📌Tutorial📌
We finally stood on the ground– or it’s actually Hachisuka that is the one who is standing on the ground because I was clinging to him.
He slowly put me down.
I cleared my throat.
“Thank you.” I’m blushing once again.
“Ahaha, no need for that, Master. It’s only natural for us to help you.” He smiled.
I looked around. We’re currently inside a Japanese-style house. It’s already nicely decorated, and looks ready to live-in. There’s a nice garden with a pond outside the house. But then my vision is obscured by a transparent screen-like thing in front of me.
≪Initiating Tutorial…≫
≪Tutorial is starting, please follow all the instruction.≫
Suddenly a yellow fox spirit appeared in front of us, and he started talking.
“Greetings, Shiromi Matou-sama, my name is Konnosuke. I will be working as your guide, and I am glad to make your acquaintance.” He talked in a formal tone.
“Nice to meet you, Konnosuke.” I smiled at him, intrigued, I approached him, but he quickly moved away.
“I will show you Honmaru's facilities. Please follow me, I will show you the smithing room. You’re going to need a stronger team to have success on the battlefield. Let’s go and create a new Touken Danshi.”
I followed him to another room. The room is hot, as expected from a forgery, they have a furnace lit up.
There are a lot of smither spirits around the room. They do look small, but I think they’re an expert on smithing swords. They started swarming around us and bowed their heads to me. It seems like they’re not able to talk.
Art by Syln
“Shiromi-sama, this is the place to smith a new sword. Also, here you can dispose of a double sword or any sword you don’t need anymore. If you scrap a sword, you will get a few amounts of resources. Here’s a Request Token required to smith a sword.”
Konnosuke jumped on a table and showed me a box with a lot of square wooden blocks.
I take them and see the characters 「依頼札」 written vertically on the wooden block, it means Request Token.
There are other writings on the back of the wooden block.
Charcoal _ _ _
Steel _ _ _
Coolant _ _ _
Whetstone _ _ _
Konnosuke moved a set of brush and ink in front of me.
“Here’s a brush and ink, you can write down the amount of resources to use for smithing a new sword. Do you see that number on top of the fireplace? It’s the amount of resources we currently possess. For now, just write 50 for all the resources. That’s the minimum amount required to smith a new sword.” He explained.
For now, I currently have around a little bit more than a thousand for each resource. The number slowly goes up as time goes by.
“The Government of the Time is giving Saniwas some resources as time goes by, and you can also earn more resources from battlefields and expeditions, I will explain about that later.”
I nodded at Konnosuke’s explanation.
“The maximum amount of the resources that can be used for smithing is 999 each.”
Konnosuke explained further about the smithing.
“I see.” I nodded.
I took the brush and thought to myself, I hope they can read my writing just fine, because I have bad writing even if I write with a pen, but now I need to write with a brush like this.
I exhaled and started writing 50 for all the resources.
The smithers are looking at me with expectation and holding out their little hands.
I automatically handed the token to them.
“Yes, you can give the request token to the smithers.”
Konnosuke agreed with my action.
The room suddenly became busy. The smither that took the token is inserting it into a hole on the wall, and all the tools are instantly filled with the resources I write on the token. The countdown started, the smithing time was 20 minutes.
“Looks like you have begun forging Touken Danshi. Normally, we’d have to wait for the remaining time to be used up. B-b-but wait! If we use Help Token, the forging can be completed without having to wait! For this special occasion, I have prepared a Help Token for you to use.”
Konnosuke gestured to another panel on the wall with the writing, 「手伝い札」and the number x16 under it.
“Press the button to take out one of the Help Token”
Konnosuke pointed at the button below the panel.
I pressed the button and the number is down to x15. Another wooden block came out from another letter hole.
“If you decide not to use it anymore, you can put it back into the hole, but now we're going to use it, so give it to the smither.” One of the smithers came to me and I gave him the token. The other smithers immediately stopped working and stepped away from their post. The token is inserted in the same hole as they put in the Request Token.
The smithing tools are shining bright briefly, the countdown timer went down instantly to 0, and finally one of the smithers pulled out a short sword out of the tools.
The sword is just as long as my forearm. I reached to take the sword. I already know the sensation of summoning the sword’s spirit, so this time, I’m able to touch him without immediately calling his spirit. I look at the details of the swords before finally summoning the spirit.
Another explosion of sakura petals is happening again.
“Hey, Captain. The name's Yagen Toushirou. Looking forward to working with ya.”
A boy slightly shorter than me appeared before me. Even if he looks like a child, his aura feels mature. Well, they’re supposed to be the spirit of old swords, so I shouldn’t treat them like a kid.
“Nice to meet you, Yagen. My name is Shiromi Matou. Please take care of me.”
I repeated my introduction more smoothly this time.
“Alright, Captain! Unlike my brothers, I was brought up on the battlefield, not decorating some noble's waist. Leave the rough stuff to me, Captain.” Yagen said confidently.
“I’m thrilled to hear that. Oh yeah, this is Hachisuka Kotetsu. He’s my first sword.”
I gestured to Hachisuka.
“A new sword seems to be finished. Nice to meet you, Yagen Toushirou.”
Hachisuka nodded, and Yagen nodded too.
“If you have sword doubles, you can use them to refine other swords. Let’s see, I’ll let you try to refine Hachisuka using this nameless sword.”
Konnosuke gestured and the smither brought me another sword.
“Try to hold it towards Hachisuka.” Konnosuke instructed.
I held the sword and brought it closer to Hachisuka, with the intention to make Hachisuka stronger. The sword in my palm turned into bright light and it seeped through Hachisuka’s chest.
“I become even sharper!” Hachisuka tried to open and close his hand.
“Now let’s continue on by making troops to equip your Touken Danshi. Troops can be made in the Troops summoning room, so let’s move there.”
Konnosuke wasted no time, and we quickly moved to another room.
“You will need resources to make Troops, but you don’t need to use Request Token for this. The minimum resources needed to make troops is 50, and maximum 300 for each resource.”
Konnosuke pushed a notebook towards me.
“You can use this note to write down the amount of resources you want to use. This notebook won’t run out of paper, so you can use this forever.”
Konnosuke tapped the notebook.
“Wow, that’s really convenient.”
I took the notebook and opened it. The content is just like the backside of Request Token. So I just took the brush from the table and wrote all 50 on each resource, and then ripped the paper from the notebook.
This time, Hachisuka stepped forward.
“Please let me do this, Master.”
I handed paper to him, and he inserted it into a smaller letter hole under an empty altar-like space in the Troops room. A bright light shone on the altar and a green crystal ball appeared on the altar.
“I tried to make it. Is this good?” He handed the ball to me.
“Thank you, Hachisuka.”
I can see the troops spirit inside the crystal, it’s riding a horse.
“You’ve got normal Light Cavalry troops. When it comes to making Troops, everything is done instantly as there is no waiting time. You can put it inside there, and you can equip it to the Touken Danshi through Saniwa’s room.”
Konnosuke pointed to a circle hole on the side of the wall. I put the crystal ball inside it and the ball rolled inside the wall.