The Axe

It was beautiful. The way the lines traced gentle curves, the graceful indents, the flaring at the top and the base. There was a soft shimmer across the surface, almost glistening as the soft lighting caught it. A gentle fade led into pearly white smoothness that begged John’s touch. Every inch sang to something deep within John’s psyche, telling him that it was perfect for him.

He realised that Asta was talking, “...looking at it like he wants to sleep with it…” John couldn’t pull his gaze away, even despite the fierce embarrassed blush that shot into his cheeks. He only managed when Asta teased, “Cutie, she’s all yours to take home, but you probably shouldn’t let her near your… very generous package.”

That managed to startle him. He began to stammer as he faced her, “I- That is- I mean-”

She laughed again, but this time it was accompanied by Velvet’s musical giggle. Despite the embarrassment, John could feel himself calming down a little bit. It was hard for him to stay mad in the face of her innocent amusement.

When she’d finished laughing, the cheeky craftswoman spoke as she stepped up to the display, “This is a piece I did as a private commission a few months ago for a travelling beasthunter. The blade is made out of a simple yet powerful alloy of manasteel and warding, or banishment, Silver, with an iron core. He didn’t actually tell me what the materials were from, but I recognise the properties of that one. People have different names for it, but it’ll send things home that don’t belong, or keep them at bay. As for the haft, it’s the same deal, he didn’t tell me the origin, but I’m fairly certain it’s deadfall wood from a woodland elemental, like the dryads.” She took it down from the display and paused as she held it, shaking her head slightly. “Though, what kind of a person would take from such creatures… I’m almost glad he never collected the axe.”

And an axe it was. It was a plain half-moon axe - a wide blade on one side, a wicked looking curved spike on the other. The pale wood of the haft shone slightly in the lighting as the enchantress extended the weapon towards John.

“It’s perfect,” John breathed out as he reverently took the axe. The moment his fingers made contact, he felt a deep-seated sense of rightness take hold of him, and his hands moved naturally into position on the haft. It felt as familiar to him as his keyboard and mouse, despite having never held one before. With an unexpected confidence, he turned to face the pair of them. “I’ll take it. What were you saying about modifications?

“You know, when you said you needed to change the enchantments to suit me, I didn’t expect, uh… I, uh, I didn’t… What was I saying?”

Try though he might, John’s fight to keep his concentration chaste was doomed to failure. Mostly because Asta was right beside his face. Or, more accurately, her boobs were. John took it all back, those things were glorious. Maybe the best boobs he had ever seen. Of course, even whilst so wonderfully distracted, he was aware that his answer might change later, when said boobs weren’t quite so close and within motorboating distance.

Every so often, the cheeky craftswoman would lean forward to get a better angle on where his hand gripped the weapon, and she would unwittingly press herself against him. She giggled wickedly. “Something that’s far less interesting than what you’re probably thinking about right now, you naughty, naughty man.” Or maybe it wasn’t quite so unwitting. John knew that he was about as perceptive as a brick wall, but even he couldn’t miss the purple-haired woman’s blatant flirting.

It was actually almost… reassuring? There was a girl that was actually interested in him! He’d be over the moon, if not for the small discontented huffs that came from the other girl that he thought was interested in him. Ever since Asta had sat him down, telling him something about needing to match the mana configurations, or whatever, and started flirting like he was the first dick she’d seen in a year, Velvet had been making these small unhappy noises and huffs of disapproval. He looked over at her just in time to see her stand up, make a little angry stomp with her foot, and ask, “Are you almost done, Asta? John and I have things to do today, you know?”

Asta stood upright again, and twirled a little around John to put her tools away, then stood facing him, her back to Velvet. “Fineee, I guess I’m all done now.” Then she gave him a little wink, and a wicked smirk. “But I might need to borrow the cutie pie a little while longer. I think he has a… not-so-little something for me.” With a flourish, she spun and sat on his lap, laying herself across him like some kind of cat.

Velvet let out a small squeak of indignation but otherwise seemed to stall for a moment, then very quietly spoke, “W-we need t-t-to go…” She left without waiting for either of them, her unhappiness almost visibly hanging in the air around her. It… hurt. It hurt John, to see her like that. A suggestion of some admittedly lovely tits and he’d thrown all thoughts of Velvet out the window. Why was he still just sitting there, instead of going after her?

