Thunder Breathing

Once we entered the house, we both sat down and just talked with each other for the day to know each other better and get a better idea on how the two of us could work more coherently. For dinner, Urokodaki cooked stew again and all four of us, Zenitsu woke when he smelled food, ate together in a comfortable silence.

Upon finishing our meal, Mr. Kuwajima formally introduced me to Zenitsu and vice versa. Zenitsu's eyes sparkled with clear hope at most likely believing that I would be able to lessen the burden placed upon him by Mr. Kuwajima. However, while Zenitsu is here, he will be training under Urokodaki to get a different feel for training.

Sleeping after that, I woke up early in the morning to find that Mr. Kuwajima was already waiting for me outside. Upon seeing me awake, Kuwajima pulls out a sack that he didn't have from yesterday and puts it in front of himself. Tearing open the bag, Mr. Kuwajima pulls out a single, small gourd and hands it to me.

"We shall first begin your Total Concentration: Constant training by having you breathe into this gourd. By constantly using a breathing technique during the entire day, your entire body will become stronger, including your normal breath which will break this gourd if it is strong enough. Also, by doing this sort of exercise, you will be able to increase your speed and capacity so that you can execute Total Concentration Breathing with a smaller delay time. Normally I would wait for a disciple to reach an acceptable age since their lungs could burst upon inhaling too much air, but the persistence of Urokodaki has regrettably forced me to put this strain onto you."

Not believing a single word of the apology that Mr. Kuwajima said, I breath into the gourd and like I expected, the bottom of the gourd bursts immediately. Mr. Kuwajima nods in approval before handing me another gourd. I burst the gourd two more times before the bottom of the gourd withstands my breathing. Even after trying consistently, I cannot break the gourd.

I am stopped from my struggles when Zenitsu finally comes out of the house with a slightly fearful expression, but upon seeing me, his face grows relaxed and his shoulders slump. Raising an eyebrow at his actions, his posture immediately changes when Urokodaki puts a hand on his shoulder and says some things to him.

Zenitsu, apparently having heard the devil call to him, immediately tries to run away, but the hand on his shoulder prevents him from moving an inch. Seeing him dragged away by Urokodaki into the forest, my attention is brought back onto my task when I hear Mr. Kuwajima speak.

"Since Urokodaki has finally left and you seem to be stuck on destroying the third gourd, why don't I tell you about my breathing technique. My breathing form is called Thunder Breathing and it has a total of six forms."

---

Thunder Breathing Forms:

1st Form - Thunderclap and Flash- The user unsheathes their blade, dashes forward at blinding speeds, and decapitated the opponent in a split second leaving behind the sound of a thunderclap.

2nd Form - Rice Spirit - The user unleashes five electrified arching slashes all in a single moment.

3rd Form - Thunder Swarm - The user is able to surround their opponent with powerful waves of electricity and sword slashes that slice up the enemy from all directions.

4th Form - Distant Thunder - The user to generate powerful lightning strikes in several directions with the user's blade from a far distance.

5th Form - Heat Lightning - The user unleashes powerful ranged electrified sword slash upwards that burns the flesh of the opponent.

6th Form - Rumble and Flash - The user releases a series of strong ranged electricity attacks that strike the opponent from multiple directions.

---

After stating every form, Mr. Kuwajima then proceeds to show me each form. Barely comprehending most of them since they happened at such an incredible speed, I look to Mr. Kuwajima with astonishment.

"Now, you replicate what I just did." Mr. Kuwajima says while showing a smile through his bushy mustache.

"How am I supposed to replicate something that I can't see?"

"Focus on what you could see then. If you can replicate those forms, then I can teach you how to do the rest. I don't want to waste my time on something you might never be able to do."

Nodding my head slowly, Mr. Kuwajima fills me in on how I should be breathing to use thunder breathing. With that information in my pocket, I try and use 'Rice Spirit'.

However, even after breathing correctly, I only conduct a vertical slash upwards without electricity spawning from my blade.

"Think about it this way." Mr. Kuwajima begins. "You're trying to move your blade so fast that you're creating friction between your blade and the air, thereby coating your blade in lightning as you continue to swing upwards. Because your blade has moved at such a speed, you have now created a line of lightning that will shoot outwards when the motion of you blade has stopped."

"Then how am I supposed to get five arks of lightning?" I ask.

"Your breathing technique boy. It's used to make the air around bend to your will and have the air in front of you perfectly distanced to the point where when you swing your sword, it will push the air into each other, creating multiple streaks of lightning. The importance of Thunder Breathing lies in being able to keep your center of balance the entire time and to be able to whip your sword wielding arm fast enough to generate lightning." Mr. Kuwajima explains.

After hearing that, I breathe in heavily before whipping my arm upwards as fast as possible. As I do so, I can see lightning cover my blade as it travels, but the lightning doesn't stay longer. Finishing the upward strike, I grumble in slight disappointment and look over to Mr. Kuwajima to find him looking at me flabbergasted.

"My original intuitions were correct; you can actually use more than one breathing form. I mean you were using Thunder Breathing, but I didn't expect you to be able to use any of its forms." Mr. Kuwajima then starts to cackle loudly. "Since I now know for certain that you can use Thunder Breathing, I'll be teaching you the rudimentary of how to use the first form, every form after that will come later."

Standing in front of me, Mr. Kuwajima gets down into a deep lunging stance.

"Your blade needs to be sheathed to use this technique as you are forcing your body, muscles, and every fiber of your being, to flow as if it were lightning. Before there comes thunder, there must come lightning. So, you move in the most streamline position as possible then rocket yourself forward by pushing the oxygen mainly into your legs. Bursting forward, once having reached your opponent, you will unsheathe your blade for a single moment in time before then sheathing it. You are travelling fast enough to the point where your blade has already passed through the demon's neck by the time, you're putting your blade back."

