“Rometo, gang. Gang, Rometo.”
With an apprehensive frown, Rometo watched the child called Aiden Lacheart introduce him to the team. Rometo, gang. All in all, it was only four words he had used. But it was the familiarity that made Rometo think. Not the familiarity that he felt from the boy, he didn’t know the boy in anyway, he did not feel familiar to him. No. It was the familiar way with which the boy called his name, as if he had been saying it for far too long.
Standing next to Aiden Lacheart, no longer clad in the Order robes, Rometo observed the group. The boy, Aiden Lacheart, was the one who slayed the Immortal. It was a great feat by right of itself. Slaying the Immortal, however, did not show skill in the general concept of things, it showed something different, it showed mystery. Defeating the Immortal, after all, was not a difficult task for anyone who knew what they were doing. It was easy to put the Immortal down, the problem was keeping him down.
For a child Aiden Lacheart’s age, though, it definitely showed skill and mystery.
Aiden Lacheart was an unassuming boy. There was nothing unique about his height or weight. He looked athletic, like you could expect him to run long distances and perform different feats of acrobatics. You could definitely not expect him to be a juggernaut of any kind. All these though were if he did not have mana. Still, he commanded the respect of some of the people present.
Rometo’s eyes moved over to his next point of attention, studying the group as the group took him in. Theodore Lacheart—or Ted as he liked to be called—was similar to his brother if only taller by an inch or two. He had the face of someone who smiled a lot, living life the happy way. He probably made a lot of friends very easily, and acquaintances probably liked hanging around him a lot. But he had unsure eyes, eyes that looked as if he had found himself yet found two paths ready to divulge before him. On one path lay the unknown and the other lay the known that he was not sure he liked.
The next was the knight Valdan. Rometo knew a lot about him. Torat had said a thing or two after his first encounter with Aiden Lacheart, and Rometo had gone to refresh his memory of the knight. Accepted into the [Knights of the Crown] of the kingdom of Bandiv, he was the second, perhaps third lowest admittance in the kingdom’s history. Then again, the kingdom had a very short history.
The once titled knight had the [Knight] class and fought less like a bruiser and more like an all-rounder. He definitely had the size to be a low level bruiser if he tried a bit more. Perhaps he fought like a tank every once in a while.
The kid took a knight from a king considered just, Rometo mused, not denying that he was impressed.
Next was the [Thirteenth], the church’s greatest kept secret. Apart from her duties in the church, he knew nothing about her. In fact, he hadn’t even known that she was female. It was slightly interesting to note.
His eyes moved to the only real danger in the group besides the [Thirteenth]. Oncot. Most likely a descendant of some savage nomadic tribe, he was a corpulent man with sharp eyes and a quiet mouth. While others took Rometo in, the man simply watched. His eyes did not move, not even an inch. He did not simply assess Rometo, he analyzed him. He considered Rometo to be a threat that needed to be taken care of.
Oncot was only dangerous in the fact that Rometo did not know when a man like that would snap and attack him. Killing the man, however, was not a thing that worried him.
Then there was Estabel the [Mage], currently wrapped in a bright purple robe, she did not have the staff that he knew she owned in hand. Was she hiding it or was she simply not wielding it? If he remembered correctly, it was a new staff, her old one destroyed in a way that was not recorded anywhere.
Don’t [Mage]s have to keep new staffs on hand at all times to get accustomed to it? he wondered. At least the Order taught their [Mage]s that. He thought the Mage Radiant did the same. He was fairly certain that they did.
The other members of the team were inconsequential. Tanor was the child of some man who thought himself the second Order in some kingdom too unimportant to remember its name. He was currently going by the name Alphonset, a recent change. Unless he had changed it again.
Telma was the unnecessary adopted child of the now dead king of Mba-chukwu. She was as interesting as she was boring. Despite being a fighter, there was nothing else important about her.
Rometo’s eyes finally settled on the last three members of the group. Fjord, Zen and Feira. They were the sore thumbs—the people that did not belong. According to the little he knew, they were normal people until the attack on their small town. He recognized them by their mana signature. He had been the one to investigate the events of the town, not the battle that had happened there, but the visitor that had arrived during the battle. Aiden Lacheart had taken them from their small town, the question was why? What was so important about them?
Not Fjord, though. Fjord was taken before them.
Then there was Elami, the true anomaly in the group. Nothing was known about the man except that he was of the [Healer] class. There was neither etymology nor genealogy. If the Order had any of it, Rometo was not privy to it.
The [Healer] looked uninterested in the proceedings.
“Does he always look at people like they are unimportant, Lord Lacheart?” the girl called Feira asked.
“Nope,” Aiden answered, again speaking as if he knew Rometo personally. “He’s only looking at you all like you’re unimportant because to him you are. Watch.”
Aiden raised his hand. Rometo noticed it somehow come at him from his blind spot. So, he moved immediately, his hand shooting up to intercept it. His hand wrapped around Aiden’s wrist, and slowly he turned his eyes on the boy.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I see,” Estabel muttered. “You’re right, Lord Lacheart. He definitely doesn’t look at you like you’re unimportant.”
