by DB King
A loud bang echoed through the forest. The crunching and breaking of bone, and the ripping and tearing of flesh sounding alongside it. It was a sickening sound, even when his previous life was taken into account. It wasn’t exactly disgusting, but it reminded Jin of blood magic, a subset of the Arcane Arts that he only begrudgingly used at the lowest of points, when all other options were exhausted. The sound reminded him of it.
The howls stopped immediately.
Any sign of the Shadow Wolves’ presence disappeared. It was almost as though they hadn’t been chasing him for the last few days. Jin dared not look back. It had been a miraculous stroke of luck, after all, that he had come across something that could snap its fingers and turn his pursuers into fine red mist the very next second. No wonder everyone’s scared of those things.
There hadn’t been a single, recorded mage with a Blood Fiend tattoo – that was how dangerous it was. The damn thing, which was hardly taller than the average human being, was rated above Dragons in sheer killing ability. The Blood Fiend was up there with the deviant-types, and Jin wasn’t foolish enough to confront that thing, even from a distance.
I just have to keep moving forward.
At the very least, the Shadow Wolves were gone.
What the hell is that thing doing here, anyway? He wondered. The more powerful Magical Beasts usually gathered around places where the air was highly saturated with magic, like that place in the northern woodlands. Blood Fiends were so powerful and so deadly that the only reason it could be here was that something far more powerful drove it out of its natural habitat. The thought itself was scary—there were very few Magical Beasts powerful enough to tangle with Blood Fiends and most of them were deviant- or controller-types.
Jin continued on until the world seemed to blur around him, colors whirling into hazes.
Jin caught his breath after a while and immediately stopped and leaned against the trunk of a tree. He wasn’t exhausted just yet, but he had been running for the last three hours and the trees weren’t thinning out as he’d expected. Where am I? he asked himself.
Jin surveyed the environment. Redwood trees dotted the landscape, growing close to each other. Magic was in the air, though only faintly; it wasn’t as strong here as it was in the northern forests, where magic saturated everything. Jin closed his eyes and stretched his senses. Magical Beasts thrived here—there were hundreds of them just within his limited range of fifty meters. Such a dense population indicated the presence of powerful creatures, ones he could feasibly tame or harvest – though the latter was far easier than the former, given his situation. Though, that also posed a question: what were they all doing here? A few Magical Beasts would’ve been more sensible, but this many? Whatever drove off the Blood Fiend was probably strong enough to drive out just about everyone else further south.
Briefly, a crimson-eyed silhouette flashed in his mind’s eye, before disappearing.
Jin shook his head. Well, they’re here anyway, he decided. I might as well take advantage of their presence.
Potentially, Jin was standing on a literal treasure trove of power, just waiting for him.
Unfortunately, it also cemented one very crucial fact: he was nowhere near the Southlands and, more importantly, nowhere near his uncle’s lands. Despite his urge to simply abandon the bonds of family and carve out a life for himself in a place of his choosing, Jin knew he had to make it to his uncle. The Moyatani people were clannish to a nauseating degree. Family was everything to them, and a man who abandoned his family at a young age was nothing more than a disgrace. It wouldn’t hurt him much in the short term, but might come back to bite him in the ass in the near-future.
Besides, he was only five years old, there really wasn’t much he could do on his own, besides sticking to the woods and surviving by himself, which… didn’t sound appealing in the slightest. He could do it and thrive, but he just didn’t want to – not for an extended period of time, at least. As much as he enjoyed his own company, he knew a man could go mad if he didn’t spend at least a little time with other people.
And yet he needed power – enough for him to strike out his vengeance upon the Muramasa family, before they all died of old age. Spending time alone in the woods, collecting Beast Cores was the best way to do that, but he wasn’t about to spend ten freaking years on it, however. A few weeks should be good.
Jin smiled as he sat down and leaned back against the trunk of the tree, willing back his senses. I’ll spend two weeks in these woods, he resolved. There’s plenty of weak Magical Beasts to harvest. If I’m lucky, I might just get a new tattoo.
