts — the gauntlets and the sneakers together, they're one system — absorb a portion of your mana with every movement. But not just yours.
He paused.
— They also absorb the mana of your opponent when you make contact. Either when you hit them or when they hit you. All that accumulated mana gets stored. And it can be released in a single strike.
Silence.
Enji set his cup down.
— How is that technically possible? That kind of simultaneous dual absorption without interference between two different mana sources…
— That's a good question, said Haruki. In theory, two mana flows from different origins should create instability inside the storage crystal. Unless…
He thought for a second.
— Unless the crystal is compartmentalized. Two separate storage chambers that only merge at the moment of release.
Kazuho looked at him with a quiet expression of satisfaction.
— You're almost right. But it's not the fusion at the moment of release that makes this brilliant. It's the catalyst between the two chambers.
He tapped the surface of the gauntlet with the tip of his index finger.
— Tetsuya embedded a micro compression rune between the two reservoirs. When you choose to release, the rune compresses both flows against each other before they exit. That compression multiplies the total output by a factor I'd estimate between three and five depending on how much was stored.
Haruki stared at him.
— That's… genuinely brilliant. How does someone even manage to engrave a compression rune at that scale without the artifact exploding during creation?
— By spending fifty years getting it wrong before finding the answer, said Kazuho simply. That kind of technique can't be learned. It has to be discovered.
He turned to Yuma.
— Try it. I want to see the result.
One of the staff disappeared and came back a minute later rolling a punching bag suspended from a portable metal frame. The bag was thick, dense, stitched in a dark material that absorbed light rather than reflecting it.
— This bag can absorb the force of a rank B hunter, said Kazuho. Without moving.
Yuma stood up. He slipped on the gauntlets and adjusted the sneakers. He felt the familiar slight tingle of energy running through them — different now that the channels were open. Smoother. Like breathing.
He positioned himself in front of the bag.
— What exactly do I do?
— Strike normally first. Let the artifacts absorb during the movement. When you feel the energy is ready to come out — you let it come out.
Yuma nodded.
He inhaled.
Got into position.
And struck.
The first impact was clean and solid — the bag swung back slightly.
But the second strike carried something extra.
Yuma felt the stored energy surge back into his fist at the moment of contact — not like a technique he was controlling, but like a wave that had been waiting for its moment.
BOOM.
The bag didn't swing.
It got launched.
The entire metal frame slid two meters across the floor with a grinding screech. The suspension chain pulled taut to the point of snapping. The bag spun on itself before finally settling.
Silence.
Yuma stared at his fist.
He was just as surprised as everyone else in the room.
— Good, said Kazuho quietly.
He was watching the bag with the expression of a man watching an equation solve itself in real time. His eyes had that particular brightness Enji had never seen in them before.
— Very good.
Then he turned and walked toward a discreet door in the back wall that Yuma hadn't even noticed.
— Come.
The door opened onto a short staircase leading down one level.
Then onto a room.
Yuma stopped dead at the threshold.
Kazuho Hyôga's treasury didn't have much to envy from the finest armories Yuma had ever seen in his grandfather's books. Rows of partial armor sets. Weapons of every size on display stands. Artifacts stored in internally lit glass cases. Blades that caught the light with an unnatural intensity. Objects whose very nature was difficult to identify from a glance.
And everywhere — everywhere — that tingling in the air. That dense, silent ambient mana that meant every single object in this room was active in some way.
— This is… said Yuma.
He didn't finish the sentence.
Enji came down the stairs behind him and looked around with a more contained expression — but his eyes were moving faster than usual.
— It's been a while since I was last in here, he said quietly.
— You've been here before? said Yuma.
— When I was little. Father let us come in once a year to look. Never touch.
Kazuho stepped into the room and stopped at the center, arms crossed.
— Choose. Take as much time as you need.
Yuma looked at him.
— We can really pick anything in here?
— I'm glad my son found his love of fighting again, said Kazuho simply. And that's largely because of you.
Yuma opened his mouth.
— I didn't do anything —
— You can choose not to acknowledge it, said Kazuho. That's your right. But I still want to give you something.
Yuma went quiet.
He gave a slightly embarrassed nod and turned his gaze toward the rows of artifacts.
Enji moved slowly between the display stands, hands behind his back, with that way he had of analyzing before committing to anything.
He stopped.
In a slightly recessed alcove — a complete outfit on a pale wooden display mannequin.
A white vest with a lightly reinforced structure at the shoulders and chest, fine metallic thread stitching that caught the light subtly. Black fitted gloves, short cut, with reinforced knuckles. And a pair of glasses — copper frame, slightly tinted lenses, small decorative gear details on the temples. The aesthetic of a precision mechanic translated into hunter wear.
But what actually stopped Enji was what he felt coming from the outfit.
Powerful mana. Dense. Perfectly contained — like something waiting.
— That one, he said.
Kazuho approached and looked at the outfit.
— Good choice. It amplifies control of ambient mana and reinforces the stability of constructs. Perfect for a Pure Mage.
— It's mine?
— It's yours.
Enji reached toward the outfit with something in the gesture that looked like relief — as if the object had recognized him as much as he had recognized it.
On the other side of the room, Yuma was circling.
He looked at everything. The swords — no. The gauntlets — not really. The short blades — interesting but not it. The protection artifacts in the glass cases — useful but not what he was looking for.
Was he even looking for something specific? He couldn't have said. But nothing was holding his attention.
He moved deeper toward the back of the room.
The objects became rarer back there. Older too — you could feel the weight of time on some of them, something settled in their presence that set them apart from everything else.
And then he felt it.
Something.
Not quite a voice. Not quite a pull. More like a direction — as if something at the far end of the room was orienting his attention without quite asking permission.
He followed the feeling.
Until he reached a chest.
Set on a low shelf, separated from everything else around it. Dark metal, thick clasps, runes engraved across the entire surface — not decorative ones, functional ones. The air around the chest had that particular heavy quality you sometimes found near high-rank dungeons.
Yuma turned around.
— Kazuho. What's in this chest?
Kazuho walked over.
His expression shifted slightly when he saw what Yuma was looking at.
— An old artifact, he said.
— What kind?
A silence.
— The kind that seals a rank S demon inside it.
Yuma stared at the chest.
Then at Kazuho.
— Can I see it?
Kazuho didn't answer immediately.
He looked at the chest. Then at Yuma. Then back at the chest.
Haruki, from the entrance of the room, had gone rigid.
Enji had stopped moving entirely.
Kazuho let a long silence pass.
— Yes.
He stepped forward and placed his hand on one of the clasps.
— But you don't touch anything inside. You look only.
— Understood.
Kazuho unlocked all three clasps one by one.
The chest opened.
End of Chapter 15