"179..180.." Kurt said with a vertical slash. This was Kurt's first time, and only the first of the four sets of two hundred swings. His muscles were already aching, he stopped at one hundred eighty, as he planned to at least try to use some of his water fist to make a water blade slash.

Gripping the handle of the wooden blade, he tried again to form the same kind of effect his fist would have over the blade. It was difficult and wasn't holding, as soon as Kurt tried to move the blade with the water, it simply fell. It had not worked at all. And finished the swing anyway, "181…"

The rest of the attempts had a similar result until he hit two hundred. Making the waterblade was going to be a difficult task, if even possible at all. He began right horizontal swings. "1…2…"

After a while he had again reached one hundred and eighty, his muscles even more sore, his back was also groaning, the turning motion worked completely different muscle groups. His feet and legs stung. But still Kurt persisted, again trying a water blade maneuver, and again each time it simply wouldn't hold and fall to the ground. Hopefully he just needed to work on it, he thought. Left horizontal swings for this time.

Even though the water blade wasn't exactly working, Kurt knew that he was doing something to help his form, adjusting foot positions when he fell out of form. Focusing on making the swing true and stable. Even with a bit more experimentation of the last twenty swings, the water blade seemed to still allude even something he could grasp. It was like he was throwing power at it, with no real purpose, the blade would just break through, he couldn't keep up with the movements of the sword.

Kurt began the final set, a thrust. The movement was simple, but much different than the swings. Just this last set Kurt thought, then it's over. Again he was on the last twenty swings, the water blade was formed only this time when the thrusted and the technique completely failed it had gotten all over him. Kurt was now wet. "This isn't working at all." He said in frustration,"it's not doing anything." He decided to skip the water for the thrusts. And finally was able to take a rest and sit down. He was going to be feeling this for a while, and he was supposed to continue it every day. At least he did it, even without the water blade working as he thought, laying down on the ground, still at the top of the pillar.

I have to be thinking of it completely wrong somehow, Kurt thought. What was the point of just surrounding the blade with water anyway, wouldn't that just make it blunt? Is there even a point to even doing it? Kurt breathing heavily seemed to have no idea. He started thinking, didn't he have this problem before, isn't this a stronger, sharper problem again? The main benefit of the water fist is that he can punch harder because his hand is protected, he doesn't need to protect the blade in the same fashion, it's supposed to cut.

He thought about that for a moment, maybe that was the whole problem: he was using too much water, a thin covering, or an edge. That would make more sense right. Kurt stood up, even though he just made eight hundred swings. He felt maybe he was on to something.

He made the thinnest version of the water covering he could control and made a veritable slash. It didn't do what Kurt intended, the water had slid off the blade and there just for a second a thin stream of water was hanging in the air, which then fell. Kurt saw it.

He made one more swing this time, the stream of water didn't hang in the air it shot forward, not too far. And Kurt realized he wasn't going to make some water blade, he would send out a crescent wave slashes, as he named them because the arc of the stream of water took because of the blade's path. But it's not like he was stupid enough to shout it out before he would use it. It was very similar to a water disc, and much faster to form, and running a bead of water up the blade was not a difficult task.

Kurt could feel it would drastically improve with more practice. He only grasped the concept, and saw that it was possible, the actual wave wouldn't have been very powerful in its current form. There was work to be done on it, the best placement of water, the best amount, how and when to lame that push, gaining control of doing the push with more power. It was just the glimmer of a technique, one that had a lot of potential. But, he felt he could do a lot of them, since the amount of water being controlled was so minimal, he might up to fifty, a hundred or one day all two hundred of his practice swings may all have a wave coming off them.

But today he was done with practice, if he was going to be doing this everyday, he had time. Even though he was excited about the concept his exhausted body didn't want to. He had already promised it was going to be over to it just a few moments before.

On the second day Kurt began his training attempting the crescent wave. Each time making seemingly random adjustments. While the concept was there, what he really needed to do is have a lot more control over how the wave formed as it left the blade.

After about thirty swings, remembering to go back to focusing on the correct form for his body that he was getting out of because he was focusing on the wave's creation. He had discovered he had two main options, his full power option in which he would encoat the entire blade with a thicker amount of water, this would create a bigger but less precise wave, it was more of a brick than slice. The other option is he found he could could a small amount of water near the tip of the blade, this allow him to slightly push that water off the very tip creating a thin cutting blade, Kurt thought this would be especially deadly once he perfected the technique and rhythm with the swings. Because in a lot of sword fights at some point the opponent will move out of the range of your sword missing their body, or neck, this would allow Kurt to have a thin blade extend that reach and would be devastating if he timed it right, as they would be wide open, thinking they just dodged the swing.

He knew the full power one was not quite right the most, there was some way to make the form tighter, Kurt hadn't figured it out perfectly just yet, but he also felt it could get bigger once he found the correct placement of water on the blade, and resulting push it would need to form after. The smaller cutting one had a lot of help from the tip of the blade, that the full power one couldn't take advantage of, as it was a big amount of water, one was like a thin wire and the other a sheet. Really the small cutting formation was the tip of the sheet formation, without the rest, and the tip allowed it to be extremely thin which gave it a distinct advantage, while the full power one would pack a bigger punch, so the mechanic was very similar.

Both could be done fast, he barely had to slow down his normal swing pace to allow the formation. And felt he would get faster and faster. A water disc took a lot of effort and time to form, it was stronger and sharper than the waves, but Kurt was essentially practicing making a barrage of crescents in quick succession, something he wouldn't be able to do with the discs. Today was all about that to Kurt, tomorrow he would find some targets, as he was simply letting them fly off the roof of the pillar at the moment, and figure out some ways to make them stronger.

One thing at a time. There were a lot of parts to it, and each would have to be refined and enforced. He would eventually have to think about a spear, but Kurt had realized the thrust maneuver simply didn't work with the concept, it needed the arching swing to really form. So he would still have to think about that, but that wasn't the end of the world. He decided to alternate, two full power, and two cutting crescents , back and forth during the last one hundred of his two hundred vertical swings.

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