"Huff! Huff! Huff! I can finally move like I used to."
Emrys ran through the forest, dodging trees and rocks one after another. He tore along at full speed, not even slowing down as each obstacle approached, letting his hearing and his haki, activated in short bursts, do most of the work while his legs slowly rediscovered the reflexes they'd had before the fall.
The cool air whipped his face, thick with the smell of moss and damp earth. Beneath his feet, the ground kept changing, sometimes soft and spongy, sometimes hard and threaded with roots he sensed at the last second through the vibrations traveling up his legs. Every stride that didn't end in a stumble pulled a smile out of him, small but genuine.
Of course, moving like this meant the risk of running into something stayed enormous. And that's exactly what nearly happened.
Slip!
Emrys skidded on a patch of wet earth and found himself hurtling dangerously toward a tree.
He didn't panic, though. Eyes locked on the trunk, fully focused, he vanished at the exact moment he was only a few centimeters from impact.
He reappeared on the other side, completely unharmed.
There was, however, one small problem left.
"Oh, shit."
Thud!
Emrys slammed headfirst into the ground, still at full speed.
He planted a hand in the dirt to pull himself up as best he could, completely dazed, his ears still ringing.
"This is still such a pain in the ass."
Emrys had now been living at Dubs's forge for several months. Only one since he'd gotten the use of his legs back.
He obviously hadn't spent all that time doing nothing. As soon as he could walk again, he'd gone back to training, with his haki and Blink at the top of the list.
And that training had just led him to an unexpected discovery.
It had all started a few days earlier, during a dodging exercise with stones Dubs was throwing at him from a reasonable distance. One stone had gone a bit too high, forcing him to jump to avoid it, and mid-jump, Emrys had activated Blink without thinking much about it, just to gain a little more height.
He'd kept rising, no surprise there. Nothing out of the ordinary.
The next day, wanting to repeat the move just for fun, he'd chosen this time, mid-ascent, to teleport upside down instead of in his usual position.
And he'd found himself plummeting toward the ground, at the same speed as his jump.
At the time, it had seemed logical enough. He'd jumped up, flipped over, so he fell. End of story.
Except what had just happened to him, right now, with this tree, had just thrown all of that into question.
"Wait," he muttered, still sitting in the wet dirt, his skull ringing. "I didn't change anything. I was facing the same way as before I disappeared."
That didn't line up with what he thought he'd figured out the day before. If only the final orientation mattered, he should have kept sliding forward without a hitch, since he hadn't changed a thing.
He spent the rest of the day running the experiment over and over, hunting for his own mistake rather than settling for a half-understood explanation.
He jumped straight ahead, horizontally, then teleported while keeping the exact same orientation. Nothing strange, he kept going straight.
He tried again, but this time flipping himself completely in the air, reappearing backward, back facing forward. He shot backward, as if his entire momentum had done an about-face along with him.
Then he tried an in-between angle, only slightly tilted from his starting position. And his trajectory followed that same angle, neither fully forward nor fully backward, but somewhere in between.
It was by cross-referencing all these attempts that he finally understood what had slipped past him with the tree.
It wasn't just the final orientation that mattered. Nor was it just the direction he'd been moving in before disappearing. It was both at once, combined together. As if his momentum stayed locked to the angle of his own body at the moment he'd first set himself in motion, and that momentum, once Blink activated, simply pivoted along with him to whatever new orientation he chose.
With the tree, he hadn't changed anything, true. But he'd slid on his back for a good part of the way, leaning slightly backward to keep from tripping, before straightening up at the very last moment. That straightening, however small, had been enough to tip his entire momentum straight down into the ground.
"Great," he sighed, half annoyed, half fascinated. "So now I've got to watch how I'm moving before I teleport, on top of knowing where I want to land."
A rule simple enough to state. Much less simple to master in the middle of actually moving.
