Spirit... A Subject [Akira, Mura]

Okay… apparently, he relied a lot on Reishi for his techniques. He did wonder at times if the wind scythes were manifested purely by Reishi-empowered muscle or not – apparently not fully. Okay, there was a problem – a problem he could begin solving…

Grabbing Akira’s hand, Mura helped himself back up on his feet and listened – Reishi… he dispersed it for his techniques, resulting in the wind scythes that dealt destruction to his targets. His problem – the channeling of Reishi itself. Task to solve said issue – focus on channeling Reishi by focusing on his blade, but don’t release it. “…” Glaring at his rusty sword, he second-guessed the idea, but Akira looked rich as all hell. He could fix a sword for him, most likely… right? He knew a swordsmith, right? He had a sword, himself…

Taking a sharp breath, veins bulged up under his skin, and his arm grew in strength. Reishi flew through his limb at high speed, and he felt naturally prompted to swing Harukami and release the Reishi as a wave, but… when he tried to remain, when he tried to keep the energy locked solely to the blade itself, his arm looked stressed. Veiny, muscles pulsating, sensitive to the Reishi flowing through one limb only. Mura was much more used to using Reishi to empower his entire body at once – what he was doing now was basically enclosing that area of effect to his arm alone, then the sword itself.

Most of his Reishi was still gathered in his arm and not the sword, but Mura asked: “Am I… doing it right? This is new to me – m-my legs feel a little sluggish, too…” Gathering Reishi to his right arm alone meant that the great power throughout his body – its physical prowess – was less and less affected by his Spiritual Prowess, the very effect that strengthened him due to his amount of Reishi. Like weakening leg muscles to empower arm muscles even further.

Oh, neat. Whatever he was doing, he was doing it right… he did feel that his arm was much lighter now. A lighter arm could swing faster… yeah! That could work. But… nah, thinking back to it, that wasn’t exactly what he was meant to achieve, was it?

Akira threw some more light into Mura’s mechanism – widening his eyes at the news that he was robbing some body parts of energy to enforce his arm, wondering why on earth he needed to do that. That sounded very detrimental in the long run… but Akira told him not to worry too much about it. He would, but he’d keep it to himself for now. There had to be a more efficient way.

Okay, yes! That! Into the blade, that was what he needed to do! He just… damn, he knew what Akira meant. His blade was an extension of himself, so if he just focused on that concept, then he should be able to channel his Reiryoku through it like he did with his arm. Just an extension of himself… c’mon, Mura, you’ve swung swords your entire life. The sword is you.

The sword is you…

…

Wind blades were so familiar with Harukami, responsible for most of its cut wounds. Now, wind blades slowly escaped its sharp edge, brought forth by a flux in Mura’s Reiryoku traveling up the rusty sword. Almost like rippling waves, instead of furiously launching at an enemy, the wind mellowed out in some way, resting along the metal blade like a sort of scabbard. Reishi was emitting from the entire blade in ripples, slowed by the poor condition but still channeled through nonetheless.

But the wind wasn’t sharp – it was just like a coat. It needed some more momentum to regain its cutting edge, like a sort of… chainsaw-like rotation, or something. Mura couldn’t tell, he was preoccupied with getting a hang of this experiment. As a new phenomenon, it demanded his focus.

That moment… where a gust is about to shift into a ferocious assault, a perfect moment of calm… before the storm. Mura did have a breathing technique that Kyūken taught him… but it was meant to supply him with stamina to prolong battles. What Akira might’ve meant was that he could gather energy, calmly… then find that perfect moment to unleash it in a violent assault.

Like the difference between a distance runner, who regulates their intake of oxygen and excess of energy, and a sprinter whose objective is to burn as much energy out as possible within a short timeframe. Could he… emulate that with his breathing? If he could visualize it well enough, maybe. It was, in the end, his power… but not the most well-defined method. His body would have to learn for itself.

Once Akira had used another one of his mystic arts to draw the dummy closer to him, Mura squinted at the target. He held his focus, let the Reishi pour into Harukami and run along its edge like a river. No… constrain it. It was running too slow, but constrain it.

His Reishi began tightening its form in the blade, almost as if choking on itself. As a result, its flow across the edge began speeding up like the activation of a chainsaw. Faster… faster… faster…

An… unpredictable outcome occurred. Before Mura ever got the chance to move Harukami, the spinning Reishi suddenly unleashed a powerful whip of razor-sharp wind that travelled like a burst in all directions, whipping the dummy with multiple slash wounds! The burst was like that of a popping balloon and even jolted Mura himself a bit to the side, but something clicked… it was like a bomb. No, it was like… nothing he’d ever perceived before.

Niten Muryū was a martial art – it required immediate movement to perform any sort of Kamaitachi. It couldn’t be performed without movement, so how on earth did this occur?! It couldn’t have been a result of his skill in the arts of the old swords, but… his spiritual prowess held more gifts than he initially thought.

“… One more time,” he asked Akira, “I just… discovered something new here. It’s not a martial art, but it’s almost… the same as Niten Muryū. I didn’t move at all there, but a wind scythe still exploded.”

Kyūken, on the other hand, was astonished, his face grimacing in confusion. It wasn’t his Niten Muryū, whatever he just did… sure, one could argue it was a better application of it, but Kyūken was nothing if not an arrogant, stuck-up relic of the past. “Tch… it barely cut through the dummy. Don’t get your hopes u-“

“I’m trying to focus, Kyūken.”

Mura cut it short with the mouthy ghost, who just scoffed and glared to the side while Mura had another question: “Akira… do you have more of these dummies? If possible, I’d like to be surrounded by them.”