Chapter 30 - 29

"So, you want to establish a good relationship with me and mine?" Soma questioned between bites as Irina nodded, beside her Lint was stuffing her face with pizza and Mirana was still a bit terrified regarding Fred Krueger.

She was no good with terror movies it seems, but she still wanted to keep watching so there was nothing to do about it. ​​

"Yes, as we are new in town we would want your cooperation in case anything was to happen. Of course, if you accept and need anything you would only need to ask. We will do what we can to help." Irina said before taking the slice of pizza in her hand and biting into it, a slight moan of pleasure escaping her lips due to how good this pizza was.

Soma put his fingers on his chin in thought before replying.

"I suppose there wouldn't be any issue with that, but I will not help if you enter in conflict with the devils in town and if you try to put your hands on any of those under my protection or my friends I will not stay quiet. Also, do not touch Ravel, Momo, Riser, or anyone of Riser's Peerage... Well, if Riser or his peerage do anything against you then you can act as you wish as long as you do not kill them."

Soma was Riser's friend, but he understood that Riser was a bit on the horny side and if he were to extend his hands towards these girls then they had every right to punish him for it, but killing is a big no no. Besides, Riser could heal quickly anyway so even if he gets his ass beaten there won't be lasting damage to anything besides his pride.

"That works for us." Irina said with a smile and extended her hand to shake which Soma did easily enough.

While shaking his hand Irina her body came close to the sword at Soma's side and she froze for a bit.

She was someone who grew up around holy swords, as soon as she felt the energy around it she could identify the sword as a holy blade with ease. She failed to realize it before due to how this sword's light energy was extremely dense and close to its body, unless one gets close to the sword it would be hard to say it has any light or holy energy.

In a manner of speaking this sword was the reverse of Durandal, the use of Aria centered on the power of the blade itself while Durandal centered on large-scale destruction.

"This sword, where did you get it?" Irina asked in wonder.

Hearing Irina's question Soma put the sword in his lap to show it off, seeing the expressions of Irina and the other members of the church and their admiration for his work.

After having spent hundreds of years forging swords and other equipment only to have his master mention all the flaws in it, it felt nice to have other people admire his work.

"I just completed this baby downstairs, I named it Aria Goddess of Light."

The three looked in wonder at the beauty of the blade before snapping out of it as Mirana blinked twice and took out a sword from behind her.

"It is a very beautiful blade, but we have this here that Gabriel-sama told us to deliver to you." She then presented him with the sword and Soma took it out of its sheath.

The sword resembles a European sword with a golden guard that curves forward. The base of the blade curves inward. It also has a green plant stem with leaf petals design engraved along the blade to make the sword feel as if it is a part of nature.

This was Excalibur Blessing, a sword made from one of the shards of Excalibur and has the ability to augment any christian holy rituals considerably, both for healing, exorcism, weakening of devils and vampires, and empowerment of Exorcists. It was not as offensively capable as some of the other Excalibur Fragments, but its utility in the hands of the right user could and would enhance the person's ability considerably.

But, when put side by side with Aria, it looked shabby and weak. That was not simply because of their power difference, but because of crafting quality itself.

The Excalibur Fragments were all made into swords by combining the fragments of Excalibur with other metals and making the combination into the form of a sword using pure alchemy. Even if the materials are good, how could a sword made by such a method compare with one that was properly forged using the best forging skills and enchantments possible?

Feeling the difference in the two swords side by side the three from the church looked a bit sheepish. They had heard many times people mentioning the importance of these Fragments, but having one such fragment be considered second class by an outsider was a bit of a troubling feeling for them.

Soma ignored them though and just kept eating his pizza. He had bought a stuffed pizza and wanted to enjoy it as a reward for a job well done.

After everyone was done for the day the church girls were led to the gates and the closer they got to it the more disheartened they felt. Soma, wanting to make a good impression on this cash co... new allies, spoke 'kindly'.

"What makes you all feel so down?" Ha asked them. The three looked from one side to the other before answering.

"Well, the truth is-" Mirana said before explaining the whole situation.

After hearing them out Soma thought for a bit before an idea struck him.

"Then, would you like some help?" He said as he sent out a pulse of energy from the ground to inside Dimension Lost. While setting it up Soma made sure that, as long as he was inside his house, he could communicate with the inside of Dimension Lost as easily as if he was right beside it, so it was that easy to send a command to one of his golems.

After a few moments, a golem came out of the gate of the house, it was about two meters tall and looked very sturdy.

"You can use this guy here to help fix the church if you want. It can fuse with the ground to a degree so it could help fix the walls and you can also have it bury the trash far away and kill any pests around. You just need to give it directions really." Soma said as he patted the golem that slowly started merging with the soil until one could no longer see it.

On one hand, he was giving away a small advantage he had, but, on the other hand, he wanted to advertise his golems anyway as the more people knew about them the more people would want to buy them for their utility.

