Once upon a time, there was a woman who lived in a distant country, almost unreachable by mortals. She was a legendarily difficult teacher, who burned through students at a ridiculous rate. It was said that being taken as one of her disciples was the same as a death sentence.
One day, a kid came asking to be taught by her--the father of the girl he loved demanded that kid get the woman's training before marrying his daughter. Since he never once turned down a challenge, the kid went straight to the woman's country and was accepted as a student.
It turned out he was one of the most skilled of those she had ever seen; every challenge she gave was something he accomplished no matter how difficult. So at the end of his training, she passed down to him her most valuable and powerful weapon.
But ultimately...he couldn't do the one thing she really desired most of all. It turned out the woman's country was separating from the world itself; as a human that came too close to the power of a god, the woman's divine punishment was for her to linger in the shadows between the living world and the world of the dead. In the end...she wanted that student to kill her before she was exiled to that.
He wished that he could have done what she wanted, and cursed his own weakness in failing to go through with it. But there was really nothing to be done about it; once he left her country, there was no way to find his way back.
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Once upon a time, there was a woman who lived in a distant country, almost unreachable by mortals. She was a legendarily difficult teacher, who burned through students at a ridiculous rate. It was said that being taken as one of her disciples was the same as a death sentence.
One day, a kid came asking to be taught by her--the father of the girl he loved demanded that kid get the woman's training before marrying his daughter. Since he never once turned down a challenge, the kid went straight to the woman's country and was accepted as a student.
It turned out he was one of the most skilled of those she had ever seen; every challenge she gave was something he accomplished no matter how difficult. So at the end of his training, she passed down to him her most valuable and powerful weapon.
But ultimately...he couldn't do the one thing she really desired most of all. It turned out the woman's country was separating from the world itself; as a human that came too close to the power of a god, the woman's divine punishment was for her to linger in the shadows between the living world and the world of the dead. In the end...she wanted that student to kill her before she was exiled to that.
He wished that he could have done what she wanted, and cursed his own weakness in failing to go through with it. But there was really nothing to be done about it; once he left her country, there was no way to find his way back.