He snapped his head to where Asta was lying on him, slightly surprised by how angry he felt. “Get off, I need to go-”

“See if she’s alright? Good, if you didn’t, I’d have punched you in the dick.” Asta stood as she spoke, then smirked at his apparent confusion. “Oh, sweetheart. Vel’s far too sweet to betray like that. I’d rather go chaste than steal someone she’s interested in.” She shook her hair slightly, fixing it back up to be tidy. “No, I just wanted to give her a nudge.”

“A nudge?” John asked, still shrugging off the confusion.

“Yeah!” Asta replied. “Listen, Vel is an absolute darling, I adore her. But, by Gaia, that girl could be in a relationship for a year and not kiss the boy. Or girl, I guess. I think she swings both ways, at least. Regardless, the point is, I just wanted to try and speed it along a little for you both.”

“Oh,” John echoed his thoughts, and couldn’t restrain the note of disappointment that bled through despite his best efforts.

The cheeky craftswoman finished fixing her clothes, and turned to face John, cocking her head and putting a hand on her hip. She seemed to consider him a moment, and a small yet genuine smile slowly appeared on her face. “...Oh, John. Don’t be discouraged. I wasn’t lying today. You’re real cute, and I’d probably be asking you out myself if you’d come in alone. But both you and I know that neither of us are okay with doing that to Vel.”

John nodded slightly. She was right, he absolutely couldn’t live with that lie in his life, nevermind the effect it’d have on Velvet.

“But…” the smile became a smirk again, “if Vel turns out to be more adventurous than I thought… Well, you never know.” And she winked at him. Then, with a twirl that sent her twintails flying, she walked out the door, talking over her shoulder, “Don’t forget to bring the axe, cutie pie!”

“Now that… that is a fucking weapon. Damn, dude.”

Moira’s response to the axe was a little more elegant than Erica’s. “Form and function in equal measure, as any good weapon should have.” She gave a small satisfied nod.

Velvet hadn’t said anything. She didn’t have that intangible air of displeasure around her, but since he couldn’t read her eyes, it was really hard to tell if she was angry with him.

“It’s more than covered by the price that you expected to pay for the basic weapon and armour kit deal, so I’m also going to throw a set of spare bracers in there. They’re nothing special, but they match. Probably won’t last more than a couple fights, since they’re pretty much mundane,” Asta explained, as she pulled a pair of bracers out of a drawer and placed them on the table beside the axe.

“Is there really nothing you can do in terms of armour? Like, surely you’ve got something that’s worthwhile, even at a higher price?” Erica asked, some disbelief and confusion evident in her tone.

Asta made a face. “It’s… It’s not that I don’t have anything. So, theoretically, I could make him some armour, and damned good armour at that. But, because he’s a melee fighter, a berserker, anything that’s not made out of fairly good quality Abyssal materials will be shredded pretty quickly. Additionally, I can’t use most of the usual enchantments I would use for armour on him. His mana channelling is just so very densely packed that I simply don’t have the equipment or facilities here to be able to configure it to him properly. At-”

She paused, glancing over at where John was sitting with a hand timidly raised in the air, and slowly raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “...Really? This isn’t kindergarten, you know. You can just talk.”

John blushed a bit in embarrassment, but asked anyway, “What is, um, mana channelling?”

“Oh, uh.” She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts. “So, basically, when we use mana, it fills our mana channels, then exits the body as whatever it is that we’re trying to do with it. Generally speaking, it tends to look like a bunch of tubes running through the body, when we scan people. That’s what that podium that I put you on was.”

“The one which went crazy?” John asked

“Yeah, exactly. For you, rather than a bunch of tubes, it was dozens, if not hundreds, of strands that wove through every single part of your body. It was so densely interlocked and laid that I genuinely couldn’t get a good enough look with the equipment I have here. The configuration that I did with your axe was just tapping into a few of the biggest ones I could find. Just in your hand alone, there’s probably a good twenty more that I simply couldn’t get at.”

