Eldmia Ega
Eldmia Ega
Eight years.
Time I'd spent building new attachments and adapting to life after being reborn into this other world.
It was a hell of a long stretch, sure, but for a little kid it was far too short. Reincarnation or not, it had still taken four years for my brain to develop enough for me to function properly.
"This is fucking exhausting."
And today was the eighth year and twelfth day since I'd been born into this other world. The third day since our village had all but disappeared, and...
"This shitty body is so fucking weak."
It was the second day since I'd found the head of a shovel with its handle burned away in what used to be the smithy and started digging the grave.
"The blisters hurt like hell!"
There was a creek with drinkable water, and the village granary still held half-burned potatoes and such, so food and drink weren't immediately a problem, but a kid's body was just unavoidably weak.
Since this was a fantasy world, magic existed, so if I'd learned it I could've dug more easily, but my village was too rural for me to learn anything that fancy. At least about three years ago, a mage happened to visit, and I'd sucked up to him hard and pretended to feel this thing called Magic Power, but I couldn't use magic with it.
He'd said that if he came back in four years and saw I'd worked hard, he'd teach me magic. Mages don't lie, so if the Demon King's Army had attacked just one year later, wouldn't I at least have been able to use an earth-digging spell? But what could I do? Now it was still only the third year.
The one stroke of luck—if I could call it luck—was that I could do the extremely fantasy-like thing of using Magic Power to strengthen my body. I'd spent three years practicing it relentlessly, completely absorbed in how fucking incredible the experience was. I could run faster than any eight-year-old should be able to, and for brief bursts I could swing a heavy longsword at nearly an ordinary adult's speed.
But an untrained body still had limits. The blisters on my palms proved it, and so did the pain that hit whenever I ran fast—pain that definitely wasn't ordinary muscle soreness. So I dug with nothing but my own body and a shovel head. In the end, it took two days to finish my parents' grave.
"Still, for an eight-year-old kid, I did my best."
Even though my body was eight, my mind was pushing thirty when I counted my past life. So when my father left the hideout saying he'd bring my mother back and still hadn't returned by morning, I knew exactly what that meant. Feeling like absolute shit, I went down to the edge of the village at dawn and found my parents collapsed together.
I cried so hard even I thought it was pitiful. I cried until I passed out from exhaustion. That was why, even though this was the third day after the attack, digging the grave had taken me two days.
"By tomorrow, I can cobble together a grave marker from the leftover fence pieces."
They'd lived as hunters in the end, but my parents once traveled the continent as adventurers before settling down.
Maybe that was why. Both of them had died clutching blood-soaked swords I had no idea where they'd grabbed from. It felt wrong to call it fortunate, but they hadn't been caught in the fire or had their bodies mutilated. They'd simply been run clean through the heart, so I hoped they hadn't suffered much.
My death in my past life had been like that, after all.
"Thinking about it now pissed me off."
By the time I finished the grave around noon, tore open a sack from the underground storage that had miraculously escaped the fire, and moved my parents' bodies onto it, I was completely spent. If I'd used Magic Power to strengthen myself while moving them, I would've collapsed afterward without enough strength to lift a finger, so I moved them with nothing but my own strength. It was a huge relief that autumn was already deep and winter was close enough that decomposition hadn't begun yet.
"Hah. Relief, my ass."
How was a little eight-year-old supposed to survive the winter alone? That so-called hideout my father had talked about was nothing but a tiny dirt cave he'd used to store meat over the winter. If this had happened a bit later, there would've been some food stockpiled for winter, but now it was empty. Even if I scraped together all the half-burned food from the storehouse, I wouldn't last a week.
I was only doing this because I felt compelled to fulfill my duty as their son. There was nothing fortunate about my situation, and I had no room to breathe.
"I thought this was a fantasy world, but now it looks like I'm filming some isekai survival story."
The sun was setting. This was the time I used to come home with my father, smelling my mother's stew. Ever since I turned six, I'd followed my father around, asking about hunting techniques and the medicinal herb lore he'd picked up as an adventurer. I'd liked reading at the village chief's house too, but that process of learning skills just for the sake of living, without college or job-hunting, had been laid-back and filled with a kind of joy I'd never felt in my entire life.
Tears welled up on their own at the realization that those happy days had vanished as if they'd never existed.
It had been truly pure happiness. So much so that I felt relieved I wasn't actually a child, so I could properly savor and enjoy it.
"Ha... Let's head back."
At least the creek was still fine, so I didn't have to worry about drinking water. That was a huge relief. Otherwise, I might've cried myself to death from dehydration.
If I picked out some potatoes for dinner and went back to the hideout, it'd be pitch black. With nothing to light a fire, I'd have no time to rest. If I didn't get back to the cave quickly and wrap myself in the scavenged clothes to keep my body temperature up, I'd freeze my ass off.
Just as I started to stand, I felt a faint vibration through the ground under my ass.
A sound I'd never heard in my past life, but one I'd become familiar with in this life.
The pounding of horse hooves and the snorting of horses.
"Fuck."
A chill ran down my spine. It was a more terrifying sound than I'd ever heard before. As naturally as I could, I drew the longsword I'd placed in my parents' hands and laid it beside me, then slightly turned my head to look toward the source of the sound. At what used to be the village entrance, backlit by the sunset, stood a group.
