I want to hold a sword.

It's been a day since Baldr started his sword dance.

The sword he used was rough and crafted with clumsy craftsmanship, It had no edge to speak of and was only vaguely shaped like a sword, the hilt being the only true thing hinting that it was meant to be held by hand.

On the other side, his movements did not tire and his mind stayed fresh as he continued performing katas he knew, those that were taught at school obviously.

So his sword dance continued, even after two days passed.

It was easy to notice when the world flowed back in time that the man did not sleep or got exhausted. Even in the last moments before he stopped, his mind was simply lethargic to everything due to his curse.

So it wasn't a stretch to say he could hold his dance for a decade, as long as his will did not give up.

Baldr knew that was also the fate that waited for him if he didn't conquer the Nightmare. So he started to swing the sword, after all he couldn't do much other than that.

'It feels weird thought'

Baldr had a hard time focusing on his sword because of how he felt while training. There was some amount of exertion with each move he performed, but not even a second later all traces of possible exhaustion disappeared from his body.

Technically he could do an infinite amount of push-ups while continuing to have the same amount of struggle with each one.

At least that was if he didn't grow.

Bodily growth was impreciptible because it was minime, it was months or years of conditioning that would change the body to become better, so while Baldr knew he was growing with each second he didn't really feel like it.

Instead he just always felt... Fresh so to speak. His mental state wasn't changed but his mental exhaustion vanished. So as he thought, it would be his will against the Nightmare's own.

But the more he moved, the deeper his frown became. His sword dance was... lacking.

'I don't know if it's because of the [Peerless Talent] Attribute but looking at my swordsmanship... it's nonexistent.'

Saying it was a sword dance was already a big compliment. While Baldr movement were becoming better with each swing, putting more finesse and meaning in every one of them, it wasn't connected in any way.

A sword dance was a showcase of your fighting style, to express the meaning behind your swordsmanship, but while relatively trained in the sword, Baldr had no swordsmanship to speak of.

He knew how to thrust, parry and slash but he didn't put any particular meaning behind his action. A thrust was a thrust, a parry was a parry. This was a very methodic and fluid way of fighting, winning him countless spars against his peers as schools would have you do during P.E sometimes.

But there was no intent behind his moves, he had love for the sword but didn't yet think of swordsmanship.

But now he could ponder it.

So that would be his goal, to create his own swordstyle.

■■■

A week passed since Baldr started his sword dance.

He thought he would easily get sick of it, after all doing the same activity for hours on end was bound to get boring easily, at least that's how he thought at first.

But the more he moved his sword the fonder he got of swordsmanship. Funnily enough he had long discarded the white toga he had access to, the mass of clothes simply too cumbersome for him to move it, so when it slided off his body while he was performing katas he let it.

So here he was, swinging his sword naked in a white void, that would land him an arrest and multiple trials in court back at the NQSC, but here there was nothing but him and his sword. What shame was there to have then?

'But I really want to hold a sword...' The stick on a handle he had would do for now, by some twisted coup of Fate, it's weight distribution was not too dissimilar to the practice swords he often had to use. The fact that those swords were real swords, made of steel simply with dulled edge and this was wood told him that he was in the right direction.

He also had an idea of what to choose as the pillar of his swordsmanship.

■■■

It's been a month since Baldr started his swordsmanship.

If one asked him how he could tell how much time passed he'd ask, how could he not?

As an idol, he was always reprimanded and reminded about haircut and the rate at wich his hair would grow. He knew what a month without haircut looked like on himself, much to his manager dismay.

But after that, time would get relatif, he knew at wichh rate his hair grew but he had no way to measure it, and his mind was half entranced in his sword dance already so he could only eyeball it whenever his hair would fall in his peripheral vision.

Talking about swords, his swordsmanship grew leaps and bound as he confirmed It's pillar not even a week ago.

It was love.

Baldr time in this room reminded him of multiple things, loneliness was a great teacher. He realised he was a man with a heart full of love.

There was no grass, no trees, no sky, no water, no food, no friends. There was nothing in here. The emptiness he felt at not being able to experience these things wasn't simply due to having taken them for granted.

It's also because he realised he loved it all. This world and his last one, both earth were so different but so lovable! It was a shame he couldn't experience them for a long time.

But it was still something he could deal with after all, much more than everything else.

He loved the sword.

Swordsmanship, the act of swinging his sword was elating, it had slowly became a fervent passion in his mind. So what better way to honour his love for the blade than to improve his own skills with it?

The progress was slow, there were no enemies to face against, no other person styles to grow more versatile or people to spare against. It was just him and his katas, so he continued.

He had time to spare anyway.

■■■

It's been six months since Baldr started his sword dance.