Howls echoed from the distance.
Jin’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t like the implications here – not one bit. Those aren’t the howls of Shadow Wolves…
A familiar roar echoed – the roar of an Earth-Shaker Boar, filled with rage as was its norm. The howls resounded, followed by bestial cries. Is it a territorial dispute of some kind?
Numerous bestiaries discussed the behaviors of Magical Beasts, and one of the most studied of these behaviors was their territorial aggression toward each other and not toward normal creatures. It was observed by one Narumi Shiyaki, a mage of the Imperial Circle of Scholars, that a Frost Bear would ignore the presence of bison and wolves in its territory, while aggressively attacking its neighboring Frost Drakes or Silver-Horned Elks. The creature would even ignore passing humans as long as they were non-mages.
It’s definitely some kind of territorial dispute.
Intrigued, Jin leapt from his perch, jumping from one branch to another toward the Earth-Shaker Boar. For once, he wasn’t thinking of swooping down and harvesting the core of whatever beast would fall; this time, it was the scholar in him that wanted to know and understand more about the natural world around him.
Jin followed the sounds until he found the Earth-Shaker Boar in the middle of a clearing. The eternally angry and incredibly aggressive creature unleashed a powerful roar at a group of—Jin’s heart sank at the sight of the tall, humanoid creatures with glowing, amber eyes, and vaguely wolf-like features on their face. There were six of them, each one standing about nine feet tall with powerful hind legs and long, muscular arms that ended in talon-like claws that were almost as long as Jin’s own wakizashi. Grayish black fur covered the surface of their skin.
Werewolves! He recognized the creatures instantly. The Earth-Shaker Boar’s going to take on all five of them? It’ll get ripped to shreds!
The Earth-Shaker was powerful and physically imposing. Its skin was nigh-impenetrable and its charge was unstoppable. Its raw strength and incredible aggression allowed it to take on the more versatile elemental-types in territorial disputes.
Werewolves, however, were on an entirely different level. It wasn’t that they were stronger, though they were certainly faster and more agile than Earth-Shaker Boars. It wasn’t that their skin was nigh-impenetrable and their bones indestructible. Their claws, while sharp and extremely deadly, were not tools of absolute destruction. It was none of those things. What made Werewolves incredibly dangerous and allowed them to stand above many other Magical Beasts with much more impressive abilities was their ability to work as a team – a very coordinated team at that.
Most Magical Beasts were lonesome creatures, preferring to reign over their own territories, unless it was mating season. Werewolves, on the other hand, functioned as a single unit – moving and attacking as one. They weren’t quite like the Shadow Wolves, who merely banded together and hunted their prey with primitive strategies. Werewolves were different. They acted so precisely and with so much coordination it was as though they were a networked intelligence, moving with only one mind at the helm with individuals acting like the limbs of a much bigger entity.
That was why they were terrifying to deal with. That was how they took down other Magical Beasts far more powerful than them.
And why Jin avoided them so fervently.
The Earth-Shaker Boar charged the Werewolf pack and was prom
ptly tripped, gutted, and ripped apart in short order. It never stood a chance. The whole affair must’ve lasted ten seconds—maybe less.
Jin turned and ran away. New plan: I’ll get as far away from this place as I can and get to my uncle’s village as soon as possible.
Staying in this place for a few weeks might have been a good idea if damn Werewolves weren’t involved. There was also that Blood Fiend to worry about as it was a nomadic creature.
Jin felt a hum of amusement coming from Agito as he leapt for another branch. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I might be prideful, vengeful, and ambitious, but I’m not suicidal.”
As Jin leapt, something crashed into him mid-air. A flash of light and an arc of lightning filled his vision, before everything faded to black.
Chapter 14
Lightning flashed and boomed in a cloudless sky. A wild torrent of arcane energies flooded the forest, bathing everything and anything in a massive field of electricity, indiscriminate in its destruction. Magical Beasts, strong and weak alike, perished in the ensuing explosion, dying in the hundreds, their cores subsumed by the torrent of magic and lightning. Blue lights flooded the woods, shining through the gaps between the trees and illuminating the darkness, pushing away the shadows.
