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When Sekiro woke the next morning from his encounter with the madman and girl with pink hair he immediately went to grab the new sword. One hundred years without practice is a death sentence to be sure. However most people couldn't claim they've gone unpracticed for a century, so there was some strange bragging right he had, although it may not be a very good one.

Climbing down the ladder to the single room from the loft, he immediately walked towards the kind-faced Buddha where he placed the blade the previous day. When he grabbed the handle and glanced at the blade, it did not slip his notice that there were no chips in the blade. Not along the tip where the sword made contact with iron hard skin, or along the sides where there were when he first saw it.

"This is a Zanpakuto?" he wondered aloud.

For something meant to cut souls, he didn't expect a self-repairing blade. Does that mean the handle and tsuba would also self-heal if they became broken? He would rather not find out, but it truly made him curious. What other hidden qualities did these swords have aside from wounding souls, sending them to the afterlife, and healing themselves?

Now that he looked at the sword it did appear to have a lively quality to it. He could see the reflection of his eyes in the blade, the marking of the dragon's heritage on his left side as well. While the tsuba and grip remained the same, there was a small tuft of white and silver fur on the bottom of the sword. It was strange how he didn't notice that before.

It was a very pretty katana to him, for some reason. While only just a small bit decorated by the tuft of fur on the bottom, it was strangely captivating to look at. How clean the blade should be able to cut, the sword feeling almost weightless in his hands. He even felt it the day before, but hadn't had the focus to acknowledge it. If his reiatsu, or whatever this strange energy is, were any higher then he was confident he would have severed his spine at the neck.

He wouldn't dare say it but this sword was leagues better than Kusabimaru. Kusabimaru was made of steel, unlike iron sand which most were made of. Most wouldn't be able to afford such a thing, but Owl put in a special request from a smith, and likely a few threats, to get it made. Probably just to see if it could be done so he could get his remade with the same metal and technique. That much was probably why Kusabimaru and his father's sword couldn't break so easily.

Yet just because his sword could repair itself doesn't mean he shouldn't abuse it like it could. If it breaks it breaks, and if it happened in a fight he would be dead... again. The concept of dying at this point seemed like a funny thing to Sekiro.

He took the sword and turned toward the door, only to find a scabbard beneath the only window in his house. 'Where did that come from?' he wondered. He took his newly found sword and sheathed it in the scabbard. It fit perfectly. "A gift? But from who?"

Regardless of who it came from, a neighbor who saw the sword or the madman who might have followed him home, he would accept the gift and not question it. Not unless it came to bite him in the back.

Quickly he left his home and headed eastward to the nearby forest where there were plenty of trees to practice his strikes with. It would be hard to get used to swinging a sword again. He wasn't even sure if he would remember the shadowfall technique he hadn't used for a century up until that point, but he did. If it didn't take him that much energy to remember how to fight, then it should take only a swing to correct his stance and grip, if not that only one.

At the very least he could say he had a hobby. It was the first hobby he had in both lifetimes.

At this point, Isshin could call himself a regular at this inn. They had decent drinks, better food, and a room for him to stay in when he became too drunk to walk. The bed was comfortable as well, but any flat surface was comfortable when he was drunk.

The other patrons were friendly enough, some too friendly and others not so friendly. Most seemed to enjoy their time, and his presence, at the inn. They would tell jokes and share stories at the counter and the tables. One was telling a tale of chasing a monkey that stole his shirt and him not even getting the piece of clothing back. After that story was one of how he survived a pack of hollows chasing him.

It was all truly fun. What was even more fun was telling stories of their time in the living world. At least, it was when the people he spoke to were from the living world. Most were former soldiers such as himself, probably victims of the many wars their masters threw them into. The rest were farmers who starved to death because their stock and crop yield had either been burned by their land's foes or requisitioned by their lord's forces. Anyone else was born in the afterlife, which was a concept he found odd, but interesting.

