“Hup!”

A lone man stood along the riverbank, an expression of intense focus on his face. Raising the sword in his hands above his head, he paused for a moment, allowing the morning sunlight to gleam off of its violet edge—and then swung it back down again. It sliced through the air in a perfect arc, before coming to a sudden stop just above the water’s surface.

“Hup!” he called out, tensing his disciplined muscles to bring the heavy blade to a momentary rest, and then lifting it above his head once more.

This was his daily routine. Every morning he would practice swinging his trusted blade until his arms grew tired and he felt he could swing them no more. Each concentrated swing would cause his long, flowing hair to billow out in the resulting gust of wind, entwining with the striking red scarf that trailed down his back and snaked far across the dirt behind him.

Today he had chosen to practice his swings alongside a river. The man liked rivers. The serene vastness of their natural beauty was calming to him, but at the same time, the thought of their boundless, ever-reaching form stirred feelings of excitement within his heart.

This particular river ran across the town of Bredkrum—a town he had arrived in the previous night. It was a small town with nothing of any significant note or importance to the man aside from the river itself. It was simply a short stop along the way to his destination.

In the distance, he could hear some kind of commotion happening on the other side...

“Hup!” Ignoring it, the man continued to concentrate on the swinging of his hefty blade.

“Oi! You there! What the hell are you doing?!” A voice at his back suddenly broke the man’s focus. “Stop that right now!”

“Ah, it’s that guy! That rookie adventurer I was telling you about!” Another voice chimed in. “The one that’s been making waves around town lately.”

“No shit it’s that guy! I could see it was that guy before he even stepped foot in town! You can see that damn sword of his from miles away! What was his name again…?”

“The other adventures have taken to calling him… One Swing, I think?”

With his violet blade still held out in front of him, the man called One Swing glanced over his shoulder, meeting the approaching voices with a warm smile. They were guards—two of them—each lightly armored and carrying a metal-tipped spear.

“My apologies, officers,” he said, raising his blade into the air once again, still intent on his training. “I was so focused on my swordsmanship I didn’t realize the disturbance I must have been causing this fine morning. I’ll be sure to keep my voice down from now on.”

One Swing had a deep respect for guardsmen. He respected both the length of the weapons most chose to carry, as well as the long arm of the law that they represented.

“It’s not your hup-hupping that’s the issue! It’s obviously that damn sword of yours!”

“Hm? My sword?” At the guard’s complaint, One Swing looked up at the blade held in his grip. It was a sword made from pure soulstone. The hardest, rarest, and most sought-after material in the land. Once an affluent noble, One Swing had given up everything he owned and every last coin to have such a sword forged for him, all to achieve his lifelong dream of becoming an S-Rank adventurer. He had only just recently departed on his journey so he was currently still an F-Rank. The very lowest of the ranks.

—And then he swung the sword down again.

Focusing his attention on the tip of the blade this time, he watched as it sliced cleanly through the air in a perfect downward arc, before connecting with a moving wagon on the other side of the river. The wagon instantly exploded in a shower of splinters and wooden fragments as crowds of screaming townspeople frantically flew from the scene. Although the sword had stopped before touching the ground, the stone path beneath the hovering blade had been completely uphevelled by the sheer force of pressure from each swing, scattering clumps of gravel up and across the rooftops of every nearby home.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Ah…”

One Swing paused his training in realization. Though rivers were unfathomably long, width was a completely different measurement altogether. One Swing had failed to realize that the length of his weapon was far greater than the width of the river, and thus, each one of his training swings had been wreaking havoc across the other side.

“Alright, jail. Straight to jail.” Approaching the man, the guard immediately reached for the shackles at his belt. “Help me put the cuffs on him.”

“When I heard he was ‘making waves’ around town, I didn’t think it was meant to be taken literally!” The other guard approached as well, assisting in One Swing’s arrest.

“Dammit, what’s with all these weirdos we have to deal with lately? First it was that freaky cannibal, now it’s this guy…”

Detained by the authorities for destruction of property and disrupting the peace, One Swing was about to be placed under arrest before—

DING! DING! DING!

Suddenly, a bell started to ring out across the town. It was a warning bell, signaling the approach of imminent danger.

“Of all the… Dammit, leave this idiot! We gotta go help out at the west gate! It’s probably another goblin attack!”

“Right!” As the guards put their shackles away and made to leave in a hurry, one of them paused for a second and turned back around. “Hey, One Swing, was it? If you’re an adventurer, it’s your job to help with stuff like this, right? Are you up for actually putting that ridiculous sword of yours to good use?”

Slinging the lengthy blade over his shoulder, One Swing gave a confident smirk.

“Always.”

And with that, One Swing made his sprint towards Bredkrum’s west gate. As he neared, he was greeted by the sounds of fighting. Garbled, animalistic shrieks cried out over the sounds of combat.

“What’s with these goblins? Didn’t they used to be more organized? This is a piece of cake!”

“Yeah! I heard these suckers were a problem because they had some kind of jacked-up hobgoblin leading them all. But now they’re in a total frenzy!”

As One Swing arrived at the gate, he watched the scene before him. A group of crazed goblins—small, green, savage creatures—had torn through the forest, rushing the gate armed with nothing but makeshift wooden tools. Lunging forward wildly, each one was swiftly and easily cut down by a guardsman or adventurer who had heard the bell and rushed in to assist.

“Ah… I guess we didn’t need you after all…” the guard panted, pausing for a moment to catch his breath after finally arriving at the gate behind One Swing. “There’s not many of them this time, huh? Looks like this lot will be able to take them down easily enough without us. I appreciate you coming though. Just this once, I’ll let your little incident at the river slide. As long as you make sure never to do it agai—”

—One Swing swung his blade down in front of him.

In a flash, One Swing had gripped the handle of his sword with both hands and lifted it high above his head. The fifty-meter blade stood out like a violet beacon in the sky, threatening to pierce the heavens with its hundred-and-sixty-four-foot length.

“Seven-Slaying Star Judgment—!” One Swing shouted. It was the name of his beloved weapon. Part of its name, at least. It was as much of its name as One Swing could reasonably call out between the start of his swing and the moment of impact.

The blade tore down through the air in a perfect arc, obliterating everything in its path. A charging goblin disappeared into nothing but a crimson mist as the gigantic blade cleaved through it with ease. Continuing onward, the blade plunged deep into the earth, shaking the very ground beneath their feet. Waves of undulating dirt spread out in all directions, upturning every tree caught in the path of the quaking soil, as well as the entire length of the town’s western wall, quickly crumbling along the line like toppling dominoes. Splitting cracks snaked their way across the earth, plunging both goblin and adventurer down into the deep fissures continuing to widen across the entire area, taking any homes or buildings still left standing across the western edge of town down along with them.

After the chaos had settled and the sounds of combat and destruction had dulled into nothing but a heavy silence, One Swing lifted his sword back from the earth. Pulling it free, he heaved the hefty weapon up and slung it over his shoulder once again, the violet blade trailing high up into the sky above.

With a satisfied smirk on his face, One Swing turned back around to find—

"Alright, jail." The guard was already waiting for him, metal cuffs at the ready. "Definitely straight to jail.”

With a look of satisfaction still on his face, One Swing was promptly arrested, and taken straight to jail.