That they all could report back to him anything done around them and would work as spies that could and would stab their 'owners' in the back with a single command was just a small bonus. Getting people to give him money for something to spy on them, now that is the type of deal Soma liked very much.

The girls looked impressed and accepted the help, going back to the church with a golem that would clean and fix the place for them, all three of them thought about the mission report they would be sending to the higher-ups and what they would write on it.

Overall, they were quite happy as they felt much more at home in town now and would not need to spend a long time cleaning the church themselves, and Soma was happy as he now had an Excalibur Fragment in his hands and had established positive relations with the Church which should restrain the devils somewhat.

///---///

Days passed like that, classes went on like normal and a sense of normality spread through the supernatural community in Kuoh.

Soma visited the Yakuza of town two times during these days to buy some rare herbs for medicine creation, he wanted to accelerate his body training further so this was a necessity. During these visits, Soma would exchange with them a few Holy and Demonic swords he produced using the metals he got from the devils and angels. These were just alchemy-made weapons and far from his best, but their ultimate quality was well above the ones found in most other places and Soma got a lot of cash from this exchange and he used said cash to buy the herbs.

During these days he also studied the Holy Sword Project research results and figured out the method that was used to extract a person's 'talent' for wielding a holy sword. It was honestly quite a brilliant thing and Soma came to admire Valper Galilei for his results.

Sure, he did not appreciate the killing of children, but the research itself was brilliant and the man accidentally managed to do something highly interesting. He managed to target and extract a small fragment of a soul, the one responsible to allow a person to use Holy Swords, and use said fragments to stimulate the target's soul into increasing naturally their own affinity.

An analogy would be that he made a 'vaccine', he extracted from a person their affinity, processed said aspect, and injected it in someone to stimulate the target's own soul into having more affinity.

As Soma understood it he truly could only sing praises to the man who managed to make something like that, a genius for sure.

After understanding it, Soma proceeded to, every night, stealthy enter the houses of the citizens of Kuoh one after the other and steal the civilian's affinity for holy swords. Most have a very little affinity, individually not much, but Soma didn't mind as he managed to steal them of so many of the regular civilians one after the other. The process to steal someone's affinity only took about ninety seconds, and he spent several hours every night to stealing so he obtained an astounding amount of the affinity for Holy Swords.

He had no shame in doing so since this was an aspect of a person that mostly no one would ever use, taking it away would not damage these civilians whatsoever, so he went crazy with it.

During this time he also met up with Gentle Criminal and his side-kick/girlfriend Manami Aiba, he did so to see how they were doing after the whole incident regarding Sacred Gears and to speak about Gentle's lost limb. Having lost his arm during the fighting Soma offered to heal Gentle as a way to help establish a good relationship with the older male.

He did so mostly because he wanted to establish good relationships with the people in town and, to be honest, making a new arm for someone cost next to nothing for Soma. At most, it would be a twenty minutes project he could make, and, in exchange, he got the gratitude of a couple that had powerful and useful gears, one able to turn anything elastic, and the other able to empower those she cares about. This connection might never come in handy, but it could be useful later on and it was a low-risk investment.

At this moment in time, Soma was training his body. Under a bounded field that increased the gravity by 15 times, he was using his training equipment that would force his body to the absolute limit while training as he kept practicing his katas for his martial arts. Having properly remastered Jacob Limbs to the point he could activate it as easily as breathing there would be no benefit from practicing it like before, he would only need to keep activating it until he could keep it active and no longer feel the difference. As such, he now had the time and, most importantly, the physical conditioning to start practicing his own martial arts.

With the help of a brainstorm of Chiron, Yan Qin, Li Shuen, and several other martial artists who managed to reach the Throne, Soma had learned a rather unique martial art. It had extremely high requirements for the body, but its power was undeniable. Merlin, after observing it in action, suggested that, if it was in a Servant in a Holy Grail war, it just might reach A++++ Rank or even Ex Rank as a Noble Phantasm since it was the epitome of martial arts that masters of all sorts of fields worked together to make.

This was a martial art that was not done for competition though, it was made for pure life or death combat. There were several 'unfair' strikes mixed in, from pulling hair, to finger aimed at the eye, to kneeing the nuts, stomping the opposition, biting, using the knees or elbows, truly any combination imaginable of moves that could kill or cripple an enemy. Truly, this was a martial art that aimed at, at least, disabling an opponent in a semi-permanent fashion with most moves aiming to kill.

He was only practicing it now because he was counting that someone would be coming after him sooner or later and he had to be ready... and because training it was a great workout routine, especially under high gravity and he used the training equipment that made his body need to strain to the limit to move anything. That he could keep moving under these conditions and executing the katas, it was nothing short of a miracle.

As he was feeling his muscles stretching and pulling to the limit Soma was not thinking about anything, all his focus on his movements as he continued his movements.

