Dance with death

The clash of steel echoed through the air as the two armies collided, merging into one another like a furious storm.

It was complete and utter chaos everywhere Yōta looked.

Yōta, now in possession of the body of the boy named Sol, watched as both sides fought with merciless cruelty.

He watched, horrified, as people were maimed and gored before his very eyes, the light disappearing from their eyes.

He shook his head, forcing his mind away from the terrible sight before him.

'This isn't the time to be panicking! I need to focus on staying alive.'

With a deep breath, he broke free from the fear that had taken hold of him.

Yōta crawled, scurried, and tumbled his way through the battlefield narrowly avoiding death at every turn like a bad Tinder date.

He rolled to the side as a horse galloped past, its rider swinging a sword wildly at his head and narrowly missing.

'Fuck, fuck, fuck! I'm going to die if this keeps up...'

This was no game; this was nothing like the sweet reincarnation novels he had read.

This was a brutal war, and he would die like a fly if he didn't find a way to survive on this battlefield.

Yōta wasn't stupid enough to think he could try to fight and come out of this battle alive.

He had never wielded a sword before today, not in any meaningful way at least.

He recalled the one time he tried Kendo, more out of a friend's insistence than any real desire of his own.

She had knocked him out with a single strike, her skill and power a stark contrast to his complete and total ineptitude.

She was a black belt and he was barely a white napkin.

The humiliating moment had led him to scour the internet, studying all forms of combat—excessive, yes.

But Yōta had a serious case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and couldn't approach anything without meticulously studying every nook and cranny of it—it compelled him to leave no stone unturned.

And with his perfect eidetic memory, absorbing all the information was as easy as counting 1-2-3.

However, he wasn't a fool. Sure, he had read all about martial arts and weapons in his previous life, but knowledge wasn't the same thing as practical experience.

Reading about combat was vastly different from actually practicing it.

Yōta wasn't deluded and knew that real combat experience was worth far more than reading a hundred books on martial arts.

His knowledge of combat was nothing in the face of the experience of the countless battles these men must have survived.

It didn't exactly help either that Yōta was in the body of child—a weak, frail one at that.

These men would break him as easily as a cheap plastic toy.

As he scurried past another skirmish, a man came up behind him, swinging a sword.

Somehow, Yōta sensed the murderous intent, twisted at the last moment, and managed to block his strike with his twin daggers.

"Arghh!"

The strike sent him a few meters back, his hands trembled and were numb from the impact.

He was almost relieved by the distance created, but the man had already swiftly given chase, not giving him a moment of reprieve.

Yōta froze as the man lunged toward him. It was too late to dodge; any movement now would be completely futile.

'I'm gonna die!' his brain screamed.

He had just been reincarnated and was already about to die.

The words that would be engraved on his epitaph were already picture clear in his mind:

I came, I saw, I died.

Just as the man was about to send him to Jesus, he was swiftly impaled in the back by a spear.

Yōta had nearly pissed himself in abject fear.

"Thank you! Thank you!" He screamed at his saviour in total gratitude.

He crawled forward to hug the man's feet, tears streaming down his cheeks, but right before he reached the man's legs, something dropped right in front of Yōta's path.

"What the fuck!!!"

It was his saviour's head!

The face of the man who had beheaded him twisted in wicked glee as soon as he caught sight of Yōta.

He raised his sword high into the air, the blade catching the light of the sun in a menacing glint.

Yōta jumped back just in time, narrowly avoiding the downward swing of the man's sword. His sword cut through the air with a deadly "whoosh!"

Yōta quickly got to his feet and narrowly dodged another downward swing by a hair's breadth.

The man was way too strong and fast for him, but he had made a mistake—he had underestimated Yōta, thinking he would be an easy kill.

As a result, the man swung his sword carelessly, ignoring his defense, and that would now be his undoing.

Capitalizing on the man's exposed defenses and applying his theoretical knowledge, Yōta planted his boot firmly on the man's sword, lodging it in the snow.

With swift precision, he quickly swung one of his daggers forward and pierced the man's heart.

He watched as the man slowly choked on his blood, struggling to breathe.

Yōta's eyes slowly twisted in horror as he realised what he had just done: He had just killed another human being.

He staggered back as he watched the man's body collapse to the ground.

His heart was filled with something indescribable, and soon, his mouth was filled with something too.

He bent over, vomitting the bitter contents of his stomach.

He knew this wasn't the time or place but he couldn't stop himself; he had just taken someone's life and felt it as it slipped out of its body.

In that moment, his mind was suddenly assaulted by vivid memories causing a sharp pain in head. Yōta gripped his head and groaned in pain.

Memories of the warm faces of Sol's mother and sister filled his mind with crystal clarity, memories of their loving smiles and their times together.

'This idiot! If you have a loving family waiting for you at home, then what the hell are you doing here trying to get yourself killed?!"

Yōta was abandoned as a newborn baby at an orphanage and had never experienced the love of a family.

It irked him that this boy was so stupidly trying to throw it all away.

'Did this fool even consider how it would make his mother and sister feel knowing he had died in the middle of nowhere?!'

However, Yōta's thoughts were cut short as a large shadow was casted on him.

Yōta looked up and saw the looming figure of the shadow's owner.

'Give me a fucking break!'

The man had already swung his axe over Sol's kneeling body, ready to chop his head off.

Yōta suddenly felt a chill spread through his body in that moment, he wanted to dodge but he couldn't move, he was completely paralyzed, an inexplicable fear freezing his legs in place.

It was like something was pressing down on him, holding him rooted on the spot.

Yōta instinctively did the first thing that came to mind: He stabbed his left knee with his dagger, the pain rousing him back from the paralysis just in time to avoid losing his head.

The huge man however, swung his grotesque axe marred in the dark colour of crimson blood once again, raising it above him.

The fear Yōta felt was suffocating, threatening to blind him.

It took everything to maintain any semblance of rationality under the domineering pressure.

But Yōta refused to die that easily, he closed his eyes and quickly pointed a finger at the man's towering figure.

Despite the terror he felt, he concentrated as hard as he could and quickly conjured a ball of water no bigger than an oyster pearl.

The man stopped his motion, staring at the tiny ball of water with a confused expression on his face.

"Bang!" Yōta said.

The ball of water shot forward at high speed, smashing into the man's skull. It penetrated and burst out of the back of the man's head with a spray of blood.

The man froze as his axe slid from his grip.

'Ah, shit!'

The axe was falling towards Yōta's face!

He reflexively closed his eyes unable to react, his heart pounded expecting the blade of the axe to cut through his skull like a log of wood but nothing happened.

All he heard was the soft thud of the axe as it's sharp edge buried itself in the snow less than an inch away from Yōta's head.

'Ah... The worst has finally passed...'

He wanted to sigh in relief but the light was suddenly blocked from his view.

Darkness descending on him as the man's lifeless body toppled over right on top him.

"Ack..! Fuck my life!" Yōta grunted in pain.

However, he made no attempt to get rid of the heavy weight pressing down on him, he simply laid there in the snow hiding under the dead man's huge frame.

He had no idea how he had survived so far and he wasn't about to tempt fate any further.

'No more... I can't handle any more of this! I swear to God, I'll never read or fantasize about another isekai story ever again in my life!'

As he lay there, he couldn't help but wonder if there was a return policy on reincarnation.

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[A/N]

Thank you for reading this far, I really appreciate it. If you like my novel, please make sure to add it to your library and recommend it to your friends.