Prologue

Kotsuba Musashi.

Hearing that name would instill the image of that one Word of Power hunter. Kotsuba Musashi was that sort of man – A slim, well-built being without any notable scars, wearing a simple tanned leather coat and chitin pants with hair the color of charcoal. It was easy to distinguish his Ohdean background from other hunters out there.

He paused to behold a place abandoned for the longest of time. With the flooring and walls riddled with soot it was no doubt a strange room. The ceiling had been wiped off by some form of attack revealing the strange inter-dimensional space surrounding the room, a quiet and perpetual swirl of colors too bountiful to describe. Broken debris of the pillars and walls lay on the rotten panels which comprised the floors.

Kotsuba Musashi finally arrived at one of the mythical Sealed Rooms which supposedly housed a Word of Power within. Rumored to be fragments of castles decades ago, various rooms were ripped from their citadels in entirety and sealed within the strange distorted dimension away from the vile claws of Man. But there he stood, with the resilience and triumphant valor befitting a representative – In defiance of it all.

In the center of the room was a peculiar pillar with its surface eroded briefly. The pillar was floating above the ground tilted at a forty-five-degree angle with the bottom pointing toward the entry point. Just slightly above the base was a word of Anikan origin radiantly brimming with a golden light.

One ought to have been happy at this sight. To reach the mythical Sealed Room with a Word of Power before oneself, anyone would have gladly accepted the great power with open arms. And yet Musashi's face twisted into a heavy, anguished look of disbelief.

M: "No..."

He was blatantly horrified by what was before him. With his eyes fixated on the golden character, he slowly dragged his feet across the dusty and foul wooden panels. The warning signals in his mind flared and the slight depression of the rotting planks with every step noisily dissuaded him from approaching the Word of Power any further.

Eventually, he stopped short before the column. He recognized that character in his native tongue. But he knew it meant something else in its entirety, something supposed to be spoken in a different language and intonation. That character was 定. It sported many names when read from different perspectives but in its truest, original tongue was pronounced Dìng.

M: "No... No! NO!!"

Kotsuba Musashi collapsed, the life and vigor from before evaporated. He looked up towards his prize while clutching the sides of his head with both hands. From a distance, he looked quite insane had what he uttered been left unheard.

M: "This... This wasn't supposed to happen! The most heavily guarded Word of Power should have been 再! Why is it 定!?"

The undeniable fact was almost cackling at his grimace. He shook his head ever so slightly, refusing to believe the reality before his eyes. But there it was – In its greatest glory the golden word was the only thing resting upon the barren and battered pillar.

M: (All the lives lost... All the resources sacrificed. All of that could be rewound if I had 再 to create a 再度 concept. All of it didn't have to go to waste if only it had been 再!!)

He could not even cough. Had that word been something else, it would have been different. Had that word been what he sought he could have saved them all.

M: (There's no bringing them back... I don't have the dignity to walk back alone like this, with them dead. I needed 再, not 定.)

The power to revive the dead and recover the resources expended was certainly valuable enough to risk it that far... Yet it all came to naught over misinformation. His will wavering, his resolve shaken. Musashi looked at the pillar above his head once more.

M: (... I dare not take it.)

He was afraid. Had he taken that word and went back to Rugnud he would be ostracised as a cold-blooded murderer who used others for personal gain; a merciless, dishonorable monster who threw the lives of others away to achieve the end-goal.

He did not want that. In his hands it would be viewed as something obtained through conniving means. The act would be misjudged by the corrupt eyes of the people who sought after it, and those hands of his would be branded by and stained in the blood of the people he didn't kill.

Musashi did not mean for this to happen. His head drooped into a position where it was just dangling on his neck. He looked down at his attire, stained with the blood of those who had given their lives willingly.

He remembered the owners of the stains clearly.

The spattered drops were from the young man Rohat, impaled by a spear wall. A joyful, sprightly child at heart with a loving wife and a great future ahead of himself dead from a moment of folly before an unexpected trap.

The smudge of blood and grime belonged to his childhood friend Dekomura, who gave his life to redirect a swine down a cliff. Unfortunately, the boar's tusk incised a great wound on his left thigh and the persistent Bloodswarm locusts made his wound fester that much faster.

In the end, he too succumbed to fate. And despite that, Dekomura's final words...

He offered Musashi his corpse to disable the traps ahead such that his chances of reaching the Word of Power may heighten, as little as it may be. The moments of their deaths flashed before his eyes in an instant. The valiance and dignity they had in order to ensure that the expedition was a success would be sullied by those greedy hyenas in human skins.

He couldn't accept the Word of Power. Those very lives would have had their sacrifices pinned upon him wrongfully. Those very people who looked up to Musashi as a model would weep and turn in their graves when they learn of their families' spite towards the man they gave their lives willingly for. And yet, he could not let their deaths be in vain.

M: (Everyone... I have let you down. I'm truly sorry. As much as you have put into obtaining this for me, I can't accept it.)

Musashi stared blankly at his body, his head devoid of energy and his eyes losing their brilliance. His focus was, unconsciously, locked onto a specific part of his field of vision.

A vial. A vial dangling from his neck, with a cloudy white liquid within.

It was his lucky charm should he be killed on the job – A bottle of his own semen to carry on his heritage.

M: "...!"

Luster returned to his pupils and he grabbed the vial on his neck gently, but quickly. He sprang up determined. The solution had been under his nose the entire time. He dangled the vial in his hand and slowly tapped the vial onto the pillar. In accordance to his desires the golden character faded away and the vial flared a brilliant, equally radiant glow.

M: (I will never live with myself had I taken this power. I won't be able to answer the dead respectfully. That is why, my precious child, please understand... This is Daddy's only gift to you. Cherish it well, my sweet child.)

He uttered to himself while clasping the vial in his hands. Or perhaps, he was speaking to someone?

M: "Let's go home... Katachi."

He gave the room one last look and exited from whence he came, a door which was not a door, the only entrance and exit of the Sealed Room. And with that, Kotsuba Musashi's days as a Word of Power Hunter ended with his failure.

But what of the 定 he gifted the semen?