Sword Progenitor

Ken opened his eyes, and he was faced with a stormy sky. Lightning could be seen flashing inside the layers of gray clouds, and thunder rumbled from afar every few seconds from all directions.

He laid in a plain full of lush, green grass. Powerful gales from the storms above made the grass sway according to its rhythm, but otherwise, it seemed that the sky and the ground were completely detached from one another. There was no rain. Only storm, and the lush green grass and dry ground didn reflect the nature of a natural disaster on that scale. He found it fascinating.

What he found more fascinating, though, was the fact that he had been transported to this sprawling plain of pure grass while he was taking a shit. He magically stopped needing to poop, and his pants had also been pulled back up for him. He touched his butt, hoping that he didn accidentally poop in his pants. When he confirmed that wasn the case, he sighed in relief.

What is this place, anyway? he thought, standing up and looking around.

He tried gripping his hands, but noticed that there was something in his right hand. It was a jian. A jian was a Chinese sword. Its guard was small, and the hilt was the same width as the base of the blade. Its small, round pommel had a small red trinket tied to it.

Waving his sword, he thought, It looks kind off.

He couldn describe it. There were slight distortions around the sword, but the movement in space was so miniscule that he could barely see it.

After fully understanding that he had been transported to another world, he began wondering, Do I have powers? Even if he did, he wasn sure how he would activate them, so he began testing, Powers, activate!

Nothing happened. Of course, he was expecting that.

He stayed calm, and tried various ways to activate his powers, yet it seemed that he had none, so all he could do was take a seat on the rolling plain and think, What am I even supposed to do here? Am I supposed to find a way out, or something else? There was definitely a reason he was sent here, at least he thought so as he looked around for anything.

Soon, he decided that he couldn remain idle. If he wanted to survive, he had to find sources of life, and that included trees and animals. He could always eat the grass, but he would still prefer meat over unwashed plants pulled from the ground. Obviously.

The day passed by as he trekked. The lightning never ceased to flash, and the thunder never ceased to rumble. Ken started to wonder how long that annoying storm would take to pass.

Plains. That was all there was, plains. He grew steadily more tired as he walked across the infinitely stretching grass plain, but the lack of sunlight helped him to conserve the amount of liquids in his body by not making him sweat it all out.

Still, he lips grew parched as his trek continued for the sixth hour. He had never felt so tired before. Even his hikes up the mountains with his friends and family hadn been so tiring. HIs legs were aching, and his feet probably had blisters on them. Yet, he continued to walk, determined to find some kind of life source.

Suddenly, he heard something. Except for the occasional rumble of thunder and the sound of his steps and complaints, the entire plain was completely silent, so it was easy for his sensitive ears to pick up on any sound.

He searched around with his eyes, but couldn see anything. The sound was the rustling of grass, so he looked downward.

A little figure was running through the grass, leaving a trail of disturbed grass behind it. He darted toward the creature and tried his best to catch up with it, but it stopped and turned toward him, giving Ken a good look at the being he was chasing.

It was a rat. A small, little rat. Its teeth were poking out from inside its mouth, and Ken retched when he smelled it.

Sewage, he thought, stepping back. It eyes seemed to be glimmering slightly, which made Ken doubt his own vision. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. Its eyes really were glowing! A blood red, at that.

He then looked down at its paws. They were small and tiny claws protruded from their tips. Those rats were built for combat.

Ken leaped backward, holding his jian out as he gulped. It was his first fight, and he was quite tired. I hope this won be too hard, he thought. Fantasy monsters were often stronger than ordinary people. The only reason why one would be able to survive was because of the special armor or skills they got to fight those monsters, or they were just built different.

As of now, he has neither. His sword was blunt, and he had no superpower to decimate his enemies.

All he could do was hope for the best.

The nasty, sewage-covered rat launched itself toward him, dashing at speeds that Ken could barely see. He held the jian up, and slashed toward the rat in mid-air.

Once he felt the slightest amount of contact, he swung downward with all his might, not giving the rat any time to even cling onto and climb up the jians blade. The rat squealed as it was thrown into the ground, but regained its footing soon after.

