It always rains at anime funerals.
When I was watching this show on a screen in my past life, I thought it was just a cheap cinematic trope to make the scene feel sadder.
But standing there in the mud of Shimotsuki Village, the freezing rain soaking through my black clothes and plastering my green hair to my forehead, I realized the truth.
The universe wasn’t trying to be cinematic.
It was just spitting on us.
Kuina’s grave was marked by a simple wooden post.
It didn’t reflect the sheer magnitude of the person buried beneath it.
She was a storm, a prodigy, a girl who swung a sword with the weight of the heavens behind it.
And now, she was just a mound of wet earth.
Master Koushirou stood beside the grave, holding an umbrella.
His face was a mask of placid acceptance, his eyes permanently closed to the horror of reality.
I hated that face.
I hated the calm way he accepted the “will of the heavens.” I didn’t have an umbrella.
I just stood in the rain, my fists clenched at my sides so hard my fingernails broke the skin of my palms.
The villagers paid their respects, murmuring empty platitudes about tragedy and the fragility of youth.
I ignored them all.
I didn’t want to hear it.
I had spent two years obsessing, planning, and padding the damn staircases.
I had built myself into a miniature tank just so I could protect her.
And a rogue gust of wind had ripped the roof apart anyway.
As the last of the villagers trickled away, leaving only the sound of the rain hitting the mud, a familiar, sickeningly bright blue light illuminated the gloom.
**[DING!
The ‘Lord of the Undead Necromancer System’ detects immense grief!
Bind now to unlock the ‘Raise Skeleton’ skill!
Reclaim your loved ones from the grave!]** **[Y / N]** I stared at the floating holographic text.
It wasn’t just annoying anymore.
It was insulting.
“I’m not turning my best friend into a zombie,” I whispered, my voice sounding like crushed glass.
I didn’t even swipe it away with my hand.
I just stared at it with such pure, concentrated hatred that the screen flickered, glitched, and shattered into digital dust.
I turned my back on the grave and walked away.
— The dojo was suffocatingly quiet.
Without the sharp *crack* of Kuina’s wooden sword commanding the courtyard, the air felt stagnant.
I went to the kitchen.
For the first time in two days, my stomach let out a hollow, painful rumble.
Let me clarify something for the record: I didn’t *only* eat garbage.
I wasn’t a raccoon.
I ate Master Koushirou’s normal, healthy dojo meals—steamed rice, grilled mackerel, miso soup, and pickled vegetables.
I ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner like a normal human being.
The tree bark, the spoiled onigiri, the raw jellyfish—those were strictly *supplements*.
They were stress tests designed to weaponize my digestive tract and build my toxicological resistance.
But right now, sitting in the dark kitchen, I pulled a fresh, perfectly cooked bowl of rice toward me.
I picked up my chopsticks.
I took a bite.
It tasted like ash.
My ‘Iron Stomach’ was meant to process anything, but it couldn’t digest the heavy, rotting lump of guilt sitting in my chest.
I chewed mechanically, forcing the food down because my body needed fuel, but there was no joy in it.
I looked at the empty seat across the low wooden table.
That was where she usually sat, lecturing me about hygiene or calling me a moss-headed idiot while stealing the best piece of fish off my plate.
I set my chopsticks down.
The silence was too loud.
I couldn’t be in this room.
I couldn’t be in this house.
I walked down the dark hallway until I reached Master Koushirou’s private quarters.
The door was slightly ajar.
I pushed it open.
He was sitting perfectly still in the center of the room, facing a small shrine.
Resting on the wooden stand in front of him, illuminated by a single flickering candle, was the Wado Ichimonji.
The pure white scabbard caught the dim light, a beautiful, deadly ghost in the dark room.
“Zoro,” Koushirou said softly, not turning around.
“You should be resting.
Grief is a heavy burden for a child to carry.” “I don’t want to rest,” I said, my voice startlingly steady.
