Blueberries

"You've gotten better." My father complimented as he side-stepped my sword swing.

"Of course!" I replied cockily, trying to show off false confidence. I parried one of his half-hearted swings toward my face which I received as his counterattack for setting out of line in the spar.

I jumped back a bit to gain some distance as my father began to slightly intensify his barrage of swings. Even though his swings weren't serious in the least, the weight difference between an eight-year-old child and a thirty-something-year-old wall of muscle was enough to make it challenging to deflect.

We may only be using wooden swords, but it would still hurt like a bitch to get struct in the face. After landing, I swapped stances to one that allowed me more control over my defenses, however, I was caught off-guard when my father suddenly disappeared in front of me and reappeared next to my left side, already swinging his blade. Relying purely on instinct I twirled my sword to my left side in an attempt to block. While I was successful, the strength behind his attack had led me to be blown off my feet and fly for a meter or so until landed hard on the ground below, my wooden sword shattering under the stress.

I gave a deep grunt and slowly started to get up, only to see my father's hand in front of my face.

"Alright, it seems you've gotten good enough of a foundation for me to start teaching you some Arts." My father said as he helped me up.

"Really!?! Yes!!!" I yelled with excitement.

Arts, also sometimes called Martial Arts, were techniques that used the user's own Fighting Spirit (Ki/Aura) to amplify the user's physical abilities. They could also be used in conjunction with magic abilities to create certain techniques that allow the user to bypass the defensive barriers of other beings. In the future, I planned on using Magic Arts a lot to replicate some rather impressive moves from fiction such as Artoria's Mana Burst, so I had to impress my father with my progress as much as possible as early as possible if I wanted to get started soon.

"Yeah. I'll have some time off tomorrow before my shift so we'll start training from morning till noon on how to teach you." He said as he patted my back and we walked inside the house.

"Oh. Welcome back you two. How was his training darling?" My mother asked.

She was sitting in the living space knitting a scarf for my upcoming birthday while speaking a bit to Nolla, who had stayed over for some reason. Nolla was drinking some tea and reading one of her books while waiting for me to get my but kicked.

"Looking good Alaster," Nola smirked, seeing my raggedy appearance from the countless times I was sent flying since my father's sparing began.

"Why are you still here pervert sens-" I began but was cut off when my father smacked the back of my head for being rude.

"Sorry about his mouth. I'll make sure to properly punish him later." My father said with a polite bow.

Nolla waved her hand and chuckled it off. "Don't worry about it too much. His cheekiness is why I'm interested in him enough to train him in magic."

"Yeah and I'm sure there's no other reason," I say sarcastically to myself but everyone else ignores me.

"My son is right though. Miss Nolla, I have to ask, was there something you needed to talk with me about?" My father asked while he sat down next to my mother.

"I do but..." Nolla started before looking at me.

"Alaster, honey. Since it seems miss Nolla is going to be staying for dinner, can you go retrieve Evelyn?" My mother, picking up on the mood, asked me.

"Yeah, yeah. I can take a hint. I'll be back soon." I said, running out of the house before my father could respond by scolding me for my passive-aggressive attitude towards my mother.

I was curious about what they wanted to talk about and I wanted to know badly but its not like they would tell me even if I requested to stay. I also knew that Nolla had [Magic Sense] so she could tell if I was eavesdropping or not.

I ran down the road once more towards the town square where Evelyn liked to hang out. She was cute so she liked going into town during this time of day and allowing the villagers to spoil her rotten. Just last week she was given a full-on apple pie by the innkeeper who said she made one too many. That old hag hasn't ever given me anything for me for free before but Evelyn got stuff all the time.

I shook my head as I neared the well at the center of the village. "Al! Over here!" I heard from behind me.

I turned to see Evelyn running towards me while carrying a small box. I waved her over and met her half-way. "Evelyn, what's up?" I asked curious and staring at the box.

Evelyn gave me a smug smirk. "Do you wanna know? You know what to do." She said with a bit of sass and showed me her cheek, implying she wanted a kiss.

