If one wanders the grey breaches that run along the northern shores of the Rising Sun Isles and gazes over the cold, dark waters of the Whale Sea, brimming with fish, plankton and terrible sea monsters of all varieties, one knows that beyond it, beyond even the green mountains and bustling cities of the Morning Peninsula, lies the wild land of Red Earth Country, an uncharted and uncivilized place on the fringes of the known world. Lord Toyotomi, unifier of the Rising Sun Islands, lead his high-Levelled samurai armies into Red Earth Country in the year 229 of the Bright Era (BE). He saw majestic mountains, vast forests teeming with game and savage monsters, and empty steppes with dry earth rich in ochre, which gave Red Earth Country its name. He also encountered the vicious barbarians who called this land their home, whose warriors his samurai struggled greatly to subdue. Yet he did not find a single city worth conquering, only the ancient ruins of abandoned Middle Kingdom colonies.

It was somewhere in this Red Earth Country, trudging along the muddy banks of a thundering river, that a son of the Rising Sun Isles was now wearily journeying. His father was a footman in Lord Toyotomi’s invasion force which occupied the Morning Peninsula between 224 and 230 BE who fell in love with a pretty Peninsular woman. In 227 BE, he was killed in one of the bloody battles between the samurai and the Bright Dynasty armies who had come to defend the Morning Peninsula, blown to bits by an exploding cannonball. His unfortunate son, a boy by the name of Kichiro, was left in the Morning Peninsula with his poor mother when Lord Toyotomi and his exhausted warriors sailed back to their homeland.

It was now 240 BE, and young Kichiro had struck out to leave the Morning Peninsula, where, as the product of a violent enemy invasion, he was thoroughly unwelcome, hoping to make a new life elsewhere. His sweet mother gave him a good luck charm to bring him fortune in this venture, but as he struggled to take step after step, rapidly approaching the point of exhaustion, he cursed the gods for his lack of that very fortune.

Suddenly he dropped onto his knees, clutching the good luck charm tightly in his fist, and glared at it furiously. It was a little pig, cast out of bronze, with a big happy grin on its face.

‘You’re perfectly happy to watch me die here, aren’t you?’ Kichiro barked, heaving for breath. His eyes stung with sweat and he was trembling. Then, his frustrated face twisted into a bitter smile, as he realised the absurdity of the situation.

‘You think it’s funny, don’t you?’

He cursed his naivete. He had thought that he could simply walk from the Morning Peninsula to the Middle Kingdom, but he had failed to comprehend how vast the land of Red Earth Country between the Peninsula’s northern border and the edges of the Middle Kingdom really was. Before long, a road he had followed for weeks faded into nothing, and then he came across this roaring, nameless river, that he did not possibly dare to try to swim across. Since then, he was steadily hiking upstream, in hopes of finding a crossing, but he had no luck, and his strength was spent.

Kichiro wiped the sweat from his forehead with his browned forearm. The deep blue sky, free from clouds, was darkening slightly.

‘I better make ready for the night,’ Kichiro said to himself. Talking to himself had become quite a habit, after weeks of solitude. Kichiro had grown up in the slums of the Morning Capital and was not used to solitary treks through the wilderness.

He shoved his hand into his leather satchel and pulled out a handful of cheap wooden charms he had bought at a border village of the Kingdom of the Morning Peninsular to ward off the monsters. Red Earth Country monsters were another breed from the Peninsular ones. Since there were relatively few hunters to kill them off, many attained terrifyingly high Levels and many of the dangerous species that had been driven to extinction with much effort by the inhabitants of the Morning Peninsular still stalked the untamed forests of Red Earth Country.

Kichiro found a big bed of soft moss a little off the riverbank and scattered the charms awkwardly around it in a rough circle, not being much of an expert on using charms. He understood that they would deter low-Level critters but that any monster higher than that could ignore them without much discomfort and eat him up as he slept.

He sighed. There was not much he could about that.

‘Time to go hunting!’

Kichiro drew an old katana out of its scabbard. This sword was the most prized of his sparse possessions. It was his father’s. A comrade of his had prised it from his dead hands and handed it to Kichiro’s sobbing mother. It was a bit of an unrefined piece of work, a real wartime product rather than a typical family heirloom, but it was magically enhanced to never rust and still sharp enough.

A determined expression came over Kichiro’s ruddy, monkey-like face. He trudged back to the riverbank and stared motionlessly at the flowing water below, deep in concentration. After what felt like an age, he suddenly leapt into action, lunging forward and plunging his sword straight into the river. Immediately, he yanked it back out with a victorious cry, as a fat trout flopped about helplessly, impaled on the end of the blade.

You have gained +1 Dexterity!

‘Yes!’

Kichiro celebrated for a second time. Having grown up in poverty, he had often been reduced to thievery to survive, and a lifetime experience of nabbing coins straight out of people’s purses made him develop an impressive level of Dexterity, not to mention an even more noteworthy level of Agility, honed in the process of extracting himself from the dangerous situations that resulted. Nevertheless, a gain in any Attribute was always something to be welcomed.