All the laziness, the desire to just sleep through this life, had died in the courtyard under that slate tile.
I walked forward and dropped to my knees behind him.
I pressed my forehead against the woven tatami mat, bowing as low as my body would allow.
“Give it to me,” I demanded.
Koushirou remained silent for a long moment.
“The Wado Ichimonji is a cursed blade for those who cannot bear its weight.
It belonged to my daughter.
It is a symbol of a dream that was cut short.” “It’s not cut short,” I growled, keeping my forehead pressed to the floor.
“We made a promise.
One of us is going to be the greatest swordsman in the world.
Our names will reach the heavens.
If she can’t do it, then I will carry her will with me.” I raised my head, glaring at his back.
“I will become so strong that my name reaches the afterlife.
Give me her sword.” Koushirou finally turned around.
For the first time, his eyes were open, revealing a deep, ancient sorrow.
He looked at the fierce, unyielding fire in my eyes—a fire that didn’t belong in the body of an eight-year-old child.
He reached out, took the Wado Ichimonji by its white scabbard, and held it out to me.
“Take it, Roronoa Zoro,” he said softly.
“But know that a promise to the dead is the heaviest chain a man can wear.” I took the sword.
The moment my hands wrapped around the scabbard, a shiver ran down my spine.
It was impossibly heavy, yet it felt exactly like it belonged in my grip.
“I don’t care how heavy it is,” I said.
“I’ve been lifting weights.” — The next day, my self-inflicted torture began.
The ‘passive gains’ era was officially over.
I stopped tying rocks to my arms while I slept.
Instead, I tied massive boulders to my waist and ran.
I ran until my lungs bled.
I ran until the soles of my straw sandals disintegrated and I was leaving bloody footprints in the dirt of the courtyard.
When I couldn’t run anymore, I swung.
I took two heavy practice katanas in my hands.
But Kuina’s sword, the Wado Ichimonji, couldn’t just sit on the sidelines.
If I was going to carry her will, it had to be on the battlefield with me.
But my hands were full.
So, I did the only logical, entirely insane thing I could think of.
I put a third, unsharpened practice sword in my mouth and bit down on the hilt.
The first time I tried to swing with three swords, I nearly dislocated my own jaw.
My neck muscles screamed in agony, and the sheer weight of the blade threatened to snap my teeth.
But my ‘Iron Stomach’ diet had fortified my bones and muscles far beyond a normal human’s limits.
I clamped my teeth down, tasted blood, and swung anyway.
**[DING!
The ‘God of Blades System’ detects the birth of a unique combat style!
Bind now to instantly master the Three-Sword Style and receive—]** *Crack!* I didn’t even use my hands.
I swung my head viciously, the practice blade in my mouth smashing through the holographic screen like glass.
“No shortcuts,” I snarled around the hilt of the sword, my jaw aching with the effort.
The other kids in the dojo stopped sparring.
They watched me from the porch, their eyes wide with fear and awe.
I must have looked like a demon.
Covered in sweat, blood trickling from my lip, moss-green hair wild, furiously swinging three swords against a phantom opponent only I could see.
I didn’t care what they thought.
I swung until my arms locked up.
I swung until the sun went down.
I swung until the moon was high in the sky.
And when I finally collapsed into the dirt, staring up at the same stars Kuina and I had watched just a few days ago, I didn’t sleep.
I just lay there, letting the pain in my muscles remind me that I was still alive.
*I will break the heavens,* I promised the stars.
*I will break the timeline.
I will break this entire universe if I have to.* The Systems kept coming, day after day, week after week.
They offered time travel with impossible consequences.
They offered reality-warping cheats.
I rejected every single one of them.
I was going to do this the hard way, because the hard way was the only thing that felt real.
The years began to blur, measured only by the calluses on my hands and the sheer number of bamboo swords I shattered.
The lazy boy who just wanted to nap was dead.
Only the Asura remained