Kamikaze, page 1
part #1 of Dungeon Samurai Series
Kamikaze
Dungeon Samurai Vol. 1
Kit Sun Cheah
Contents
1. Isekai
2. Irrasshimase
3. Chikyu Mura
4. Skill
5. Recruitment
6. Kata
7. Kihon
8. Aggression
9. Bushi
10. Shinbutsu Shug
11. Gusoku
12. Kill House
13. Limits
14. Crucible
15. Norito
16. Kagura
17. Tetsuo
18. Misogi Harai
19. Sabbath
20. Meshi
21. Kinoko-Jin
22. Omukade
23. Legion
24. Tactics
25. Hagane
26. Kamikaze
27. Kokubetsushiki
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
Isekai
The world was an illusion. The sweat-stained gi plastered to his back, the armor weighing on his bones, the hot air trapped within his full-face helmet, the fatigue sinking into his muscles, they were all meaningless. There was only him, his sword, and his opponent.
Yamada Yuuki raised his weapon.
“HAJIME!”
The other man began circling to Yamada’s right. Yamada followed, slowly sneaking his feet forward, closing the distance between them. His opponent did the same. Yamada bided his time, stepping closer, closer, closer, seeking the proper ma-ai, the perfect combination of space and timing, to strike.
Now.
“EEEEEEEEEEEE!” Yamada yelled, stepping in with a powerful slash.
The other man shifted just so, and Yamada’s sword whooshed through empty air.
Yamada swung again.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
His opponent vanished.
“EI!”
A heavy blunt force thudded into his breastplate.
Yamada stumbled away. His opponent had slipped out of his field of view and delivered the blow. Already the man had cleared the ma-ai, sword ready for the next exchange.
“Good hit,” Yamada admitted.
This was randori. Free play, not combat. His sword was a shinai made of flexible bamboo, not a katana built of live steel. Hiroshi Matsuo was his best friend, his childhood friend, not an enemy.
Still, getting hit sucked.
But Hiroshi was just a tad too close.
“Let’s go,” Hiroshi said.
Yamada charged in, swinging at Hiroshi’s neck. Hiroshi parried. Yamada arced the shinai around, going for the other side of his neck. Hiroshi blocked.
“HO!” Yamada yelled, bringing his shinai down.
Hiroshi yielded, swinging his sword through a tight circle. Yamada’s arms dropped through empty space—and Hiroshi’s sword rapped his exposed wrists.
“Daijoubu?” Hiroshi asked. Are you alright?
“Hai,” Yamada replied. Yes.
Hiroshi had supreme control. He had struck Yamada with just enough force to make him feel the blow without bruising anything more than his pride.
Again and again, the men clashed. Again and again, Hiroshi’s blade struck true, while Yamada’s found only air. Hiroshi had been studying the koryu longer than Yamada, and it showed.
Still, Yamada had to land a blow. No matter what. This was his first randori. He had to show Sensei he had learned something.
Yamada readied his shinai. Hiroshi did the same. Warily, the men approached each other. Yamada breathed in. Out. In.
Stepped and cut—
Bamboo slapped against Yamada’s forearms.
They reset. Advanced again. Yamada stepped in, closer, closer, his sword probing at Hiroshi’s, shielding his relentless advance while responding to Hiroshi’s maneuvers. The shinai circled and thrust and bounced off each other, testing strength, finding weakness, seeking a moment of opportunity.
Hiroshi’s sword batted down Yamada’s. Yamada flowed with the energy, circling his shinai back up and bringing it crashing down—
Hiroshi stepped aside and cut his arm.
Yamada hated being hit so many times. But this time, he saw Hiroshi move. He was learning. Next time, he could land a hit. Yamada raised his shinai and—
Hiroshi stepped in and thrust at his throat.
They reset.
Yamada was doing something wrong. Hiroshi was a defensive fighter. He had the timing and the reflexes for it. Yamada did not. He had to do something else. He had to use his brain, to use what Sensei called heiho. Strategy.
What was it Sensei had said last week? There is an opening in every stance, and by skillfully positioning your weapon you could lure the enemy into a trap. But it wasn’t enough to simply pretend to lower your guard. You had to convince the enemy it wasn’t a trap. Selling the technique required a proper set-up.
They closed again, each feeling the other out. Yamada launched a barrage of slashes at Hiroshi’s neck, keeping him on the defensive, giving him no time to respond. One last cut and Yamada abruptly dropped his sword, as though fatigued, just enough to expose his head.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Yamada yelled, rearing up and pulling his sword low.
Hiroshi slashed at Yamada’s head.
“EEEEEEEEE!”
Yamada exploded into a rising cut, his shinai colliding with Hiroshi’s left arm. The arm went slack, but the sword continued to arc towards Yamada’s head.
“EEEEEEEEE!”
Yamada twirled the shinai around, cutting Hiroshi’s weapon arm and bashing it aside. Hiroshi staggered back, and Yamada closed.
“EEEEEEE!”
The shinai struck Hiroshi’s helmet.
