The Weapon Genius: Anything I Hold Can Kill
Chapter 143: Undefined

The air stung.

Every slash, every clash left behind more than just sparks. It carved pressure into the walls, heat into the stone, and a gnawing tension into Jin's chest that didn't let up. His opponent didn't tire. He didn't flinch. He just kept smiling, like chaos was oxygen and Jin was finally breathing it in.

The weapon lashed out again.

A crack of light, curved like a scythe, split the air from the left.

Jin twisted, pivoting with a grounded heel and letting Muramasa catch the edge at just the right angle—his blade shook, the shock running up his arms, but he didn't let it throw him off.

Too close. Again.

The energy from the strike sang through the floor, rippling through the twisted stone of the maze. Jin gritted his teeth and slid back, forcing himself into a new stance—not one of the forms. Something looser.

The other man stood about ten paces off, one hand flicking his weapon in a lazy arc. The curved blade shifted again, breaking apart mid-air and returning in smaller spinning fragments, like orbiting moons waiting to be called home.

"You're adapting faster than I thought," the man said, rolling his shoulder. "Guess they weren't lying about you."

Jin didn't answer. His breath fogged faintly in the cool air, and Muramasa pulsed with residual heat.

He wasn't just dodging anymore. He was reading. Reacting. Learning.

Not just him, either.

Muramasa's aura flared slightly—recognizing something. Matching tempo.

The blade felt different now. Not heavier, but fuller. Like it wasn't just responding to Jin—it was challenging him.

The last few fights had forced Jin to adjust his stance, his strategy, his angle. But this fight was something else. It was asking him to create.

He stepped forward, slowly.

The man's eyes gleamed. "Gonna show me something new?"

"Something like that."

Jin inhaled.

Then he pushed sword aura out from his palm.

It came in a ripple—not a blaze like before, not a hum of sacred energy from a known form. This was rough. Untamed. A raw current of something greater waiting to be shaped.

He swept Muramasa through the air experimentally, not to strike but to trace.

The air distorted behind the path of the slash.

Interesting.

He stepped again and slashed diagonally, the aura flaring in a line of white-gold that hissed like burning silk.

The other man blinked. "Now that's interesting."

"Just figuring it out," Jin muttered.

He turned, pivoted off his back leg, and swept the blade again—this time angling the aura outward, trying to curve it.

It worked. Sort of.

The arc wobbled. It cut nothing.

But the possibility was there.

He adjusted.

If he could shape the aura, not just release it—

He slid to the side, feinted low, and twisted into an upward cleave.

The sword aura burst in a half-moon flare—cutting a chunk out of the wall nearby. The other man dodged cleanly, but his grin widened.

"You're crafting now," he said. "Good."

Jin didn't respond. He didn't need to. The glow along Muramasa's edge intensified, now a steady white with veins of soft crimson. Not divine. Not infernal. Something else.

Something forged in the middle.

Balance.

He dropped into a wide stance.

A new stance.

Lower than his usual. More forward-weighted. Centered for impact, but not grounded in tradition. Not Mura's. Not the system's. His.

"Ichi—" he started.

No.

Not a numbered form.

This wasn't part of the list.

It was outside it.

The man noticed. His brow lifted slightly.

Jin brought the blade to his side. The sword aura burned white-hot along its edge.

He whispered the name.

"Tengoku no Hōfuku."

Heaven's Retribution.

He stepped forward.

The blade didn't move fast—but it moved like judgment. The sword aura didn't flare out in a beam, or explode in a wave. It carved forward in a direct line, perfectly honed, almost invisible until the last moment—then flared with a sound like thunder caged in a bell.

The man moved to dodge—

Too late.

The aura cut across his chest and shoulder in one perfect arc—clean, undeniable, and final.

For the first time since the fight began, his opponent stumbled.

Smoke rose from the wound. The damage wasn't catastrophic. But it was real.

Jin held his ground, blade steady.

He could still feel the echo of the technique vibrating through his bones. Not like before. Not borrowed. Not inherited.

This was his.

And the fight was shifting.

The Catalyst stumbled.

Only for a breath. Only a foot back. But for someone who had spent the entire fight flowing between attacks like water through cracks, that stumble was seismic.

Jin didn't move. He didn't rush in. He just stood there, Muramasa humming softly, its edge still glowing faintly white with the remnants of sword aura.

He could feel it fading. That heat. That certainty.

He'd struck with a form that wasn't handed to him. Not by the blade. Not by the past. It was his. A technique drawn from instinct, shaped by pressure.

But the silence that followed wasn't peace.

It was waiting.

The Catalyst straightened.

His grin didn't return.

Instead, he looked down at the wound. Touched it with two fingers.

"You really are something," he muttered.

Then he smiled again—slower this time. Wry. "You're not just mastering what came before. You're building new laws."

Jin didn't respond. He adjusted his stance subtly, readying for a counter.

But the Catalyst didn't attack.

Instead, he… laughed. A soft, breathy sound. Not manic. Not mocking.

Just… entertained.

Then, without warning, his body began to dissolve.

Jin's eyes widened.

The Catalyst's limbs broke into wisps of dark energy—black vapor with pink edges, curling up like smoke from paper. His torso followed. Then his face.

