Rebirth of the Weakest

10: Trial, Error, and a Very Loud Bang

Every ending, Ken had come to believe, was really just the opening line of some other legend nobody had written yet.

The morning sun had barely cleared the walls of the Grand Le Clan when he stepped out of his courtyard with the Devouring Beam Sword balanced across one shoulder, still every bit as ugly as the day he bought it.

Rust clung to most of the blade. The handle looked chewed through by time itself. To anyone glancing his way, it read as scrap metal someone had forgotten to throw out. Yet Ken could feel the faint pulse humming beneath the surface, patient and alive, waiting for a reason to wake up fully.

*Everyone thought you were garbage too,* he thought, glancing down at it fondly. *We might actually understand each other.*

Disciples turned to watch as he crossed the courtyard, murmurs trailing behind him the way they always did now. Ever since the fight with Wei Lin and his surprise entry into both pavilions, his name had become something people repeated at dinner tables whether he liked it or not. Some looked at him with open admiration. Others clearly resented how fast the ground had shifted under a boy they used to step over without a second glance. A cluster of younger disciples bowed politely as he passed, and Ken caught himself smiling at that. A few months ago, none of them would have bothered looking twice.

*Funny how quickly people rewrite their opinion of you once you stop losing,* he thought. *Would be nice if it worked that way for everything in life.*

The Forge Pavilion greeted him with its usual chaos, hammers ringing against metal, heat rolling off a dozen furnaces at once, sparks drifting through the air like impatient fireflies. The moment Ken walked in carrying the massive rusted blade, heads turned all across the workshop.

"Is that the sword from the marketplace?"

"The one nobody wanted?"

"Looks even worse up close."

Ken let the comments roll past him and claimed an empty workbench.

Gao Shen wandered over a few minutes later, arms full of raw ore, and eyed the sword with open skepticism.

"Brother Ken, I stand by what I said before. You got swindled."

"Maybe," Ken said, grinning.

"Maybe?" Gao Shen pointed directly at the rust. "That thing belongs in a scrapyard, not on your shoulder."

Ken reached over and tapped the blade affectionately. "It has potential. Trust me on this one."

Before Gao Shen could argue further, Elder Han arrived, his sharp eyes locking onto the sword immediately.

"You actually bought that," he said, not quite a question.

"I did," Ken said.

"Waste of good coin," Elder Han muttered, though curiosity clearly won out a second later. He crouched down and gripped the handle himself.

Nothing happened. The sword sat perfectly still beneath his grip, refusing to so much as hum for him. Elder Han pressed harder, jaw tightening, and still nothing.

A few disciples exchanged surprised glances behind him.

Elder Han finally let go and straightened up, one word summing up the entire moment. "Hm."

That single sound told Ken everything he needed to know. Even the old master could sense something unusual sleeping inside the blade.

"So," Elder Han said, turning to him, "have you settled on what you are building?"

Ken's eyes lit up instantly. "Yes."

"Then explain it."

Ken hesitated, already dreading the attempt. Explaining a firearm to people who fought with swords and fists was going to be like describing color to someone who had only ever seen in grayscale.

"I want to build a weapon that releases Beast Qi," he said carefully, "without relying on martial technique to do it."

Several nearby disciples paused their work to listen.

Elder Han's frown deepened. "Meaning what, exactly?"

Ken grabbed a stick of charcoal and started sketching across a wooden board. Tubes. Chambers. A trigger mechanism. Storage pathways feeding into a single point.

The more detail he added, the more confused the crowd around him became.

"I understand none of this," Gao Shen admitted, squinting at the drawing.

"Same," another disciple offered.

Elder Han studied the sketch for a long, silent moment before looking up. "Are you certain this is not simply nonsense you dreamed up?"

"Not remotely certain," Ken said honestly.

That earned an incredulous huff from Elder Han, somewhere between disbelief and grudging respect. At least the boy was not pretending to have all the answers.

Inside his soul space, Mirinda had been quietly watching the whole exchange, seated beneath the towering silver dragon statue.

*You still remember things from your old world,* she said as his consciousness settled beside her.

"Some of it," Ken admitted.

"What exactly is this weapon supposed to be?"

"Where I came from," Ken said, "most people could not cultivate at all. No spirits, no Qi, nothing. So we built machines instead, things that could make up for what our bodies could not do on their own."

Mirinda listened, silver eyes narrowing thoughtfully as the concept settled into place. "You are trying to combine forging with Beast Qi storage."

"Exactly," Ken said, grinning.

She allowed herself a small smile. "Then let us see whether your strange ideas actually hold up against reality."

---

Back at the workbench, Ken gathered his materials, Black Iron, Beast Steel, Starfall Ore, and a handful of conductive crystals. The Recreation Flame bloomed above his palm, drawing every eye in the room the moment it appeared, crimson fire coiling around the metal like it had been waiting for the invitation.

