Chapter 299

Chapter 299: Chapter 299

Ottar arrived at Rayleigh’s workshop the following morning with Tenken across his back.

Rayleigh noticed the weapon before the Boarman said anything; even sealed, the greatsword was more than two meters long and heavy enough that most adventurers would struggle to lift it.

Remembering his previous trouble with the doorway, Ottar entered carefully, then removed Tenken from his back and laid it across the reinforced workbench.

"Lady Freya told me about your conversation yesterday," he said. "She also told me that if I wanted something from you, I should come and ask for it myself, rather than expect her name to influence your answer. Tenken has felt different recently, and I want you to examine it."

Rayleigh regarded him for a moment.

Freya had certainly found a way to show she understood yesterday’s boundaries.

"All right. Leave it there."

He pulled the enormous sword closer and rested a hand on the hilt.

The connection formed immediately, familiar from the day he had forged the blade around a portion of Ottar’s soul.

The spirit was unharmed.

Years of combat had left small deformations along the blade’s edge and deeper marks where Tenken had met weapons capable of resisting Ottar’s strength, but that ordinary wear didn’t explain its restlessness.

Its spiritual pressure pressed against the sealed blade with the same heavy, direct force Rayleigh remembered, while the bond between sword and wielder had developed since his last examination.

After several minutes, he looked up. "You haven’t damaged Tenken. Quite the opposite. Your connection has grown enough that the sword is trying to take the next step, but you’re not quite keeping up."

"Bankai?" Ottar’s attention sharpened.

"Possibly, but don’t start celebrating. Sensing the next step and actually taking it are very different things." Rayleigh lifted Tenken from the bench, feeling its spiritual pressure again as the problem became clearer.

Ottar’s bond with the blade was exceptionally strong, which made sense.

Tenken suited him almost perfectly: straightforward, protective, and physically overwhelming, with the power to reproduce his every movement on an enormous scale.

Rayleigh handed the sword back. "You know Tenken is part of your soul. You understood that during your fight with Zald, but there’s still something uneven about the relationship. You spend almost your entire life thinking of yourself as Freya’s sword. Somewhere along the way, you’ve started treating Tenken the same way—as another weapon to help you serve her."

Ottar was silent for a moment, his expression barely changing.

"My purpose has always been to serve Lady Freya. Tenken does not oppose that."

"I didn’t say it did. Your loyalty isn’t the problem." Rayleigh leaned against the workbench. "Tenken came from you. It can share your loyalty, your goals, and everything else that matters to you, but none of that replaces an identity of your own. If every answer you give comes down to ’because Lady Freya wishes it,’ there isn’t much room for Tenken to hear what Ottar wants."

The Boarman looked down at the enormous blade in his hands.

"You wanted to defeat Zald," Rayleigh continued more quietly. "That wasn’t simply an order from your goddess. You hated your own weakness, respected the man standing in front of you, and wanted to surpass someone who had crushed you in the past. Tenken responded because that desire was yours."

Ottar remembered the battle clearly.

Zald had pushed him past all thought of titles or duty, until all that mattered was his anger at his own weakness and his determination to defeat a man he had once considered beyond his reach.

Tenken had answered with more power than Ottar had ever drawn from it before.

Rayleigh tapped the sheath. "If you want to find out how close you are to Bankai, sitting here talking won’t help much. Let’s take Tenken somewhere you can release it without destroying my roof again."

A faint embarrassment crossed Ottar’s face, and Rayleigh decided the memory had punished him enough.

...

They left Orario through one of the western gates, and Freya joined them outside the walls.

She came openly as herself, with no escort beyond Ottar, which Rayleigh immediately noticed.

They traveled far enough from the city to test Tenken safely, stopping at an old quarry with broad stretches of broken stone and exposed cliff faces that nobody would mind them damaging.

Freya left the training to them, taking a place on a rocky rise overlooking the empty ground while Rayleigh and Ottar moved farther away.

Rayleigh pointed toward the largest cliff face. "Start with Shikai. Don’t try Bankai, and don’t try to impress anybody. I already know how hard Tenken can hit."

