WIEDERGEBURT: Legend of the Reincarnated Warrior: Volume 1 Read online

  “You’re finally here,” Ms. Nadine said just as I entered the library. She was standing near the entrance with her hands on her hips. Looking behind her, I could see there were already quite a few people sitting around tables as they read books or studied.

  “I’m not late, am I?” I asked.

  Ms. Nadine shook her head. “You’re not, but you usually arrive early. I thought you might have overslept again.”

  “That’s… well, I suppose I can’t blame you for thinking that.” I tugged on the leather band keeping my hair in place.

  “Hmph. I’ll leave you in charge of closing. Do make sure that everything is boarded up properly when you leave.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Ms. Nadine gave me a strange look like I had said something weird, but then shook her head and left.

  I worked quietly for the next several hours or so. Time passed by slowly while I was putting books away, cleaning the shelves and floor, and helping people find books they were searching for. I believed the reason time felt like it was crawling at a snail’s pace was partly because I was busy thinking about the next few stages of my plan to get stronger. Once I gained control over my Spiritual Power, the next step would be getting my body back in shape. For that, I would need those weighted clothes the seamstress was planning to make me. I’d also need to buy more ingredients for a different alchemy pill I wanted to make that would increase the effectiveness of my training.

  “Whoa, who is that?!” a young voice shouted in surprise, causing me to pause in my work before resuming.

  “You don’t know who that is?” asked another voice, this one sounding incredulous. “That’s Kari Astralia.”

  “She’s Princess Kari? I’ve never seen her in person before. She’s even more beautiful than people say,” the other voice responded, his tone one of reverent awe.

  “Hmph! Don’t get your hopes up. That girl isn’t someone people of low social standing like me and you can talk to.”

  “I know, but there’s nothing wrong with looking.”

  Their words finally broke my ability to concentrate. I first glanced over at the table where two young men were chatting away as they gazed at something currently outside my field of vision. They were young, probably younger than me. Judging by their threadbare clothes, which weren’t all that dissimilar to my own, I assumed they were peasants like myself.

  After taking note of the two, I turned my head to find Kari standing in the library entrance. A deep blue cloak had been thrown over her shoulders that day. It contrasted with the light pink dress she wore, which descended past her knees and swished around her legs as she moved. She wore the same sandals as always.

  She must have sensed my eyes on her. Kari turned her head in my direction. When we made eye contact, I gave her a smile and waved my hand in greeting. The bright greeting she gave me caused a pleasant warmth to spread through my chest.

  That said, it didn’t make me popular with the two peasants.

  “Who is this person? Do you think she knows Princess Kari?”

  “He. That person is actually a boy. And how could he? Look at those clothes. He’s a peasant just like us.”

  “I’m shocked! I had no idea that person was a boy! I always thought he was a girl! A-ahem. Either way, someone of his standing shouldn’t dare speak to a lady of Princess Kari’s stature! People like him need to learn their place!”

  “I agree.”

  Ignoring the peanut gallery (though my eyes did twitch when I got mistaken for a girl again), I walked over to where the still-smiling Kari was waiting. I left a space of about half a meter between us.

  “Hey there,” I greeted. “Have you come to return a book, or are you looking for something new to read?”

  “Something new,” Kari said with a gesture of her hand. “If possible, I would like an adventure story that involves exploring dungeons and ruins.”

  “Dungeons and ruins…” I tilted my head in thought for a moment, recalling all the books we currently had in the library. It was harder than it sounded. Sometimes I would think of a title, only to remember it was actually a book from mine and Kari’s library at the Brave Vesperia Headquarters. However, I did eventually remember something. “I do recall reading a journal about a former Emperor of Nevaria who explored a ruin in the Demon Beast Mountain Range when he was younger.”

  “That sounds like a great read!” Kari clapped her hands together once, clasped them, and beamed at me.

  “Let me grab it for you,” I said.

  The book was located on the first floor. Ignoring the two young men glaring holes into my head like they wanted to kill me with their eyes, I let my memory guide me to where I remembered seeing the book. Kari followed behind me, hands behind her back, and a smile on her face. That smile became several decibels brighter when I handed her the journal in question.

  “It’s so old,” Kari exclaimed in surprise. Indeed, the journal was old. The leather bindings were faded and worn, and the pages had a yellowness that happened when parchment aged. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, her eyes shone like a pair of stars twinkling in the night sky.

  “It is a couple thousand years old,” I said. “According to the first journal entry, this Emperor was alive a few hundred years after the Great Catastrophe, during what’s often considered the Era of Darkness.”

  “Really…?” Kari mumbled as she flipped open to the first page. It looked like she was about to begin reading it right there in the aisle.

  Chuckling just a bit, I placed my hands on her shoulders, turned her around, and gently pushed her toward the stairs.

  “Why don’t you sit down before becoming engrossed in that book?” I suggested with a faint smile.

  Kari blushed. I had to admit the sight of her cheeks turning pink was alluring enough to steal my breath from me. Not only had her cheeks gained color, but even the tips of her ears were a little red.

