'Eccentric'

Finding a sword he liked was a lot harder than he thought it would be. The room had every sword imaginable, from longwords to flamberges to estocs to even obscure ones like koa swords and a kilij. He picked up what felt like hundreds of swords, swung each of them a few times, then put them back, shaking his head. He decided to be a bit vain with his choice; he didn't want some ordinary run-of-the-mill short sword.

Usually, he wasn't concerned about stuff like this, but he knew that once he met up with his family again, they'd mock him for choosing something so basic. Autumn would probably laugh the hardest as she swung some nine-headed flail monstrosity around and smashed a wall by accident. Besides, he had a practical reason as well.

From the little knowledge he had of swords, short swords were mostly backup weapons, and he was looking for something that could replace his railguns as his main weapon. Moreover, short swords were great in confined spaces but lacked decent reach. Longswords were the opposite, with fair reach but cumbersome in closed spaces.

Between the two, Fate preferred something like the longsword, as he was confident in his knife skills and hand-to-hand combat for any situation where he was in a tight space. That decision cut most of the smaller options out, like the gladius, kukri, and kamplian.

It was at this point that Fate marveled at the sheer quantity of weapons available here. They had every kind of sword imaginable, and Fate hadn't even looked at the maces, polearms, staffs, and all the other weapons available.

When he asked Dinan about this, she told him that the Ancestor had passed down information about many different things from different galaxies, including farming techniques, weaponry, and Embodiment technology.

They were still deciphering the last one, having put more importance on the practicality of the other subjects. Also, many guards liked having different weapons from others to feel unique.

He also dismissed the swords that were purely for two-handed use, like the flamberge, claymore, and zweihander. That left him with swords that were usable with both one and two hands. This included the hand-and-a-half sword, the longsword, the Miao Dao, and the katana.

He dismissed the first two for being too common, along with many of the other options for being a little unwieldy, but mostly because the last two managed to capture his attention.

The katana, like the wakizashi, was famous for being used by both samurai and ninjas in popular media. Like the people of the Milky Way, those of the Solynus galaxy fell in love with the culture and history of feudal Japan, and movies and books and shows about this era were still made thousands of years in the future.

Likewise, the 'cultivation' novels of China gained widespread popularity in the Solynus galaxy a few decades ago, with multi-billion-dollar franchises based on the concept of cultivation. The wakizashi, like the short sword, was typically used as a backup weapon, so he decided to take it off his list of potential choices.

Long story short, Fate knew of both the katana and the Miao Dao, the highlights of his childhood before the Advanced took him being watching main characters use these weapons in big-budget movies with his mother. He held both weapons, one in each hand, trying to decide which one to pick. Princess Dinan, noticing his indecision, spoke up.

"The master of the katana is a very… stubborn man, and often his students fail to grasp his teachings due to his vague metaphors. He is also the master of the Miao Dao. If you'd like, we can go and ask him which one he prefers."

"That sounds good." Fate carefully put the two swords back on their racks and followed Dinan to this Miao Dao master. It seemed that most of his job as Savior was to just walk around.

During the trek, he noticed once more the brown hair and eyes of Princess Dinan. They reminded him of Symna, the girl he had saved from Gilliam and the Incarnation Freyda. Like Dinan, she had hair and eyes of matching color. She hadn't shown up at the designated meeting place, the northern gate of Tangronga, at the time Fate had said.

He hadn't heard from her since he left Frederick's house, but when The Flaming Crows paid him for killing Gregovich, Robna had mentioned that she had stayed with Frederick, learning the trade of medicine.

Princess Dinan caught him staring, and blushed slightly as she lifted the hem of her robes, quickening her pace.

They arrived at a garden many miles into the city that mixed the styles of Japan and China, a large pond in the center with an island in the middle, accessible by arcing wooden bridges. There were many trees, such as plum blossoms and cherry blossoms, along with more conventional trees and shrubbery.

Fate spotted a large pit of raked sand in one corner. The entire area was closed off by tall walls of white stone, with paintings of women, dragons, and battles in the styles of both feudal Japan and ancient China.

On the island in the center of it all was a square, open-walled pagoda held up by four pillars. The entire thing was made of a crimson, lacquered wood, with accents of black. The pagoda stretched to each end of the island in the center of the pond, leaving only a few feet between it and the water unoccupied.

The island was roughly sixty feet wide, the rest of the garden spanning for a mile in every direction. From the gate they entered in, he could vaguely see motion under the pagoda. As Fate followed Dinan to the pagoda, he got a better look at what was under it.

Under the pagoda were several young men and women, split into two groups. On the left were katana wielders, with wakizashi sheathed in scabbards in the small of their back, and on the right were wielders of the Miao Dao. They were evenly spaced out in rows and columns, with six feet between the two groups.

They moved through various stances, the man in the middle occasionally yelling out critiques or admonishments. As they grew closer, Fate noticed an odd detail about the man.

He was short, wearing a white and gray hanfu, and appeared to be in his sixties. He was distinctly Asian in appearance, although Fate couldn't place the exact region. He kept his hands clasped behind his back most of the time, clutching a wooden rod in his right hand. Whenever a student made a mistake, he would often march over to them and swat them on the arm, leg, back, or chest, depending on the mistake.

He had long white hair, some of it bundled into a topknot held together by a white cloth. He was the perfect image of a profound master of weapons of philosophy… or at least, each half of him was.

The strange thing about the man was his beard. It was a cascading mass of curling white hair that fell to his waist, complete with a Fu Manchu… on the left half of his face. The right side, for some reason, was without even a whisker, exposing his disapproving frown for all to see. His eyebrows followed suit, the left bushy and the right trimmed.

It seemed this was one of those 'eccentric' masters.