Screams and roars echoed throughout the expanse of woodland as Magical Beasts fled and trampled each other in panicked stampedes.
For a moment, night had turned to day as the explosion radiated for hundreds of yards before finally stopping. It did not dissipate, however; instead, the chaotic field of lightning and magic churned and crunched inward rapidly. When it reached its epicenter, a massively blinding torrent of blue energies shot out into the night sky, before exploding and dispersing into the atmosphere, like a crown of blue and white.
Burnt husks of trees and the smoldering ashes and embers of living things dotted the blackened landscape. Tiny arcs of electricity arced between whatever moisture still existed, alighting small patches of shadowed and darkened earth and soil.
At the center of all the madness lay the body of a five-year-old child, unconscious. Upon his left forearm was a tattoo of a snarling Fire Salamander. His forearms were armored with turtle-like growths, whilst three burning feathers sprouted from the crown of horns atop its head. His right forearm, however, was wreathed in lightning. Upon it was a tattoo of a gruesome wasp-like insect, surrounded by clouds and clothed in a constant electrical field.
The boy’s eyes snapped open. Arcs of blue lightning shot out of his irises. He blinked and laid a hand on his face, shaking his head. His left hand absently shot out to grab the crimson-bladed sword that was under a pile of ashes and smoking embers.
Jin sighed and rubbed his eyes. His chest was heaving. Each breath came with difficulty – as though he had been running for a whole day without rest, without water, without food. His muscles felt drained, loose and wobbly, as though he had recently just finished a difficult bout of weight training and didn’t stretch particularly well afterward. What the hell happened?
He wasn’t oblivious to the charred, smoking, and smoldering landscape around him. Everything smelled of burnt things, charred wood and flesh. It was a familiar smell. In another life, at least, Jin had grown accustomed to this particular brand of stench. Something happened to him and his surroundings, which had done all of this.
Did something explode? All the burnt trees and husks all around him indicated the presence of an incredibly powerful explosion, at the very least—powerful enough to force something as tall and as imposing as a redwood tree into the ground. Something definitely exploded, there was no denying that.
The only mystery now was how he was unharmed. Sure, there were black patches on the surface of his kimono and his whole body felt ten times heavier than it should, but nothing seemed too out of place. Powerful explosions had a nasty tendency to blow out limbs and rupturing organs. If he was caught in one, sore muscles and shortness of breath should be the last thing he had to worry about.
And yet, those were the extent of his injuries – nothing more and nothing less.
A flash of blue from his right caught Jin’s eyes. New magic was coursing through his body – more powerful than any magic he had felt within himself before. He glanced down at his right forearm and found it cloaked in blue lightning. It arced out, onto the ground and into his clothes. It did no damage, however, and seemed to just jump around, searching for moisture. Below his right wrist, he saw a tattoo of an insect. It looked sort of like a wasp, but its body appeared to be shrouded in a thin layer of clouds, rain, and lightning.
Jin’s eyes widened. That’s a Lightning Bug!
Lightning Bugs were some of the rarest and most powerful of Magical Beasts mentioned in the bestiary of the Murasaki Library. They weren’t physically imposing, being the size of a giant wasp and having the aggression of a brick. What made them extremely powerful and greatly sought-after by numerous mages, however, was their ability to store and manipulate lightning. They didn’t do it in small amounts either. The tiny creatures were capable of unleashing incredibly powerful arcs of electricity—so powerful, in fact, that they were known for turning whole regiments of soldiers and hunters to smoking husks. For their tremendous power, even the most experienced mages approached them with the highest level of caution. Their threat rating was just two magnitudes below that of a Dragon. Capturing and taming them, however, was made even more difficult by the fact that they resided in the deep woods, where other – usually more dangerous – Magical Beasts often resided as well.
And now, Jin had one on his right forearm – an actual Lightning Bug!