"Isshin-san!" called a man a few seats down from him. "What's your favorite memory from the living world?"

"The sake!" he yelled out with a laugh, the rest of the room laughing with him. "Don't worry, I will answer your question seriously."

Thinking on all of his time as a mortal, he found many pleasant memories. Many of where he took care of Emma and her taking care of him. There was him teaching his grandson how to use a blade before Tomoe stole that from him. Sekiro had also shared a few drinks with him, despite the Shinobi not drinking any of it.

Then one memory appeared. "I was sitting among a group of fools, myself included among that list." The room laughed at the jest, silently waiting for more. "Among these fools was a tricky Butterfly who would use her illusions to sneak a drink at the sake I would have imported. Another was a craftsman who could never stop working on this one prosthetic he made for a friend. The last one was a cunning Owl, who would go bright red at even the slightest drop of sake. Among these fools, we would share stories and memories, and drink until we couldn't stand."

"So it was sake?" asked the same man before.

"Yes," Isshin laughed. "It was sake. Some of the best sake I could get my hands on."

"What kind of sake is it?" asked a new face in the bar. He was a tall man with light stubble around his face. He wore black clothing and a straw hat, both well-maintained. He was clearly from a richer part of the Rukongai to have clothes that were well taken care of, but for some reason, he was in Isshin's part of the Rukon.

"Dragon Spring," Isshin answered, slightly wary yet still welcoming of the stranger.

"Dragon Spring?" said one of the former mortals. "Isn't that distilled in Ashina?"

"It is not distilled in Ashina, no," Isshin corrected him. "It is made elsewhere It's only mostly drunk in Ashina."

"What does it taste like?" asked the stranger, taking a seat on the floor near one of the tables.

"It tastes like Heaven," Isshin told him. "Very fruity, flavor and it smells like sakura blossoms. With low levels of burn and a smooth texture down the throat, it was the best thing anyone could get in Japan."

"Must've been pretty expensive stuff," said the stranger. "Can't imagine it going for anything but the highest prices."

Isshin laughed as a form of agreement. "You have no idea what I had to go through to get it. I purchase it from a village that gets it from somewhere else. It's a nightmare to ship it out of there, and when it does leave the village I have to make sure none of the boys around the castle bust into it!"

"Did you at least get to have one more drink before you came here?"

"It was the last drink I had before illness took me," Isshin told the man. Isshin threw a pouch full of kan on the bar and shouted at the top of his lungs, "This round is on me!" he shouted, getting cheers from the crowd around him. "I make this toast to the last drink of sake I drank, given to me by the first man to beat me in battle!"

A round of confused cheers sounded across the room. The only cheers that weren't, came from those too deep in alcohol to hear proper words. The tavern owner poured into everyone's cups more sake. Despite the confusion of the toast, the promise of more alcohol took more hold in their minds.

The stranger however asked, not yet too inebriated to let the comment slide. "Who was the first person to beat you in battle?"

Isshin downed his drink in one go, slamming the empty cup on the table and then turning towards the man. "A man who I thought to be a very unkind individual, but showed unwavering loyalty and compassion towards others. He broke an iron-strong code to protect his master and kill a scheming fool to whom he pledged this code."

"You sound like you respect him," the stranger said.

Isshin nodded. "He was the first person to best me in combat. He killed me in battle with no hesitation."

"I thought you died of illness?" asked the stranger.

"I did the first time," Isshin told him. "Wherever he is, I wish him the best in life... or in death."

Tree bark scattered across the forest floor as Okami's elbow struck the tree. A large dent was made in the trunk of the tree, almost as large as his head. A trio of loose pine cones fell from the tree, leaving Sekiro to impulsively check his reaction and slice the pine cones in half.

He got too of them, the third he caught too early as it bounced off the flat of the blade. It was something he would need to work on, but it shouldn't be too difficult to slow down his speed. Being too fast was never something anyone should avoid achieving, but this was about timing. It didn't matter if a real projectile would have still been deflected, the timing needed to be perfect.