After explaining it all, Mr. Kuwajima then executes the form. However, like the first time I saw it, I can't get a grasp of everything that I'm seeing. Even so, I do as Mr. Kuwajima instructed.

Getting in the proper stance, I breathe in and force the blood flow to go to my legs. Feeling like my legs are about to burst, I execute the first form. Unfortunately, because of how disorienting I got from the speed I was travelling, I am unable to pull my sword from my sheath. Gripping my head after finishing the technique, my entire world spins as I try and reorient myself.

"You know, I might just be able to have you perfect my breathing form while I stay here. I truly didn't expect that."

After twenty minutes of kneeling there, I finally manage to stand up and continue whatever it is that I just did. I bet this is the reason that Zenitsu must be asleep to use the first form since it heavily effects the caster once having completed the technique.

Ending the day after disorienting myself an uncountable number of times, I continue to train only the first form for the next week until my brain and my eyes can handle the disorientation of changing places so quickly.

With that complete, I then focus on drawing my blade and then sheathing it, but on my first attempt, the wooden practice sword snapped in twain. Wondering what had happened, I look to Mr. Kuwajima for an answer.

"You're travelling at such a speed that your sword can't handle the amount of resistance that the air is putting against it, so as a result, it will snap in two."

Understanding, I focus the next few days on drawing and sheathing my sword as fast as possible until I believe that I can execute the first form of Thunder Breathing. Once again getting down in the stance and conducting the first form, I perfect it.

Looking at Mr. Kuwajima for praise, I see him clapping his hands with a wide smile on his face.

"Well, one down, five to go."

Silently crying, I have Mr. Kuwajima start explaining the other forms in detail. For the next four days, I make little to no progress on the forms until Mr. Kuwajima once again reiterates what it was that I was doing and the best possible position and breathing circulation I need.

Spending the next three weeks working on the remaining five forms, I manage to get the same basic level of completion that I got for the first form. Along with getting the basic mastery, I had also made friends with Zenitsu.

This is both because we understand the pain that the other went through and we found it easy to talk with one another as we could consistently complain about our training and what we would want to do with our lives if we weren't training.

Proud of my achievements, I planned on having Mr. Kuwajima continue to teach me, but his time has come to an end.

"We need to be getting back to our peach farm. Leaving it unattended for too long with have unprecedented consequences, so I hope you will excuse the two of us." Mr. Kuwajima then walks over to me with a look of pride in his eyes. "You have performed better than I ever thought you would and far surpassed my expectations. I truly hope that you become a Demon Slayer since you will be, by far, the strongest. You should also visit me in my peach farm, it gets rather lonely while I deal with my pathetic disciple. I wish you well on your journey and bid you adieu."

Walking away while carrying Zenitsu, Mr. Kuwajima disappears from my line of sight.

"Now that the two of them are gone, it feels a little quieter that it has before."

Nodding my head in agreeance, Urokodaki asks me a question.

"So, what do you plan on doing now?"

"Master Lightning Breathing and finish Water Breathing." Saying that, I go out and start training just a bit more.

-

(Time Skip)

Even though I said just a bit more, I ended up extensively training for the next six months.

In that amount of time, I was both able to reach mastery of Thunder Breathing and create a seventh form for it, finish my eleventh form for Water Breathing, and I created the first and second form of Ice Breathing.

The first that came to me was of course the mastery over the six forms of Thunder Breathing, but after that, I was finally capable of using my eleventh form of Water Breathing.

I call this form 'Calm Before the Storm' in which I touch my sword to the sky slowly and at the point in which a ripple effect occurs, all oncoming attacks are absorbed and surround my sword. Once I wish to release the received strength, I dash forward at a speed akin to 'Thunderclap and Flash' and unleash all the power in one slice.

This technique suffers the same problems as Giyu's technique does in the fact that if an attack is too strong for my body to handle or the attack is too fast for me to ever defend against, then I can't absorb it.

After creating my eleventh form, I then began to focus on creating a Thunder Breathing Seventh Form and only hit a point of inspiration after I witness a storm come rolling through and send down lightning, splitting a tree in two and setting it afire.

With that in mind, I created 'Thunder Breathing Seventh Form: Smite' which calls down lightning wherever I want it to land. The heat and destructive ability of the lightning bolt originally started out as nonexistent, but the longer that I train the ability, the more I started to have the lightning bold become stronger.

After completing that form, I had planned on reaching the multiple extensions of 'Thunderclap and Flash', but I finally remembered my wish for Ice Breathing.

Already having painful experiences with ice and its chill, it didn't turn out too hard for me to make the breathing style/pattern. With the pattern in mind, I tried to think of the different kinds of forms that I could use to accentuate on Ice Breathing.

After a time of thinking, I managed to come up with two probable forms that could work. The first being a combination of 'Water Surface Slash' and 'Thunderclap and Flash' whilst the second being a combination of thunder breathings range and water breathings piercing power.

The first form I called 'Frost Fang' in which I dash forward and then slash horizontally in front of me when having reached my destination.

The second form I called 'Frostbite' in which I also dash forward, but for a shorter period of time, and then swing my sword in a crescent moon manner in order to take a "bite" out of my target. The advantages of 'Frostbite' is that I can extend my blade with a phantom blue sword tip, making the range of this technique deadly.

After using the two of these techniques on trees, I noticed something peculiar. Examining the places that I cut, I could see clear ice residue that had spread. Not knowing the effects this would have on demons, I continued to try and improve my basic completion of my two forms.

Ending the six-month period of training, I return to Urokodaki's home and find a certain someone waiting.