Harem Training System: Every Girl I Train Makes Me Stronger!

Inside, the heat hit William first, radiating from a forge in the back where a massive figure worked a length of glowing metal with rhythmic, practiced strikes.

Grock turned out to be a dwarf in the most stereotypically satisfying sense, barrel-chested and thickly bearded, with forearms that suggested decades of manual labor and eyes that missed absolutely nothing despite the general impression of a man entirely absorbed in his craft.

"Ahhh~! Look who it is! "It’s Catherine Blackwood," Grock said without looking up from his work, his voice a low rumble. "Been a while since you darkened my door with that white hair."

"Hahh... same old desk work that keeps me busy; you get what I mean," Catherine said.

"Desk work," Grock repeated, finally setting down his hammer and turning to look at them properly, "is a crime against a sword arm like yours, but that’s a conversation for another day, gahahaha!"

Grock glanced at William. "Who’s this, then?"

"Instructor William Wade," Catherine said. "Headmaster Albert has authorized a weapon of merit for him."

"He can choose anything in the forge; price is not a concern."

Grock’s bushy eyebrows rose considerably at that. "A weapon of merit, eh?"

"Albert doesn’t hand those out to just anyone!" Grock laughed. "What’d you do, boy, save the whole academy single-handedly?"

"Yeah... something like that, maybe," William said. "Well, it’s a long story."

"Gee, I like long stories," Grock said, wiping his hands on a leather apron and gesturing broadly at the racks of weapons lining the walls. "Go on then, tell me what you’re after!"

"I’ve got standard issue, ceremonial, enchanted—the lot of them."

"Alright, let me see it myself..." William walked the length of the forge slowly, examining blade after blade, and found himself dissatisfied in ways he couldn’t quite articulate at first.

Everything felt limited, single-purpose, like a sword that was only ever going to be a sword and nothing else.

"Hmm... Can I ask for something specific?" he said finally.

"You can ask for anything you want, boy," Grock said. "Whether I can make it is a different question, of course."

"Not that big of a deal for a dwarf like me because... I want something flexible," William said, turning the idea over as he spoke, drawing on decades of training people to fight with everything from bayonets to bare hands. "Something that can be one-handed for speed but also usable two-handed if I need more force behind a strike."

"I also want a blade long enough that I could theoretically use both ends if the situation demanded it, and I want the option to go bigger, something closer to a greatsword, if the fight calls for it."

"I-Instructor Wade... that’s actually asking for too much." Catherine stared at him. "And that’s not a sword!"

"That’s just four different swords."

"I mean... ideally, yeah," William said. "I don’t see why it has to be four different swords, though."

"Why not one weapon that does all of it?" William crossed his arms. "Too keeping it simple so that the enemy can’t predict it at all."

Grock had gone very quiet during this explanation, and when William finally looked over at him, the dwarf’s face had split into a wide, delighted grin, the kind of expression a craftsman gets when someone finally asks for the thing he’s been waiting years to build for.

"Hah! Gahahahahaha!" Grock’s laugh boomed through the forge. "Finally!"

"Do you know how long I’ve had customers walk through that door asking for a sharp stick that doesn’t break?! Years, boy!"

"Years of ceremonial garbage and status pieces that never see real combat!" Grock starts banging on the wall. "You want function, I see... and you also want a weapon that adapts to the fight instead of forcing the fight to adapt to it."

"Hohhh! You get it, Grock!" William smiled widely. "So you can actually make something like that!?"

"Can I?!" Grock repeated, already moving toward a locked case at the back of the forge, practically vibrating with enthusiasm. "Boy, I’ve had exactly one piece in this shop that does what you’re describing, and I’ve never had a customer with the balls of steel or the skill to actually use it properly other than messing shit up!"

"Wait here! Let me get that sexy little bitch!"

...

Grock unlocked the case with a key that hung from a chain around his neck, and inside, resting on a bed of dark velvet, sat a weapon unlike anything William had seen since arriving in this world.

The blade itself was long and elegant, but the hilt and guard were a mess of interlocking mechanisms, gears, and hidden seams that gave the whole thing a quality closer to engineering than swordsmithing.

"Whoa!" William was impressed seeing the craftsmanship.

