Rebirth of the Sword Saint: A Reincarnation Epic Fantasy Saga

by DB King

  Jin immediately forced himself up and glanced at the distance, where a dark figure with burning red eyes seemed to linger for a moment between the tall trees, before disappearing. There was another powerful presence there – likely another deviant, given the display of power. However, it disappeared before Jin could fully grasp its aura.

  “Where are all these deviants coming from and what the hell do they want from me?” Jin sighed and turned to the right, where the Wendigo’s hurling had carved deep furrows into the earth and had left a trail of destruction. Its cold and unnatural presence, however, had disappeared as well. Without the Wendigo’s unique magical essence corrupting the very land and air, the frigid cold, the harsh snow, and the howling blizzard all slowly disappeared, gradually dissipating. The skies cleared, revealing a great blue expanse that seemed to stretch out eternally. However, much of the current landscape was still blanketed in a thick mist and bed of white ashes and cinder.

  With a heavy sigh, Jin fell backward onto the ground and closed his eyes.

  “What the hell just happened?” Jin spoke out loud, almost screaming into the winds. In this world, the Wendigo would definitely be classified as a deviant. It had too many powers and abilities that likely wouldn’t have made any sense to the mages of this world. It could have killed him too – very easily at that. It was faster, stronger, and a thousand times more durable. When it held him by his neck, it should have been the end. A single flick of its wrist or a hard squeeze by its bony fingers would have been enough to snap or crush his neck. He’d then be paralyzed for a total of one minute as his regeneration would likely allow him to recover from such an ordeal, but a whole minute was more than enough time for the Wendigo to rip his head off or crush it.

  It could have very easily killed him, but why didn’t it? In that same vein of thought, that demonic-looking deviant Magical Beast he’d encountered in the Northern Woodlands also could have easily killed him by crushing his body or breaking it a thousand ways, but it didn’t. Those were two encounters by deviant type Magical Beasts - at least, the mages of Moyatani would probably see the Wendigo and label it under the deviant category - and neither of them killed him; he couldn’t quite remember what the demonic thing said, but the Wendigo’s words were still clear in his memories. It couldn’t kill him or something wasn’t allowing it to kill him. It happening once was a coincidence; twice, however, was a pattern – a conscious decision or design by some unknown force that was… looking out for him?

  Jin shook his head. I have no idea what’s going on; for now, it’s probably best to avoid deviant Magical Beasts until I’m strong enough to tackle them – if such a level of strength even exists in this world. I’ll also need to re-examine magic from the ground up.

  Well, at the very least, with the Wendigo gone… somewhere – hopefully – far away, Hirata was safe from its ravenous appetite. Huh, since it’s not a primal spirit of this world, does it still embody endless cannibalistic hunger or is it just another Magical Beast now? It mentioned other things arriving with it from my previous world; that could mean any number of things, ranging from monsters to… other humans.

  Jin’s world paused. His lips curled and moved almost subconsciously, and whispered words poured out of his mouth. “Is… is the Hollowed Knight here as well?”

  Did his old friend cross into this world?

  If the Hollowed Knight was here, then Jin would make it a priority to find his old friend – and then beg for forgiveness for all the foolish things he’d done and forced his friend to do. However, even if the Hollowed Knight was here, he’d be in a completely different form with a completely different face; his Hell-Forged Armor wouldn’t have crossed this world with him. Jin shook his head. If he’s here, there’s still no real way for me to find him. He could even be in a different land altogether.

  Jin forced himself up and heaved, puking out the breakfast he’d eaten with his uncle and nephew. That “battle” had been far too close. If the Wendigo wasn’t under the control of… something that didn’t want him dead, then Jin would have been very dead. I need to amass power again; I can’t stay as weak as I am now. There’s also the force that plucked me from my world and brought me here. That same force seems to have brought along a few other things, as well, which means it’s probably a sapient entity of immense power. Sooner or later, I’m going to have to face that thing as well; I can’t do that if all I can do is chuck fire and lightning from my hands.

