The Weapon Genius: Anything I Hold Can Kill-Chapter 99: Unlocking Knowledge

The words blurred together after a while.

Jin leaned forward, elbows on the table, squinting down at a page littered with diagrams and old ink notes. Another passage about grip pressure. Another reminder about footwork and center of gravity. Another perfect world explanation, written for students who already knew what a sword was supposed to feel like.

He flipped to the next page, jaw tightening slightly.

More of the same.

It wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t enough.

He could understand the theory—but there was no flow, no connective tissue between the ideas. No bridge from "hold the blade this way" to become the blade this way. Every book assumed he had a master standing over his shoulder, correcting him. Every manual expected foundation he didn’t have.

Jin sat back in the chair and stared at the ceiling.

This wasn’t going to cut it.

He needed something more.

The thought slipped in without warning—quiet but sharp.

The system lets me upgrade the base... doesn’t it?

He hadn’t thought about it much. Not outside of the basics—clearing out buildings, reinforcing walls, setting defensive measures. But the library? Would it even be listed?

Only one way to find out.

Jin flicked his fingers lightly, pulling up the base management screen. A transparent overlay blinked into existence across his vision.

Options scrolled past: training grounds, gym facilities, armory expansion.

Then—

Library Enhancement: [Available]

He blinked once.

Tapped for the description.

"Expand the facility’s archives. Restore lost records. Unlock advanced training materials."

His heart kicked a little harder against his ribs.

Cost wasn’t low. Definitely not cheap.

But this wasn’t the kind of thing you second-guess.

Jin hit "Confirm" without hesitating.

The system pulsed once, silently.

And the world around him shifted.

The wooden shelves creaked, groaning as if breathing. Dust exploded outward in a sudden gust, making Jin cough into his sleeve. The lights overhead flickered, and the air grew heavy—thick like wet stone.

He staggered back as the walls seemed to bend outward, stretching, widening.

And then—

Silence.

When Jin lowered his arm, the library wasn’t the same.

It wasn’t huge. It didn’t turn into some endless, glowing archive.

But it was cleaner. Brighter. Bigger.

New rows of polished shelving lined the far walls, filled with books that hadn’t been there before. The air smelled sharper, cleaner. Like the scent after a storm.

The old dusty manuals were still there, pushed aside almost reverently.

But now...

Jin stepped forward slowly, hand trailing along the edge of a gleaming new shelf.

The titles gleamed under the lights:

Kenjutsu: Principles of the Blade.

The Duelist’s Art: European Swordsmanship Across Eras.

The Saber’s Dance: A Study in Flow and Destruction.

Paths Through Steel: Philosophy and Form.

He pulled one free at random—The Heart of the Blade.

The cover was soft, almost warm under his fingers. He flipped it open carefully.

The first page wasn’t diagrams.

It wasn’t lists of moves.

It was a single line:

"To cut the world, you must first cut yourself free."

Jin smiled faintly.

For the first time since waking up, the tension in his chest loosened a little.

This wasn’t just mechanics. This wasn’t just borrowed shapes.

This was about intent.

About soul.

He dropped into the nearest chair, the book settling against the table with a soft thump.

He skimmed forward, drinking in everything—Chapters that explained the mental flow behind each strike, the concept of breathing through your blade, moving with an opponent instead of against them.

He lost track of time almost immediately.

Book after book passed through his hands.

Different styles from different corners of history—Japanese kenjutsu masters, European fencing instructors, Chinese saber generals, even long-lost desert blade dances whose names had been erased by war.

Some focused on footwork.

Others on timing, on feel, on body control.

Not a single one told him there was only one way.

Every style, every school had built itself on truth—not just technique.

Truth in movement.

Truth in intention.

Truth in why you picked up the blade in the first place.

Jin leaned back at one point, closing a book gently, tapping two fingers against the worn leather cover.

No wonder Muramasa had looked at him like he was nothing.

No wonder the broken katana still felt like a stranger in his hand sometimes.

He’d been swinging without knowing why.

Acting without understanding the weight behind it.

But that was over now.

Slowly, Jin reached for another book.

The sun climbed higher outside, spilling golden light through the cracked windows, turning the floorboards to molten lines.

Somewhere far off, he could hear the faint clang of weapons from the training yard—the others, still working.

Jin let the sound drift past him.

For now, this was where he needed to be.

Here, in the quiet, chasing down the edge of something real.