He had only just started practicing once again with his blade. One hundred years unpracticed was something he never should have let happen, but it was something that he couldn't have done something about. He had no sword or sparring partner for centuries. For the former of the two options, he could have at least used a sturdy enough stick, so he could at least chastise himself for that.

For the longest time before serving Kuro, he would at least practice with Owl or Lady Butterfly. Having an actual person to spar with helped keep him on his toes. Unfortunately, sparring partners aren't known to appear out of thin air. Not unless he considered the beetle climbing up the tree behind him a sparring partner.

Ignoring the tree with the beetle climbing up its trunk, he looked towards one next to it. A large, sturdy oak tree that could likely withstand a heavy blow. He wanted to test something but wasn't sure if it would work. In his time in Ashina, he had killed all of the Kubinashi surrounding the land. These headless spirits left parts of themselves behind, things like memories that took to Sekiro's mind. He wondered if he could still call upon these warriors' spirits in death.

Closing his eyes and taking a breath, Okami struck the pose of the headless warrior Ako, the warrior whose head was severed from him in battle. Sekiro could feel his muscles tighten, but he was unsure if it was from anxiety or the spiritfall. He looked towards the tree and ran towards it, stopping only to strike it as hard as he could, almost completely punching through the tree. If his reach was long enough he would be able to feel the other side.

The invocations still worked, which was something Sekiro could rely upon should he feel the need to. Despite this, he felt as if he should still rarely use the blessing of Yashariku. The physical drawback was too great, even with the ion in strength. However if he kept on increasing his spiritual presence, and therefore his physical strength in the process, he should be able to achieve a great enough strength without having to incite Ako's blessing. He exhaled, feeling his muscles relax and Ako's boon leave his body.

Without spirit emblems to act as a stand-in for his soul, he would need to be cautious when using the invocations. Until he could find a way to either make spirit emblems or obtain them, he would do well to use the spirit invocations as little as possible. He had no intention to end up as the headless spirits before they died.

He began to sheathe his sword until he heard the shrill sound of a screeching animal in the distance. At first, he thought it to be from those masked demons that Ren had described. The main difference between the two was the lack of distortion in the noise. It was more distant than anything.

Sekiro paused, waiting to see if the noise got closer. It did become closer, the noise repeatedly sounding like a wild boar on a rampage. He was enjoying the lack of stray and wild animals wandering into his training spot in the woods. It kept his mind and focus clear. Now he had to deal with a swine that was coming closer to him.

The animal jumped out of the tree line ahead of him, aiming directly at him. Sekiro stuck his sword out, hoping the boar would kill itself for him. As the animal reached the top of his blade, it kept going forward, completely unrelenting as Sekiro's sword became stuck in its skull and threw him back.

Now not only was he facing a boar, but he was doing so unarmed. The boar was turning around the attack him, but fast enough to catch the Shinobi off guard. Sekiro this time mimicked the stance of Ungo, a warrior gone mad who was beheaded and thrown into the moat of Ashina's castle. He let the animal charge him, grabbing onto its tusks as they became within reach. He felt the vibration of the impact through his body, thankful that Ungo's blessing stopped his arms from shattering.

With one hand still grabbing onto the tusk, he reached toward his sword with the other. Instead of pulling it out, Sekiro further drove it into the creature's skull, struggling inch by inch as the bone of the beast proved to be like stone. After a dozen seconds, but what felt like minutes, the blade was driven into the brain of the beast.

Sekiro swung the blade to his side, clearing off some of the blood, from the metal. The rest he wiped off with his garb, a dusty light-brown yukata he had gifted to him a few decades ago for helping a man retrieve a cart's worth of food from a bunch of common robbers. It was about a size too big and he would have preferred some of the food from the cart as a reward, but the yukata was a nice piece of clothing for the colder times, even though it doesn't get all that cold compared to the living world.