Elation flowed through Yamada. He’d finally did it.
“Good one,” Hiroshi said.
Yamada smiled. “Thanks.”
Three loud claps reverberated in the dojo.
“MATTE!”
Randori was over.
Yamada unfastened and removed his helmet. The night air was cool against his face. He was soaked in sweat, his muscles burned, but he felt good. He felt right. Sure, he’d taken a beating and then some, at the hands of Hiroshi and at the other senior students, but he’d survived. He’d even managed to land a few hits. That counted for something.
The students gathered around Sensei. Sensei Sasaki Makoto was a slight, short man, coming up only to Yamada’s mouth. Sensei’s short hair had run to white, dark spots speckled across his skin, and his lined face seemed cast in weathered stone. But under his loose gi were muscles hard as iron and nerves trained to perfection, and when he stood his posture was perfectly balanced, ready to spring into action. Everywhere he went he radiated intensity of focus, and woe betide anyone who dared cross him.
“Everyone, well done,” Sensei said, his voice deceptively gentle. “What have we learned today?”
Sensei always ended classes with a brief recap of the day’s lessons, beginning with principles and techniques, concluding with general observations and mistakes.
As he wrapped up, he turned his gaze on Yamada.
“Aggression is, of course, necessary in combat. However, it must also be tempered with wisdom, with timing, with heiho. Blind courage merely leads to your death.”
Yamada nodded. He had to remember that.
His closing remarks finished, Sensei closed the class with meditation. Yamada knelt on the hard wooden floor, ignoring the pain in his joints and muscles, straightening his back and resting his butt on his heels. This was seiza, the traditional way of sitting.
Yamada closed his eyes. Breathed in. Breathed out. Let the world fall away. Let every thought disappear. Let everything he had learned today sink into his body, his mind, his heart.
“You have been chosen.”
His eyes flew open.
Where had the voice come from?
Looking around, Yamada saw that a few others had broken meditative discipline. Including Hiroshi.
And Sensei.
Sensei scanned the room. Returned to seiza. And closed his eyes.
Hiroshi followed. So did Yamada.
Yamada breathed. Maybe that was nothing. Or perhaps some idiot was playing a prank. If so, Sensei would ensure it would never happen again. It wasn’t his problem. He just had to focus. To breathe.
Two claps brought him back to reality.
The students bowed.
“Thank you for teaching us!” they recited.
Sensei bowed back. “Thank you for teaching me.”
A deep, gleeful, alien voice filled the room.
“And thank you for being my food.”
“Eh?” Yamada said.
Strange, intricate designs covered the floor, the ceiling, the walls and windows, filling the dojo with crimson light. Chains of interlocking circles, of circles within circles, branching off into spirals and horns and semisolid cubes composed of tiny interlocking pyramids whose sides melted and flowed into each other. Impossible shapes danced at the edges of Yamada’s sight, his brain almost but not quite recognizing the forms. Harsh voices whispered and cackled and gibbered, speaking in nonsense tongues that clawed at Yamada’s ears.
“Masaka!” someone exclaimed. Impossible!
Yamada covered his ears and gnashed his teeth. He snapped his head from side to side, and everywhere he looked he saw more circles, more alien geometries, more things that should not be. Men screamed and stumbled and lashed out at the things, Sensei himself was wobbling about, barely able to stand.
This was impossible. But he had to act or
Men sprang to their feet, seizing weapons and scanning the room, barking observations and orders. Yamada clawed at a complex arrangement of triangles and lines with his fingers, but all he felt was solid wood.
“Everybody run!” Hiroshi shouted.
But there was nowhere to run. The windows were gone, the door engulfed in the disorienting designs.
“Find an exit!” Sensei ordered.
A student ran his hands along the wall, feeling for the doorknob, but found nothing. He slammed his palms against the walls to no avail. Other men pounded at the places where the windows used to be, but they were all gone, replaced by walls crawling with monstrous shapes.
The darkness grew deeper, the scarlet light brighter, the voices louder. Thunder boomed in Yamada’s ears. Cursing, Yamada dropped to his knees. A sudden chill shot through his bones, so cold he gasped in pain. He clawed at the closest design on the floor, a string of miniature globes that seemed both two-dimensional and three-dimensional at once, and electricity ripped through his fingers, his palms, his arms, his chest, blazing up into his brain.
An atomic bomb exploded in his skull.
Then, darkness.
* * *
Sanity returned.
Yamada’s head throbbed. His vision swam. His muscles hurt. Presently he realized he was lying face-up on a cold stone floor. Groaning, he rubbed his eyes, and slowly his sight cleared.
Before him a black nothingness stretched into infinity. It was the night sky. No stars, no planets, just a moon.
A full moon too large and too bright to be the moon.
Whispers, questions and orders filled his ears. There were other people around. Groaning, Yamada picked himself up.
He was still wearing his gi. Dusty, sweat-stained, but intact. He wasn’t injured. But everything else he had—armor, weapons, his backpack—was gone.
Off to his left, Hiroshi mumbled, “What happened?”
