The Legendary Weapons had been viewed as relics from the last millennia, relics from the times of the Third Savior, and...and they also mattered more to Nana than anyone could have possibly imagined. He looked at the body of the mercenary, and the fact that she possessed the Sky Splitting Sword angered him to his very core.
"Don't look down on the path I have walked until now..." Ver said through gritted teeth, a whirlpool forming over her hand before the handle of the Sky Splitting Sword finally came extending out. She pressed herself up, the Sky Splitting Sword in hand and set in tune with his own Wave.
"I do not care for what you have been through. Strength is strength." Nana said right away, the Water Weaving Sword winding around his arm before Nana launched himself forward, the blade then using Nana's own body as a springboard as its sharpened tip tilted forward like the mouth of a predatorial snake, ready to tear up Ver's body completely.
"Let's do this, Little One!" The Kraken's voice came through before its roar matched with Ver's own battlecry as massive spanning tendrils shot out from her shoulders and looped around the blade itself. The blade rapidly expanded, its body blowing up and the sharp tip charging towards her opponent, "Whirlpool black Special: Sunder!"
"There you go!" Nana laughed, his thin sword nothing more than a match stick when compared to the gargantuan size of the ever-expanding sword of Ver's, yet when they clashed, the match stick resisted with such ferocity that it felt as if Ver had run into a brick wall instead.
"Tsk! Reinforce!" Ver grunted, the tendrils lat hing onto Ver's arm and the blade itself even tighter as she pressed forward. However, Nana simply tilted his wrist slightly, the Water Weaving sword immediately retracting and redirecting the massive sword as it slashed right past Nana's body.
Taking advantage of the opening created by the Sky Splitting Sword going right past him, Nana slammed his foot into the ground, rocketing his body through the air before his sword coiled around his arm like a winding serpent, ready to strike the moment he got in range.
Dashing through the air, Nana then sent his wrist forward, the Water Weaving Sword shooting ahead and piercing straight through Ver's body! However, there was no resistance at all from the tip of the blade before Ver's body dispersed into a pile of ink which splattered all over the ground.
"What?" Nana held his breathe briefly, his mind rapidly searching from past knowledge of Ver for any skillset that resembled what had just happened. However, there was no answer, "You coward."
Ver may have been able to get out of range from Nana's attack by leaving behind her ink clone, but that also meant the Sky Splitting Sword was just sitting there without anyone to hold it. In her retreat, she had just fulfilled the true goal of Nana all along. Reaching forward with his calloused hand, Nana grasped around the handle of the Sky Splitting Sword before trying to inject his own Wave into the legendary weapon.
That was when a flash of pain burned his hand as the entire blade was set ablaze, and through the flames and the dark fluid which coated the blade itself, Ver emerged with the Kraken's tendrils looping around her arms and legs, and she blasted Nana back as he swung his sword in a frantic flurry while holding the Sky Splitting Sword in his off-hand.
"Damn it!" Nana cursed, looking down at the charred flesh of his hand as the burns slowly turned to a numb tingle, and layers of skin started peeling off from the base of his palm. He was too careless, or rather, he was too focused on taking hold of the Sword rather than dealing with the troublesome mercenary in front of him.
"Legendary weapon or not, it's about how you use it." Ver said, shrinking the Sky Splitting Sword until it became a light two-handed broadsword in her hands. She swung it around as droplets of the Kraken's oil splashed onto the ground.
"Precisely, Ver Fulgen Vaughan." Nana said through gritted teeth, and he flexed the wrist of his left hand before holding the Water Weaving Sword in front. Then, pulses of Wave echoed from within his body before it came spilling out. The air around them seemed to have stiffened before sounds of crashing ocean waves filled the air.
"Be careful! Little One!" The Kraken warned rapidly, "He is doing something different."
"I can see that." Ver said under her breathe, and she paid all of her attention forward as the sound of crashing waves became louder and louder, almost as if she's back at the cliffside by the ocean back at the Northern tip of the Endless Woods. She scrunched her brows together as the Water Weaving Sword started to became more and more blurry, somehow.
No...instead, it is simply vibrating at a frequency too fast to see, its every movement through the air giving out a loud slushing sound that sounded like crashing waves. Like a singer of the sea, the Water Weaving Sword composed its own melodies. Nana tuned his body together with the vibration of the blade, and all of the sounds started to quiet down before a thin layer of Wave contained both himself and the blade.
Like a glass casing, the semi-transparent layer of Wave encased Nana's entire being, erasing his presence in the Wave fully. Ver felt her heart sinking, and Nana suddenly vanished from right in front of her very eyes.
"Kraken!" Ver called rapidly, and the Kraken's body emerged from a massive spanning whirlpool that surrounded the entire battlefield, its sides pressing into the invisible walls which separated her from her squadmates, and she encased her body within the Kraken's massive body just before Nana dashed overhead and unleashed his fierce attacks.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The Water Weaving Sword tore through the Kraken's shells with no difficulty, and the flesh of blood of the monster was blended into a soup before it was then elegantly directed by the movements of the sword itself. So long as anything has got water in it, it shall fall under the Water Weaving Sword's control.
Redirecting the jets of blood and flesh, Nana sent them tearing through the Kraken's body as a tendril looped around Ver's body and started pulling her around to safety, or wherever’s safest at that exact moment.