He had tied the leggings closer to his body near the ankles and upper thighs, allowing for more maneuverability and a lower likelihood of tripping over the clothes. The sleeves were also done similarly, being tied close to the rest, and just above the elbow. He belted the waist extra tight to reduce any baggy folds in the clothing and shortened the top near the collar. The sandals he wore were also strapped extra tightly to his feet to keep them from slipping off.

The boar had torn a bit of a piece off one of the looser parts of the sleeve, but it shouldn't be that big of a deal. While he may not know how to sew, he could simply remove the ripped sleeve or both of them if he cared about symmetry.

In the meantime, the inanimate body of a wild pig lay down in front of him. He wasn't sure if he should call it a corpse, because it was just a spirit-body. Could he even consider it to be dead? For now, it didn't matter, as it wasn't fading away into particles like a Hollow or vanishing into thin air. The corpse was still physical, and could therefore be used, and what better use for the recently killed again pig than for food.

Unfortunately, he didn't have any pork-based recipes stored in the back of his head. As a matter of fact, he didn't store any recipes in his head at all. He didn't know how to cook. That much didn't stop from from trying, and the result wasn't terrible.

The flavor was dull and the meat was dry, but the meat could easily be chewed and eaten. If it weren't a slab of meat cut up into pieces, and instead small strips of meat, it would have been a decent pork-based jerky. He might just try that sometime if only to have food with him to go when he goes out.

He had pretty much used all of the pig for its meat, only leaving its poorly skinned hide and bones left lying in a corner of his house. The hide he could sell to a tanner should any exist in this world, but what would he do with the bones? Perhaps he should simply throw them back in the woods. He did also overhear, a long time ago, the Hirata chefs talking about how bones could be thrown into a broth, so maybe he could try that.

Regardless of any cooking skill, eating was supposed to be something to help increase his own reiatsu. He didn't know how it worked, or even if it did work. He wasn't even sure if that was right. Maybe it was supposed to be that eating helps replenish lost reiatsu, kind of how exercise tears muscle and eating helps rebuild it, stronger than before. He could only speculate on how it works until he gained a better understanding of this strange system.

He took another bite from the tasteless pork, quickly chewing it and swallowing it down. The hunger he had built up over time found itself subsiding, but for some reason, he felt more hungry than he thought he should be. Perhaps his assumptions were right.

Sekiro looked towards the blade, sheathed it, and once again placed it upon its shrine. It was a good sword. It was slightly longer than Kusabimaru, so whenever rocks were near his practice swings he would sometimes clip them with his sword. The sword would never chip, however, which goes to show how much of a freak of nature the man from yesterday was.

He did wish to name the sword, as he did Kusabimaru. His father always taught him that a sword was little more than a sharp piece of metal, a tool meant to kill his opponent and nothing more. Still, he named Kusabimaru, a name he gave it as a symbol of the service he pleaded to Kuro. Both his father and Lady Butterfly mocked him for it, but he did not care.

This sword he would also name, but something inside of him made him feel as if he was not yet ready to give it a name. Even if he did, the sword would make him feel as if he were not worthy to call its name. For now, it remains unnamed. Merely a sharp piece of metal he was to practice with and protect others with, as he did for Kuro.

Before I go on to notes and stuff, can I ask you guys a question? I know it's only been 3 chapters so far, but does everything feel a bit too fast-paced? I'm genuinely curious and want to know.

In the meantime, please leave a review, and let me know how the fic is doing so far.

Notes* and Trivia

- Kubinashi (首無し) is the Japanese translation of the headless. Additionally, they share the tendency to reach up their opponent's ass with the Japanese creature called a Kappa. I tried finding more information on them, but all I could find was from another anime called Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan. An anime I have watched before, and it's an alright anime. It only has 2 seasons though (I think it got canceled).