After around two hours of this, as he collapsed on the ground, Soma was taking deep breaths of air. He was extremely tired by this workout, but a frown could be seen on his face. He has been training like crazy for several weeks now, taking several medicines and modifying his body while doing so. His growth was going as well as he expected, but he was feeling like he had reached a barrier of some sort just now. A bottleneck that would need him some time to break through, and he did not like that at all.

"Whatever barrier stands in my way, I will just smash it." Soma muttered as his resolve solidified once again.

He used his fingers to pull his body towards a small pool on the side, his limbs too tired to let him move by himself but he just pushed himself until said pool. Dropping inside he sighed in relief, this pool was filled with a precious medicinal herb bath following the recipes developed by several cultures to achieve the highest resolve.

After twenty minutes inside Soma stood back up, ready to push himself again to see if he could break through this recently found bottleneck.

Just as he was about to start training again there was a signal that someone came to talk to him. As he was not in an intensive research moment he did not put the sign to not disturb him, so he was relatively fast to hear about it and go see what is going on.

Since he was going out of his workshop Soma took out the training equipment and felt his body become light like a feather right away. He was now only wearing a tank top and cargo pants as he walked out of his workshop to see what was happening for the others to call him out.

As he got out he could instantly see what was going on and why he was called. Riser was there, all dressed up, with a tuxedo in hand as he looked Soma up and down with a frown.

"... Did you lose track of time?"

"Weren't we meant to meet in the afternoon?" Soma questioned as he was quite sure what time it was.

"Yes, that is now. You really need to stop spending so much time in your lab?" Riser said to his friend.

Soma Had lost track of time training since he fell into a rhythm while training. He had planned to take it easy today as it was his friend's engagement party. He even prepared a gift after hearing from Riser about the engagement after it was brought up during their double date with Soma taking Rossweisse. Thinking back to the date it brought back some nice memories to Soma, he and Rossweisse were playing a bit too much with their hands beneath the table, and as such he wasn't really paying attention to what Riser was saying, and he was sure that Riser was doing the same with his Queen. Though he did remember mentioning that he would provide formal dress wear for him.

Seeing Soma's sheepish expression due to losing track of time Riser shook his head and gave him the tuxedo.

"Here, wear this and get ready, the party is in about an hour or so." Riser said. "As it will be in the Underworld I will be taking us there, and don't worry I promise that I will take you back to your house.'

Soma just looked at this and squinted his eyes.

"Is it safe for humans in the Underworld? Isn't the air poisonous, rivers of lava, and other such irritating annoyances are all around."

"No, nothing of the sort. It is quite similar to Earth, even if the air is much less polluted and the atmosphere is nicer, I think you will enjoy it." Riser said.

"... This is the weirdest way of telling someone to 'go to hell, you will fit right in' I have ever heard." Soma deadpanned and Riser laughed at it.

"Fine, fine, now go get dressed." Riser said and Soma nodded, but before leaving he questioned.

"Can I take a guest?"

"Of course, and I assure you that any guest you take will be looked after by my house without failure." Riser said and Soma nodded.

He was thinking of taking Aya with him, mostly because he felt that the girl needed to open up a bit more as she was starting to find refuge in the house and was avoiding going out more and more. Going out to a party to socialize would shock her system a bit and should be good for her. He would not take Mami, as she was still rather unstable and going to the Underworld wouldn't be the best of ideas, Mittelt, because she was a fallen and was theoricaly in 'war' with the devils, or Rintaro, he was a pervert and Soma did not want to deal with him trying to get in the pants of a big titted married woman or, even worse, a virgin noble.

Going to look for Aya he knocked on the door of her room.

After some shuffle she opened the door, a shy expression when she saw that it was Soma who came knocking and her room was a mess, or at least it was what she thought (it was normal, but she was quite conscious about it).

"Aya-chan, would you like to go to a party with me tonight?" He asked her and she widened her eyes before smiling.

"Yes, I would love to." She said and Soma noted how her smiles were becoming more and more natural on her face. As she got used to smiling more and was gaining confidence (as well as a decent meal and proper care) she was able to leave behind the worst of her past and was becoming better. Soma liked this and patted her head gently.

"Good, it is a bit of a formal party, but don't worry too much about it. Just remember, if someone says anything bad to you then you just need to tell me." 'And I will slice that person in half' was a second part he did not mention since she might not appreciate it much.

Aya just pouted slightly.

"Soma-kun, I have been training and can take care of myself now." She said as she summoned her Sacred Gear, Soma just put his hands as if in a sign of surrender.

"Sorry, sorry, I am not underestimating you. Just, if something happens please tell me even if you deal with it yourself. Please?"

Aya just nodded her head, her face held high as her confidence grew a bit from Soma's reaction even if she could tell it was just some theatrics.

She was just wondering how this party was going to be exactly and hoped everything would be alright.