It made Rometo wonder how he looked at Aiden Lacheart.
“Alright then.” Aiden looked from his held hand to Rometo and back. “If you don’t mind?”
Rometo released him, still curious of how the boy had attacked from his blind spot. Unhanded, Aiden robbed his wrist as he turned his attention back on his teammates.
“As I was saying,” he said. “Rometo here will be joining our team on our journey going forward. We have increased in number with his addition, but it is not necessarily a bad thing. Rometo is a powerful person and can hold himself against the best of us, that is me included.”
Me included, Rometo thought, pondering on the boy’s choice of words. What was more interesting was the surprised look on Valdan, Fjord, Zen, and Feira’s face. Did they think the boy invincible.
“In fact,” Aiden continued, “I could argue that he might be able to hold his own against everyone currently in this room.”
Ted cocked a brow. “That’s high praise, brother.”
“Trust me, it’s not high enough,” Aiden said, then he paused. “Actually, maybe as he is now it might be too high. All you need to know is that he’s strong and you should not try to get into a fight with him alone.”
“Why has the Order deigned to hand him to us?” Estabel asked. “I refuse to believe that the Order is not aware of who you are. If they are, then his presence is only for reasons that favor only the Order.”
Aiden bobbed his head as if he was thinking about disagreeing with her. In the end, he did not. “He’s actually here by unpopular demand,” he said. “He was asked for.”
The only people in the group not surprised were the people that had been in the room when Rometo had arrived. The [Thirteenth] looked very displeased.
“We asked for him?” Estabel asked.
Aiden nodded. “Yep.”
They were currently in a large room, large enough to house all of them. Interestingly enough, while there were more than enough places to sit or lie down, the entire group remained standing.
The [Mage], Estabel was leaning against the wall.
“You do not want to get in bed with the Order, Lord Lacheart,” Tanor said. “They know too much and do too much. You think you know until you realize that you do not know.”
Aiden nodded, unbothered. “Thank you, Tanor. I brokered a deal and the Order came to terms with me. Believe me, if anyone is to suffer from this deal, it is none of you.”
“And you?” Valdan asked. “Will you suffer?”
Aiden shrugged. “Someone has to suffer, Valdan. You know this.”
“And if we are not in support of this?” the [Knight] asked.
Feira and Zen nodded aggressively. “Yes,” Feira said quickly. “And if we are not?”
“Really?” Aiden sighed. “I’m still thinking about shipping you off to somewhere safe, Feira. You shouldn’t be the one opposing.”
Feira took a defiant step forward. “Just try it and see what happens?” she challenged.
She and Aiden stood at a stalemate for a while before Aiden surrendered with a sigh. Rometo took note of that. Feira was the only one in the room that dared to challenge the boy, even though Telma continued to look at him as if she would rather slit his throat than listen to him.
Are they in some kind of relationship? Rometo wondered.
“You guys aren’t opposed to it,” Aiden said simply. “We need someone strong to support in the things we are going to be doing.”
“And what are we going to be doing?” Elami asked, finally speaking up. He was the only one sitting comfortably.
“Dangerous things,” Aiden answered.
“But we’ve always been doing dangerous things,” Ted pointed out.
“We are going to be doing things so dangerous that we will have to customize Zen’s training and speed up the entire process.”
Rometo’s brows furrowed at that. He took Zen in one more time. So this was the reason Aiden had asked for him. This was the reason he wanted an instructor.
“You teach well enough,” Feira argued. The look on Elami’s face at her words said that the [Healer] did not agree.
Aiden on his own part was already shaking his head. “Nope,” he said. “I do not. I teach Zen like he is my friend for certain reasons.”
“I always wondered about that,” Fjord muttered.
“What Zen needs is someone who will teach him like a teacher,” Aiden said, not responding to Fjord’s words.
Zen thumbed at Valdan. “Valdan can do that just fine. Melvet has even been proving to be very good at teaching. I think I almost have all the basics down. I got my [Basic Swordsmaship] skill to fifteen percent mastery just this morning.”
Rometo paused at that. The boy had to be at least one year old since getting his interface. How was his [Basic Swordsmaship] mastery that low?
“I also said that we need to customize it,” Aiden pointed out. “Hence him.”
“I don’t know.” Zen scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “I don’t know if I would like him as a teacher.”
Aiden looked at Rometo, then chuckled a little. “That’s a fair point. Most of his students actually don’t like him either. It doesn’t change the fact that he’s good at what he does, though.”
How does he know? Rometo wondered. Yes, most of his students didn’t like him or his method of teaching. The master of the Order could’ve easily told Aiden that but Rometo doubted it.
Still, the master had said that Aiden knew him even though he did not know Aiden.
Time travel? Rometo wondered. Was it possible that at some point in the future he would unlock a skill capable of sending him to the past? It was highly unlikely, considering his skills liked to deal with the effect of time in the present not past or future.
