“That’s… not good,” Det said quietly, the mist already shifting to hide the bodies again. He hadn’t gotten long to look at them, but there was one very clear thing he’d noticed about all of them—they weren’t eaten. Every time a wolf or bear had gotten near the sheep, there was hardly anything left of the animal besides a stain on the damp grass. In front of Det, hidden as they were, lay thirteen mostly whole sheep.

  For the first time in the memory of his new life, he almost wished Calisco—the other ReSouled of Radiant—was nearby. While the woman was obnoxious, haughty, and annoying as all hell, when it came to a fight, her particular brand of magic was explosively useful.

  And from the pair of glowing, red eyes materializing distantly in the mist, this was going to be a fight. He couldn’t make out anything beyond the glowing orbs seemingly hanging in the fog, but just from the height of them, whatever it was had to be at least seven-feet tall, with a broad head.

  What the hell are you?

  Given that he didn’t speak the question, it wasn’t a surprise he didn’t get an answer. Instead, the eyes stared at him through the mist twisting between them. Taking a step to the side, the eyes paced him easily. Three more, the shining glare kept distance with him perfectly. No, that wasn’t precisely true; the eyes had moved slightly further, as if blocking his path to the village.

  It’s going to be like that, huh?

  Whatever was staring at him—whatever had killed the sheep and the dogs—was sizing him up as its next playmate.

  “Is this what hurt you, Kels?” Det asked the unconscious girl in his arms. She didn’t answer him either. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you back to see the doc. Just, hold tight a bit longer.” With the words, he crouched down—gaze on the red eyes staring at him—and gently placed Kels on the ground, then took a few steps ahead. As soon as he did, the ink-wolf placed itself between the girl and whatever glared at them from the depths of the mists.

  With the purpose he’d given the creation, it wouldn’t come to Det’s aid, no matter how bad things got. That was fine, assuming it was enough to protect the girl. Protecting Det, on the other hand, was up to him, and his right hand went to his hip, while his left hauled one of the scrolls from his cross-body strap.

  Thumbs flicking in unison, a snap of each wrist sent the scrolls’ weighted ends sailing out to each side of him. Magic flowed through his fingers—his eyes never leaving the red orbs observing him—and he held the paper in the air for the requisite two seconds. On the pages, black ink shimmered, his power bringing his paintings to life, before the two scrolls burst into a shower of lazily falling embers.

  To his left, a screech announced the presence of one of his two remaining animal creations, and the bird of prey swept into the air. Vanishing into the mist within a few beats of its wings, the red eyes hadn’t even given it a second of their attention. Nor did it seem to care about what had appeared in Det’s right hand.

  Forged of the same black ink of all his other creations, the katana was heavier than he’d expected it to be. It was actually one of his earliest paintings—one he’d never needed to use—and he pulled it in front of himself to grip with both hands.

  Holding a real sword had to be the same as his kendo practice in his past life, didn’t it? Being reborn in the body of a ReSouled had transformed most of his old-life skills into near-masteries, with almost-perfect muscle memory, even if he’d never picked up a bokuto with his new hands.

  Guess it’s time to find out…

  Lifting the sword so the black-ink blade stood equally between the pair of red eyes, whatever he was facing seemed to understand he was ready. In response, more red lights flared to life about halfway between the ground and the eyes.

  More of the…?

  No, those weren’t eyes appearing in the mist. They were too low. Too long. Too curved. Four on each side.

  Det was looking at claws. Six-inch-long claws.

  Bloody hell.

  The glowing eyes he could almost write off as normal—cats’ eyes glowed in the dark, right?—but the glowing claws? Nope, not normal at all. What the hell was standing in front of him?

  Slightly behind him, the ink-wolf growled again, like it was agreeing with his sentiment. It also reminded him he couldn’t fight there. Not with Kels so close.

  “Keep watch over her,” Det told the wolf needlessly. “I’ll be back.” Then he dashed to the side, putting his full speed on display. If the eyes couldn’t keep up with…

  They could. They did. Faster, in fact, lines of red tracing themselves through the mist as whatever it was sped in his direction like an arrow.

  Even with it getting closer, its shape remained hidden within the swirling mist, red claws drawing back in preparation for an attack. Whatever the thing was, it wasn’t using the clawed limbs to run, meaning it was bipedal, or at least had arms like a person did. Unless it’s flying? That would be a pain.

  Very suddenly realizing he couldn’t outpace the opponent, Det slid to a stop in the wet grass, and brought his sword up in preparation to defend himself. It was at that point his brain informed him kendo had never taught him how to fight claws. Mastery of the skill or not, this wasn’t something he’d ever practiced. Hell, he’d never even had to fight against two weapons at the same time in kendo.