But a single Magical Beast could not account for the sudden influx of magical energies within himself. His core had grown several magnitudes brighter and more powerful in an unexplainable snap. I’ll have to find out when I get out of here, he decided.
Jin pushed himself up off the ground and wobbled on his feet. Well, having more magic definitely doesn’t make me stronger than I usually am.
With a huff, Jin transferred his Fire Salamander onto his chest and breathed a sigh of relief as strength and warmth flooded his body. It wasn’t much, given how his muscles were hardly capable of flexing and crunching without great effort, but the enhanced strength gave him just enough push to get by. At the very least, he could probably walk and not fall flat on his face, until his magic did its job and healed his body of whatever had happened to it. I’m regenerating much faster, but my muscles are not responding as quickly… they’re healing and recovering, but it's far slower than it should be.
How the heck did the Lightning Bug get onto his right forearm? I ran into it and… damn it, I can barely recall the moments in between, he realized. Had he reached out to it with his magic? No, he would have remembered that—the act of reaching out takes too much focus for a mage to simply forget doing so. How’d it get here? Did it mess with my regeneration somehow?
Jin held out his right hand and eyed the tiny arcs of lightning that flashed and danced between his fingers. It had definitely bonded to him… somehow. What was he missing? I was sure I’ve read every single thing about the workings of magic, he thought. I can’t have unknown variables screwing up my plans.
Evidently, there was more to bonding and taming than simply reaching out with his magic and absorbing a Magical Beast into himself.
He glanced at his right forearm again. It was there now and it likely wasn’t coming off anytime soon. Besides, a Lightning Bug was an incredibly rare find. The fact that the creature somehow bonded with him instead of electrocuting him to death was a miracle. Regardless, he wasn’t fond of unsolved mysteries. He had to find out what happened here as soon as possible.
Shaking his head, Jin strapped Agito to his waist and began walking southward. It was about time he got to his uncle’s home and got some proper rest.
It took nearly three hours for his muscles to regain their former strength when the whole thing should have only taken a few minutes, given his enhanced regeneration. Something was d
efinitely messing with his system.
Regardless, Jin continued on. After passing through the field of burnt debris and smoking husks, Jin stuck to the tops of the trees and made his journey by hopping from one branch to another, avoiding any and all Magical Beasts he met on his way. With his regeneration taking far slower than usual, Jin figured it’d be far safer to avoid potential danger. After three days of constant travelling, the woods eventually thinned out into much shorter and thinner trees whose branches he could not reliably stand on. Jin continued his journey on foot for another ten hours, before the sun settled at its zenith and he would finally find some reprieve.
Leaning against the bark of a young willow tree, Jin smiled. Across the thicket of trees, just beyond the tree line, was a rice field. A lonely little village lay even further afield – much smaller than the outlying villages around Murasaki Castle. There were stockades of cows and sheep, pigs and chickens. Tall barns, built of wood and hay, stood in the distance. Jin rushed out of the tree line and breathed out a sigh when his eyes laid upon the flag at the center of the village, where his uncle’s family crest was emblazoned – a black tiger upon a field of white.
This must be Hirata Village, he thought.
Jin stepped out of the trees and breathed out a tired sigh. He never thought he’d ever miss the sight of open fields and wooden houses, but here he was. Following the tree line, Jin eventually came across the wide dirt path that bore signs of constant use. This should be the main road toward the village, he decided. There are caravan trails and horse tracks everywhere.
Jin followed the road. It led him to the village’s outer gates, which really was more of a formality than an actual defensive installation as there weren’t any walls around it. Around him, people walked to and fro, carrying baskets and bundles of vegetables, herbs, and green onions. Peasants rode atop wagons, bearing great loads of rice and fruits, as they journeyed into the village and passed him. The air was filled with the sounds of human activity: children laughing and cheering as they played and chased each other through the streets; adults, men and women, talking and bargaining over the prices of the common goods; dogs barking in the distance and cows mooing in the fields.
