The Weapon Genius: Anything I Hold Can Kill-Chapter 104: The Blade Remembers

The dark didn’t break — it peeled.

Layer by layer, as if someone were lifting heavy cloth from his senses. The weight was still there, pressing on his chest, curling behind his ears. But sight returned first, faint torchlight flickering to life, one flame at a time.

He stood upright.

Boots on stone.

Slick. Damp. Cold.

And the smell—

Blood, rot, and something older than either. The kind of stench that stuck behind your teeth.

His eyes adjusted slowly.

Stone walls rose around him like the insides of a throat — no sky above, just the slow drip of water from some unseen height. The floor sloped downward, every edge uneven, cracked. And bones, human bones, littered the ground like forgotten offerings.

Skulls.

Some caved in. Some clean. Some fresh enough to still glisten.

Jin didn’t move.

He couldn’t. Not yet.

Because something was off. His stance was grounded. Balanced. Familiar, but not his. His hands hung near the hilt of a sword at his waist, but when he looked down, the blade was whole. The broken katana he remembered wasn’t there.

His heart thudded, too slow. His body didn’t feel panicked. It felt... prepared. As if whoever he was now had trained for this moment every day of his life.

A dream?

No.

Not a dream.

But something close.

Then came the voice.

"I was beginning to think you’d gotten cold feet."

It didn’t echo, it rolled. Smooth and deep, the kind of voice that didn’t need to shout to dominate a room. Jin’s eyes followed it across the cave.

And found him.

At the far end, half in shadow, a figure stood tall and still. Human in shape, but that was being generous. The red mask gave no expression, just a permanent grin carved into lacquer, gleaming under torchlight. Gold eyes burned behind the slits, narrow and unblinking.

He was shirtless, pale skin stretched over dense muscle, black markings trailing up his ribs like ancient scars. And on his back, sheathed in a twisted bone harness, was a sword.

Not just sheathed.

Gripped.

The blade was held in place by a severed hand, discolored, curled tightly around the hilt, perfectly preserved like it had never stopped holding on.

The demon tilted his head as he stepped forward, bare feet crunching against bone.

"Nothing to say?" the voice asked, curious now, like it was enjoying the silence.

Jin’s mouth moved, but it wasn’t him speaking.

Another voice came. Calm. Precise. Worn like a blade that had never dulled.

"I didn’t come for conversation."

The demon chuckled softly and rolled his shoulders, bones cracking loud enough to echo.

"Not even a ’hello’? After everything you’ve done to get here?" He gestured lazily to the floor. "You’ve painted my path with corpses, you know. I lost count around... eighty? Maybe ninety?"

No answer.

"But you remember them, don’t you?" the demon said, voice dipping lower. "The shrine maiden. The cursed twins. The screaming monk with the face split down the middle. You cleaved your way through my court like a wildfire."

The body Jin stood in didn’t shift. Didn’t flinch.

The demon smiled wider beneath the mask.

"I have to say, I’m flattered."

He stepped again, and this time, Jin noticed the slight parting of the shadows behind him, not walls, but depth. The faint shapes of more skulls. Thousands, maybe. And further back, chained corpses hung against the rock, limp and lifeless. Forgotten.

Something in his chest stirred.

Jin didn’t understand it all, not yet. But the control. The stillness. The weight of the sword at his side. The way the demon knew whoever he was looking at...

This wasn’t just a vision.

It was something deeper.

And then the demon’s eyes narrowed.

"Muramasa," he said softly, with a kind of reverence wrapped in mockery. "What are you even here for?"

Jin’s breath caught.

That name Hanuel had said it, just a day ago, and he had even met him within his sword during the bonding process.

A swordsman from the Heian era. The Demon Blade.

The one who defeated a demon.

Jin’s heart kicked once in his chest, a sharper beat than before.

He wasn’t dreaming this.

He was inside something.

Inside a memory.

Inside him.

Muramasa still didn’t move.

But Jin could feel it now, a subtle shift just beneath the skin. Tension, like a blade drawn half from its sheath. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t nerves.

It was weight.

The kind that came before blood.

The demon tilted his head the other way, slow and curious.

Muramasa’s voice came out with a boom.

"Justice!"

The demon gave a dry laugh, then stepped from the ridge and began walking forward, slow and deliberate, the light from the torches flickering over the red lacquer of his mask. "Don’t lie to me, swordsman. I’ve seen the path you carved to get here. You’re no purifier. You’re no monk. You’re not even a soldier anymore."

He stopped just short of the torchlight.

"You’re just like me."