  His stance shifted ever so slightly in the second before the streaks of red reached him. Two weapons? There’d been plenty of clumsy LARPers who thought they could dual-wield.

  This thing coming at him, though, it wasn’t clumsy, and its left claw came up at an angle as if it was looking to carve him up like a side of beef. Reflexes taking over, his hands squeezed on the ink-hilt of the sword, he twisted at the waist, and brought the blade down to intercept the attack. With his superhuman strength he could…

  … go flying through the air like he’d been launched.

  The instant the claws had met his sword, despite his muscles clenching, the blade had been pushed back to within an inch of his chest. At that point, he’d finally held out against the power of the strike. Gravity couldn’t say the same thing, Det’s feet getting torn from the ground.

  Nearly twenty feet distant, he hit the soft meadow and rolled, grunts of pain coming with every rotation. Somehow, he managed to keep the sword in his hand—dropping it would’ve meant the end of the magic—and he pushed himself to his feet after he’d bounced another ten feet.

  The red claws were already coming in his direction, even faster than last time, left, right, left. Not quite the same sweeping blows as last time, Det angled his sword just enough to parry, then deflect the first two blows. The third caught his upper left arm, slicing through his skin like a hot knife through butter. Three cuts—each over an inch deep—sent weakness spreading through his arm, though he managed to keep his fingers tight around the sword’s hilt.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Bivac’s spear probably couldn’t pierce my skin with all his strength behind it, and yet these claws didn’t even slow? Note to self: red-glowy claws are bad.

  Still, leaning as he was from how he’d tried to dodge the attack, with his sword horizontally out to the side, he planted his front foot. Muscles straining, Det twisted hard at the waist, drawing his blade out and across to cleave his mystery opponent in two.

  A good plan that didn’t work out at all like he’d hoped, with the thing hopping back through the mist to get out of the range of the sweeping strike. Really, he hadn’t even come close, but there was one thing he had accomplished. The way the mist moved, and the eyes and claws bounced, he was definitely fighting something person-shaped. And, something—thankfully—not flying.

  Two arms. Two legs. A head. Taller than he was by a solid foot, but gangly and thin. Its arms were longer than a normal person’s, and despite being so narrow, possessed a strength that put him—as a ReSouled—to shame. Worse, Det’s arm hurt something fierce, blood running down it and already reaching the back of his hand. His ink-sword wouldn’t become slick from the blood or anything, but he was going to be fighting one-handed soon. Unless he did something a bit different.

  Letting go of the sword with his left hand, Det reached down to one of the two scrolls on his left hip. Out and seal broken, he had the paper unfurling at the same time the red claws came forward again. Back, back, he quick-stepped, sword flashing to weakly deflect an attack from the left, while he ducked low under a slash looking to take his head off. Another off-balance parry sent him stumbling away, before a straight thrust at his chest had him doing the only thing he could.

  Det leapt straight back, the scroll falling from his hand to turn to embers as soon as it reached the ground at the same time he did. Lying like he was, there was no way he’d be able to defend himself from the monster as it approached, claws raised above its head. As soon as it took a step forward…

  BOOOOOM, the landmine Det had created exploded in a violent eruption of ink-washed flame, blasting back the mist and the thing attacking him with equal ease.

  “Ha!” Det said, rolling onto his side and pushing himself to his feet. “How do you like…?” His words trailed off as the ink-flames faded—their magic expended—and he found a familiar pair of red eyes staring at him again. At its sides, the red claws flexed like they were suddenly eager to reach him.

  So focused on Det, the thing didn’t see the ink-hawk dive in silently from behind, three-inch claws reaching for its back. Against a normal person, the hawk should be able to sever a spine. Even a ReSouled would find themselves bloody or hurt from the vicious claws.

  Whatever Det was fighting was apparently neither of those things, one of its own clawed hands snapping up to slash through the ink-hawk without even looking. Red streaked through the mist, separating the hawk into four pieces, before it burst apart in a shower of black ink, like blood. Not that even that reached whatever had killed the sheep, the liquid vanishing as soon as the magic left it.

  “Well, shit,” Det cursed, barely getting his sword up to parry aside another vicious claw strike. Then a second, a third. The fourth got past, gouging three long slashes across the thigh he was too slow to retract. A fifth and sixth he managed slap away, but that last one drew his sword too far out to the side—How the hell am I supposed to fight claws?—which let a straight thrust get past his guard.

  Reflexes faster than even Det expected had him leaning to the side to avoid the long claws looking to spear him through the heart. Instead, they entered the front of his poor, left shoulder, and burst out the other side. Mind-numbing pain… didn’t come. If anything, it almost felt like this body was shunting the pain away. Diluting it. Allowing him to focus instead on the enemy in front of him.