It attacked again, but this time, it raised its paws and slashed forward, making Ken flinch. Its yellow claw lodged into the wooden jian. Then, it climbed up his sword.

Ken struggled to stop himself from dropping the jian, but he kept his hands relatively steady and turned the jian so that the tip would be facing the ground.

He plunged it into the ground as the rat reached the tip of the sword, and impaled it in one fell swoop.

It didn matter of the jian wasn as sharp as he wouldve liked. If he used enough force, its small body would still break from being crushed into the ground. Ken sighed in relief, ”Its an ordinary rat. Thank god it can eat nukes. ”

Pulling the wooden jian out of the bloody corpse, Ken noticed something odd. The blood that soaked the wooden weapon dried off at a speed visible to the human eye, but he couldn see any steam rising from the wood, nor was there blood pooling below it. The blood just seemed to disappear.

Suddenly, a deep red permeated from where the guard, the blade and the hilt met. It ran through the wooden jian, staining the entire weapon with an almost imperceptible tinge of red.

Kens eyes widened as he inspected the jian. It had absorbed the small amount of blood that had soaked into its structure. When he looked closely, he could see that the jian had become slightly sharper rather than being entirely blunt.

So, my sword absorbs blood and uses it to become stronger. Does it absorb other substances as well? He stepped on the corpse of the broken rats body, and blood oozed out of its mouth to form a large, red pool beneath it.

He kicked the corpse away. It was useless to him for now, since he had nothing to cook it with. He would use his jian to impale it later when it finished absorbing the rats blood.

He dipped the tip of the sword into the blood, and the pool began shrinking. The blood soaked the tip and eventually ran through the sword, dispersing through the sword and slowly giving the jian a shade of cherry red. It was nowhere close to that color, but it was getting there.

After the pool of blood was depleted, Ken picked up his jian, nodding in satisfaction, It has gotten a bit sharper as well. The jian was far from being able to cut something, but he assumed that after absorbing more blood, it would be sharp enough to do so.

Then, Ken looked at the corpse of the sewer rat he had slain a few minutes ago. It had begun stinking even more than it previously had. The decaying process had already started.

A giant lightning bolt flashed down from the sky, blinding him for a few seconds. When he regained his vision, he looked around and at the stormy sky. The incessant lighting had stopped, and silence reigned for a few moments before a deafening boom echoes across the grassy plains. It was louder than every rumble of thunder he had heard since he had been transported into this unending world.

”Holy shit! ” he screamed out loud as he covered his ears and kept his eyes open. Even with his ears plugged, he felt like his ears were about to explode.

The thunder persisted for four seconds and ended after that.

Ken could only wait as the winds blew wildly whipped up blades of grass. Is it done yet? he thought, glaring at the sky as if daring it to strike down with its lightning and thunder again.

Nothing.

Good, he thought, picking up the dropped jian, and began walking.

Before he could even take two steps, though, rustling could be heard from all around him.

In front of him, hundreds of paths of disrupted grass oved toward him from every direction. Creating these paths were the very same rats that he had fought just a couple of minutes ago, which made Kens jaw drop.

Im supposed to fight that? Why aren they eating each other? Im a much worse source of a meal than their own kind! he was surrounded, and there was nowhere to go. All he could do was fight, but it was hard to steel his determination with such a giant force coming at him all at once. He could run, but at what cost? He had seen the distances those vermin could leap, and he no doubts that they would be able to catch up with him.

So, he chose the only, but stupidest option. Charge.

He jumped into the fray, bringing his jian down on the first rat that had jumped at him. The rat squealed as it was smashed into the ground with all of Kens strength and body weight. Its spine was snapped, and it died instantly.

They aren as hard to kill as I thought. The challenge here are their numbers. Realizing that he would be able to survive as long as he killed enough rats in a set amount of time, Kens will to survive skyrocketed. As long as he used his full power to crush these vermin, they would be one-shot. A burst of energy made him jump forward and horizontally whack the next rat like how he would hit a ball in baseball.

Its corpse flew a few meters and landed on the ground, dead.

He swung his jian again, but missed. No matter, he thought, This will be good target practise. Ive never used any kind of sword in my life.