Chapter 24: Hiring the Washed-Up Master
About twenty minutes later, Theo reached the dojo. His place wasn’t too far from the outskirts of the city. Where he lived, in fact, sat on the higher end of that outskirt, the stretch people usually called the rich outsiders.
The outskirts itself was a rural amalgamation of buildings, and it wasn’t necessarily piled with waste the way people always assumed.
The problem was the air.
There was a lot of contaminated air out here, and it left an unfriendly smell hanging over everything, faintly chemical, the kind that coated the back of the throat.
Theo had known this ahead of time, so he’d bought a nose mask before setting out. Now a black mechanical mask sat over his face, filtering the air as he breathed, and he walked on through the tilted houses with their dried-up bodies lying on mats in front of the doors.
Nobody stirred at any of them. The whole stretch lay quiet, quiet enough that his own footsteps sounded loud against it.
After a short walk, he reached a broken signboard. Half of it read Uth, the other half jo, and the piece between them was gone.
The dojo behind it looked like something that had survived a brutal storm, and yet, set against the rest of the buildings in the slums, it was still somehow astonishing.
Theo knocked twice and heard a sound at once from somewhere deep inside.
"Co—Coming!"
A moment later one of the wooden double doors was yanked open, and behind it stood a man with rough black hair and stubble across his jaw.
He had deep, tired eyes and hollow cheeks. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept right in a long time, the skin beneath his eyes gone dark. But his gaze sharpened the moment it landed on Theo.
"Hello, stranger. How may I assist you today?"
His speech was surprisingly fluent, too.
Theo was impressed. He turned and tried to study the inside of the dojo through the gap under the man’s armpit. When the man caught him looking, he sighed.
"I am Uthedaisis. You can call me Uthed. Do you want to come inside and inspect it to your satisfaction?"
Theo’s face lit up. "Can I?"
Uthed smiled and nodded. "Of course you can."
He stepped aside and watched Theo enter the dojo. His gaze followed every bit of Theo’s movement, a faint glassy glow buried deep in his eyes.
’Interesting. His movement is refined. He ought to have been using the sword at least ten years to move like that.’
The man trailed after Theo as he walked around the dojo in silence.
Beyond the gate was a garden, or what should have been one. The lake at its center had gone to a flat green water, and the grass of the yard had dried to brown. Broken lanterns leaned here and there, and now that the sun was setting they struggled to come on, flickering on and off, throwing weak light across the dead lake and then swallowing it again.
Beyond that a raised platform led up to an open dojo, its columns thin enough that Theo could see straight through to how the training area looked.
Contrary to the rest of the place, it was well kept, scrubbed clean. The weapons were arranged neatly in their racks: swords, spears, axes, shields. There were fewer than three of each, and in fact he only had a single axe.
But overall, the man seemed decent enough by Theo’s read.
Theo climbed up onto the platform and stood in the open hall. Uthed followed.
He walked to the rack and took down two wooden swords. One he held to his waist, and the other he tossed to Theo, who put out a hand and, to his own surprise, caught it clean.
The motion was smooth, almost as if the sword had simply slid into his grip no matter which way his hand moved.
Theo looked at the man with a bit of confusion, though.
"Since you seem skeptical about my skill, and whether I’m worth whatever it is you’re here to ask, how about we settle it with a simple spar? You look like an experienced master yourself."
Theo frowned, more confused than before.
"An experienced master? No. The first time I held a sword was yesterday..."
Uthed grinned and leaned forward, settling into a stance.
"Oh? A humble master. Seems you had a good teacher. Who was it? Someone in the Tower?"
Theo gave a puzzled look. "I’ve never been to the Tower."
Uthed paused, his expression shifting, faintly confused now.
"Aren’t you a Hero?"
Theo nodded lightly. "Yes, but I only awakened, what, a week ago? And a useless F rank at that. The truth is, I came here to find someone who can safeguard my wife and teach me how to fight properly. Because I plan to enter the Tower."
The man tilted his head one way, then the other, his mouth opening and closing again.
’I can tell when a man has held a sword. I’ve been fighting for the past twenty years. The way he moves, the way he caught that blade, the way he’s standing right now. There are basic principles the body realizes on its own, long before anyone teaches them. So why would he lie? What would he gain from lying to me?’
Theo, seeing the confusion on the man’s face, added,
"I’ll pay you, don’t worry about that. On the Hero Hire site you’re listed at $75 an hour, right? I’ll pay $100, for a twelve-hour shift, every day."
Uthed froze, the grin sliding off his face.
"What?!"
’Is he trying to trap me? Who would pay a washed-up hero like me that kind of money? This makes no sense.’
He just stood there, completely lost.
’Who is this stranger? What is he trying to do? Is this some kind of test?’
He drew a breath and settled on a single way to find his answers.
"You want to learn how to fight properly?"
Theo nodded. "Yes."
"And you want to hire me to protect your wife?"
Theo nodded again. "Yes."
"Then is it fine if we spar? At the very least I’ll know how skilled you are, so I can tell where to start training you."
Theo answered reluctantly, looking down at the wooden sword.
"Honestly, I’ve never really swung a sword before. But I guess we can."
Uthed watched as Theo repositioned both hands on the hilt, sliding them slowly forward. And he thought to himself.
’Haven’t swung a sword before? Don’t bullshit me, stranger.’
***
[System Notice]
[Never forget. The Author still has a responsibility to release an extra Chapter beyond the regular release schedule but only if you all vote fifty power stones. Make haste, the requirements for bonus Chapters are going to be moving up soon]