One would think with his body growing he would have picked up speed, becoming a whirlwind of steel performing each of his move with the ferocity of a devil, they couldn't have been more wrong.

As of right now he was moving with next to no speed, his movements were deeply scrutinised by himself as he perform each katas slowly, extremely slowly.

He was in the process of developing moves for his swordsmanship, each kata he imagined was burned in his mind and engraved in his body. Since he didn't know much about swordsmanship he set himself an easy goal for each of his katas.

They must all be able to be performed from any other kata, must all be able to come back to the other katas and must need no stance.

This was all pretty simple all things considered. At least in his opinion, the hard thing was developing the movements themselves.

Love was in itself a wide concept so each kata was to be a type of love with multiple strokes to have different ways to express it.

Hence, Baldr would often spend hours on end performing and pondering one single kata until he finally found every way he could think of expressing it.

His mind had long filtered out unnecessary thoughts to his swordsmanship yet there was still one that lingered.

'I really want to hold a sword though.'

The more he worked with the wooden tool, the more he yearned for an actual sword. An edge, something to slash with, something that would be able to cut.

'Maybe I can work on that one alone though?'

He had heard of masters cutting with dull blades, he simply had to recreate and implement that in his swordsmanship, surely that would help him cut deeper with real swords later on?

■■■

Two years passed and with it, Baldr sword dance changed into one of love.

He was able to develop seven katas and create a stance. Each kata was meant to express a type of love, he thought he was good at naming things, but he knew greeks philosopher were better. So he named them after the types of love they had discovered since it was quite fitting.

The easiest one to come up with, if any could be called easy was Philia wich he could call Affectionate Love or Love between Equals, it's strokes were meant for when swords clashed and expressed the different ways one could feel toward their friends.

Then he came up with Eros this one was embarrassingly enough, the first one he named, the easiest way to express Romantic Love or Desire was after all, through thrusts. It was also the one he couldn't perform continuously after all, desire was a selfish fire and without other types of love to fan the flames, it would burn out quite easily.

Mania on the other hand was the most difficult on to make as obviously he didn't start naming his katas only after making them, it was in the process of creating them, that he decided to name them as such to finally have a somewhat clear path.

So Mania wasn't meant to be shown. Instead, while love was the most important pillar of his swordsmanship, This kata was like a mantra and helped solidify his foundations. It represented his love for the sword, the obsessive love he had for it, each stroke demanding a stupidly long amount of time to be created.

Ludus was Playful Love, and was meant for redirecting blows. Each stroke was a way to flirt, to smile, pushing and pulling were it's essence.

When he finally found the strokes for Philautia Self-Love he smiled, if it was something focused on himself, it would of course be biased wich made it hard to find something appropriate, but he persevered and made discoveries in the field of parrying. Self-Love is self-respect, to know when to walk away from or repel advances.

Storge was a funny one as an orphan it's hard to think about Familial Love, then he remembered the real family was the one we made along the way so Baldr mind was filled with ideas for strokes, it would be used for defending not himself but others.

The one he first didn't know what to do about was Pragma, how did you even come up with a way to put Mature Love into swordsmanship? Then it hit him Pragma was a result of other types of love, so were technically other types of love.

So with everything being a result of everyone, who really started it all? This almost made his whole swordsmanship crumble until after a month of struggling under the metaphysical way of this problem he found it.

Who came first the chicken or the egg?

The response was Agape

The Love of the World, otherwise known as Selfless Love. It was all encompassing and hence perfect for making a stance. He didn't know if he would use it often, but it served as an anchor in his swordsmanship and most of all, it was versatile.

Baldr was repulsed at the idea of a stance at first as it meant needing a platform, to have his skills limited not just by his own mind but also his environment.

It was hard to understand in this white void that the environment should be part of his skills, to use everything to his advantage. Now his stance also included footwork in it as he realised that. To always be in the best position possible.

Now with all of this it meant that each kata could flow into another kata and another stroke all to perform a different sword dance each time.

He had a good memories when it came to swordsmanship so he could easily remember each sword dance after doing them once but in total? He probably had to perform a lot.

Like a whole lot.

At this thought Baldr again smiled, he would need time for this and he had plenty, he doubted a Nightmare would actually trap him for years there had to be some kind of time dilation thing, if there wasn't he would just find a way to go back then.

But now wasn't the time to think about it, now was the time for his ultimate and unending performance.

Now was the time to really dance.

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Holly molly, next chapter will be the last in the Nightmare, hope y'all liked it so far, I lwk lacked inspiration for the katas at the hand but I think they came out alright for something I hastily put together.

Also Pragma is basically for slashes, didn't know where to put it.