John understood then. “So, you can’t do armour for me because there’s so many, uh, channels to connect it with, and they’re too small?”

“Exactly! The channels are just too fine, and too overlaid with one another for me to be able to even look at them here, nevermind figure out how to make it work with enchantments. Hell, even if I could do it right here and now, I wouldn’t. The amount of energy that fuels my basic armour enchantments is miniscule, really, but with how your channelling seems to weep ambient mana whenever it’s touched, it’ll probably shatter the limiters of… actually, it’d shatter the limiters of more or less any binding enchantment, I think. Probably take some time for the larger or more powerfully woven ones. To make it work for you, I’d have to look into some way to channel the excess ambient mana into a different enchantment - release it some other way so it wouldn’t break the armour.”

John stared blankly at the excited enchantress, who had steadily sped up the more she spoke. It was endearing, the way she wholeheartedly threw herself into the puzzle of her work, but John got lost about halfway through with talk of limiters and whatever ambient mana was. How that differed from normal mana, like his MP bar, he had no idea.

She blushed slightly, realising how she’d gotten caught up, and cleared her throat. “Anyway… the point is, I don’t have the materials to make the base, the facilities to see the mana channelling or the equipment to do the fine tuning. Also, when you throw in the healing effect he has going on… As long as he keeps a couple health potions to hand, or has a healer nearby, that’ll probably be a better choice than anything you’ll come across at your price range. The potions won’t do much, but they’ll stop you dying. Healer would be best, but powerful enough healers can be difficult to come across, I’ve noticed.”

John nodded slowly, making a mental note to ask Erica about those health potions later, before they started training.

Moira interjected, “Well, we should likely be on our way. I have some troop training exercises to oversee, and you three have your own personal training to get on with.” She looked expectantly at Asta.

The enchantress took a long moment before remembering. “Oh! Payment! Yes, okay, one moment.” She ran over to a different worktop, dug around for a minute, and then ran back over. “Here, one of my payment cheques. It should automatically charge your Auction account, or put a request in for the funds at your treasury, depending on what you tick at the bottom. I’m putting the axe down with the bracers as the start-up deal, meaning it’s 20% off. A favour for my favourite best friend.” She smiled fondly at Velvet.

Whilst they dealt with the payment, John stepped over to his new goodies. He reached out and touched the bracers, shifting them into his inventory instantly. Then he carefully picked up the axe, admiring once more how the blade glimmered, the intricate carvings on the sides of the head catching the light.

“...Asta, one more question.” John raised his voice slightly to ask, drawing attention back over to himself and the raised weapon.

“Hmm?” she hummed in response.

John slowly turned the weapon in the light. “You didn’t mention. Why the etchings on the head?”

“That’s me.”

In the doorway, framed by the sunlight outside, stood another fucking hot woman. John was beginning to question if anime had actually told him the truth about all magical women being attractive as fuck.

She was tall, compared to Velvet and Asta, probably coming in at around 170cm, making her only slightly shorter than John. The sneakers she wore probably boosted that a little bit, but not much. Going halfway up her calves were her socks, in some questionable choice of fashion that, despite thinking it looked silly, John appreciated for the way it highlighted the slightly muscled form of her calves. Then, a long, pale stretch of beautiful leg, and a pair of short running shorts that barely reached far enough down to be ‘appropriate’. Anything more was obscured by the giant oversized grey hoodie she wore. Stranger still was the fact that the hoodie then had another jacket, a black one, over the top of it, worn loosely over the shoulders and open at the front. Finally was her pale orange hair, which fell freely down her back, save for a pair of tails she had loosely gathered up on the top of her head. Unlike Asta’s twintails, however, these seemed more like an accessory to the naturally falling aesthetic she had, than an actual attempt to have twintails.

Very clearly, she was dressed for comfort, and yet she still gave off the impression of self-confidence and capability. An impression which was minorly ruined by the gleeful exclamation from Asta, “Kitttyyyyyyyy!” which was immediately followed by a similar scene as when Velvet had arrived, as a tornado of purple hair and sparkles slammed into the redhead.

