Sword Progenitor

A quarter hour had passed since Ken had begun fighting the rats, but they seemed to have no end. They came in orderly waves that weren overwhelming, but he could feel his fatigue catching up.

Nevertheless, his bladework had become better. He no longer missed every few attacks, but the pressure his arms had to bear with every full powered attack was increasing. Now, not only did his legs feel like falling off, so did his arms.

Even as he tired out, Ken moved without stop, swinging his blade like he was dancing, and allowing the momentum he had amassed to partially carry the flow of battle.

Any turbulence the blade of his jian met was overcome by improvisation, and he slowly grew more adept with his blade as he twisted and turned in a continuous manner, fighting a never-ending battle on an infinite plain.

Corpses littered the ground as blood began to pool up in the area where the battle was taking place, but Ken didn have a second of respite, and the stress and exhaustion eventually got to him. As he was about to swing downward on a rat that had leaped at him, his muscles spasmed, and the slashs trajectory went off track, missing the sewer rat by an entire inch.

At that sudden failure to kill the rat, everything had collapsed. He had to stop to gasp for air, and his momentum had left him, leaving him near exhaustion and almost powerless.

He gripped his sword tightly, creating overly large arcs in the air as he swung the jian with all his might, trying to regain the momentum he had lost. Slowly, though, he felt him and the army of rats numbers difference. It was overwhelming. Too much for a mere mortal like him.

Yet, he had to push on, for the sake of survival and avoiding the imminent pain of eaten alive. He grunted, leaping forward and doing his best to meet each dangerous attack with a sufficiently powerful counterattack, but it was in vain, as the vermin got to him and slashed at his forearms, creating small, but deep gashes where blood flew out of.

He bit his lips as grunts came from his mouth. Screaming would distract him. He couldn let screaming distract him.

As he continued forward, his momentum increased and he felt more confident as he carried each swing with the same amount of strength as the last, but it still dealt marginally more damage. Each swing packed more of a punch than the last, and that force stacked up.

Soon, each swing managed to knock the rats away even without him using his full strength, and that was exactly what he needed. The rats had stopped appearing from the horizon, so all he needed to do now was fight until the monsters suffered enough damage and died.

An hour passed that way, and Kens endurance was meeting its absolute limit. He had killed hundreds of those sewer rats, but there were still another few hundred.

Every second that passed was another chance for his will to falter and allow him to faint, but he persevered, keeping his eyes open despite being dizzy enough to fall over at any moment.

As he swung, he thought, There has to be a way… There has to. I have to make it smoother, like water! Fluid! Flow. At that moment, his entire existence realized. It had a chance. He kept running, but instead of taking short, shallow breaths, his breaths were long and deep. He grew calmer as his eyes darted around, creating the optimal path for his blade to go on to inflict the most damages with the least movements.

He imagined his jian to a wave, and the path of blood it left was the river left in the waves wake.

As he moved, the imaginary wave would grow stronger, and it would wash away all the obstacles in its path. He couldn care anymore. All he had to do was charge and slash. He didn pull his arms backward to further increase the force exerted during an attack, he only plowed his way through his enemies, constantly knocking them away with his slashes.

Slowly, spurts of water flew from the edge of the blade that was hitting the rats. He ignored the magical spectacle, and continued to slash, ”washing ” anything away with his blade. He kept the monsters in view, and slashed once every second in wide, powerful and horizontal or diagonal arcs, knocking them forward, just out of slashing range before he caught up with the rats midair and hit them forward again.

Kens momentum increased by the second, and the spurts of water began occurring more often as he bashed the rats to death.

A minute later, and he reached the edge of the small army of sewer rats, and a small trail of water followed his jians blade. Ken inwardly nodded as he swiftly turned around, waving his blade in an entertained manner despite his immense fatigue, I guess I do have superpowers.

He dashed toward the rats and swung his blade, smacking them sideways and forward. As his momentum increased, he felt able to lean further forward and leap forward. He had reached the point where, thanks to his momentum, each of his slashes had reached a superhuman level, able to crush or at the least inflict severe damage to the sewer rats.

The second hour of his battle against the rat tide passed, and he had basically reverted to a mode where his body moved automatically as his consciousness rested, but the water trailing behind his jian had turned into a dangerously sharp wave that lingered for a few seconds before dropping to the ground. It looked like Ken was performing a terrible, unrefined ribbon dance.