Even just from the silhouettes, I could tell they weren't a proper military unit. There wasn't even a single banner to show affiliation, the kind even mercenaries carried. And above all, there weren't many of them.
"Fuck."
Bandits. Maybe they'd seen the burned village or spotted traces of the Demon King's Army—either way, they were here to loot whatever was left.
If I ran into the mountains right now, I could survive without much trouble.
But then those fuckers would strip not only the swords I'd placed in my parents' hands, but even the few trinkets they had.
Even if my whole body got torn to pieces today, I couldn't stand by and watch that.
They started heading toward the hill where I was.
The place I was at was what 'used to be' a small pantheon on the village hill. There wasn't any special meaning. I'd just thought that since my parents were fairly devout, it was right to bury them here.
Seven people. The ones who came near dismounted, looked around, and approached me. At least one, judging by body shape, was a woman—maybe a slave, being half-dragged along with an iron collar around her neck.
Their armor was shoddy. Not a single one wore a helmet. The one walking at the front was the best equipped, with a breastplate, greaves, and gauntlets. He was the only one carrying a sword. The rest had daggers or axes, and I didn't see any bows at all. No, to be precise, there was a bow, but they'd left it on the horses.
I felt the blood drain from my hands and feet from the tension. What did I have? An eight-year-old appearance. The swords my parents had held. The rocks around me.
And... Magic Power. Magic Power that could strengthen my body. Magic Power I hadn't used even once in three days and had conserved.
"Hey. Kid."
The man at the front, who looked like the boss and had walked a bit faster than the others, called out to me. His hair was a tangled, unwashed mess, as if he hadn't bathed in days, but there were no scars on his face.
"Wh-who are you?"
I put on a pitiful expression, clutched the sword like it was my parents' keepsake, and trembled as I asked. Deep down, I had a faint hope that they might just be adventurers checking out the situation, but that seemed unlikely.
From the start, it'd be rare to find a weirdo who'd be tense around an eight-year-old, but with my life on the line, I had no choice but to act as best I could. At my question, the man smirked as if it were laughable and came closer.
"Heh. Fuck that, just hand over that sword."
"Th-this is my parents'."
I turned my body sideways, pretended the sword was slipping from my grip because of its weight, and grabbed the hilt. The guy's expression twisted into a scowl, and he bent at the waist and yelled at me.
That was exactly what I'd been aiming for, you son of a bitch.
I detonated the Magic Power spread through my body and swung the sword.
"If you don't wanna fucking die, right now—ghk?"
Swordsmanship? I didn't know whether I could claim any real proficiency, but martial arts had been my hobby in my past life. Back in school I'd been so obsessed with kendo that I'd even considered becoming an instructor.
As long as my body had the strength for it, I had enough technique to aim for the neck with a horizontal slash. And Magic Power gave me that strength.
"Ghk. Wh-what..."
Fuck the pressure of killing someone. I'd been killed by a murderous robber in my past life. With the last of my strength I'd snapped his neck, but he'd stabbed me through the heart almost at the same time, and I'd died unable to move. I'd already killed someone once.
That was how this second life had begun. And now even this life had been blown apart.
Right now, I had nothing left to lose.
"Huh? Boss?"
Apparently the guy who'd gone headfirst into the ground and was choking in his death throes really had been the boss. I became a clueless little lamb again, pretending to tremble in fear, and one of the others ran over with a baffled look and crouched beside him.
He should've paid attention to the blood on the sword I was holding.
"Boss, what's... Blood? Wha—"
I took a step back for distance, then swung my sword at his neck. A diagonal downward slash cleanly sliced deep into his carotid artery, even by my own standards. His startled eyes looked at me, but it was already too late.
"Wha—? What the fuck did you do, you little shit!"
Only then did the rest of them snap out of it and stare at me. But my act wasn't over yet.
"I-I don't know! The sword suddenly just..."
The gazes of the four panicked bandits and the one slave with an odd expression all converged on me.
"What?! F-fuck, isn't that a Demon Sword?!"
Wow, things like that actually existed? What a brutal world.
I'd been worried they might just rush me and kill me, but they were floundering in fear.
"Are you insane?! Why would that be in a backwater shithole like this?!"
"B-but the Demon King's Army passed through here, right?! Didn't they drop it?"
What kind of idiot would drop something like that? It was so absurd I nearly broke character despite putting my heart and soul into the act. Fuck.
Think sad thoughts. My dead parents' li—fuck, now I'm actually sad. I will never forgive these bastards.
"H-hey. Kid. Ju-just hand that over first."
One of them, who seemed to have a little more nerve, started approaching me hesitantly. He shuffled forward with one arm stretched out, bending his waist to match my height.
"Sob, th-this is my mom's..."
"Fucking hell. I got it, so just give it here! I'll give it back later!"
I approached him, panting, as if I were about to hand over the sword by its hilt with both hands. This guy had probably never held a sword in his life—he had zero expectation that I could swing it.
He wasn't that big. Maybe around 160 cm tall? His arm length would be at most 60-70 cm.
The instant his fingertips were almost touching the pommel, I swung the sword at his neck with all my strength.
"Ghk!"
"Waaaaah!"
"Gaaah, fuck, Glen!!"
"It's a Demon Sword! A fucking Demon Sword!"
It looked like I could keep the act going a little longer.