He stayed still for a moment, letting the last stars dancing in front of his eyes fade away, before pulling himself fully upright. His legs still trembled a little, aftereffects of months of forced immobility, but they held. Already a huge improvement compared to just a few weeks ago.
Emrys finally sat down on a flat rock, in the shade of a tree he had absolutely no intention of running into this time, and let his mind wander over everything he'd accumulated since arriving in this world.
There was Drainda, of course. His very first summon, the one that had already saved him more than once, set apart because it drew on his mental energy rather than his magic.
There was Unlimited Blade Works itself, his power as a whole, with everything that entailed. Gae Dearg, Rule Breaker, those weren't separate abilities he possessed each on their own. They were just the result of Projection, one of the four facets of his power, built from memories that only half belonged to him.
And alongside that Projection, which he'd already used several times without ever really needing to study it, sat three other skills, as far as he understood it. Structural Grasp, which let him perceive an object's exact composition just by looking at it, its history, the way it had been shaped. Reinforcement, which involved temporarily strengthening the structure of an object, or of his own body, to make it more resilient, sharper, faster. And Alteration, more ambitious still, capable of deeply changing the very nature of whatever it touched, far beyond simple reinforcement.
Thinking back on it, he realized he'd already brushed up against Structural Grasp without even noticing. Every time he'd materialized Gae Dearg or Rule Breaker, a stream of knowledge had forced its way into him, how to wield them, their history, the craftsmanship of their original owners. He'd never needed to invoke it consciously. It had simply happened, alongside the Projection itself, more like a reflex than a mastered skill.
But being able to use it deliberately, on command, on any object rather than only on what he was projecting... that was a whole other problem.
Three skills, on top of Projection, that he'd barely had the chance to work on consciously, having leaned so heavily on Drainda and his summons from the very start.
There was also his Observation Haki, still limited in range and endurance, but steadily improving with each passing session.
There was his Armament Haki, barely touched so far, which he'd hardly had the chance to work on again since arriving at Dubs's.
And there was Blink, on which he'd just discovered this whole inertia business, a mechanic that, he could tell, still hid far more possibilities than he'd explored so far.
Not to mention spells. That possibility Dubs had revealed to him, that third layer of power available to anyone, human or not, provided they had the patience and talent for it.
Emrys sighed, running a hand over his face.
So many possibilities, and yet... where to start?
He couldn't train everything at once, that much was obvious. His body, still fragile despite months of convalescence, wouldn't allow it. And his energy, whether mental or magical, remained limited, no matter what his determination thought about it.
Drainda already seemed fairly reliable, provided he had enough mental energy to summon it. Continuing to train with it would mostly mean refining his combat technique, rather than developing an entirely new ability.
His Observation Haki was progressing slowly but surely, simply through daily use. No need to devote special attention to it for now, that would come with time.
What remained, then, in order of what truly deserved focused work: the three other facets of his power, Structural Grasp, Reinforcement, and Alteration. His Armament Haki, nearly abandoned since his arrival here. Blink, which he'd just discovered still hid unsuspected subtleties. And spells, an entirely unknown territory he hadn't even begun to explore yet.
Four directions, this time. And still no obvious answer.
He sat there for a long while, mind turned inward, weighing the pros and cons of each option, unable to reach a final decision.
Armament would make his blows more dangerous, his skin tougher. Useful in close combat, especially against opponents without a power capable of cutting through magic the way Drainda could. He still remembered the sensation, from his very first attempt in that clearing, months ago: that famous crater he'd left in the ground with a single punch, before collapsing, drained of all mental energy. If he could reduce that cost, or increase the power of the coating for an equivalent effort, that would probably change a lot of things in an actual fight.
Blink, with this whole inertia business, could probably open up movement possibilities far more complex than anything he'd imagined so far. Dodges at impossible angles. Sudden bursts of speed in a direction no one could anticipate. Maybe even attacks, if he managed to combine it with Drainda at the exact moment of reappearing, turning every teleport into a full-speed charge.
