Luck Weaver

7. True Owner

Chapter 7 - True Owner

Everyone, including the teenager knew that he would lose quickly.  He needed something quickly, in order to win.  He mentally flipped through through the rules, hoping for any cheap rule he could use to his advantage.  He couldn’t find any, it was the Loser’s Gambit then.  It was the only way.

He  rushed a student, but the girl was prepared.  The change of strategy before had left the remaining fighters wary.  They knew the teenager was becoming desperate to win.  He swung with all his might, but met resistance, so he used the deflections momentum to lunge at some other student.  It was barely blocked by a hastily raised sword, but the lunge left his body exposed.

Suddenly the teenager felt a sword’s tip pressed gently into his throat.  He prepared to twist to escape, but as if he were reading his thoughts, the instructor stepped forwards, and pushed him.  He fell down.  It didn’t hurt, but was humiliating.  Forgetting the humiliation, he looked up at the instructor.  He had taken down two students, but was it enough?

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After a long boring afternoon, night was falling, and Jay stopped.

He pointed at a clearing near the trail, but not too near in case of bandits.  The waning sunlight reflected off of the fireplace already in place there, and there were names carved into everything.  It was customary to carve your name into the campsite if you use it.

"My aching feet, not to mention I'm still hungry," Alex complained.

Jay pulled out a loaf of bread and tossed it to Alex who tried to catch it.  It fell onto the ground and Alex groaned.

"Couldn't you have handed it to me?  You never said you had any food in your satchel.  Why didn't we stop and eat any lunch?" Alex complained some more.

"Can't you ever be quiet?  I didn't eat lunch because I wasn't hungry.  Anyway, we need to ration our food,  we'll run out if we're not careful.  I'm going out to forage, I'll be back with meat.  In the meantime, make a fire."

Leaving Alex in charge of the camp, Jay switched views to look for the auras of animals.  Switching views used to take a long time, but after much practice, it came easily to him.  He naturally tuned out all small sounds.  Spotting hundreds of them, Jay focused on the larger ones.  He spotted a couple of medium sized ones and headed toward them.  He slowly crept toward the rabbit, trying not to make any sound at all.  He pulled out his dagger he carried everywhere.  It was an old dagger, worn with use.  Jay found it on the forest floor near his old town a long time ago.  At the time, it was a rusty dirty piece of scrap metal, but after he washed it, he became fascinated with it.

The dagger was made of some metal he had never seen before, light but extremely hard.  He tried scratching it with a spade, but he couldn’t get a single mark.  On the blade, there were strange words inscribed on it.  It was of some long forgotten language.  Some of the characters seemed familiar, but warped so much ,they were barely recognizable.  The dagger was a long one, with a blunt tip.  The real prize were its edges.  They stayed sharp for much longer than an ordinary knife.  Though not impressive in appearance, the light grey knife was perfectly balanced, and an amazing piece of equipment.

As Jay drew closer, he saw the aura in more detail.  After lots of practice, he learned how to distinguish the different auras of different animals.  It seemed like a rabbit.   Moving stealthily, he reflected back on those long hours he spent perfecting moving silently through forests.  Even after months of practice, Jay still wasn’t great at it, just barely better than average.  Silently creeping up on it, he stepped on a leaf.  The loud dry crunching sound woke the rabbit up, instantly alert.  Before it had a chance to flee, Jay flung his dagger at it.  It sunk into the rabbit without a sound and it instantly died with a whimpering sound.