Against all expectations John had, the tall redhead dropped her weight, caught Asta mid-run, and spun her around in the air a few times whilst laughing. They spun a few times, then Kitty put the enchantress down and turned to face John again. “When the scum never showed to collect it, I got a little bored and added some decoration to it. Probably won’t be any use to you, though. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Hell no,” John replied. “It’s beautiful. Thank you.”

Erica whistled slightly, taking a closer look at the markings in question. “Dude, these are amazing. Isn’t that… is that a clan mark?” The berserker babe twisted her head to look at where the leggy redhead was still hugging Asta.

Kitty nodded slightly. “What are the four of you in here for, other than the axe, if I may ask?”

Erika and Moira looked to John, and it took him a moment to realise they were waiting on his permission. “Oh, uh,” John said, “I have no gear- or, I had no gear, I guess now. Recently I found out that I was a berserker, so I need to train that, I guess.”

Kitty raised an eyebrow with new interest as she examined him again. “A berserker? That’s an unusual thing to realise about oneself so late in life. What triggered it, if you’ll forgive my curiosity?”

John opened his mouth to reply, only to get cut off by Velvet, “He saved me. Some mana farmers grabbed us, and John broke free to stop them from hurting me. I-I guess we just have a b-bond or s-something from it.” She’d started off very confidently, and then steadily gotten quieter and more uncertain, until she slowly trailed off the ending, an embarrassed blush turning her cheeks pink.

As for John, whilst his blush was no less fierce, he couldn’t help the way his chest felt like it was going to burst, nor the way his mind raced at a mile a minute to provide him with all the fantasies it could about the blind brunette.

After a long silence, Moira cleared her throat slightly. “Well, I believe that we should be on our way, if we’re to remain on schedule. Thank you very much for your services, and it was pleasant to meet the both of you.” She nodded at Kitty and Asta, who each returned the nod, then turned and left the store.

Erica turned to follow when Kitty spoke, “Excuse me? You’re the tutor in this, right? If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, would you mind it if I came by to observe your training one day, or perhaps join in? I find it difficult to find folk in these parts that are trustworthy enough to train with, but the good reputation of the Order of the Golden Rose is one that travels far and wide.”

The blonde shrugged slightly. “It’s cool with me. Just drop me a message before, ‘kay? Laters, dudes.” She left after Moira, and Velvet hurried out after her with a very quiet muttered goodbye.

John awkwardly smiled and waved. “Um, bye, I guess?” He made to move when Asta jumped over and gave him a hug that did far more for him than he’d ever admit.

She pulled back with an enormous smirk on her face. “Don’t worry, cutie. She’ll come around. Now go on, get after her.”

Asta looked after the departing group from the doorway of her shop as they walked down the street. An arm encircled her waist, and she leant back into Kitty’s taller frame as the redhead came to stand beside her.

“Cutie?”

The enchantress snorted slightly. “What, you don’t think he’s cute with that dorky innocence and gooey brown eyes?”

Asta could almost feel Kitty’s eyebrow raise in disbelief. “Really? Innocence is how he’s getting you? You’ve not known the man a day and you’re giving him nicknames.”

“I know, it’s just…” She trailed off, collecting her words. “I wasn’t kidding, Kitty. He’s actually innocent. He’s a late bloomer.”

“...Him? Truly?”

Asta nodded slightly. “And you didn’t see the look he gave Velvet whenever he looked at her. It was love, honey. Like, real romance novel shit of love at first sight. I don’t know what happened there, but… those two are in deep.”

The pair stood a while longer, watching the morning traffic flow through the distant market in the clean sunlight.

“I will certainly be making a stop to observe them. A late bloomer berserker... Gaia, a normal berserker is often the equal of three close-quarters fighters,” Kitty remarked, fascination clear in her voice.

Asta smirked and turned her face up to Kitty’s, wiggling her eyebrows. “Are you sure that’s the only reason? I mean, I know I already said it, but those gooey chocolate eyes…”

Kitty gently pulled her hands back and then savagely tickled Asta’s waist. With a squeal, the purple-haired enchantress turned tail and ran, leaving Kitty to chase after her wonderful ass.

…Even if she couldn’t get the image of deep brown eyes that spoke of the warmth of home and hearth from her mind’s eye.