Chapter 177: Coach, I Want to Learn Blacksmithing
At the foot of the volcano, the oppressive heat of the magma-scorched earth radiated straight through the thick soles of Hikaru's boots. The air tasted of sulfur and ash.
Hikaru held Muramasa horizontally across his palm.
The katana retained its standard, elegant curvature, yet a glaring imperfection marred its steel. A hairline fracture stretched from the tip down through a full third of the blade. Beneath the steady infusion of his Yao Qi, the fissure pulsed with a faint, dark red luminescence.
The steel hummed. It was a low, rhythmic vibration, the amplitude barely perceptible—like the quiet shifting of someone deep in slumber.
Totosai rested his massive forging hammer against his shoulder. The old yokai tilted his head, his large, bulbous eyes locking onto the weapon for three long breaths.
He didn't reach for it. He didn't even lean in. He maintained a strict arm's length, using the sheer experience of eyes that had evaluated and forged legendary blades for centuries to simply look.
"Hmm..." Totosai snorted, a puff of hot air escaping his nose. His heavily wrinkled face scrunched into a complex, subtle expression.
It wasn't disdain, nor was it shock. It was the pure, focused intrigue of a master craftsman encountering a fascinating new material.
"Little... ahem, sir. Bring it closer."
Hikaru extended his arm, moving Muramasa half a foot forward.
Totosai reached out. His palms were a landscape of rough calluses and swollen knuckles. Iron rust and mineral slag were permanently embedded beneath his fingernails, making it look as though he had just stepped away from a blazing anvil.
The very instant his fingertip brushed the scabbard—hum!
A short, violent tremor erupted from the weapon. The dark red glow bleeding from the crack flared to twice its previous intensity. The blade thrashed in Hikaru's palm, the scabbard physically jumping against his grip.
Totosai yanked his hand back as if he had plunged it into boiling oil.
"Hiss!?" The old smith shook his stinging fingers, his bulging eyes widening to comical proportions. "It bit me?!"
He hadn't pulled away because the edge was sharp. He retreated because of the sheer, unadulterated rejection radiating from the blade soul itself. It was a pure, unyielding refusal of anyone but its master.
"Interesting." Totosai tucked his hands into his sleeves, crossing his arms as he leaned in for a secondary inspection.
This time, his scrutiny was absolute. Those massive eyes traced every millimeter of the weapon—from the tip to the hilt, from the razor edge to the dull spine. Finally, his gaze anchored on the pulsing crack.
Perched on his shoulder, Myoga stretched his tiny neck, leaning his flat, flea-like face closer to the red glow.
"Lord Totosai, this sword—"
"Shut up, I'm looking."
Myoga instantly retracted his neck, his six spindly legs clamping down hard on Totosai's collar to avoid getting swatted.
Silence reigned for another ten breaths, broken only by the bubbling of distant lava.
Then, Totosai spoke.
"Kid." He looked up at Hikaru. The panicked, cowardly tone of an old man fleeing for his life was entirely gone. In its place was a heavy, grounded calmness—the absolute authority of a grandmaster discussing his life's work.
"I cannot reforge this sword."
Hikaru's expression remained perfectly deadpan. He didn't rush to demand answers. He simply waited.
"And it doesn't need my reforging."
Totosai swung the massive iron hammer off his shoulder. The heavy head slammed into the volcanic rock with a dull thud, cratering the ground. Embers danced across the flat of the hammer.
"You said the blade body is cracked and cannot sustain its power. Correct. It indeed cannot sustain it. The base material of this sword is nothing but common iron. Mortal iron cannot contain a Demonic Tool-level blade soul. It's like trying to hold a raging river in a fragile teacup; the porcelain will shatter sooner or later."
He patted the thick wooden handle of his hammer, his eyes drifting back to the crimson light seeping from the fracture.
"But the problem isn't actually the cup at all."
"The problem is the water."
"The soul of this sword—has actually already formed."
Hikaru's eyes narrowed slightly. According to his system panel, Muramasa's awakening progress was still stubbornly stuck at 47%. Yet, this legendary smith claimed it was already formed.
"It has formed, but it remains incomplete," Totosai added, seemingly reading the silent question in the Oni Samurai's gaze. "The 'unawakened'feeling you sense isn't a lack of raw power. It's because it is fundamentally missing a crucial piece. The skeleton of the blade soul is present. The flesh and blood are there. But the'heart' has not fully grown."
Myoga couldn't hold his tongue. "What do you mean the heart hasn't fully grown?"
"Fool, it means exactly what the words imply." Totosai casually flicked a soot-stained finger, nearly launching the flea into the magma.
"A sword's soul never sprouts on its own. For an inanimate object to transition into a true demon, it requires one of two things: time, slowly accumulating sentience over hundreds or thousands of years, or external force, being carefully fed by the owner's Yao Qi, thoughts, and sheer will."
He pointed a knobby finger at Hikaru. "The soul of this sword was fed entirely by you."
"You poured your Yao Qi into it. Your will, your obsessions, your understanding of combat—these elements condensed to form its blade soul. Simply put, its soul is a literal extension of yourself."
"But—" Totosai's voice dropped an octave. "What you gave it is not enough."
"It's not a matter of quantity. It's a matter of identity. You haven't figured out what you are yourself. Your 'will' lacks a definitive shape, which means what the blade soul consumed from you is nothing more than a semi-finished product."
