by DB King
Jin’s solution was rather simple: slash and burn. Magical Beasts frequented areas with a dense population of trees and undergrowth – places where nature flourished and man’s touch retreated. Unfortunately for the local Magical Beasts, the trees closest to the iron and silver deposits were not of the redwood variety, which were a pain to cut down due to their immense sizes. Thus, clearing these trees out with fire was a rather easy task. Jin convinced the Lord of his plan, who begrudgingly agreed on the basis that the patch of woods to be burnt was not at all important to Hirata.
It had taken half a day of constant burning and cutting to finally create a straight path toward the iron and silver veins. A few, lower class, Magical Beasts had attempted to attack them, but Jin easily cut down the creatures with Agito. Once a safe route was established, Lord Toyotoda finally relented and allocated a large sum of resources into the building of an iron and silver mine, and funding builders and workers. He was skeptical, but Arima had seen the immense potential for growth and the wealth that would surely follow such growth.
After two years of hard work, the first shipment of iron and silver from Hirata Village would reach the Imperial Capital City. Toyotoda’s investment returned a hundredfold, filling his coffers with riches. Under Jin’s advice, the Lord then invested into proper roads and infrastructure, proper irrigation and ditches, and a sewage system to top it all off. Travel became easier, farming became a hundred times more efficient, and the presence of infectious diseases was cut down. With the village’s success, Jin had become its governor in all but name; Toyotoda Arima deferred to him when it came to matters of economics and infrastructure – even the collection of taxes and the allocation of funds became Jin’s unofficial responsibility.
And Jin welcomed it. He couldn’t do the same with Hamada as the man really didn’t bother much with economics and infrastructure, but – in his uncle’s village – Jin was free to unleash the full brunt of his otherworldly knowledge. He was practically running the village in Arima’s place, while his uncle dealt with the more political side of things, signing trade deals and such.
Of course, Jin had to hold himself back. The overall technological development of Moyatani was primitive in comparison to Jin’s previous world and the people here were simply unprepared for the marvels and wonders he could offer them if he truly unleashed everything he knew.
After two more years of Jin’s constant vigilance and shrewd governance, Hirata had developed a proper citizen registry, vastly improved its hygiene standards and practically outlawed public urination and defecation, established proper defensive walls and watchtowers around its borders and roads, and built a hospital – though, in Jin’s humble opinion, Moyatani medicinal knowledge was rather lackluster, relying mostly on herbal remedies instead of alchemy. Regardless, in his care, the village flourished and more than quadrupled in size as people from other lands moved in for a chance at a better life. Arima had denied them entry at first, seeing them as filthy miscreants, who were undeserving of his protection; Jin, however, had convinced him that an increase in population would lead to more competition and employment, which would allow him to collect more taxes, which meant more riches, and more development for Hirata.
However, all this meant Jin rarely had time to test his skills and further his knowledge of the magical arts – not that his uncle had an extensive library for him to take advantage of. Though, his skills with the blade had not dulled—traveling swordsmen, ronin, and martial artists all journeyed to Hirata to challenge the supposed child bushi for their weight in gold.
The constant supply of eager challengers had kept blade skills sharp, though some opponents were far better than most and actively forced him into using his enhanced strength, speed, and reflexes just to defeat them. That said, everyone else was soundly beaten, even without the aid of magic—force redirection was simply too good at beating undisciplined opponents.
I’ll have to find time to experiment more with my magic. What Jin had to know above all else, for now, were the actual limits of what he could unleash with his Fire Salamander. The Lightning Bug, though incredibly powerful in its own right, was a very simple tool for destruction. When placed on his right forearm, it allowed Jin to conjure powerful bolts of lightning from his fingertips or from the skies. When placed on his chest, it allowed him to move faster than the blink of an eye. It was limited, however, by the fact that Jin couldn’t turn while moving with the enhanced speed. When placed on his head, everything would slow down as his brain processed the world at the speed of lightning, allowing him to react to things much faster than he could normally do.