And then he was gone.

Gone—but not entirely.

Because something remained.

A sound.

Clapping.

Slow.

Measured.

Coming from just beyond the corner of the next maze wall.

Jin turned sharply, blade already raised again.

Footsteps echoed—calm, unhurried.

Then a figure emerged from the dark. Not leaping. Not attacking.

Walking.

One hand loosely held at his side, the other lifting once more for a final, mocking clap.

Same coat. Same build.

But this one… felt different.

The aura was heavier. Not in weight, but in presence.

He moved like someone who didn't need to prove anything anymore. The fight had been the warm-up.

This was the arrival.

Jin's pulse slowed—but it didn't ease.

The man stepped into full view, and now Jin saw the mask.

A half-mask, pale and cracked at the edge, covering his eyes but not his mouth. It clung to his face like a second skin, etched with thin runes in a language Jin didn't recognize.

The man came to a stop a few steps away.

He raised a hand.

The broken scythe fragments scattered across the floor shimmered—then lifted. Not chaotically. With purpose. They spun once, twice, then snapped together into a full, curved weapon that hovered in the air before him.

He caught it one-handed.

"Better, right?" the man said, gesturing to the scythe. "This one moves more like me."

Jin said nothing.

The man cocked his head. "Not going to ask who I am?"

"You're not the kind to give a straight answer."

That earned a smile.

"Fair. Still, I'm feeling generous."

He tapped the side of his mask lightly. "I'm known by many things. But if you need a title for me…"

He stepped forward.

"…I go by 'Undefined.'"

Jin's brow furrowed. "That's not a name."

"No," the man agreed. "It's a designation. One given by people like us."

Jin's grip on Muramasa tightened. "Us?"

The man—Undefined—exhaled slowly.

"The Transcendents."

He said it without flair. No dramatic pause. No lightning or thunder. Just… a word.

A fact.

It hung in the air like it had always belonged there.

And suddenly, everything felt smaller. The maze. The torches. The stone beneath their feet. Like they were all being redefined by something larger.

Jin didn't speak.

Undefined didn't press.

He just looked at him.

"You pass," he said, as casually as if discussing weather. "Nice to meet a new one."

Then he turned away.

"Wait," Jin said sharply. "What was the test?"

Undefined paused. He looked over his shoulder.

"Think of it as a moment of pressure," he said. "A blade finding its own edge."

"Was this your own trial?"

"Not exactly."

Jin stepped forward a half-step. "Then what did you mess with me?"

Undefined sighed. "Curiosity. Boredom. Purpose. Take your pick."

He looked at the labyrinth around them. "I wander. And sometimes I watch. But every now and then, I like to tap the glass."

He began walking again.

Jin's voice rose. "If you're done… at least help me find my team. You held me up long enough."

That made Undefined stop.

For a second, he said nothing.

Then—he grinned.

"You're right."

He turned toward the wall beside him and raised the scythe.

His fingers brushed the stone.

Just a whisper of contact—but the maze reacted like it had been waiting.

Faint glyphs flickered beneath his palm—thin silver lines curling across the wall like veins, pulsing softly with pink light. The stone didn't shift. It breathed. Like it had come alive for him.

Jin tensed. "What are you—"

"I'd step back if I were you," the man—Undefined—said lightly. He didn't even look at Jin. His tone was offhand, casual, like someone reminding you to hold onto a railing before turbulence.

"This part gets loud."

Then he moved.

Not with grace. Not with fury. Just a single, decisive step.

He brought the scythe forward—not in a swing, but a thrust. Smooth. Direct. He leaned into the motion, aiming the tip of the weapon like a conductor tapping a baton.

It struck the wall.

No clang. No crack.

Instead, the air bent.

Reality folded inward around the blade's tip, the stone rippling like disturbed water—until, without warning, it ruptured outward.

A detonation without flame.

The impact didn't stop at the first wall. The force tunneled through it—then the next. Then the next. A straight-line devastation, boring cleanly through the maze like a lance of annihilation. Walls burst apart in unison, as if following a predetermined command. For hundreds of meters, stone turned to dust.

Jin threw himself back instinctively, one arm raised against the shockwave.

Dust bloomed in every direction—thick and heavy, choking the air. Debris tumbled from the ceiling above, and somewhere far off, he heard the distant collapse of a corridor crumbling into itself.

And then—silence.

Not emptiness.

Aftershock.

When the dust finally cleared, Jin looked up.

The maze was… open.

Not in pieces.

Not ruined.

Just… carved.

A corridor had been created—long and deliberate, as though the maze itself had parted to allow it. The stone had melted at the edges, smoothed by pressure beyond his comprehension. Far ahead, through broken archways and bent torchlight, he saw flickers—like movement in the distance.

A way forward.

Jin exhaled slowly. The last of the heat from that thrust still clung to the air.

He turned his head.

Undefined was gone.

No puff of smoke. No dramatic exit.

Just… vanished.

No footprints.

No trace.

Only the lingering glyphs on the wall he'd touched—and the hum of a presence that had rewritten the rules just by being there.

Jin looked back at the corridor.

He didn't speak.

He stepped forward.

And moved into the scar that had been left behind.

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