"To put it plainly, when you swing that sword, you haven't truly figured out why you are swinging it. It sounds like the simplest question in the world, but the vast majority of warriors die without ever finding the answer."
"It is waiting. It is waiting for you to figure yourself out."
"When your intent is complete, and you pour that finalized resolve into the steel, it will shatter its own shell. Whether that shell is common iron or the bone of a Great Yokai, the exterior doesn't matter. What matters is the heart inside."
"So—it doesn't need me to reforge it. What it needs is you."
Hikaru remained silent. He lowered his gaze to Muramasa. The crack remained, bleeding that faint, stubborn crimson light. The steel vibrated gently against his palm, as if echoing Totosai's assessment. As if urging him forward.
"Then if..."
He didn't dwell on the philosophical concept of 'intent'. While Totosai's explanation differed slightly from his own pragmatic summaries or Taigen Sessai's deep teachings of 'all paths lead to one', they all pointed toward the same ultimate truth. Sessai's words leaned heavily into artistic conception and the essence of the self, while Totosai focused entirely on the 'tool' in hand.
Yet, they were intrinsically linked. One dictated the path of the wielder; the other dictated the vessel.
These weren't epiphanies he could force in a few minutes. So, he pivoted. His 'intent' had never been carried solely by Muramasa.
Reaching into his robes, Hikaru retrieved a handful of objects.
Metal fragments. They varied in size and shape. Some were jagged pieces of a sword's spine, others were chipped edges of a blade, and a few were nothing more than rusted lumps of scrap iron. The material was utterly mundane, indistinguishable from the discarded refuse found in any mortal blacksmith's slag heap.
However, lingering upon every single piece was an extremely faint, yet obvious resonance.
Favorability. Maxed out. 100.
Their origins spanned the entirety of his bloody journey. Some were the shattered remains of nameless katana he had scavenged from the rotting corpse piles on his very first battlefield after crossing over. In those desperate early days, he had flooded them with Yao Qi, grinding their favorability to the maximum to siphon their meager stat bonuses to survive, only to watch them shatter against superior steel.
Others were fragments of a rusted naginata he had found enshrined in a dilapidated, abandoned temple, maxed out on a quiet, boring afternoon.
They were broken. Useless in combat. Yet, he had kept them all. Partly out of a strange, deadpan nostalgia, and partly due to a pragmatic instinct that they might, one day, serve a purpose.
And now...
The fragments lay spread across his pale palm, their dull metallic surfaces catching the orange, flickering glow of the volcanic crater.
Myoga peeked out from behind Totosai's collar, squinting at the handful of junk.
"Those look incredibly ordinary... they're just bits of scrap metal. What could they possibly—"
Slap.
Before the old flea could finish his sentence, Totosai swatted his shoulder. Myoga was launched three feet into the air, executing two frantic somersaults before face-planting onto the volcanic rock, his six thin legs twitching in the ash.
"What do you know?!" Totosai barked, his bulbous eyes widening like brass bells.
He crouched down, bringing his face mere inches from the pile of fragments in Hikaru's hand. He didn't dare touch them—the stinging rejection of Muramasa was still fresh in his nerves—but his gaze locked onto each individual shard for at least three seconds.
"The material is indeed scrap iron," Totosai muttered. His voice had shifted entirely. It was deep, grave, and laced with a barely concealed, vibrating excitement. "But the things clinging to them... are not something scrap iron should ever possess."
He straightened up, locking eyes with Hikaru. The faint, loyal glimmer of the fragments reflected perfectly in the old smith's massive pupils.
"Intent."
"Every single piece is stained with pure intent."
Totosai gestured wildly. "What is Tessaiga? When you strip away the legends, it's nothing more than a single canine tooth from Lord Toga. What is a tooth worth on its own? It isn't gold. It isn't jade. Yokai fangs are scattered across every battlefield in this era. Even if it belongs to a Great Yokai, it just means it's a bit harder than average."
"But Lord Toga poured his intent into it." Totosai's voice echoed with reverence. "That tooth ceased to be just bone. It became a heart."
"In essence, Tessaiga is a demon blade that Lord Toga birthed himself. It was merely forged into its final shape by my hands."
Totosai hoisted his iron hammer, spinning the heavy handle half a turn before resting it back on his shoulder. "Your fragments are exactly the same. The material is absolute trash, but the intent carried within them is breathtakingly real."
"The highest quality vessels in this world are never judged by their physical material, but by the intent forged into them."
He paused, sucking air through his teeth as his expression shifted once more, morphing from awe back into deep trouble.
"However—" Totosai shook his head slowly. "As for completing this blade, this old man cannot help you."
He jutted his chin toward Muramasa. "It won't let me touch it. You saw it yourself; my fingers are still throbbing. This blade only recognizes you. Anyone else who tries to impose their will upon it will get bitten."
"No matter how peerless my craftsmanship is, I cannot forge a blade from a distance."
"So, you have to do it yourself."
"You must cast it yourself."
"You must refine the intent within these scattered fragments and fuse them together with your own hands. Once your intent is physically hammered into the steel, perhaps it can inch closer to completion."
Just closer. Not fully achieved. But for Hikaru, that was more than enough. His singular goal had always been to push Muramasa's 'awakening' forward.
Hikaru looked at the old yokai, his voice flat and pragmatic. "I don't know how to forge blades."
"This old man knows."
Totosai grinned. His heavily wrinkled face scrunched up, revealing a wide, eccentric smile that pushed his bulbous eyes even further out.
"So—this old man can teach you."
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