Still, I haven’t figured out the great mystery of how the heck I even have this Magical Beast on me. After four years of experimentation, Jin was no closer to an answer.
“How do I find a Magical Beast?” Ebisu asked, wrestling Jin out of his thoughts. The boy’s excitement was palpable. “Can we go now? Let’s go now! I wanna shoot fireballs from my hands!”
“Ugh…” Jin reached up and scratched the back of his head. “You’re too young for that, Ebisu. It’s not safe for you to go out to the woodlands just yet. Your father would be angry with me if anything happened to you.”
Ebisu merely nodded and closed his eyes. “Okay, I’ll just play with this.”
Curious, Jin focused his magic into his eyes and peered into his student’s core, which was likely what the boy was referring to. His core was already more malleable than Jin’s. Maybe he should give his method a try? But relying on my feelings is too unreliable. Feelings and emotions are always unreliable, Jin reminded himself. Ebisu’s control over his magic was instinctual rather than technical—a natural genius. He relied on the flow of his emotions to guide his magic, and if that flow were to be disrupted by sudden emotional turmoil, his control would be shaken too.
And yet, Jin sighed, I can’t deny the fact that his control is just better than mine.
Jin looked on as Ebisu altered, reshaped, and guided the flow of his core within himself, constantly changing it into a myriad of shapes or outright splitting it into two or three. The boy’s control was phenomenal.
Jin’s eyes widened. Okay, that’s just unfair. How is he so much better at this than I? It took me a whole week of practice just to get manipulation down to this level and he does it in two days.
Oh well, everyone was good at something and Ebisu, as it turned out, was just really good at manipulating magic on an instinctual level. Unlike Jin, Ebisu relied more on his feelings and emotions to guide him in shaping his magic. Then again… alright, I should probably test my hypothesis on him and see if it’ll work the way I think it will.
“Hey, Ebisu, there’s a cockroach on your foot.”
The boy’s control over his magic dissipated instantly with fear added to the mix. Ebisu screamed some gibberish, before jumping up and falling immediately on his back. His core receded into his stomach, where it’d remain without his constant control. Ebisu muttered something, but Jin wasn’t listening to him.
Ebisu was relying heavily on his emotions. If the boy had more technical control, his core wouldn’t have dissipated like that; it would’ve dissipated, Jin knew, but not to its most basic state. Jin didn’t like relying on something as irrational and as wild as emotions. Precise control and technical knowledge worked better for him. Or was he just overthinking this?
Still, he could not deny his pupil’s ridiculous talent. Given twenty or so years, Ebisu would be a veritable monster.
Jin’s thoughts and Ebisu’s panicked sputters were interrupted when a servant walked into the manor’s courtyard where they trained. The sun was nearing its zenith and sunlight bore down upon their heads. The servant was probably sent here to take little Ebisu to the bathhouse for a quick dip – Hamada was apparently the only noble lord who forbade his servants and maids from bathing him or Jin. Neither Ebisu nor his father was particularly opposed to the idea; Jin, however, found the whole thing to be a great security risk. An assassin could simply pretend to
be one of the servants and kill them in the bath… which was why Jin had memorized every single employee in his uncle’s payroll.
Fortunately for the servant girl, Jin recognized her: Furumi Ayame, a local farmer’s daughter.
“Young master, Ebisu, your father has requested your presence immediately,” she said.
Jin’s pupil nodded and walked off with the servant girl after a curt bow to his teacher. Jin bowed back, before sighing and letting himself fall onto the grass, eyes looking up. He had three hours before he had duties to attend to…
A faint, but very familiar roar suddenly echoed from the northern woodlands. Jin stood up, immediately, eyes wide, and grinning.
There was an Earth-Shaker Boar some ten miles away.