Ottar drew the massive blade, settled into his stance, and released a controlled amount of spiritual pressure.

"Roar, Tenken!"

The air above the quarry distorted as an enormous armored hand formed overhead, gripping a spectral version of Ottar’s greatsword.

The weapon alone was roughly forty meters long, and even before it moved, the pressure around it sent loose dust rolling across the ground.

Rayleigh studied Ottar and the manifestation. "Strike the cliff."

Ottar swung, and the spectral arm mirrored him, bringing its giant sword down across the exposed stone.

A large section of the cliff collapsed under the impact, leaving a deep cut through the rock as fragments scattered across the quarry.

"Ottar, you’ve been able to do that for years," Rayleigh said, unimpressed. "If all you do whenever Tenken gives you more power is swing harder, you’re training your body more than your Zanpakutō."

Ottar lowered the blade without defending himself and waited for instructions.

Rayleigh picked up a fist-sized stone and tossed it toward him.

"Catch this with Tenken."

Ottar raised one hand, and an enormous spectral hand appeared above him, closing around the stone in a fist large enough to crush a building.

Rayleigh stared at the giant fist before looking back at Ottar.

"I said catch it. You pulverized it."

Ottar opened his hand, and fine dust drifted from between the spectral fingers.

On the hill, Freya covered her mouth, barely concealing her amusement.

He ignored her and turned back to Rayleigh, who picked up another stone.

"Tenken copies you, but you’re relying on strength because strength usually works. This time, forget about destroying anything. Control the movement precisely enough to catch the stone without breaking it."

He threw again.

Ottar adjusted, and the result was better, though the stone still cracked as soon as the spectral fingers closed around it.

Rayleigh kept throwing stones, and by the sixth attempt, Ottar was visibly more frustrated than he had been fighting some of the Dungeon’s strongest monsters.

Freya finally laughed, and Rayleigh glanced toward her. "Your captain is learning that catching a rock is apparently harder than splitting a street in half."

Ottar kept his eyes on the stone in Rayleigh’s hand, clearly determined not to let that stand.

When Rayleigh tossed it, he barely moved his fingers.

The giant armored hand followed with the same restraint, closing carefully around the stone before lowering to the ground.

Its fingers opened to reveal the rock intact.

Ottar studied it for a moment, and Rayleigh nodded. "That’s what I wanted. Tenken isn’t just an enormous sword appearing above your enemy. Its real strength is that the manifestation follows your body. The better your control, the more you can do with that connection."

Ottar looked back at the spectral hand with new interest.

Until now, he had used his Shikai mainly to magnify his already overwhelming strength.

A sword swing became a gigantic sword swing, a punch became a massive armored fist, and every attack gained the size and force to tear apart the battlefield.

"Now keep Tenken released and follow me." Rayleigh drew Shinsō.

Ottar’s attention shifted immediately to the new sword. "You forged another Zanpakutō."

"My sixth. Its ability is useful for this kind of training." Rayleigh pointed it toward a patch of loose stone several dozen meters away.

"Shoot to kill, Shinsō."

The silver blade extended across the quarry, struck one of the smaller rocks, and retracted almost too quickly to follow.

As the stone flew into the air, Ottar moved Tenken’s spectral hand to catch it.

Rayleigh immediately changed targets, sending another rock flying from a different direction, then a third.

Ottar caught the first, missed the second, and shattered the third by closing his hand too quickly.

Rayleigh kept changing targets, refusing to let him settle into a simple rhythm.

The exercise demanded far more precision than Ottar normally needed in battle.

Tenken’s armored hand moved across the quarry, catching stones between two fingers or cupping them in its palm as Ottar gradually reduced the unnecessary force behind each movement.

Freya watched from the hill.

She had seen Ottar fight more times than she could count, but this was different from his usual attempts to lift heavier weapons, endure greater damage, or push his body closer to its limits.

Rayleigh was teaching him to communicate with Tenken through movement.