"I do, do I?" I said seriously before jumping and tackling her to the ground. I then began assaulting her by tickling her sides causing her to burst out into laughter.

"Hehehe hahaha! Stop it! hahaha!" She said as she squirmed under my assault. Eventually, she dropped the box and I swiftly recovered it.

"Hey!"

"Now what's inside?" I wondered aloud dramatically as I opened the lid.

"Blueberries!" I said a bit aloud.

Evelyn slowly got up off the ground and dusted herself off. "Nolla and I found them in the forest on our way back. I felt bad that we left you alone, so I picked some for you. I know you like them" She said.

"Ah! Evelyn your my little angel, I love ya!" I said as I gave her a big hug.

"Eh-EHHHH!?!" Evelyn yelled as she stiffened up and her face flushed red. I held her for a few seconds before letting go and using a bit of household water magic to wash and chill the blueberries until they were firm and semi-solid. I popped one into my mouth and moaned a bit at how good it was.

"This is so good!" I said aloud. I could hear a few of the villagers chuckling at our interaction, though Evelyn.exe was still in the process of rebooting and was a muttering mess right now, muttering something along the lines of 'He loves me?' or 'I'm so happy I could die' but I chose to ignore her as I approached her and popped a chilled blueberry into her mouth.

It seems this knocked her out of her daze and she looked up at me with a red face and wet, shimmering eyes. "Good right!" I said.

Evelyn smiled brightly and nodded chewing the blueberry thoroughly.

I had forgotten about the earlier convo between my dad and Nolla and Evelyn and I began to wander around the village for the next few minutes, talking about anything and everything while we ate the cool treat. I even stopped by the old Granpa's house which lived on the outskirts of the village and gave him a handful for him and his wife.

he was a cool dude. Supposedly he used to be a knight for the kingdom and was the person who trained by my father when he was younger but now he is old and retired so he mostly spent his days telling stories to the toddlers of the town. He was actually the one who told me all about the Divine Ancestor Twilight Valentine and the magic used in the Super Magic Empire, about how Veldanava spawned the world out of nothingness, etc. He was important to me because this was the guy that made me realize that I was in the Tensura world in the first place.

After we had eaten nearly half of the box we finally managed to make it to my house just before sunset. I could hear Nolla, my father, and my mother all laughing merrily from outside.

"It seems Aut Ima and Uncle Avil are doing good," Evelyn said as she walked by my side into the house.

"Yup," I replied as my mother came to the front door to greet us.

"How was your walk, Alaster, Evelyn?" She asked gently.

"It was good! We went around the village and ate blueberries! We even gave some to Grandpa Saba and Grandma Vita!" Evelyn explained happily.

"O-hoh? You seem pretty excited. Did something good happen?" Nolla walked into my room followed by my father. Nolla had a pretty teasing smile on her face.

"Alaster said he loves me!" Evelyn replied while I buried my head in my hands to cover up my embarrassment.

"Oh my!" My mother said, placing her cheek in her hand while Nolla whistled and my dad laughed heartily.

"Come on. It's dinner time isn't it." I said as I grabbed Evelyn's hand and walked past all of them towards the table.

I made sure to give my mother what was left of the box of blueberries as we walked by her. She lifted the lid and smiled before putting one in her mouth and turning to my father.

"Fight you for it, darling~" She said showing it off in her mouth. This caused him to instantly seize up and go red in the face from the sudden, slightly erotic attack from my mother. He didn't say anything but marched over to her and kissed her deeply.

"Awawawawa!" Evelyn covered her face with her fingers but had them spread so that her eyes could see the scene.

Nolla looked at the scene a bit surprised before she looked towards me. I had a bad feeling about what she was about to do and I was right, as she swiped one of the blueberries from her box my mother had placed on the counter next to her when beginning her makeout session. Nolla put it in her mouth and showed it off, sitting on her pink, wet tongue.

"Come and get your reward, Alaster~" She said in her seductive voice along with a wink.

I looked on at the whole situation with half-closed eyes.

"Really?"