General information

Attributes

Job information

Name

Kichiro

Name

Value

Name

Value

Name

Level

Progress

Species

Human

AGI

22

STR

12

Thief

13

44%

Sex

Male

CHA

14

WIL

13

Barman

6

78%

Age

17 years

CON

13

WIS

10

HP

67/67(+0.026/sec)

DEX

19

SP

89/89 (+0.1/sec)

INT

18

Throwing the wounded fish onto the bed of moss, where it flip-flopped around miserably for the last minutes of its life, Kichiro ventured deeper into the forest, somewhat nervously. It was late spring; the leaves were a lush green, birds sung and even in the shadows of the trees it was pleasantly warm, but Kichiro knew the idyll to be deceptive; terrible, high-Level creatures lurked in these woods, and they would love to make a quick afternoon snack of him. Fortunately for Kichiro however, he soon found what he was looking for; some deeply red berries grew amidst some rotting sticks in the undergrowth. Although he did not know these berries, he grabbed a handful and nibbled at one gingerly, and from its surprisingly sweet taste decided that they must be safe to eat. Then he headed back to his little base by the river, his mood largely restored.

Soon, he was roasting the trout on a stick, and tearing off its juicy pink flesh with his teeth, before stuffing his mouth with cherries and gulping it all up hungrily. The sun was dipping below the horizon, painting the spotless sky in hues of orange, when Kichiro fell backwards into the soft bed of moss with a satisfied grunt and rubbed his round belly happily.

‘I might be lost, but it’s not all that bad,’ he declared aloud.

He was about to drift off, when he realised that the countless stars in the nightly sky were swaying up and down. Kichiro saw that they had actually turned into cruel spear-points, gleaming as they moved up and down; the spears they were attached to were borne by endless ranks of marching soldiers, their faces largely obscured, but for their yellow eyes, which burned with an inner fury, and their wide, drooling mouths, which were like the maws of beasts, thirsting for blood. Kichiro pressed his head as firmly as he could into the moss, fearing that the soldiers would see him, but then he felt that the moss was not actually moss at all, but the soft, stinking corpses of fallen warriors, still imbued with residual body warmth.

You have been intoxicated!

It must be the berries, Kichiro thought to himself, shaking with fear, To hell with these cursed berries!

He found no reason to doubt that these soldiers were demons and that they had come to pierce his hapless mortal flesh in a thousand places with their cruel spears. He thought about his mother and prepared to die. When his vision turned inky black and he slipped into oblivion, he knew he was dead.

Until he heard the rustling in the leaves. Kichiro’s eyes snapped open. The soldiers were gone, but the sky was now a blinding blue. It glared at him until his eyes were burning with pain, but he was unable to shut his eyelids. It was as if the very Heavens were challenging him to a mandatory staring contest. At the same time, he could hear the nocturnal noises of the forest, each sound utterly, alarmingly crisp and clear, from the hooting of an owl, to the scuttling of a mouse through some twigs, to the expulsion of hot breath of something big and dangerous a mile away. But then he heard the galloping of hooves, coming closer and closer, and tried to turn his head to locate the horses in question, but was locked in position as warm, golden firelight washed over him. This light felt genuine, not alike at all to the painful blue glare of the sky.

The treading of hooves on the undergrowth ceased as two riders reined in and stared with astonishment at Kichiro, who was lying stiffly in the moss like a wide-eyed corpse.

‘What under the Blue Heavens…’ begun one horseman, before he succumbed to fits of laughter, nearly falling off his elegant steed, which detracted considerably from his otherwise profoundly impressive appearance. He boasted a long beard, snow-white as his mount; the beard of a wise and ancient man. His eyes were golden as an eagle’s and pierced like daggers. He was tall and lean, and despite his advanced age he graced the saddle as if it was a second home, and moved as effortlessly as a man in his physical prime. On his skull gleamed a golden helmet engraved with various hunting scenes, and from it dangled a red tassel. This was Nurhaci, ruler of the entire Red Tassel nation, the feared inhabitants of Red Earth Country. After decades of determined struggle he had united all his people under his leadership, forging all the once divided tribes that warred amongst themselves into a single, powerful Red Tassel tribe.

‘An outsider lying in the middle of Red Earth Country,’ said the other horseman, ‘And his belly bursting with merry devil-berries no less!’

Nurhaci’s companion was a haggard man, a flame dancing jollily on his open palm to light up the night. He was a Fire Shaman, and although he had aged much worse than his master, an intense vitality emanated from his eyes that seemed almost inhuman.

Nurhaci and the Fire Shaman flinched as Kichiro suddenly leapt onto his feet, having finally succeeded in shaking off his berry-induced paralysis, and took in the majesty of the two horsemen with suspicious, irreverent eyes. Then, he hastily bent down, grabbed some sort of rod from the moss and pointed it at squarely at Nurhaci, breathing hard.

‘Begone, demons!’ shrieked Kichiro, his face contorted in a grimace of fear.