  However, Jin still had plenty of things to do, before moving on to dealing with the arcane; his vengeance against the Muramasa Clan and becoming the Emperor of Moyatani were firmly at the top of his list, though they weren’t nearly as urgent as making sure his new home survives the war that was looming on the horizon. Jin chuckled inwardly. Now that I think about it, becoming the Shogun wouldn’t be all that hard once I have the right resources. With a proper army at my beck and call, I can sweep through Moyatani and defeat all the little Daimyos and their little armies with their little tactics. Making sure my current home doesn’t end up a smoldering ruin ironically sounds just a tad bit harder than conquering the whole damn country.

  With that in mind, Jin pulled Agito out of the ground and slowly lumbered back to Hirata. Even when his magical core was hardly depleted and his muscles hardly strained, Jin felt utterly exhausted; it might have been the rush and the closeness of death in the air, but he was drained. He really wasn’t excited to go back to Hirata, either. Jin dealt with the Wendigo… somehow, but the village had its own set of problems that would no doubt give him a terrible headache for a few days.

  When he finally reached the village, clothes torn and scorched, he was greeted by the sight of a crowd of peasants. They cheered and shouted and ran toward him, bearing gifts and other items Jin couldn’t be bothered to care about. He did force himself to smile, however, as they screamed his name to the heavens, proclaiming him their savior and protector. They carried him and hoisted him up high. Jin stiffened for a moment, before allowing the peasants their moment of hero worship. After all, it was important to ensure the working class’ continued faith and belief in his prowess.

  They carried him to his uncle’s manor, where the guards received him, and Jin’s feet finally met the ground once more. The peasants, however, were respectful of boundaries, and merely continued on cheering and celebrating from outside the manor’s walls. As Arima and Ebisu went out to meet him, Jin couldn’t shake away the feeling that everything was about to go terribly wrong once more.

  Jin sighed. I wish the Hollowed Knight were here with me….

  End of Book 1

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  Keep reading for a sample chapter from Outcast: Shinobi Rising 1

  Shinobi Rising 1: Chapter 1

  Everything was illuminated in stark, violet-tinged light for a sliver of a second. In that moment, all the chaos had briefly been frozen in place, as if the gods were taking a snapshot of this madness.

  In the air, suspended a fraction of an inch in front of Andy’s face, an arrow hung in mid-flight. The projectile’s savagely barbed tip reflected the vein of lightning that split the sky.

  Just behind the arrow, a steel throwing star gleamed menacingly. A few feet ahead of him, on the castle battlements, angry warriors in leather armor—glossy and painted in hues of black, red, and burgundy—brandished naginata, yari, and wakizashi, their faces twisted into grimaces of murder.

  A hundred feet below, a city sprawled out across a river valley, but there were neither skyscrapers nor overpasses to be seen here. Instead, low buildings with curved tile roofs, bamboo structures, and tens of thousands of paper lanterns dominated this ancient city landscape.

  Thunder crashed, and the dazzling lightning flare gave way to darkness. This brief moment of frozen time lapsed, and everything was moving with urgent sp
eed again.

  Arrows and throwing stars zipped past Andy, their flight paths ending impotently as they bit into the wall behind him. Breathing hard, but charged on the twin fires of adrenalin and combat, Andy raced along the brick battlements. In his right hand a lightning-enchanted nodachi crackled with eager power, while in his left a throwing star, also enchanted, sizzled.

  An enemy warrior howled out a battle cry and came at him with a spear. With a deft flick of his wrist, Andy flung the throwing star. Unlike his adversaries, his aim was true, and the projectile slammed into his enemy’s throat. The warrior dropped his spear, coughing up blood as he staggered back, clutching at his throat. He toppled over the wall, plunging a hundred feet to his doom.

  Like a magician palming cards, three more throwing stars appeared in Andy’s left hand. In a flurry of flicks, he shot these three projectiles into three more enemies’ throats. As he ran, he glanced over his shoulder. A shinobi, dressed in all black, his face covered with a zukin and fukumen—traditional ninja masks and hoods—was hot on his heels.

  This was no enemy, though, for Andy was attired in the same black gear, wearing the same light, flexible armor and black hood and mask. Instead, this black-clad figure was his only ally against the hordes of enemy warriors charging along the walls. Despite the hammering of his heart, Andy felt no fear, no sense that this night would be his last.