Chapter 16
The massive creature lay on the ground, smoking and steaming, its once smooth and majestic fur having burnt away moments ago. The bulk of it was muscle and thickened skin, bones so strong and powerful they might as well have been unbreakable. Its tusks, mighty and gruesome, had cracked apart, revealing the fleshy core beneath the hard exterior. Its eyes, once filled with hatred and anger, had rolled back into its skull. The gargantuan Magical Beast, a rare mutant-type with unmatched physical prowess, had been defeated. The Earth-Shaker Boar lay dead by Jin’s hands.
With a heavy sigh, Jin dropped Agito onto the ground and fell back, landing on his back upon the soft grass beneath him. His chest heaved up and down, and sparks of lightning arced out of his right hand. Flames sputtered out of his left hand, but they were tiny puffs, barely holding any real power.
“Ah, that was a lot harder than I thought it would be…” Jin muttered to himself in between breaths.
Jin had, against his better judgement, engaged the Earth-Shaker Boar in a head-to-head battle, without using his knowledge of its physical weaknesses – its knees, for instance, which would have made the whole affair about a thousand times easier.
It had been a grueling death match. Jin had purposefully avoided its eyes or any of its softer bits, even avoiding attacking or injuring its spine. The purpose of prolonging the fight and making things a lot harder for himself was to test the limits of his fire manipulation – which, Jin found, seemed limited only by his imagination and how much magic he had left in his system.
Luckily for him, Jin’s magical core was absurdly large, which meant it could house an absurd volume of magical energy and restored magic much faster than if it had been smaller, which allowed him to fling elemental spells at will.
And that’s exactly what he did. Jin had unleashed the full capacity of his Fire Salamander, creating walls of flames, globes of flames, and a whole host of other shapes and forms that he had not tried before. The Earth-Shaker Boar was, however, unamused by Jin’s constant and liberal use of fire. It charged again and again, just barely missing each time. Its thick skin was all but immune to the effects of extreme heat, effectively cancelling out any damage Jin’s flames might have done to it, though its fur did suffer greatly.
One of the many things Jin had noted about his own flames had been the fact that he could not control its overall temperature. He could not make it any hotter than it already was, which meant the only way for him to increase the heat of his flames was to unleash more of it. There was, after all, a limit to just how much destruction he could feasibly cause with his flames. The other limit was that he could not conjure any fire out of thin air—either he conjured it from the ground up or from his hands. The former of which was a bonus from the Turtle tattoo he’d taken from Yamamoto Gamashiki all those years ago. The Phoenix’s additive ability of creating and controlling hot gusts of wind also greatly increased his repertoire of fire-based attacks. By willing forth a great pillar of flames from the ground, for instance, and encasing it in a constant circular flow of hot air, Jin could create a tornado of magical flames.
Jin’s experimentations with his fire-based abilities lasted for over an hour, which – surprisingly – did little to actually halt the Earth-Shaker Boar’s unstoppable onslaught. After all, the angry pig was more than capable of taking down elemental-type Magical Beasts with ease, simply with its brute strength. The flames he’d conjured for the last hour hadn’t really done anything except annoy the pig even further than it already was. Strange, I was able to burn away its skin and meat last time, but it was already dead by then. Is its skin really tough or is it simply regenerating through all the flames?
Deciding he was done experimenting on the poor creature, Jin activated the power of his right hand and began unleashing powerful bolts of lightning from the sky and from the tips of his fingertips. He could conjure both at the same time, but he was limited to two bolts of lightning. In terms of burst damage, his Lightning Bug was definitely stronger; in terms of damage over a period of time, over vast areas, however, his Fire Salamander was stronger. Though, against the Earth-Shaker Boar, lightning worked better.
The smell of burning meat and skin entered Jin’s nose as he rained down bolt after flashing bolt of lightning upon the mutant-type Magical Beast, significantly slowing its strides each time its body was struck with the powerful flashes of heavenly magical electricity. Unlike when it was hit by Jin’s flames, the Earth-Shaker Boar’s thick skin and regeneration did nothing to protect its internal organs from getting zapped each time Jin sent a powerful streak of lightning into its body. The Magical Beast staggered and slowed, Jin’s lightning pushing it further and further into the ground each time it struck. Tiny cracks appeared at its feet with every grueling step forward.