  I’d never seen Kari act this shy in my previous life, so it was a rather fetching sight.

  “R-right. I’ll just be upstairs then.” She paused, and then, in a hesitant tone, asked, “Will you come up after you finish your duties?”

  “Of course,” I replied. “I have to know what you think once you’re done reading.”

  Offering me one last smile, Kari ushered herself up the stairs. I listened to the sound of her footsteps before they disappeared. Then I went back to work.

  Several people came and went while I worked. A few people came up to me, asking me to locate this or that book. Ms. Nadine’s library had a no check out policy. Of course, most libraries had policies like that in Nevaria. This place wasn’t Midgard. That said, this library was also only one of four public libraries in the entire city state.

  Nevaria was shaped like a slightly misshapen circle surrounded by a gigantic wall. It was split into north, south, east, and west, with the Imperial Royal Palace sitting in the center and four roads stretching out from it. The libraries were all located in one of those sections. Ms. Nadine’s was located in the north.

  Once I finished my work for the day, I headed up the stairs, where I found Kari not reading the book as she anxiously looked toward the stairs. Her eyes brightened the moment I arrived.

  “It took you a long time to finish your tasks today,” Kari said as I walked over and sat down.

  “I’m a bit sore today. It slowed me down,” I admitted with a slight shrug.

  “Sore? What have you been doing?” she asked.

  “Just some spiritual exercises.”

  I tried to sound nonchalant, but the moment I mentioned spiritual exercises, Kari began interrogating me.

  “Does that mean you are a Spiritualist? How come you don’t go to the Spiritualist Academy? You know they accept people regardless of social status, right? How far along are you in your training?”

  Under this bombardment from the insanely curious beauty, who seemed to have completely forgotten her social etiquette and was right in my face, I could do nothing more than ra
ise my hands and laugh.

  “Settle down. I can’t answer any of your questions if you keep asking me more without giving me a chance to speak.”

  “Oh!” Kari blushed again and, seemingly remembering her manners, leaned back and placed her hands on her lap. “I’m so sorry. I completely forgot myself.”

  “It’s fine.” I graced her with a smile. “I don’t mind. Anyway, you wanted to know about my training, right?” As she nodded, I scratched my chin and pondered what I should tell her, or rather, how much I should tell her. “I wouldn’t really call myself a Spiritualist right now. The fact is I can barely control my Spiritual Power. It’s a bit too… unruly at the moment.”

  “Unruly?” she asked with a curious tilt of her head.

  I nodded. “I have quite a bit of Spiritual Power. I don’t know where I’d be if you were to rank me, but I know that I currently have too much to control. Right now, my spiritual exercises are mostly activities that will help me refine my ability to control my Spiritual Power.”

  “I’ve heard of that happening before.” Kari’s expression contained a mixture of seriousness and fascination as she spoke. “There have been a number of people whose Spiritual Power is so great they have difficulty controlling it and need to train really hard. My mother was that way.”

  “Hilda Astralia?” I asked and received a nod in return. “I’m not surprised. I heard she was a peasant who rose to prominence thanks to her incredible powers and natural charisma. She won the Spiritualist Grand Tournament thirty years ago and became Nevaria’s Empress after defeating the previous Emperor in single combat a few years later.”

  “Yes. That’s Mother all right. She is a great woman.” There was a lot of pride in Kari’s tone, but there was also a very distinctive “but” that she didn’t say out loud. I knew she didn’t want to talk about that, so I decided to ignore it for now.

  “How much of that have you finished?” I gestured toward the journal.

  Tucking a stray strand of golden hair behind her ears, Kari said, “About sixty pages.”

  “That’s impressive, and what are your thoughts so far?”

  Kari didn’t speak at first. Her brow furrowed as she gathered her thoughts and composed the words she wanted to say. I looked at the way she gently bit her lower lip. It was a very cute gesture.

  “The ruins sound very interesting,” she said at last. “According to this journal, he said these ruins were located deep within the Demon Beast Mountain Range, and that he had to fight against an A-Rank Demon Beast before entering. Given how powerful a Demon Beast of that ranking is, Emperor Bodolf must have been incredibly strong. Even my mother would have trouble contending with an A-Rank Demon Beast on her own.”

  I didn’t dispute her words, though I also didn’t say anything. Back when she and I founded Brave Vesperia, Kari and I were both capable of taking down A-Rank Demon Beasts individually. The two of us had even taken down an S-rank one together. Of course, I’d also fought against the Great Overlord of the Seventh Realm’s enslaved Demon Beasts, each of which were S-rank if not SS-rank… but that was only after several decades of murderously difficult training.

  “What really interests me is what he said the ruins were like,” I said.

  Nodding emphatically, Kari agreed. “I didn’t get very far in, but it sounds like the ruins were littered with traps and even more Demon Beasts, who had invaded it and made the interior their nest. I’m surprised he made it out alive.” She looked at the book and sighed after another moment. “I wish I could go out and explore some ruins.”

  “Then why don’t we?” I asked.

  “What?” Kari looked startled.