Whenever frustration drove Ottar to rely on speed or power, the manifestation lost precision; when he calmed himself and focused on what it was doing, it responded more naturally.

After nearly half an hour, Rayleigh lowered Shinsō.

"Good enough."

Ottar dismissed the giant arm but kept Tenken released.

His breathing was steady, though maintaining Shikai with such fine control had demanded more concentration than his usual large attacks.

Rayleigh approached and rested a hand on Tenken’s broad blade. Its spiritual pressure had changed slightly, but enough for him to notice.

"That helped."

Ottar closed his eyes for several seconds.

Tenken felt clearer in his hands, though the difference was difficult to describe.

The Zanpakutō had never felt distant from him: he had known its name from the beginning, understood its power, and trusted it through battles that would have destroyed ordinary weapons.

Now, though, wielding it felt less like commanding something powerful and more like moving another part of his body.

When he opened his eyes, Rayleigh was still studying the blade.

"Try Jinzen tonight. Don’t chase Bankai or demand anything from Tenken. Just listen. If I’m right, you’ll hear more than you did before."

Ottar nodded slowly.

...

Once Tenken had been resealed, Freya descended from the rocky rise.

She approached Ottar first, studying her captain with an expression much gentler than most of Orario associated with the Goddess of Beauty.

"You’ve spent years believing that becoming stronger for me is the same as becoming stronger for yourself. I allowed that because your devotion was your choice, but Rayleigh is right about one thing: I chose Ottar. I didn’t choose an empty weapon that happened to be useful."

Ottar lowered his head slightly, but she continued before he could take her words as another duty.

"You don’t need to stop serving me. I would never insult what that loyalty means to you. I want you to remember that the man offering it has value of his own. If Tenken is another part of your soul, perhaps it has been waiting for you to understand that too."

After a long silence, Ottar answered, his voice lower than usual.

"I understand what you mean. Whether I can so easily change something that has shaped most of my life is another matter."

Freya smiled and briefly rested a hand on his arm. "I would be disappointed if one morning with Rayleigh was all it took."

Ottar’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly before he stepped back to let Rayleigh finish examining Tenken.

Rayleigh pretended not to notice.

There was more to their relationship than a goddess commanding her strongest warrior.

Ottar’s devotion was genuine, but so was Freya’s affection for the child who had placed his entire life in her hands.

Seeing it for himself told Rayleigh more about her than another hour of conversation in his workshop would have.

He resealed Shinsō and returned it to his waist.

"Tenken doesn’t need repairs today. I’ll do the physical maintenance another time, but spiritually, the blade is healthy. Keep working on control and Jinzen. Bankai will come when Tenken recognizes that you’re ready for everything it carries."

Ottar settled the greatsword across his back. "If that happens, I will return."

"Preferably before you summon a hundred-meter samurai inside Orario."

"I had no intention of doing that."

Rayleigh remembered the roof Tenken’s first awakening had cost him and decided not to rely entirely on good intentions.

Freya caught his expression and laughed.

...

They returned to Orario before evening.

At the western gate, Rayleigh expected to leave them and head home, but Freya stopped him before they reached the main street.

"You spent most of the day helping Ottar with something I couldn’t have taught him myself. I’d like you to stay for dinner at Folkvangr."

Rayleigh considered the invitation.

She had asked without pressure or any assumption that he would agree simply because she was a goddess.

Dinner at the Freya Familia’s headquarters was a much bigger step than a meal at the Hostess, but refusing just because she’d invited him as Freya would make yesterday’s conversation meaningless.

He had told her they could continue normally as long as she respected his boundaries, and so far, she had.

"All right. Dinner."

Freya looked immediately pleased, but she didn’t try to turn his agreement into anything more.

Rayleigh followed her and Ottar through the western streets toward Folkvangr, aware that openly entering the headquarters of Orario’s strongest Familia beside its goddess would probably draw more attention than his quiet afternoons with Syr ever had.

He could worry about that when they reached the door.

They were speaking plainly to each other now, which was already an improvement.