“DIE, YOU ANGRY PIGLET!” he’d screamed.
Willing forth an absurd amount of magic into his right hand, Jin conjured a massive blast of lightning from the clouds. It was so massive that its flash had temporarily blinded Jin, forcing him to step back for a moment as a thunderous boom echoed outward and filled the woodlands with its terror. Ears ringing and eyes dazed, Jin stood still and waited for the telltale signs of the Earth-Shaker Boar’s approach – only, it never came.
When his vision finally returned a few seconds later, Jin had found the creature lying prone at the center of a shallow crater, spiderweb cracks radiating outward. One of the Magical Beast’s tusks had broken off and most of its body seemed to have been flash-fried by the absurdly large lightning he had conjured.
Agito had not been needed for this battle, but Jin had kept his companion in hand.
Utterly exhausted after his rather careless expenditure of magical energy, Jin fell onto the ground, arms wide open, while his gaze lingered upon the sky.
In the four years he had spent in Hirata, Jin had accumulated more power than he ever had at Murasaki Castle. From the hundreds of elemental-type Magical Beasts he’d slaughtered and harvested in all that time, Jin had found his magical capacity to have grown rapidly from their addition, reaching new heights of power. The returns, however, were diminishing. With each Beast Core he harvested, the boosts he’d receive, in turn, slowly plateaued. Then again, I’ve shoved every single core into the damn Fire Salamander and it’s…
Jin glanced at his left forearm and marveled at the growth of his tattoo. It’d once been just a simple Salamander-looking image, but now – after about a hundred infusions of different elemental-type Magical Beasts – it had slowly morphed into something that resembled a dragon from his previous world, one with two legs and a pair of wings. As it evolved, so did his control over magical flames.
I should probably shove the Earth-Shaker Boar’s Core into the Lightning Bug; if the diminishing returns work on the basis of a tattoo’s capacity to hold in only a set amount of cores, then placing new cores in the Lightning Bug, instead of the Fire Salamander, should allow me to get around the diminishing returns – at least, for a bit, before the Lightning Bug fills up eventually.
Pushing himself onto his feet, Jin grabbed Agito and walked over to the Earth-Shaker Boar’s massive corpse. Standing right next to its smoking, smoldering remains, Jin held out his right hand and willed flames to burst out of the ground bene
ath the Magical Beast. The fires licked and crackled as it radiated out and consumed the corpse within moments. Jin took several steps back. As the flames intensified, Jin then conjured forth great gusts of hot air and had them form a whirling vortex around the gargantuan corpse. The winds pulled on the magical flames and, soon enough, a massive flaming whirlwind formed over the remains of the Magical Beast.
The fires quickly ate away at the boar’s corpse, whilst the whirling vortex swept away the burnt meat and bone. After twenty minutes, the only thing that was left was the Beast Core, a glimmering ember orb of pure, solidified magical energy. Jin walked toward it, crouched down, and reached out with his right hand. He extended his magic and pulled the orb into his Lightning Bug tattoo.
Immense strength filled him immediately, a surge of energy onto his muscles and bones – electrifying every cell in his body. Jin’s hair, which he had kept just above his shoulders, stiffened at the sudden influx of energies that surged within his body. Jin fell to his knees, eyes wide at the strange strength he suddenly wielded. It’s… entirely different from shoving it into the Fire Salamander. It’s not heat – it’s electricity. My muscles are twitching. I feel much stronger, but…
Grabbing Agito, Jin laid the edge of his unnatural blade over his palm. Huh, this is the first time I’ve ever done something like this – why haven’t I tested my regeneration in this manner before?
Jin coldly looked on as he slid Agito’s edge over the skin of his palm, drawing a tiny trickle of blood from a small wound, which closed almost immediately – or, at least, it tried to. What the—
