chapter 8

Another month had passed since I had mastered kami-e, a month which I had the first half of training my shigan technique again after I noticed that learning the technique has become much more manageable after mastering kami-e, which made a lot of sense since shigan was the hardening of the fingers muscles to point where they would be hard enough to penetrate a rock, and all it required nothing but physical strength which I already had and also a fine control over your muscles which I had gained through training my kami-e.

It only took me a week to reach the point where I could do it on command with all the fingers of my hands and another week of constant fighting for my life to integrate it into my fighting style fully.

I'll never forget the look on Wilson's face after I had gotten drunk and smashed a rock by only japing it with my index finger. I, of course, didn't use shigan on Wilson during our daily sparring sessions as it was too dangerous and could cause serious injuries.

I then trained the iron body(tekkai) technique since it was the next most logical option. It had the exact requirements as shigan, with the only difference being is applying your muscle control all over your body instead of just the fingers.

Even though I had a foundation to start working from towards learning the iron body technique, it wasn't all smooth sailing, as it was much more complicated than the finger gun technique to learn.

But I was slowly making progress as I could barely harden my body for only a second by the end of the month.

And as another three weeks passed, I could finally keep my body hardened for a full minute. And so I stopped training it for now as it wasn't a problem of my understanding of the technique; instead, my body was lacking, as my muscles weren't durable enough to take the iron body technique to the next level.

I then, of course, spent another week of endless fighting to absorb the technique and add to my fighting style again.

My next step, of course, was trying to figure out the three remaining techniques. Tempest kick(rankyaku), shave(soru), and moonwalk(geppo) were all coincidentally leg-based powers. And so, after another week of me running in circles around myself and not making any progress, I stopped and focused on my sword training to use that as a base to learn rankyaku and then hopefully both geppo and soru.

I spent another week swinging my sword and trying to come up with all kinds of ways and shortcuts to improve as a swordsman, like doing sword meditations, trying to pass my sword through leaves without cutting them as Zoro did during the alabaster arc during his fight against Daz bones also known as mister one, and even heading deeper into the island and fighting all kinds of strong creatures using my sword which also didn't bear any fruit.

And so as I was drinking my frustrations away and trying to come up with another way to take my swordsmanship to the next level, I suddenly recalled a specific scene in the dressrosa arc when that Orlumbus guy threw Zoro into the air, Zoro then chanted something before he used one of his named attacks to cut Pica in half while he was in his giant statue form.

I've always been wondering what's all this chanting thing that Zoro does before unleashing a big attack is all about 'maybe it somehow acts like naming attacks before unleashing them to increase their power by helping the person channel more concentration on and thus more power their attacks?'

Even though I don't remember the exact chant, coming up with a chant of my own may be the key to improving my swordsmanship. So I decided that working on that, even if it was a longshot, was a better course of action than drinking and doing nothing for now.

And so, after washing my head to sober up and drinking some refreshing bottle of gourd juice, I sat in a meditative position while trying to think of a chant that had deep meaning and was related to swordsmanship instead of being just some nonsensical gibberish.

And after many hours of meditating on my swordsman training and my personal experience with the sword, I could finally come up with something that sounded like an actual religious chant and not something that an eighth-grader with Chynibyou syndrome would shout at school during lunch.

So I grabbed my sword, satori, and walked to the forest until I reached a vast and thick ancient-looking tree I had discovered some time ago, it seemed to be at least 30 meters long and had a diameter of 5 meters. Although it was enormous, it didn't have any fruits or leaves meaning that it was already approaching the end of its lifespan.

Standing two or three meters away from the ancient decaying tree, I held the sheathed satori by the body of its sheath in my right hand while holding its hilt in my left prosthetic one in a textbook stance of Iai or quick draw in English.

And while maintaining the same stance, I slowly approached the tree as I chanted.

"sudden enlightenment is the beginning and rooting of all heavenly wisdom," I chanted loudly and felt my mind becoming clearer, throwing all useless thoughts to the side.

"and so with the root of wisdom as my sword" my mind, which had been previously emptied of all thoughts, was now filled with sword intent, becoming something akin to the blade of a sword.

"There is nothing I can not cut..." I chanted again as I felt connected to satori in ways that I didn't even know were possible.

"satori no kakyoko (song of sudden enlightenment)" I did not chant this time, but I screamed at the top of my lungs as I drew satori and swung it in the tree's direction. There was a white flash of light and then nothing. (author's note: a bit of wordplay at the start of the chant, as the name of satori, which is johnny sword, literally means sudden enlightenment when translated to English)

'another failure..?' I thought sourly as I brought satori's blade to its sheath and slowly buried the sword into its sheath. However, as the metallic clang signaling the sheathing of a blade sounded, I heard another sound, the sound of groaning that wood makes when it's put under more pressure than it can handle, to be more precise.

I raised my head to look at the tree and was gobsmacked and at a loss for words at the scene before my eyes.

The tree was leaning to the side, exposing the part cut neatly and smoothly in half as fallen to the side. That, however, wasn't the end of my surprise as the tree fell and exposed an even more shocking scene behind.

Everything within a distance of ten-meter of the tree was also cut in half. It was grass, stones, shrubbery, and other smaller trees in that area, it was all cleanly cut in half.

"did I just do a flying sword slash..?, huh, neat," I said exhaustedly, and that was the last thing I did today as my vision grew dark and I fell to the ground unconscious with a smile on my face.