The kong hit the earth like a falling cliff.
Kenjiro didn't run. He couldn't. The air was too thick, saturated with the beast's musk and the smell of wet fur. He jammed the stock of the rifle into the hollow of his shoulder. His small frame was a fraction of the monster's height, a twig standing before a landslide.
"I said help!"
The scream tore out of his throat, raw and desperate. Silence answered him—save for the kong's breathing, which sounded like the bellows of a forge.
The beast opened its maw. A roar erupted, a physical wall of sound that rippled the puddles and sent Kenjiro stumbling back three steps. His ears rang. The world tilted. He gritted his teeth, the copper taste of adrenaline coating his tongue, and leveled the barrel.
He pulled the trigger.
The rifle barked, the recoil slamming into his chest. The lead slug punched a neat, dark hole into the kong's matted pectoral. It was a pinprick. The monster didn't even flinch. Instead, its heartbeat accelerated—a heavy, rhythmic thud-thud-thud that Kenjiro felt in his own marrow.
The kong's eyes, pits of burning amber, narrowed. It raised two massive, corded fists and brought them down.
Kenjiro didn't think. He crossed his wrists above his head.
The impact should have turned his bones to powder. It should have driven him into the soil like a tent stake. But the tattoo on his wrist flared a violent, freezing black. A jolt of ice-cold energy shot through his forearms, meeting the kong's strength with the rigidity of a tectonic plate.
"I can't... hold..."
The weight was astronomical. The ground beneath his boots began to spiderweb. He felt his joints groaning, the pressure building behind his eyes until his vision blurred.
The kong let out a huff of hot, foul breath and retracted its fists. It didn't wait. It struck again, a lateral sweep with a speed that defied its bulk.
Kenjiro dived. He rolled through the mud, the monster's knuckles whistling inches above his head. The strike hit a nearby boulder, reducing it to gravel in a single explosion of stone.
"Am I going to die here?"
The thought was a small, cold thing in the back of his mind. He looked at the ground, watching the cracks spread. He looked at the beast, a mountain of fur and malice that showed no sign of slowing.
"No."
He scrambled to his feet, lunging for the rifle he'd dropped. Another fist hammered into the dirt where he'd been lying a second before. He was being hunted in a cage of trees. He couldn't leave. He couldn't outrun a god of the mountain.
He turned, clenching his small fists. Heat began to radiate from the back of his neck. He didn't flinch as the kong loomed over him, blotting out what little light remained.
Then came the slap.
A massive hand, tipped with jagged, yellowed claws, caught the side of Kenjiro's face. It wasn't a punch; it was a sweep. The claws raked across his cheek, tearing through skin and muscle.
Kenjiro flew.
He hit a thick pine trunk with a sickening thud and slid to the root-choked ground. The world turned red. Blood—hot and thick—poured down his neck, soaking the collar of his tunic. His vision began to fracture.
He lay there, looking up through the canopy. The grey sky started to swirl.
Images that weren't his own began to overwrite the forest. He saw a city of steel and glass, drowning in a sea of demons. He saw a man with one arm, standing over a fallen elder. He felt the weight of a sword that weighed more than a soul. He felt a love so sharp it hurt—for a sister with a schoolbag, for a brother who sat on a worn couch.
The visions flickered and died.
Kenjiro's breathing became shallow. His eyes grew heavy, the lids fluttering. The kong was approaching, each footfall a drumbeat for his end.
"Sorry... Mom. Dad."
His eyes drifted shut. The darkness of the forest started to merge with the darkness of the void.
Then, a sound. Not a roar. Not a heartbeat.
It was the sound of a system rebooting—a sharp, digital chime that resonated in his skull.
[ System Restoration Initiated... ]
[ Host Status: Critical ]
[ Error: Soul/Body Desync ]
[ Re-establishing Link to the Abyss... ]
A pane of cold, blue light manifested in the air before his closed eyes. It didn't belong to the mountain. It didn't belong to this era. It was a jagged, flickering window into a forgotten authority.
[ Class: Necromancer (Locked) ]
[ Title: Reincarnated King (Inactive) ]
[ Warning: Forbidden Arts Detected in Previous Life Cycle ]
Kenjiro's hand—the one with the soul-mark—began to twitch. The black ink didn't just pulse; it started to bleed off his skin, turning into a thick, oily smoke that coiled around his arm.
[ Awakening Requirement Met: Will to Survive ]
[ Commencing Level 1 Synchronization... ]
A voice, deeper than the kong's roar and colder than the river, echoed through the clearing. It wasn't the Abyss Lord. It was himself. An echo of the man he used to be.
"Get up, Mortal King. The throne is still cold."
Kenjiro's eyes snapped open.
They weren't the eyes of a six-year-old boy. The iris had turned a piercing, neon emerald, and the whites were flooded with a dark, swirling ink. He didn't feel the pain in his cheek. He didn't feel the broken ribs.
The kong halted, its hand raised for the final crush. It tilted its head, a primal instinct screaming at it to flee. The small, bleeding creature on the ground wasn't small anymore.
Kenjiro pushed himself up. He didn't use his hands; he rose as if being pulled by invisible wires. The blood on his face didn't drip; it steamed and vanished, the wound sealing itself with a jagged, black scar.
"I'm not dying," Kenjiro whispered.
The air around him didn't just move; it curdled. The shadow beneath him didn't stretch; it rose. A towering silhouette of a knight, armored in plates of shadow and etched with green flame, manifested behind the boy.
[ Skill Learned: Shadow Extraction (Incomplete) ]
[ First Command Available ]
The kong roared, a desperate attempt to assert dominance. It lunged, its entire weight behind a killing strike.
Kenjiro didn't move. He simply looked at the beast.
"Kneel."
The word was a tectonic shift.
The kong's front legs buckled as if the gravity of the entire mountain had concentrated on its shoulders. Its head slammed into the dirt, the force of the impact sending a spray of mud fifty feet into the air.
Kenjiro walked forward, his boots silent on the shifting earth. He didn't look like a child. He looked like an ancient judge. He reached out and touched the kong's forehead with his marked wrist.
"Your life is waste," Kenjiro said, his voice overlapping with a ghostly, older resonance. "Your death is mine."
[ Extraction Commencing... ]
The kong's eyes rolled back. Its fur began to slough off, turning into black smoke that flowed into the mark on Kenjiro's wrist. The massive body didn't rot; it dissolved, leaving nothing behind but the scent of ozone and the scorched earth.
[ Level Up! ]
[ Level Up! ]
[ Current Level: 3 ]
The blue screen flickered and dimmed, leaving Kenjiro standing in the silent clearing. The deer was still there. The rifle was still there.
Kenjiro looked down at his hands. The emerald glow in his eyes faded, returning to a dark, deep brown. He felt the exhaustion hit him like a physical blow, his small legs trembling.
He picked up the rifle. He slung the deer over his shoulder. He started the long walk back to the village, his steps heavy but certain.
He had five hundred years to get back. He wasn't going to waste a single day.