"This," Grock said, lifting it out with the reverence of a man handling something sacred, "is Aetherion!"

"Took me the better part of four years to build, on and off, whenever I had a spare afternoon and a stubborn streak that wouldn’t let it go."

"It’s a mana-responsive weapon, adjusting to five distinct configurations depending on the will and the flow of whoever’s holding it."

"Maybe you’re the chosen one, boy! To raise this sword like a legend in the future!"

"That’s excessive, but I won’t deny that!" William laughed.

He held it out, and William took it carefully, immediately struck by how the weight settled into his grip like it had been waiting specifically for his hand.

"So... this is the only piece like it that exists?" William asked.

"The only one that’s finished, anyway," Grock said. "Not every warrior wants this."

"Most people, they want one thing and they want it perfect." Grock said while showing his whole collection of different swords in his back. "A blade that does everything usually ends up doing nothing particularly well, if the wielder isn’t skilled enough to adapt."

"This weapon punishes mediocrity, but the good thing is that... it rewards mastery!"

"What are the modes?" William asked, turning the blade over in his hands, feeling faint threads of something like awareness humming beneath the metal.

"Single wield is your baseline," Grock said, holding up one thick finger. "Standard longsword, nothing fancy, good balance."

"Feed it a bit more mana and intention, and you get dual wield; the blade splits down a hidden seam, and you’re left holding two shorter blades instead of one, which is good for speed and dual strikes."

"Push further and you get a double-edged wield; an additional blade emerges from beneath the pommel, and the grip extends, giving you a proper double-ended weapon if you’ve got the reach and the training to use both sides without cutting your own leg off."

He held up a fourth finger. "Then there’s the greatsword wield; everything about it scales up, blade, guard, grip, all of it, good for pure devastating force if raw power’s what the moment calls for."

"And the fifth?" William asked, already suspecting from Catherine’s earlier confusion that this was the strange one.

Grock’s grin turned positively wicked. "Arcane wield. Watch."

He took the sword back briefly, closed his eyes, and channeled a visible pulse of mana through the blade. The metal responded instantly, aura crackling along its length before folding and reshaping itself with an almost liquid quality, the blade retracting into the hilt while an entirely different structure extruded from the same housing, something long-barreled and unmistakably mechanical in silhouette.

"Holy shit!" William stared. "Is that a FUCKING GUN?! IN THIS WORLD?!"

"Arcane cannon," Grock corrected, sounding faintly offended by the comparison but not actually disagreeing with the premise. "Fires condensed mana in place of physical ammunition."

"Feed it enough magic, and it’ll put a hole through a castle wall, and if you feed it a little, then you get something more like a precision strike, good for picking off a single target at range."

"Even though it’s cool as fuck, but still... why does this world have guns?" William said, mostly to himself, staring at the arcane cannon with a mixture of confusion and reluctant appreciation. "But never mind, it makes sense; the ammunition is literally magic. Of course this world found a way to weaponize that too."

"You catch on quick," Grock said approvingly, shifting the weapon back into blade form and offering it to William again. "So... You want it?"

"What kind of question is that?!" William took the sword, feeling the weight settle into his palm with the same eerie rightness as before. "Fuck yeah. I want it! Take the headmaster’s whole money!"

"Good," Grock said, already turning to grab a scabbard from a nearby rack. "Because I’ve been dying to see someone actually put this thing through its paces instead of letting it collect dust in a display case for another decade."

William glanced at Catherine, who was watching the entire exchange with an expression somewhere between wonder and mild concern. "Is there somewhere I can actually test all five modes properly?"

"Somewhere with things I’m allowed to hit...? Or maybe..." William’s eyes locked in. "...K-I-L-L!"

Catherina was caught by surprise with his look, so she gulped. "Uhm..."

"T-there’s a dungeon about an hour outside the city," Catherine said slowly, clearly already anticipating where this was headed. "Low-tier monsters, well within safety regulations for supervised testing."

"Instructors use it for practical evaluations sometimes."

"Perfect," William said, sheathing Aetherion at his hip, feeling something settle into place that had been missing since he woke up in this borrowed, unfamiliar body. "Let’s go KILL some asses."

Grock laughed so hard he nearly knocked over a rack of daggers.