A half hour later, and the sharp waves crashed back onto the jian and stopped appearing on the blades edge. The rats had all been slain in a grueling battle, and Kens body had been riddled with hundreds of bleeding flesh wounds.

He passed out from blood loss and exhaustion as the drawbacks of his battle state hit him. His sword dropped out of his hand, beginning its absorption process as soon as it came into contact with the rats corpses blood.

The lighting flashed;

The thunder rolled;

The first wave had been overcome;

Water, was the first thing that came to his mind. His previously white shirt was drenched and soaked with rats blood, and so was the ground where the battle had happened. It seemed that the wooden jian couldn completely absorb all the blood that had been spilt.

The ground was littered with the rotting corpses of the rats, which made him retch to no end. Even his empty stomach felt like it was about to vomit everything out of it.

He looked at the sky, and saw that bolts of lightning had started running among the clouds again.

Ken recalled his battle against the sewer rats and thought, Water. I have superpowers. I can make water! He raised his arm and tried to will water into existence, but he found it impossible, But how?

He turned toward the jian near his hand, and saw that its color had completely changed. It was cherry red. A grin appeared on his face as he looked at the jian. He tried to stand up, but his muscles denied him any access. He felt an immense pain coursing through him every time he tried to move a major tendon or muscle.

How long has it even been since I fought those shits, anyway? he wondered. There was no way for him to measure the time in this odd plain.

Even though his body was aching like never before, he willed himself to crawl toward the jian. So, inch by inch, he neared it, but he didn need to be too close. All he wanted to confirm was that the jian had gotten sharper, which it had. In fact, it was able to inflict cuts now, which made Ken rejoice.

After that, Ken felt that his lips were parched like never before. He desperately needed water, but he didn know how to create it, or take it from the environment.

So, he began thinking back to his battle, right when he began imagining his jian to be a wave of water. He was calm and collected as he summoned the waves.

Calm and collected, huh? So I need to be calm in order to summon the water. In such an environment, he had tensed up the moment he came to, and that tension never ceased as he was weary of his surroundings every second.

Ken took deep breaths, inhaling through his nose with his diaphragm, and exhaling through his mouth. He felt his muscles loosen up as his mind became less laser-focused on surviving despite there being no threat at the moment. He raised his hand up and imagined a small ball of water forming in his palms.

Instead of the rushing waves like when he was fighting, his placid state allowed him to form peaceful thoughts.

When he breathed out, a small orb of water had appeared in his palm, levitating above his hand as it rippled from the passing winds and gales.

A small smile appeared on his face, Ive done it. My way to survive. During battle, he was able to create a sharp wave trailing behind his jian by making water form right below the edge of the blade.

All he needed to be was calm, and organize his thoughts and will to create water, and he could perform the same technique again.

He enlarged the ball of water with a bit of difficulty and discovered that the larger the body he was trying to manipulate, the more concentration it would take for him to affect its entire structure. It wasn hard to add more water to the ball, but it was not easy for him to control it.

With a bit of testing, he managed to shift the ball of water into multiple forms. It was fairly easy to do, since it was in waters nature to shift forms easily, whether it be from one state of matter to the other, or from one shape to the other, he only needed a thought for the water to change shape.

Then, he shifted the water back into a ball, and thought, Become a stream as you fly. It wasn exactly a coherent thought, but that was all the water needed. It was given an order by its creator, and it wouldn hesitate to obey it.

Ken lobbed the water ball into the air, and a trail of water was left behind its trajectory. The ball became smaller as the stream lengthened until the water in the orb ran out.

Left behind was a stationary stream of water that fell to the ground once its job was completed.

He felt satisfied with his tests, and concluded that to generate water, he needed to be calm. The larger the body of water, the harder it would be to control; and he could also give the water orders that it would carry out.

The latter was different from directly controlling the water, because he wouldn be able to change the trajectory of – per say – a water bullet if he didn interfere with its flight.

But, he felt that he would be able to merge the two processes in the future once his proficiency with hydrokinesis increased. If that was the case, then he would be able to use his will to indirectly give the water orders, while still being able to change them whenever he wanted without a millisecond of delay. He wasn sure how long it would take him to reach that level, but that didn stop him from speculating.

Now, he stood up and grasped his jian, and found that his body had already tensed up. He took a few deep breaths to regain his coolness, and said aloud, ”Time to do some training. ”