Shane's face darkened as he grabbed the battle-ready Erza—who looked two seconds away from charging him in the bedroom—and dragged her straight toward the forest.
"Why are you pulling me? Can't we fight anywhere?" Erza grumbled, though her feet still followed.
"Anywhere?" Shane shot her a look and jabbed a thumb back at the house. "We paid real money for that place. If we break it, we'll be repairing it with real money."
He hadn't been to the guild many times, but every visit came with Makarov complaining about who smashed what and how much the renovations were going to cost.
"…" Erza pictured what a real fight would do to their living room. Her momentum wilted a little. "We can just fix it…" she muttered under her breath.
They quickly reached a clearing deeper in the woods.
The ground was flat, the view wide open. Frost-dusted, bare-branched fruit trees ringed the edge—a perfect sparring spot.
"Looks like apple trees…" Shane's attention drifted. "Wonder if they're wild or planted." He made a note: come back in season and see if he could buy a basket.
"Hey!"
Erza snapped him back with a sharp clash of steel, her twin swords crossing with a clear ching that echoed through the trees.
Her silver-and-scarlet knight armor glinted in the morning light as she barked, "Aren't you transforming?"
She'd always assumed his "Heroic Spirit mode" was some kind of take-over or transformation magic.
Shane came back to himself but didn't rise to the bait. Instead his gaze fell on the pair of swords in her hands.
"Before that," he frowned slightly, "let me see those."
"Hm?" She didn't understand, but handed them over without hesitation.
His fingers brushed the cold blades.
They had a decent heft. He could feel the faint pulse of the lacrima fused into the spines, boosting hardness and sharpness a bit.
"So this is a magic sword…" he thought.
On toughness and edge alone, they were clearly better than the plain steel he'd been forging.
But—
"The craftsmanship is awful," he judged silently. "Crude structure, sluggish energy flow, zero elegance. A waste of good materials."
Mimicking the obsessive smith from his vision, he took a sword in each hand and lightly tapped them together.
Ding—
The clear note had barely sounded when—
Both "sturdy" swords snapped like dry twigs and clattered to the ground in several pieces.
Erza's pupils shrank; she froze.
"What… what are you doing?!"
She lunged, snatching the hilts from his hands and staring at the glittering shards on the ground, face full of pain.
"My swords…"
She crouched and touched a fragment with trembling fingers, on the verge of tears.
She'd bought them last month, while he was lost in forging—one sword was 70,000 J.
Shane didn't look bothered at all. In fact, there was disdain in his tone. "With me here, why are you still using this junk?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Erza looked up.
"It means," he said, lips curling, "I can forge magic swords now."
The calm red in his eyes flared into wild flame.
"You wanted to see my new magic in action, didn't you?"
The words had barely left his mouth when—
BOOM—!
Crimson fire exploded around him, blooming like a lotus of flame and swallowing his figure whole.
Heat roared out, stirring the air and making Erza throw an arm up on reflex.
In the dancing blaze, she saw his everyday clothes unweaving and reforming in fire.
A vivid red single-sleeve wrapped his right side; his left chest and abdomen were bare, showing smooth, honed lines. Threads of flame spun around him, knotting into a wide white belt at his waist; a pure white cloak fell from his shoulders, patterns shimmering along the inside as the flames died down.
When the last ember faded, Shane was completely transformed.
It wasn't just the outfit. An indescribable pressure radiated from him, enough to make Erza hold her breath.
Gone was the usual "warm winter sun" feeling that made people relax.
Now he was a roaring furnace—blazing, boundless, with an inhuman edge of absolute focus.
Shane didn't waste words. He simply flexed his hand—the hammer, tongs, and anvil manifested beside him with a soft scatter of sparks.
He gripped the broken sword fragments with the tongs. Without any visible spellwork, the metal softened near his palm, melting into a glowing lump.
He dropped the fused mass onto the anvil and raised the hammer.
Clang.
The clear, ringing strike sang through the trees, the rhythm strangely pleasing rather than harsh.
Erza watched without blinking. She'd seen him forge before and thought his movements smooth and skilled, far beyond a normal smith.
But now, though she still couldn't follow the intricate methods, she could feel something deeper in it.
The beauty of craft—even an amateur could sense the "thousand-fold hammering" in those motions.
The work went shockingly fast.
With each swing, sparks flared; the metal moved under his hand like it was alive, stretching, thinning, flowing into the outline of a long, lean blade.
In no time, a simple yet razor-edged longsword had taken shape.
With a final tap, he lifted the still-glowing blade with the tongs and tossed it into the creek.
Ssshh—Steam erupted in a white gust.
"Just a casual piece," Shane said, dismissing the tools, tone mild. "Still beats the junk you bought."
When he'd broken the old swords, he'd already mapped out the lacrima inside and had deliberately avoided damaging their cores—those were now intact, fused into the new weapon.
He eyed Erza's fitted armor with interest. "Just so we're clear—I'm not reforging your armor."
"Huh? Why not?" she asked on reflex.
"Because the only 'weapons' I care to forge are ones meant to cut," he said, a craftsman's stubbornness in his voice. "Armor's for defense—shields, plates… it's the wrong kind of work."
Neither he nor the ideals he'd inherited from Senji Muramasa felt the slightest pull toward armor.
A disinterested forge never produces a masterpiece.
At that, something hit Erza. Her expression shifted; she hurriedly waved a hand.
Magic flashed; her elegant knight armor vanished back into Requip space, replaced by her original sleeveless dress.
Now it was Shane's turn to look puzzled. "You're not going to wear your armor? Doesn't it boost your magic?"
He could feel the amplification woven into it.
~~~
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