Spells, on the other hand, represented completely uncharted territory. He didn't even know where to start, or what kind of spell would best suit what he was trying to accomplish. Maybe a defensive spell, to make up for his lost sight. Maybe something tied to detection, to back up his haki where it showed its limits. But the idea of having yet another ability, independent of his personal power, held a certain appeal.
That left Reinforcement, Alteration, and Structural Grasp. Three facets of one single power, the very one that was supposed to define what he'd become.
"Three choices, and still can't manage to decide," he muttered out loud, as if saying it might actually help him choose.
It didn't help.
He stayed quiet a while longer, listening to the wind stirring the leaves above him, the distant song of some bird he still couldn't identify despite all these months spent in this forest.
Reinforcement. That was probably the most immediately useful of the three. A tougher body, more powerful strikes, maybe even Drainda made sharper than it already was. That felt like the most reasonable choice to him, the one most geared toward combat, the one that best fit what he needed right now.
Reinforcement it is, then.
Decision barely made, he'd already started thinking about how he might train it. Reinforce an object, or his own body. Put that way, it sounded simple.
Except pretty quickly, an unpleasant realization hit him.
How am I supposed to reinforce something if I don't even know what it's made of?
Reinforcement, by definition, meant consolidating an object's structure. But how do you consolidate a structure you don't understand? How do you know how far to push a piece of metal before it breaks, how far to stretch a fiber before it tears, if you know nothing about its actual composition, its natural limits, the way it was shaped?
He thought of Dubs, of the way he handled a chunk of ore even before working it, guessing its quality just from touch and sound. It wasn't a coincidence that the giant always did that before forging anything at all.
Reinforcement without Structural Grasp was like trying to shore up a house without knowing where the foundations were.
Emrys sighed, a bitter smile on his lips.
"Alright. Guess that settles it."
So it wouldn't be Reinforcement first after all, despite what he'd believed only a moment ago. It would be Structural Grasp. The foundation everything else rested on, the skill without which neither of the other two could ever really express itself properly.
He got back up, this time with a clear idea in mind, and headed back toward the forge.
The familiar sound of Dubs's hammer guided him easily through the last stretch of forest.
"Fell in the mud again, kid?" Dubs asked without even pausing his motion, no doubt recognizing the smell of wet earth now clinging to Emrys's clothes.
"A tree started it."
"And you lost."
"And I lost," Emrys admitted, dropping onto one of the rickety stools lying around near the entrance. "Dubs. You got any scrap metal lying around? Rejects, offcuts, anything you don't need anymore."
The hammer kept coming down, twice, three times, before Dubs answered.
"For?"
"I want to try something."
"That tells me absolutely nothing, kid."
Emrys let out a small laugh, despite his exhaustion.
"Fine, fine. I've got a power that works in three parts, basically. Reinforce something, transform it completely, or just... understand it. See what's inside it, how it was made."
"And you want to start with the last one."
It wasn't even really a question. Emrys nodded before remembering that was pointless.
"Yeah. Spent all morning trying to convince myself otherwise, actually. Kept telling myself reinforcing something would be more useful in a fight, right away. Except reinforcing something I don't understand is basically just hitting harder at random."
A grunt answered him, one that could have meant plenty of things.
"That's not a dumb way to think about it."
"Thanks."
"I said not dumb. Not brilliant."
Despite everything, Emrys felt a smile stretch across his face.
"I've got a whole pile of scraps by the anvil," Dubs continued after a silence, the hammer picking its rhythm back up. "Help yourself. And this time, try not to end up with a crater instead of an answer."
Whatever happens, happens. I'll figure it out by trying.
A massive exposition chapter. Honestly, I wouldn't blame you if you don't get the whole "Blink" thing (I seriously wonder what I was smoking when I wrote that); so, if you don't understand it, feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to explain it as best I can.