Did the boy have time travel? Again, that was unlikely, he was a [Weaver], even though he mostly fought like he had no business weaving.
There was no way they knew each other in a way that the master of the Order did not know. The only thought that came to mind was time travel, and there was no existent time travel by magic or skill that could explain it. It annoyed Rometo that he did not know.
“But in the spirit of fairness,” Aiden said calmly. “Why do you think you won’t like him?”
“The eyes,” Zen said without missing a beat.
“What about them?”
“He looks like the kind of teacher that will ask me if I’ve ever broken my leg before. And when I say know, he’ll just break it to get that out of the way.”
Aiden laughed as if he had failed to stop himself. It was an uncanny thing. If any other instructor of the Order was present, they would react the exact same way. Why? Because it was exactly the kind of thing that Rometo would do.
It was always better to get the pain out of the way. Pain was not the enemy, and it was prudent that students understood that. Especially when there were [Healer]s to solve the problem.
“I could just heal you,” Elami pointed out, as if he did not disagree with that type of teaching.
Aiden was already shaking his head, smiling. “He probably won’t let you.”
“Exactly,” Zen pointed out. “At least with Valdan and Melvet, they are human and treat you like you are human.”
“The first time Valdan used his skill, do you know what happened?” Aiden asked.
Zen opened his mouth, then closed it. He shook his head.
Aiden looked at Valdan. “Do you mind?”
“No,” Valdan answered, then addressed Zen, like a man commanded by his king who was also his friend. “The first time I used my skill, I closed my eyes and hit something. Till this day I still can’t remember what it was.”
Aiden nodded sagely. “Rometo, would you indulge us.”
Rometo sighed but indulged them. “The first time I used my skill on someone, they closed their eyes and hit something.”
He was slightly annoyed by the look on Aiden’s face, as if Aiden knew it was exactly what he would say. A lot of people had not asked Rometo this question before, and the few that had, got the same answer he had just given.
He knows too much, Rometo thought. It was wrong. It was… dangerous.
Fjord raised his hand like a student in a classroom. “What did they hit.”
“The ground,” Aiden answered easily.
Rometo gritted his teeth and kept his wariness from his eyes. That was how the end of his statement went. The person closed their eyes and hit the ground. Saying ‘something’ was him being dramatic. For all his time at the Order, at heart, he was still royalty, and royalty was nothing if not dramatic.
“He asked what happened when he first used his skill not when he used first used it on a person,” Elami pointed out, unimpressed.
“True,” Aiden agreed before Rometo could point out that the first time he first used his skill it was on a person. “But that is the point I’m trying to make. Perspective.”
Ted cocked a mocking brow. “Perspective? Aida, it just sounds like you’re just trying to advocate for the guy. No offense, Romeo.”
Rometo paused. He thought about correcting the boy but changed his mind. It was either an honest mistake or some kind of mind games. Whichever it was, silence would handle them best.
Aiden gave his brother a look that was not quite one of annoyance before he continued. “When I say perspective, I mean perspective. Something that matters more than most people think in a fight is perspective. Valdan told you what happened, but you can tell that it’s from his point of view, it is natural, what happened to him. Rometo just told you what happened to the other person. If his skill had hit the wall, he would’ve still told you what happened to the wall.”
“It’s the difference in mindset,” Elami muttered, showing his first signs of interest. “Perspective.”
“Valdan saw it from the point of view of what happened to him because he thinks like a human,” Estabel said, displeased.
“Rometo,” Tanor said, his voice somehow sad and introspective, “remembers it from a point of view of what happened to the person he hit, because he thinks like a weapon.”
“What concerns a gun with who shoots it,” Ted said in understanding, confusing a few people in the room including Rometo. “All it cares about is what it hits and what becomes of it. Dead or alive.”
Feira looked at him. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” he asked.
“The thing you said. A gun. What’s that?”
“It’s a weapon people use to try to kill people,” Ted answered.
“And that’s the perspective, Zen,” Aiden said. “Valdan will teach you how to be a strong human, and that takes time. We need you to be as strong as possible as fast as possible. And that means that we can’t train you to be a strong human, we have to train you to be a weapon. Valdan won’t do that. Rometo will.”
Aiden Lacheart was very dangerous.
“No offense, Aiden Lacheart,” Elami said in a voice that sounded offensive. “But isn’t that something you’re cruel enough to do by yourself?”
Heads nodded around the room, and Aiden ran a tired hand down his face.
“Well,” he said, “I can, but the problem is the time, I do not have the time to do that. Working with us, Rometo has all the time in the world. And even if I did have the time, this brings us to the second reason Rometo is here.” He turned to Rometo. “Rometo, meet Zen, [Time Walker].”
Shock stunned Rometo with a slap to the face.
Impossible.
“Zen,” Aiden continued.
He can’t know, Rometo thought wth a surprising sense of panic. He can’t.
“Meet Rometo,” Aiden finished. “[Time Walker]. He will be teaching you how to be the deadliest [Time Walker] that you can be.”