  “Why don’t we find some ruins to explore some time?” I said.

  “But… I mean, I can’t… I’m…”

  “The Princess of Nevaria,” I said as the girl trailed off into incoherent stutters. “I know, but I don’t really care.” I grinned at seeing her flabbergasted expression. I’d never seen it before, but I couldn’t lie and say I wasn’t drawn to it. “If you asked me to, I would gladly sneak out of Nevaria and head into the Demon Beast Mountain Range with you right now.”

  I couldn’t recall ever seeing Kari turn this red before. A blush brighter than even the sun sprang onto her pale face like someone had used a Spiritual Fire Technique to burn her face from the inside out. For some reason, seeing her look so flustered made me want to tease her more.

  “Oh… well, that’s… I mean… uh… uh… oh! L-look at the time. I really should be going. My parents are expecting me home early. Bye.”

  Before I could say anything to stop her, Kari had stood up from her seat and bolted down the stairs. I watched her go, listened to the loud thumping of her footsteps, and remained sitting even after those faded away.

  “That was new.”

  The Kari that I had known from my previous life never got embarrassed like that. For a moment, I wondered if maybe this Kari was different from the one I knew, but then I shook my head. Everything else about her was the same. I didn’t doubt that this Kari was also the one I had known back then. Perhaps the one who had changed wasn’t her but me.

  “I don’t think I ever teased her back then,” I said to myself.

  Back then, when she and I fled Nevaria during the Demon Beast Invasion, I had relied on her strength to survive. I would have died a thousand times over without her. During that time, I had grown to not only love her even more, but respect and admire her as well. The old me would have never teased her. This was especially true before Nevaria had been destroyed. Before our lives were destroyed, I had been intimidated by her social status, which kept me from confessing my feelings until it was too late.

  Things were a little different now, I guess. I wasn’t strong yet, but I had the potential to be strong, and not only did I possess knowledge about the future, I also had knowledge of Kari herself. Right now, Kari was just a girl who had yet to become a woman. I believed the reason I could tease her was because I saw this Kari as more of an equal than a figure to admire or an untouchable princess. She was within reach to me.

  “Still, I think I might have come on too strong,” I sighed.

  The next time she and I saw each other, I would apologize for acting out like that.

  Kari didn’t know quite how long or how far she ran. By the time she stopped running, she was far from the library. She couldn’t even see it anymore.

  Placing a hand against her chest, she felt her rapidly beating heart, which pounded against her rib cage as though trying to break free. She’d never felt this way before. How could a few simple words from Eryk make her feel so embarrassed? What’s more, why did the idea of being embarrassed by him not bother her like she felt it should have?

  More than that, his words had not only embarrassed her, but they made her happy. Even if he was just joking, hearing him say he’d go into the Demon Beast Mountain Range if only she asked him made her want to take him up on that offer. However, that just caused her to feel even more embarrassed, which created something of a vicious cycle within her.

  What’s happening to me?

  Asking this question deep in her heart, Kari set off toward her home.

  Her heart calmed down as she walked. Guilt settled in her stomach as she remembered how she had run away like that. However, she didn’t think she could deal with Eryk right now given the current state of her emotions. She decided that she would apologize the next time she saw him, though she didn’t know when she’d be able to face him again without blushing.

  Chapter 7

  A Chance Meeting or a Fateful Encounter?

  I stopped with my hand halfway toward the shelf, the book I’d been about to put away still clutched in my grip. The ground beneath my feet was shaking. Actually, the whole building was shaking. It stopped after several seconds, and I finished putting the book back where it belonged.

  “The ground has been shaking a lot recently, hasn’t it?” a young man sitting at the table behind me asked.

&n
bsp; “It has,” the girl next to him said. “It was only a bit for the past few days, but now it’s happening every few minutes. I wonder why?”

  I had also been wondering why. I’d learned in books that these events in which the earth shakes called earthquakes happened sometimes, but they were supposed to be really rare… according to the books I’d read. All of them said the same thing, though. That was why I believed them. While information in books could be wrong, if numerous books said the same thing, then it was probably true.

  However, if earthquakes really were rare events, then why had they been happening so much lately?

  I didn’t think I would get any answers, so I was about to continue with my tasks, but then the earth shook again, and this time it was powerful enough to knock me off my feet. I tumbled unceremoniously to the ground. The young girl screamed as the bookshelves were shaken so badly several books fell off. She wasn’t the only one. Several other people within the library also screamed, creating a cacophony of noise to accompany the intense quake.

  “What the heck is going on?!” The young man who’d spoken before shouted.

  At that moment, just as the young man screamed, a black object slammed into the wall several meters to my right. The wall burst open like it was made of simple blocks stacked together instead of bricks held together with mortar. The object that came through was actually a creature, which ran on four legs, had rough skin, and had numerous horns jutting from its face.

  A Demon Beast.

  I watched as the creature plowed through bookshelves before breaking through the other side of the library. It left more than two gaping holes in the walls. The entire section of the building it had broken through fell apart, leaving the library exposed.