章 3: First Contact

(Near the frontier between the Holy Land and the Western Kingdom)

At the entrance of a forest, a small group of soldiers was taking a break from walk , they all felt they deserved some rest after all. They had walked for hours in order to reach the frontier, and the leader of the group didn't seem to want to let his subordinates rest. .

Talking about him, he was sitting against a tree when a soldier came to him.

"Sir, a new letter from the commander" announced the messenger, squeezing with his moist hands the yellowish piece of paper. The Leader took it and moved a bit to read it.

"I see…"He returned the letter to the person who has just been running kilometers to be able to deliver it , and who was still sweating from this running session ."Burn it , make sure that nobody knows the content of it ."

"Yes Sir", it was the last words of the young boy before he disappeared behind the trees as he moved away from the High ranking officer and his squad.

"Get ready to go ! We have a new mission ! We will go in five minutes !"

Five minutes later the Western kingdom's squad where gone , only some footprints were left. They were walking towards the frontier , what were they gonna do here ? Only their Leader knew it, and he didn't seem like he was about to tell them anytime soon.

After an hour of walking, they finally arrived, one of the soldiers began to make a remark: "But Sir, we are very close to ...", the chief cut him off. "Yes, it's for the sake of our mission that we must be here ..."

This place, this land that every nations wanted to conquer, it was quite suspiscious that a single group of soldiers was sent there.

"The orders are simple, we need to patrol in this forest and make sure that nothing 'Weird' happens. According to the Commander, the pillar of light that we saw could have been an attack from those damn Northerners. It wouldn't be all that surprising, they always try to destroy the barrier." Said the Leader, the other soldiers all flinched when they heard the word 'Barrier'. They knew what he was talking about.

The soldiers than started to patrol around the forest, even though they knew they wouldn't find anything. If the Northerners had really attacked, they wouldn't be stupid enough to let some proofs of this attack at the frontier between the Holy Land and the Western Kingdom. A few hours later they were forced to stop since the night had come. They came back to where they left their Leader and quickly made a camp.

In just a few minutes, every single member of the group was sitting around a fire. The silence was quite tense until a loud rumble was heard. One of the soldiers clutched his stomach and let out a nervous laugh.

"Haha! I-I'm sorry, i didn't think i was THIS hungry." Said the man, scratching the back of his head. The others just shook their heads but said nothing, they were hungry too after all. But suddenly, the Leader of the group smirked and grabbed something behind him.

"....."

His smirk widened when he saw the gobsmacked expressions of his subordinates.

"What ? You thought i was just sitting around for a few hours, doing nothing ?"

"Y-You.....YOU KILLED A THREE-LEGGED CROW ?!" Yelled one of the soldiers.

"Damn right i did....Wait, why are you all looking at me like i'm dumb ?" Asked the Leader, as they were actually doing just that.

"Sir...ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID ?! DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU KILL A THREE-LEGGED CROW IN THIS FOREST ?!"

"Well.....No. I mean it's the first time i came here."

Before any of the soldiers could tell him how stupid he was, they all tensed. As they looked behind him, their faces lost all their colors.

"What it is ?" Asked the somewhat naive Leader. He looked behind him and.....

"RAWWWWWWR!!!!!!!!"

"FUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!"

"RUNNNNNN!!!!"

The entire group began to scream at the top of their lungs when the monster in front of them moved. A 12ft tall Oni was standing just a few meters away from them. It had blue skin littered with bruises, brown shoulder-length hair, and four red slit eyes. It had a broken blade barely tucked in it's loincloth, and the fact that it was covered in blood didn't help to calm them.

Before they could even react, the Oni moved faster than their eyes could follow and caught the Leader in his hands.

"S-SIR !!!"

"F-FUCK!!! LET ME GO YOU DAMN ONI !!!"

With some great courage, the soldiers ran at the Oni and stabbed it's legs, eliciting an angry roar from the monster. It kicked them away, piercing some of them with the spikes that were on his leg. In fact it had spikes on it's legs, arms and shoulders.

"YOU FUCKING DUMBASS WHAT ARE YOU-"The Leader started.

He couldn't finish his sentence. And never will. This proud man was now being swallowed by the Oni, only his feets could be seen from the monster's mouth, and even then he still appeared to be struggling as his body sank into the throat of the Oni.

The dozen soldiers, all began to scream in horror, screams surprisingly acute for soldiers. This general panic caused the breakup of the group, while some ran back west, others went to the opposite. Unfortunately, the monster was not satisfied yet and began tracking down the first group, his steps destabilizing the poor soldiers. They no longer knew where to walk, or to go, their sight were blurred, so much that they didn't even noticed that the Oni was just behind them.

The monster grabbed the blade from it's loincloth and began a massacre, a nightmare. The panting breaths coming from the Oni became more and more psychotic, he was close to madness, unable to prevent himself from mutilating the bodies of these poor men who couldn't escape. But then he simply ate them without an ounce of hesitation.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group had continued to run for their lives. Not knowing where to go, they were content to go straight ahead, the furthest away from that monster. After running for awhile, the rhythm had slowed down, but they still ran despite their fatigue, but suddenly, one of them began to burn alive, which stopped the other men.

"Wha-WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?!" Yelled one of them men.

Amidst this general confusion, a young soldier moved a little while stretching his arm, after a few steps, the tips of his fingers began to burn. It was then that everyone understood where they were. They had arrived at the frontier of the sacred land, where no one had ever set foot.

Every single one of them began to panic, not knowing what they could do, inside of them they just knew they were dead. But suddenly something came crashing besides them. They all thought it was the Oni, but it was quite a surprise when they saw it was a young man. Yet his appearence was quite....Special. Be it his smooth, silver hair, his golden eyes or even his white and golden robe , nothing was normal with him.

"Do any of you even look where you're walking? Losing a man for so little is quite dumb" he said ironically, before he jumped on a tree branch.

An awkward silence followed his words before the soldiers all yelled at him. "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU ?!!" they unsheathed their steel Katanas and threw themselves upon the young man, who, quicker than anyone could see, had already appeared behind them.They turned around and did the exact same thing, but this time he dodged with disconcerting ease. And when they understood what happened he was already on them. It took only a second before they were on the ground, all uncounscious but one.

The soldier stretched out his hand and tried to reach his sword, but the mysterious man stepped violently on it before he could reach it.

"What do you plan to do?" He said this while looking down on him, with a voice so cold it could freeze a volcano. The soldier could only look bite his lips while trying to move, he didn't even dare to look at the man in the eyes. However he did after a few seconds and was shocked when he finally noticed the four Holy Symbols on the man's face.

"T-Those symbols...Four of them.....Y-You....." the soldier"s eyes watered as he put his second hand on the man's ankle and lowered his face to stick his forehead to the ground. "Forgive us for this misunderstanding, we were just scared for our lives we did not want to offend you, may the gods be-" He was talking quite fast under stress, but he could not finish his sentence, the young man took him by the hair and slightly raised his head to look at him in the eyes.

"See in what misery you sink in when you doubt the Gods' protection, they do nothing for disbelievers likes you." This was the last sentence the soldier heard before the Messiah crushed his head on the ground, finishing him for good. The man then sighed and got up. He put his hood back on his head before shaking his head.

"Well in the end, it's not like i care. If the Gods wanted the Humans to act in some special ways, they would've already said it. Or they did, and the Humans didn't listen or changed their words."

He was about to get away when he saw something coming towards him.

"An Oni ? My ,my, so that's why they were running. Looks like Humans are still pretty damn weak."The man waited for the Oni to stop in front of him and smirked.

"So.....Are we fighting or what ?"