Xed

Chapter 12

The Gupta Dojo on Spirit Arts was perhaps the best place to study spirit arts in all of Magnia. The entire Dojo was situated at the top of a small hill called the Summer Hill. At the foot of the hill were large stone walls demarcating the premises of the Dojo. Those stone walls carried runic insciptions on them, perhaps a method to keep the inhabitants of the dojo safe. Inside the premises, a large number of stairs led those who seeked knowledge around the hill to the lush gardens, pools and areas for training. The main building itself was a stunning work of art; a large roof-tiled building with stunning elongated roofs and wooden frames running down the entire building, due to humidity and the possibility of earthquakes, wood became preferred over Stone or other construction materials during the construction of this building. The wood used in the flooring and framing of the building was uncoated and unpainted, it was likely left there as a token of appreciation and respect to let the wood show its natural beauty. The building made use of moving screens and sliding doors which acted as windows and doors. Translucent paper used on the doors allowed light to enter the premises. The flooring of the building used Tatami mats, it may be suffice to say that the infrastructure of the Gupta Dojo drew heavy inspiration from the architecture of Japanese buildings from the Edo period.

The surroundings of the building were adorned by large Sakura trees whose pink flowers added an aura of serenity to the entire place. The wind would often blow past the trees and then its pink petals would rain down upon the onlookers.

The owner of the Dojo was Aryan Gupta, the leader of the Gupta family who, for generations, had specialized in  Spirit Arts style of self defense. Coming from humble beginnings his dojo, at present, had over a thousand disciples. The man was well respected by his apprentices since his skill in the spirit arts was second to none. Any casual onlooker would think that Aryan was a man who had it all, power, fame, wealth, land and everything else that a man could hope for. Two generations of Shoguns had trained under the Gupta family. And yet, Aryan was a cynical man, cranky, depressed and given to outbursts of rage. His every attempt at having a son, so that he would have an heir to the Dojo, had been stunning failures so far. All his attempts at having a son so far had led to miscarriages and the one and only child he had which didn't die within minutes of being born is a daughter; Mridula Gupta. You'd think that a man who has seen not one of his children survive would be happy to have a daughter, and you'd be wrong. Aryan hated his daughter with an intensity so strong that he'd kill her if he could, everyday his daughter's face reminded him of his failure to produce a son. Changing wives had not been sucessful either. Resigned to his fate, Aryan now seeked an heir to the Dojo from one of his disciples, he'd die before he lets a woman own his dojo.

Today was an auspicious day at the Dojo since Aryan Gupta was to pass on his family heirloom down to one of his disciples. His sword, the LinkShredder was a mechanical sword built by a famous weaponsmith known by the name of Tetsuyo Niyamoto. The Niyamoto family business had disappeared from the face of Magnia but Tetsuyo's opus magnum remains. The LinkShredder was a special blade. The entire blade was forged out of titanium but the titanium blade had a very interesting pattern on it, there were blue and copper colored waved patterns all over the surface of the blade which have been acquired by repeatedly folding and beating down the blade when it is hot until 500 layers or more are achieved, the result is a damascus pattern on titanium which looks stunning and increases the strength of the blade. Titanium is also incredibly hard to work on since it must be worked on in an inert atmosphere, titanium tends to oxidize when heated and exposed to air, given the age of the blade, the craftsmanship required to create something like this is unfathomable. The blade itself had other features of interest since the blade was unlike any other. Instead of being a single piece, the blade was made of 10 interconnected links which were threaded through to each other using a thread imbued with mana which then passed through the holes in the links. In its normal state the sword worked like any other, but under the geometric handguard that vaguely resembled half a hexagon, there was a trigger. Once that trigger was pressed the tension in the string was gone, this allowed the links to disconnect from each other and increased the reach of the weapon from 1 metre to upto 5 metres. The sword worked much like a whip with blades attached to it once the trigger was pressed. Upon pressing the trigger again, the string would become tense once again and would stack all the bladed links on top of one another to form a solid blade. The hilt of the weapon was golden in color and had three empty hexagons, these hexagons were slots for augmentation gems but the weapon had none on it. The handle of the weapon was wrapped in a manner similar to how traditional Japanese Katana were wrapped; the wrapping material was wrapped in a way that left diamond shapes across the entire length of the handle . The handle cap or the pommel, as it is called, was a mirror finished piece of gold with a single word engraved on it in small font, "niyamoto". The mirror finishing was done using a traditional method known as 'zaratsu', modern swords had lost this method of hand-crafting perfect mirror finishes and that made this sword very valuable.