  The one somehow still shrouded in swirling mist. Even the clawed hand embedded in his shoulder was little more than a narrow—armored?—appendage, while the eyes in front of him sat unblinking. Staring at him. Like the thing wanted to watch him die, and not miss a second of it. It was enraptured.

  So Det whipped his sword around at those damn eyes. Of course, the free claw snapped up with absurd speed to block the attack, but that had always been a feint anyway. Not a second after blade met claw, Det’s foot found the chest of the thing in front of him, and he pushed.

  A distant pain radiated out from his shoulder as the claws tore free—a spray of blood accompanying them—and the two opponents went in opposite directions. For his part, Det flew a solid seven feet before he hit the ground and rolled, releasing the sword in his hand as he went. The bloody wounds across his body proved it wasn’t going to win this fight for him.

  He needed another plan. Another option. One he got as he finished one more roll and found his back smacking into a wooden fence. A quick look showed him a second fence behind the first, meaning he was officially out of room to run away. That was fine, he wasn’t planning to run anymore, and his hands went for two of the last three scrolls he had.

  From his left, a long, narrow scroll snapped out to his side, but the two seconds he held it for passed along with the thundering beats of his heart before he threw the scroll out in front of him. The paper hit the ground at the same time the scroll in his right hand spat out what Det liked to call a bastard-billy-goat, its curved, black horns glistening in the mist before it dashed off to the side, out and around where the first scroll lay.

  Those two motions took enough time for the monster to find its feet from where it had been thrown by Det’s push. The thing was strong, but not so heavy Det hadn’t launched it a good dozen feet. Maybe it had been surprised by the action, or it wanted to see what else Det had up his sleeve. Either way, it gave him the time he needed to reach for his last scroll. This would either work, or… well… he’d find out if dying again took him back to his family.

  Win-win?

  Dark humor aside, the red-eyed monster had waited long enough, dashing forward with its usual—predictable?—speed. Thirty feet, it wouldn’t take long for it to reach him. Seconds, at best. Three or four.

  Would it be enough?

  Between the pair—about eight feet in front of Det—his first scroll completed its activation, the nature of magic he’d briefly poured into it preventing it from a full manifestation. Two seconds was the bare minimum he needed for this one, with more time leading to more results. Now, instead of a twelve-foot-tall, twenty-foot-wide, stone wall of black ink, this one was barely four-feet tall. Just enough to break the monster’s view of Det.

  Which was all he needed, his final scroll, little more than a foot-square after it unfurled, already humming with magic. On the far side of the wall, the soft footfalls of the speeding monster told Det it wasn’t planning to go around the wall. Through or over, those were the options.

  He wasn’t going to wait for it seated on his ass. Pushing himself to his feet, the scroll in his hand finally activated, though it left a circle of hanging ink in the air. Within that circle, a large mouth—not a head or a face, just a mouth—attached to an unbelievably long neck, shot out along the ground. Like it saw the wall—even without eyes—it zipped hard right, the absence of bones giving it unnatural speed and flexibility.

  In less than the blink of an eye, the mouth turned the corner around the wall, and sped along just above the ground toward its target. At the same time, another set of footfalls came from the other side, a certain ink-goat likely running with its head down and its horns ready.

  Neither of which seemed to bother the monster as it reached the wall. It wasn’t even going to bother with either of the creations—or the process of slowing down to deal with the wall—and simply leapt into the air. Red claws leading, the monster lunged through the space, planning to cover the distance to reach Det in one brutal jump.

  Dropping his hand from the useless mouth-circle—it wouldn’t help him now—Det smiled and stepped forward. Moving at the limit of his ReSouled speed, Det changed his position just enough to get inside the deadly range of the claws, and his fingers tightened around cold, armored wrists. Though the thing didn’t possess a lot of weight, it did have a fair amount of momentum, and Det once again found himself falling to the ground, claws reaching for his face, and the mist-shrouded monster coming down on top of him.

  Well, on top of his foot, which he placed between them as he rolled, kicking the thing’s lower half up at the same time he held on to the wrists. Det’s left arm threatened to buckle under the weight and pressure, but there was no way he was giving up that easily. Gritting his teeth and forcing his arm straight—and making his weak fingers hold on—just a little longer, the thing was left hanging upside-down above him. The mist swirled so that Det almost got a look at the monster trying to kill him before a leaping, bastard-billy-goat came hurtling into its chest like a horizontal meteor.

  The CRACK of the impact sent reverberations through Det’s fingers like he’d hit a baseball wrong with a bat—tearing the wrists from his grip—but it was much worse for the monster. A second and third crack quickly followed the first as the creature—and sacrificial goat—blasted through the two fences meant to keep somebody from falling off the edge of the pillar.

  They—thankfully—didn’t serve their purpose here, the hidden monster and goat both going careening off the side of the pillar and into the darkness of the devouring mists.