  A burly warrior wielding twin tanto burst out from a hidden trapdoor mere yards ahead of Andy. With no more throwing stars, Andy had no choice but to engage in hand-to-hand combat. He charged in eagerly, his nodachi slashing through the air with the deadly speed and force of the forked lightning bolts blazing across the storm-torn sky.

  The warrior was fast, his twin tantos whirling in a blur of vicious speed. Andy, however, was faster. Even though he wielded the big, heavy blade, he was augmented with the strength of multiple beasts. A bear’s wild power coursed through his veins, bolstering his physical strength, while the reflexes and speed of a panther made him faster than any human could ever hope to be.

  Without slowing down, Andy parried his opponent’s attack, flicked his blade, and slashed it in a downward arc with such force that it severed his opponent’s torso from his hips. Andy somersaulted over the grisly mound of split flesh and charged up a flight of stairs, hacking through another two warriors, before reaching the highest point of the battlements, at a corner of the castle.

  His shinobi friend skidded to a halt behind him, and they paused. Warriors in their dozens raced along the battlements both ahead of them and behind them. Short of vaulting over the sheer walls and dropping a hundred feet onto the cobblestones below, there was no escape.

  But still Andy felt no fear.

  And then, as another boom of thunder tore across the heavens, a new enemy appeared. This one was no warrior, but he needed no steel weapons to be far deadlier than any fighter. He wore purple and white robes, like those of a Shinto monk. His face was hidden in black shadow beneath a large straw mushroom-shaped ajirogasa hat. This evil priest came floating up through the air from the darkness below, levitating in mid-air like one of the thousands of gently glowing sky lanterns suspended over the city.

  Andy’s shinobi ally nocked an arrow to his bowstring and took aim at the evil priest. Before he could loose his arrow, the levitating priest gave a soft, almost contemptuous flick of his fingers. A lightning bolt erupted from the black clouds above, striking the shinobi down in an ear-splitting explosion of light, heat, and sound. The bolt hurled the dead shinobi off the battlements and flung his limp body as if booted by the foot of a god.

  Beneath the priest’s ajirogasa, his eyes shone with an eerie violet glow, crackling with lightning. Andy knew the next bolt would be coming for him—but he felt neither fear nor dread. Instead, lightning roared and sizzled in the nodachi in his hands. He aimed the blade at the priest and prepared to unleash its godlike power. The heavens tore open, and a cataclysmic explosion of thunder and lightning shot from Andy’s core…

  And then he sat upright in his bed, panting and sweating, his heart racing. He swallowed slowly, his mouth sticky and dry. Morning light stabbed through his puffy eyelids.

  It hadn’t been the first time he’d had a dream like this, but this had been one of the most vivid. It had felt more real than the reality into which he’d just awoken—achingly, perfectly real. He wanted to close his eyes and return to that mysterious world, but his alarm clock was two minutes away from 4:30 AM, at which point it would flood his crummy studio apartment with its annoying melody.

  Groaning and yawning, he pulled off his covers and stumbled out of bed. He felt almost hungover, but that wasn’t from a boozing session. Rather, it was a simple lack of sleep. Working two jobs tended to have that effect, particularly when combined with time-consuming hobbies that Andy simply refused to give up. A man had to have his hobbies, after all.

  Andy glanced at the date on the calendar, noting that he was mere weeks away from his twenty-fourth birthday.

  “Twenty-four going on fifty,” he muttered as he shuffled over to the bathroom.

  Mr. Tanaka, his godfather who’d raised him after his parents had died, told him once that short of a heavy drug addiction, nothing aged you faster than poverty. After many years of living hand-to-mouth, paycheck to paycheck, and barely scraping by, he could believe this.

  He shaved listlessly, half-asleep, with one toe still dipped in the waters of dreamland. After shaving, he splashed his face with cold water to try to force himself to wake up. The face that stared back at him in the grubby mirror was a relatively good-looking one. He would never grace the covers of any men’s fitness magazines, nor would any Hollywood talent agents ever slip their business cards to him across the checkout counter of the small convenience store where he worked as a clerk, but he’d had no trouble with dating the fairer sex. His tanned skin, shaggy medium-length black hair and piercing blue eyes, as well as his athletic physique, gave him the look of a surfer. In saying that, he’d never once set foot on a surfboard. His build and height—six foot four—and his broad shoulders meant that guys usually gave him a healthy measure of respect. It wasn’t always that way; he’d been a small kid, and the other schoolkids had picked on him, but that’d changed as soon as he hit his growth spurt at fourteen.