"Burn!" The Kraken roared, setting his interior on fire, but the layer of Wave around Nana's body perfectly shielded himself as he looked around at the sea of flames around him with disinterest.
"Bring me the Sword, or die." Nana said, the sword around his body flying and tearing through the Kraken's body. He worked like a seasoned chef, dismantling the Kraken's insides, severing its tendons and shattering its bones.
"Argh...he is..." The Kraken said with great difficulty, and it's the first time that Ver had seen a sign of weakness coming from him, "I can't shield you forever."
"I don't need forever!" Ver shot back, "His shield is simply too troublesome! For someone who claimed he is all about the way of the sword!"
"If...if only there is a way we can sneak around it." The Kraken added, tossing Ver far out of its own body before it rapidly compressed inwards, trapping Nana in place before it tried to swallow up Nana with a Purple Whirlpool, hoping to teleport him away.
However, Nana had seen this trick enough times to know its inner workings, and he directed his sword down, disrupting the pool of dark fluid and stopping it in its place.
Some way to sneak around the shields...Ver breathed rapidly, getting back onto her feet as the Kraken's warm blood dripped from her body...Some way to sneak around his shields...
She had snuck around shields plenty of times through her Whirlpool Purple. And in order to create a bridge between two points in space, she needed the essence of hers or the Kraken's Wave in either location. That's why she often went through the trouble of marking down the majority of the places she had been to either with a splatter of the Kraken's ink or some of its scales.
With the Kraken's scales, there is actually a rather high concentration of the Kraken's Wave within it, almost akin to mini-fuel rocks. That's essentially what allowed for Ver to pop out from Wu's body a little earlier...on the other hand, with the Kraken's ink, the concentration of the Wave is a lot less, and that makes forming a full-sized whirlpool a lot more difficult...
But is that what she needed? Ver looked up at the body of Nana as he tore straight through the mountain of Kraken before he briefly floated in the air, his eyes sharply locked onto Ver, the old scar across his face twitching with anger. Her eyes glanced down, and she spotted out his right hand dangling by the side of his body.
With the Kraken's ink, the concentration of the Wave is a lot less...and she can only form much smaller whirlpools... Looking down at her own hand, Ver smirked right as Nana slammed down onto the ground across from her.
"What's so funny?" Nana asked, pointing the sword up to Ver's throat before she put a hand up and fired off a blast of Water. Nana channeled his Wave through the blade, weaving the water aside before he leaped forward and pierced into Ver's collarbone, pressing her onto the ground, "What's SO FUNNY?!"
"You know...the legendary weapons all belong to the hands of fodders nowadays." Ver said through the pain, and that lit Nana's mind ablaze, "If they are truly strong, shouldn't the Ten Heavenly Pillars have them?"
"You are mistaken." Nana said, his voice lowered and eyes filled with malice, "And you will die with your mistake."
"If they are truly relevant today, why isn't anyone else talking about it?!" Ver shot back, and Nana held his blade in place before leaning down to look at her in the eyes.
"Because they do not know the potential power that comes when all the weapons are gathered into one place..." Nana said, the words coming out of him through a strange pace, almost as if he was reading a poem, "With the conjoining of the weapons, a new legend shall rise. Cut, are the past's ties. Forged, is the world's demise. When I collect all of the legendary weapons, I shall have strength equal to that of the Ten Heavenly Pillars."
"Then, you shall have a taste of what it's like to have my sword then." Ver smiled, then, she twisted her finger lightly, a small pulse of Wave sent through her fingertips down to a tiny purple whirlpool on the ground. Then, emerging from the other side of the whirlpool, a tiny remnant of the Kraken's ink on Nana's hand, the Sky Splitting Sword that was shrunk to be no larger than a strand of hair rapidly grew, its sword cutting Nana's right hand cleanly in half as he screamed in agony.
With shock, Nana glanced towards the ever-expanding sword and tried to shake his hands free.
However, the blade continued growing larger and larger, feeding on both Ver's and Nana's Wave until it broke up his shield from the inside. As Nana screamed in agony, Ver grabbed onto his hand, pinning him in place before the expanding blade of the Sky Splitting Sword cut deep into the sides of his body as his eyes rolled up and his body became limp.
In the same way that Nana’s students had severed the battlefield, Ver had also severed Nana’s entire right side into two.
"How...how...you never...walked the path of the sword..." Nana said, his hands clinging onto the handle of the Water Weaving Sword and his eyes opened up wide, filled with a haunting look.
"The path of the Sword is not the only path to fight." Ver said, "The legendary weapons themselves...they shouldn't be limiting what your fighting style is. Instead...they should compliment you as a person...as an individual."
"That's...ridiculous. I pursued this craft all my life, and yet defeated by trickery..."
"That's what he showed me..." Ver smiled, thinking back to the reaction she had when she learned of what Wu did to the One-Shotter Bow, "that there is an infinite number of possibilities out there. It would be quite boring, if things always stay the same, right?"
Collapsing into his own pool of blood, Nana fell forward and landed hard onto the ground, the last breath escaping his lungs as the image of the world faded from his mind. A small tendril grew from Ver's chest, and it helped her pull the Water Weaving Sword away from her collarbone before she sat up with great difficulty.
She looked down at the body of Nana's, and she picked up the Water Weaving Sword before shrinking down the Sky Splitting Sword.
Now with two legendary weapons in her possession, Ver wondered what the future holds for these...relics. And what of this "prophecy" of Nana's?