The Bounty Hunter

That fateful day was without a doubt the worst of my life so far.  It started out with me seeing off my childhood friend Fujimoto Hikari, who was moving away from Tokyo for her father’s work.  She had lived next door to me and since we were the only kids the same age in the neighborhood we were always together.  And so the day after we graduated primary school, I tearfully waved goodbye to her as I watched her go.  I was feeling down the entire day and failed to notice the time until it was nearly evening.  I suddenly remembered that Kira had asked me to come meet her by the river and that I was late by nearly an hour.  “Oh crap!”  I thought to myself as I hurriedly ran up to my room and traveled to the other world.  

The view that greeted me was the burning wreckage of what used to be the village.  I saw strewn corpses of men who were cut into pieces and women with their clothes torn apart and their throats slit.  Their faces showed expressions of horror, despair and agony.  They were the faces of kind people I knew who had given me treats or had taught me various things.  My shock was so strong I did not vomit nor did I cry nor did I scream.  I simply stumbled through the debris like a zombie, looking at all the faces until I came to Kira’s house. 

I saw her parents lying there dead, and then I realized that Kira wasn’t there with them.  That sliver of hope that she might still be alive brought me back to my senses and I immediately dashed to the river.  As I came upon the river, I saw two grimy looking beast-kin that looked without a doubt to be bandits standing over a bloodied Kira.  “Shit, this bitch was a handful.  I don’t know if I even have the drive to do her anymore.” One of them complained. “Fine by me, I’ll just take your share!  Who’d a thought staying behind to loot some more would yield such an attractive prize!” the one who spoke licked his lips with an evil grin.  Kira just laid there on the ground, I couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead.  My blood ran cold at the thought she died, and for the first time in my life I had a killing intent.

The two bandits were torn to shreds by my magic without ever realizing what happened and I hurriedly ran over to Kira.  “Kira, Kira! Please still be alive!” I shouted as I repeatedly used healing magic over and over again, to the point of exhaustion.  I was trembling from my exertion and from the fact I had just killed two people.  I felt her stir in my arms and a temporary relief washed away my trauma.  I quickly escaped with her to my room at home, where I cleaned her up and placed her in my bed.  As I saw her quietly lie there, my tears finally started to fall.  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”  I repeated over and over to Kira lying on the bed. 

If I hadn’t come late, maybe I could have stopped the bandits.  If I hadn’t come late maybe the people I came to care about would still be alive and happy.  If I hadn’t come late maybe Kira wouldn’t be lying here unconscious.  I thought that I was the hero of an other world story.  The villagers would affectionately call me a hero every time I defeated a dangerous monster that threatened them, but now I know the truth. 

I am not a hero.  A hero would have come in time to stop the bandits and save Kira from nearly being killed.  A hero would have protected everyone and not have let a single person die.  A hero would right now be smiling at the village as they celebrated their savior.  They wouldn’t be standing over a sole survivor crying.  I am not a hero.  This thought carved its way into my heart like a knife and stayed there.  That instant would change me from a goofy, innocent kid to something else entirely.  My tumultuous flood of emotions that made me feel like my head was going to explode… vanished as I broke inside.  My mana grew exponentially, as if it were trying to fill the void which appeared within me.

“I’m sorry Kira, I’m not a hero.  But I will kill them, I’ll kill all of them, so just wait here for a bit.”  The voice I spoke with was calm and serene, to the point of it being frightening.  I immediately left for the ruins of the village after casting a spell to prevent entry into my room.  I used psychometry and relived the entire event.  I watched the village burn in a surprise attack by 50 bandits, led by a pretty-boy elf with green hair.  I watched every rape, murder and the sick joy in the eyes of the bandits as they did it.  I saw how Kira had avoided the initial ambush because she had been at the river and then I saw as she came upon the horrific aftermath and was then chased by those two stragglers.

Anyone watching this playback would have felt a flurry of various emotions, but not me.  I was empty of both emotion and feeling.  There was neither rage nor sorrow.  My state of mind was akin to one in meditation.  But I was most certainly not at peace.  Instead, I had an objective that absolutely needed to be done.  “52 bandits to kill, I should collect the heads in order to not lose track and to show Kira later.”  I said to myself with absolutely no inflection in my voice, like a machine.  I picked up the heads of the two bandits I had already killed along with a sword.  An old man in the village had been a mercenary in his youth, and he had taught me the basics of using various weaponry such as the spear and sword.  Using magic, I easily tracked the rest of the bandits to where they had made camp in the forest. 

What happened next was quite straightforward:  I killed them.  I burned them, I stabbed them, I cut them, I bludgeoned them, I electrocuted them, I froze them, I drowned them, I suffocated them, I tore them to shreds, and I decapitated them.  They used a variety of magic tools and weapons as they fought back, but my magic was too strong so their resistance was like that of leaves before an autumn storm.  The one I had intentionally left for last was the green haired elven leader.  I drove him to the brink of insanity through torture and then killed him.  The entire time I had a disinterested expression on my face, as if what was happening had nothing to do with me.  Mentally it felt like I was in third person controlling my body. 

But as soon as I had killed the last bandit, that emptiness disappeared along with my overflowing mana.  I felt a flood of emotions roar back into me and the shock made me vomit immediately.  I then promptly fell to the ground and stayed in a state of shock and hysteria for about an hour before I collected myself.  “You still have work to finish, pull yourself together!”  I shouted at myself.  After that scene, I cut off all the heads of the bandits and packed them onto a wagon they had.  Unfortunately, the horse hitched to it had died in the battle. 

I paused for a moment, but decided to try out magic that I had made off-limits because I thought it wasn’t what a hero would use.  It was my first time so I decided to use an incantation to help “I call thee from thy eternal rest, rise once more at my behest!”  The corpse of the horse shuddered at my words and slowly stood up.  There was no life in those eyes and its blood did not flow from its open wounds. 

“So this is what necromancy is like.” I muttered as I looked towards the undead horse.  It was a simple reanimation spell, so to the unobservant it might simply seem injured, not dead.  I could command the zombie horse with my mind and did so.  By now it was night, so I put on a tattered black cloak to try and maintain some warmth as the wagon rattled along.  I sensed Kira was still sleeping peacefully back in my room, so I decided to first go back and bury the villagers before taking Kira to her grandmother’s in Obsidia.