  Although plenty of women liked to look at him, most would have quickly changed their opinion of him had they seen the inside of his apartment. To call it cluttered would be like saying the Great Wall of China was a handful of bricks cemented together. However, as Andy wound his way through the piles of bric-a-brac, it was clear that the items were not pieces of junk, and that Andy was no hoarder.

  Here was a homemade automatic repeating crossbow. There a functional flamethrower, constructed from scrap materials. Next to it was a fully working miniature replica of a medieval trebuchet. He stepped over a partially stripped Kawasaki Ninja motor. His large desk—held together with duct tape and wire—was strewn with gears, cogs, pistons, cranks, and all manner of tools, screws, bolts, cables, and other DIY materials.

  After pouring himself a bowl of no-name cornflakes and hastily brewing some instant coffee, Andy navigated his way through the piles of interesting items. He plopped himself down on his ratty sofa, salvaged from a dumpster and stuffed with old clothes, patched liberally with duct tape. He was half-tempted to turn on his Xbox and play for a few minutes, but resisted the temptation, knowing that a few minutes would turn into a few hours. The way things were going at work, he couldn’t afford to be late again. Scattered on the floor next to the Xbox were games like Battletech, Europa Universalis IV, Mutant War Zero: Road to Eden, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, and other strategy titles. Maybe a few minutes reading instead? He glanced up at his bookshelves, where there were many dog-eared, moth-eaten books (all from thrift stores, of course), almost exclusively history books.

  As he chewed on his cornflakes, he turned on his phone and checked his messages. There were two voice messages: one from his boss at the co
nvenience store, Ted, and one from his landlord Mr. Stavros. Neither were good options, but he decided to get the most unpleasant one out of the way.

  “Here it goes,” Andy muttered through a mouthful of cornflakes as he played Mr. Stavros’s message.

  “Andy, listen kid, I’ve been generous with you—way too generous. This is the last message I’m sending, after the last six or seven seem to have fallen on deaf ears. I know you’re having a tough time with your finances , but seriously, I’ve given you more than enough leeway now. If the rent isn’t under my door by the end of the week, you’re out next Monday. And yeah, I will get the cops to evict you. I’m sorry, this isn’t exactly pleasant for me either, but I gotta do what I gotta do. Nobody stays in my apartments rent-free. Sorry. Under my door by the end of the week or you’re out on your ass.”

  He wanted to quit listening here, but there was still one more message, even if he really didn’t want to hear it. The previous evening Andy had dumped a Slushie over an unruly, aggressive customer’s head, and although he’d known there would be hell to pay, he simply hadn’t been able to stop himself. With a reluctant sigh, he leaned back and played Ted’s message.

  “Andy you stupid, moronic, idiotic, selfish son of a bitch!” Ted roared, the cheap phone speaker distorting his voice.

  “Sounds pretty metal, Ted,” Andy remarked to himself with a smirk, glancing over at his Black Sabbath, Metallica, and Iron Maiden LPs.

  “I can’t believe you’d do something so, so, so completely brain-dead!” Ted Danzig spat. “Dumping Slushies over customer’s heads?! Are you kidding me, are you actually kidding me?! This is what I have to wake up to this morning?! And yeah, you smart-ass, I watched the security camera footage, and yeah, the guy was being a jerk, yeah, I know, he was harassing our female employees—but this doesn’t give you the right to go be, be, freakin’ Batman with a Slushie or whatever the hell you think you were doing! You ever heard the expression, ‘the customer is always right’, Knight?! The guy’s gonna try to sue me now, you idiot! I should fire your dumb ass! And I would if Sue wasn’t off sick and we had someone else to cover your shift today! Ugh, dammit, you moron, you total moron! This is your last warning, your very last warning! You ever pull a stunt like this, and I mean ever again, you’re out on your ass! This is your last warning! Ever! You’d best keep a low profile today, because if I even see your face, Andy Knight, if I have to look at your face…”