And he wasn’t leaving until he found it.

He flipped another page.

This one wasn’t about strikes or counters. It was about stillness.

"A blade does not exist to move without meaning. Every step, every breath, every shift of weight must carve intention into the world."

Jin read it twice.

He didn’t stop there. He kept reading, letting the next pages unfold one after another.

Sections on stance, momentum, centerline theory. How the sword wasn’t just an extension of the body, but an extension of breath, thought, will.

The more he read, the more the threads started connecting in his head.

Weight distribution isn’t just about balance.

It’s about pressure. Pressure into the ground, pressure into your opponent’s mind.

You don’t just attack with your body—you attack with your presence.

Jin dragged another book closer, flipping it open beside the first.

This one talked about rhythm—the natural timing between offense and defense, the beat of combat.

"Find the silence between strikes. Fill it. Break it. Control the music of death."

It wasn’t poetic nonsense.

It was real advice.

He remembered the way Muramasa moved like Muramasa had already written the ending of every exchange before it began.

And Jin had just been dragged along.

He leaned over the books, eyes sharp, tracing the words with a fingertip.

One manual broke down different footwork styles across cultures—how samurai movements prioritized grounded pivots and explosive surges, while European duelists emphasized lateral glides and constant distance maintenance.

Another book explained why sword masters often drilled the same "basic" cuts for decades. It wasn’t about the strike. It was about embedding the movement into your bones until the sword felt like breath.

Until thought wasn’t needed anymore.

Until motion was truth.

Jin’s hand clenched slightly over the edge of the table.

He wasn’t just missing techniques.

He was missing everything underneath them.

Breath. Pressure. Rhythm. Resolve.

The foundation.

The skeleton that gave real swordplay life.

He rubbed a thumb along the cracked binding of one book, the leather rough and warm from age.

Somewhere, deep inside, a part of him stirred.

Not Bloodlust.

Not Phantom Strike.

Something quieter.

Older.

A thread of hunger that had nothing to do with combat skills or stat boosts.

He wanted to understand.

Not just to survive the next battle.

Not just to win.

But to become something more than a man swinging metal.

Jin stacked three more books to the side without looking up. His body moved automatically now, reading, absorbing, thinking.

There was a page detailing how every true sword wielder found their own unique breathing pattern—a cadence synced to their body, not forced by form.

One described the subtle difference between cutting through an opponent versus cutting past them—how slight intention shifts turned killing blows into survivable grazes, depending on your will.

Another section outlined how masters learned to move with the terrain—turning uneven ground, obstacles, even broken footing into allies rather than enemies.

Jin devoured it all.

Every manual.

Every whispered piece of wisdom scrawled in the margins.

Every slow diagram showing steps, angles, balances of energy.

Hours slipped by unnoticed, the books stacking higher beside him.

Sweat beaded lightly at the base of his neck from how hard he was focusing, how deeply he sank into every word.

He adjusted his posture once, stretching out a crick in his back, but never left the table.

This was different from training.

It wasn’t about motion.

It was about depth.

Peeling back layers he hadn’t even known existed.

Halfway through a battered copy of Paths Through Steel, Jin paused at a short passage:

"Your sword is not a weapon. It is a promise. Every swing carries the weight of your past and the cost of your future. A swordsman who forgets this will die by his own hand."

He sat back slightly, letting that line settle into him.

Not a weapon.

A promise.

Jin’s mind flashed briefly to Seul, to Joon, to Echo, to the recruits laughing nervously in the courtyard hours ago.

The weight of everything he’d been carrying since the collapse of the old world. Since the day he first picked up a blade.

He hadn’t been fighting with a promise.

He’d been fighting because he had to.

Because if he didn’t, no one else would.

But maybe—

Maybe it was time to decide what his blade really stood for.

And who he was really carrying it for.

Jin exhaled slowly through his nose and turned the page.

Still more to read.

Still more to learn.

He wasn’t done yet.

Not even close.

He reached for another book from the newly stocked shelves—this one heavier, bound in deep green leather, gold lettering in a language half-erased by time.

He didn’t hesitate.

He cracked it open, set his elbows firm on the table, and kept reading.

Not because the system told him to.

Not because of a questline or a reward prompt.

But because somewhere in the slow curl of each word, in the feel of old pages beneath his fingers, he could feel the shape of something real forming.

Something that might finally make him worthy of carrying a sword at all.

And he wasn’t going to stop until he found it.