The process turned out harder than he expected. The metal kept destabilizing. The energy pathways collapsed twice before he even got close to a working shape.

Hours ticked by. Sweat soaked through his robes, his arms burned from holding the hammer steady, and still he refused to stop.

*Lower the temperature,* Mirinda advised at one point. *Too much pressure right now. The Starfall Ore is losing balance.*

Each correction saved him from another wasted attempt, and slowly, painfully, a crude shape began taking form on the workbench. Ugly. Awkward. Nothing that belonged in the same sentence as the sleek weapons he vaguely remembered from his old life.

But it existed. That counted for something.

Word had clearly spread by the time the shape finished, because Elder Mei showed up from the Pill Pavilion, curiosity written across her face as she studied the metal contraption.

"What exactly is that," she asked.

"Honestly," Ken said, "not entirely sure yet."

Elder Han nearly choked on his own breath at that answer.

Once finished, the workshop fell into a hush as Ken poured his Beast Qi into the weapon for the first time. Light traveled through the crystal veins, and his Panther spirit flared to life behind him, ready. He aimed at a distant practice dummy, held his breath, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

One second. Two. Three.

Then the entire thing exploded in his hands.

The blast rocked the workshop, smoke billowing outward, disciples scattering with startled shouts. Gao Shen nearly toppled backward into a furnace trying to get clear.

When the smoke cleared, Ken stood at the center of it all, covered head to toe in soot, hair standing straight up, eyes blinking through a completely blackened face.

Dead silence.

Then Elder Han lost it entirely, doubling over with laughter loud enough to carry across the whole pavilion, and within seconds the rest of the workshop followed suit. Even Elder Mei pressed a hand to her mouth, failing to hide her own amusement.

"Well," Ken said flatly, glancing down at himself.

"Which part exploded," Elder Han managed between wheezes.

"Most of it," Ken admitted.

That only made the laughter worse.

Strangely, none of it actually stung. If anything, Ken felt something closer to relief. The weapon had failed spectacularly, sure, but it had activated. The concept worked. Whatever went wrong belonged to the design, not the idea itself, and design was a problem he could actually fix.

That evening, once the crowd had thinned, Elder Han found him standing over the wreckage.

"You failed," the old man said.

"I know," Ken said.

"You embarrassed yourself in front of the entire pavilion."

"I know."

"You nearly burned down part of my workshop."

"I know that too."

Elder Han studied him carefully. "And?"

"And what?" Ken asked, genuinely confused.

"Are you giving up," Elder Han pressed, watching for the answer more closely than Ken realized.

"Of course not," Ken said, the response leaving him before he had even finished thinking it through.

Something in his own certainty surprised even him.

*In my old life, I clocked in, followed the routine, and let every day blur into the next without ever really pushing back against anything,* he thought, staring at the scattered wreckage on the table. *Since coming here, since meeting Mirinda, since watching exactly how ugly this world can get to people who cannot defend themselves, something in me stopped being afraid of failing. Giving up is the only thing that actually scares me now.*

"I am building another one," he said simply.

Elder Han studied him a long moment, then gave a single approving nod. "Good."

The days that followed blurred into a steady cycle of forging, failure, and small improvement. Ken barely slept. Most of his hours disappeared into the Forge Pavilion, and more than a few disciples started calling him obsessed, though never with much venom behind it. Determination like that was hard to mock for long.

Three days later, the second prototype stood finished, and this time, word had spread wide enough that the entire pavilion crowded in to watch, half hoping for another spectacular failure to laugh about.

Ken stood at the practice field, weapon raised, heart hammering harder than he wanted to admit. The Devouring Beam Sword rested nearby, humming faintly in solidarity. Mirinda watched silently from within, and his Panther spirit flared to life at his back.

He took a breath, steadied his aim, and pulled the trigger.

A beam of compressed Beast Qi tore out of the weapon, crossing the field in a silver blur.

*BOOM.*

The target shattered into pieces.

Absolute silence swallowed the pavilion. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Then chaos broke loose all at once, disciples shouting, elders trading stunned glances, Elder Han standing there completely speechless for possibly the first time in his life.

Ken stared at the smoking remains of the target, then down at the weapon still warm in his hands.

It worked. Not perfectly. Not cleanly. But it worked.

For the first time since waking up in this world, Ken had dragged a piece of his old life's imagination somewhere it was never supposed to exist.

Deep in his soul space, Mirinda watched him with a quiet, private smile, holding onto something the rest of the pavilion had not caught onto yet.

This strange, stubborn young man carrying a devouring Panther spirit was not simply getting stronger by the day.

He was slowly, carefully, beginning to rewrite what the future itself was allowed to look like.