The words didn’t echo. They didn’t need to.

"I came here to banish a demon to hell," Muramasa said, quieter now — not a whisper, but something steadier. "And once I’m done, I’ll atone for my sins."

A pause. The demon stared at him.

Then that voice broke into laughter — sudden, sharp, uncoiling in every corner of the cave. A wild, guttural sound that cracked with real amusement.

"That’s the most human thing you’ve ever said," he growled. "Kill me... then kill yourself to make it mean something? A perfect circle of suffering. You wield a blade with a poet’s heart."

The grin in his voice sharpened. "But you’re too late for repentance. Look around you."

He gestured with a slow sweep of one arm.

"These skulls didn’t stack themselves. And neither did the ones in your own past. You can wash your hands in a thousand enemy rivers, and still the blood will cling."

Still, Muramasa said nothing.

The demon’s gaze darkened behind the golden slits of his mask.

"You want forgiveness through death? Then let me give you the death of a lifetime"

His hand moved.

It rose behind his shoulder — to the blade.

To the grotesque, shriveled hand that clutched the hilt of the sword like it had never let go.

The demon placed his fingers on the dead hand and whispered something.

The hand twitched.

The grip opened.

And the sword was drawn.

Jin felt it before he even saw the blade.

A rush of pressure, not like a shout or a gust of air, but a sharp, pointed compression. Like space itself had shrunk, like the air had turned dense and sour.

His ears popped. His spine locked.

The steel, no, not steel, the thing in the demon’s hand shimmered in a way that refused light.

Black, not from shadow, but from absence.

Like the sword had been carved from something that predated the world.

Something that was never supposed to be shaped.

Not a weapon but rather a force of nature.

Jin’s breathing stuttered, though he wasn’t sure his lungs were even real here.

It was the sword.

The sword was wrong.

Muramasa’s hand moved, finally.

Not fast.

But steady fingers resting on his own blade’s sheath. Jin could feel his grip — firm, calm, not trembling. But it wasn’t peace. It was focus. Years of it.

"You called me Muramasa," he said, eyes locked on the demon now. "So you know what comes next."

The demon raised his black blade, slow and easy, like lifting smoke on a string.

"I’ve waited centuries for a worthy end," he murmured.

The smile hadn’t left the mask, but now Jin could feel it behind the voice — that thrill. Not showmanship. Not insanity.

Hunger.

"I’ve broken priests and swallowed saints," the demon continued. "But only one man ever walked into this cave without fear."

He lifted the blade fully.

"And he’s already halfway dead."

Muramasa answered by stepping forward.

Just once.

The moment snapped like a bowstring.

The torchlight bent. Stone cracked. The space between them collapsed.

And the demon moved.

Fast — no wasted motion. No warning.

Muramasa’s blade flashed upward, steel on black, the clash landing with a sound too sharp to echo — like the air tore instead of ringing.

Their feet slid across the stone, both holding ground. Sparks burst out where steel scraped along steel, then flickered and vanished in the torchlight.

Jin could feel the pressure in every bone.

This wasn’t about form now.

It was survival—between two things too practiced to flinch.

The demon struck again, blade low, then arcing high in a feint. Muramasa didn’t fall for it — he caught the motion with a tight sidestep and countered with a short cut aimed clean for the neck.

The demon twisted away just in time, laughter rasping behind his mask.

"Still sharp," he said.

Muramasa didn’t reply.

Another strike. The demon brought his black blade around in a wild spin — power over polish — but Muramasa met it with precision, using the momentum to angle his own sword inward, nearly catching the demon’s side.

Another clash.

Then distance.

They both stepped back at the same moment, the tips of their blades hovering in the space between them — breath fogging in the cave’s stale air.

The demon rolled his neck once, slow and deliberate.

"So the rumors weren’t embellished," he said.

He raised his weapon again, but not to strike — just to rest it on his shoulder.

"You really are that strong."

He didn’t sound impressed.

He sounded interested.

"But strength is only part of it, isn’t it?" he added, tilting his head. "They say your blade dances. That you cut with precision no man can see until it’s too late."

A beat passed. frёewebηovel.cѳm

"Let’s see one of those techniques."

Muramasa adjusted his grip.

No bravado. No smirk. Just readiness — the way a storm readies itself before the sky splits.

"If you want to see one," he said, voice low, "I’ll show you."

He lifted the blade slightly — the tip drawing a line in the air like ink on paper.

Then he moved his left foot back. Stance shifted. Shoulders square. Blade low.

A single breath escaped his lips.

"Shinkirō no Yaiba."