Yamada looked around. The other students were getting up, those on their feet helping those still on the floor. Sensei was on his feet, warily looking around him. They were in the middle of an ancient stone square, illuminated by the light of flickering torches at the edges of the square.
And they weren’t alone.
“I think we’ve been transported to another world,” Yamada replied.
“Isekai? This isn’t a time for jokes,” Hiroshi said.
“Look around.”
Hundreds of people were scattered across the square, many of them clustered together in multiple groups. The closest was a gathering of Westerners, all of them sporting blond or brown or red hair, huge muscular bodies, and pale skin. But they were all dressed in tunics and leggings and cloaks lifted from medieval Europe.
Yamada spied a gaggle of Asians next to the Europeans. They didn’t quite look Japanese; perhaps they were Chinese or Koreans. Short and stocky, they wore thick, voluminous robes that stretched to their wrists and ankles.
Scanning the square, Yamada saw Westerners in street clothing, Asians wearing martial arts uniforms, a platoon of soldiers dressed in tiger stripe uniforms. Scattered among them were individuals who were distinctly out of place. A black man in a military uniform covered in modern digital camouflage. A white man who wore dark robes, a funny hat and a silver cross around his neck, but the cross sported two extra crosspieces, the lower one tilting towards the ground. A man dressed in dirty blue overalls. A miko…
He blinked.
A miko? Here?
She looked at him. In the poor light, across the square, all he made out were her white haori and red hakama. Her long, lustrous hair, tied up in red ribbons. And her eyes, deep and soft and…
There was something about that gaze. Something that felt…
Movement.
He peeled his eyes away from her. Thick forests flanked the square. Armed and armored men poured out from between the trees.
Some of them wore classical Japanese armor, full-body suits of mail reinforced with lacquered iron plates. Others donned Western-style mail suits with heavy plated coats. Yet others were equipped with thickly padded armored jackets, reinforced with a dull circular plate over their hearts.
All of them carried spears, swords and crossbows, but none were pointed at the newcomers.
“Who are you?” the black man demanded. “Where are we? What the hell’s going on?”
Everybody else echoed him, and soon an incoherent chorus of shouts and yells and questions filled the world.
With a start, Yamada realized that the black man had spoken in English. His lips were clearly articulating English words. But Yamada had heard Japanese.
Three sharp claps cut above the noise.
“QUIET!”
The word was a force of nature, the voice of a god demanding obedience. Just like that, silence descended on the world. Past a couple of students, Yamada saw a dirt road leading away from the square.
Three men stood in the middle of the road. On the left was a Westerner wearing a dark long-sleeved tunic with patched trousers, on the right a Chinese in an elegant billowing robe, and in the center was a short Japanese in a plain kimono.
As one, they fell to their knees and touched their heads to the ground.
“Please forgive us for summoning you!”
2
Irrasshimase
Yamada blinked.
Had the three elders actually said, ‘summoning’?
Impossible. And yet…
All around him was proof that they had been summoned to a parallel world. The humans around him, displaced and confused; the soldiers, in their strange attire and equipment; the alien sky, deep and vast and empty.
Where were they?
Scarlet lightning slashed through the air. Thunder rolled through the forest. The lightning bolt hung suspended in mid-air for an instant, then grew wider and wider, wide enough to admit a man. It wasn’t a lightning bolt, it was a tear in reality itself. Through the fissure emerged a… thing.
Silhouetted against the light, the shadowy form possessed the figure of a man, distorted beyond benevolent design. The creature was tall, twice the height of a man, maybe more. It had thin, skeletal arms that terminated in massive hands, its fingers were long claws that reached down to bony knees. A pair of enormous horns crowned its raptor-shaped skull. Four red eyes scanned the world. Yamada couldn’t see its shadow-shrouded face, but in its gaze, he sensed infinite malice.
“Irrasshimase!” the entity boomed.
Welcome!
“What are you?” the black man demanded.
“I am the god of this world,” it replied, “and I brought you here for my entertainment.”
Yamada frowned. The elders had said they had summoned the newcomers—but this was the same creature that spoke to them in the dojo. What was going on?
“Begone, fiend!” the old man yelled.
The creature laughed. “You hold no authority over me.”
“I recognize no God but God Almighty! Return us to our homes immediately!”
“Your God isn’t here, human. Here, only I rule.”
The priest straightened his back and raised his cross.
“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, I command you—”
It snapped its fingers.
The priest bent over, screaming in agony.
“You cannot command a god,” the demon said.
“You… are… no… god,” the priest replied.
And shrieked.
He fell to the ground, his limbs flailing and lashing. His neighbors quickly backed away.
“Do you wish to return home?” the demon asked. “Renounce your faith.”
“NEVER!” the priest replied.
The demon laughed, its voice carrying through the air and echoing in the square. Lightning flashed and thunder pealed, and the priest’s howls redoubled in volume. He writhed and convulsed and thrashed about, arms and legs and back contorting and twisting in unnatural, painful positions. The priest screamed himself hoarse, but still the torture continued.
