Despite being freed from the clutches of mortality, his bliss would ultimately be bittersweet.
Daisuke's eyes fluttered open, only to find that he was still alive. His face was smushed against a wooden floor. As he tried to get up, he felt a sharp puncture in his abdomen.
For a moment, his surroundings were distorted, and his head felt dizzy, like cold water splashing his body, it is then he realized — He was stabbed multiple times.
He forced his hand over his abdomen, conjuring thin strings of mana which he sewed onto himself, closing the wound. His actions were to stop the bleeding, not to heal.
With the assistance of adrenaline, Daisuke slowly rose to his feet and began dusting himself off. In the distance, he spotted a group of men dressed in black, each holding a knife. Judging by the fresh blood on one of the knives, he deduced that these were his attempted killers.
Then they shall meet their end.
He took one step, then another, another. He approached the assassins, causing one of them to turn around, their face turning into a scowl as they saw their target was still alive.
"You...how are you alive?!" The assassin shouted out, clenching his knife as the rest of the group turned to face their victim, who seemingly came back alive like a vampire.
Daisuke placed a hand on his hip, with his lips curling into a smile. He said nothing but couldn't help but let out a small, wry chuckle. The assassins treated it as a mockery, and one of them rushed at him and swung their blade.
"Too slow," He replied, noticing the assassins' sloppy strike. He easily dodged it by sidestepping to the left. Daisuke countered by leg-sweeping his opponent, disrupting his balance and falling to the floor. "Although you've got speed, your fighting has absolutely no finesse." He remarked.
The other assassins saw as one of their own was easily taken down with one swift strike. Even though it was hard to believe that their target could fight back, they treated this situation appropriately and decided to gang up on him, using their numbers as an advantage.
Daisuke counted at least 6 other assassins besides the one he had just taken down. It wasn't anything he hadn't experienced before, but there was a strange, unsettling feeling that he was getting in the face of his enemies. But he suppressed it as he believed it to be a hindrance to his survival.
One assassin thrusted their blade aiming for his chest, but Daisuke sidestepped and grabbed his opponents' arm, crushing it and causing him to scream in agony.
He swept the knife from the assassins' hand and stabbed another assassin approaching him from the side in the abdomen. He gripped the blade and forced it across the man's entrails, but his hands were shaky from the blood loss, causing the knife to fall out. The assassin fell to the floor while he clenched his wounded spot as he was writhing in pain.
"B-But how?!" He cried out, his breathing heavy due to the blood loss.
Despite the small setback, Daisuke picked up the knife again. From the man's perspective, the boy towered over him. With a sadistic smile, he raised his knife, as he prepared to strike.
The frightened man felt much like a victim now, because of the boy's cruelty. He thought that this was an easy mission, refusing to believe what he was seeing. "You couldn't do anything at all before! You're not even older than my own kid, how can you be so—"
Daisuke brought down the knife upon him mid-sentence, slicing the man across the chest, screaming in pain as blood splattered onto his face.
Drenched in the blood of his fallen comrade, the man's eyes went white as his consciousness slipped from him.
Sneering, Daisuke launched spinning kick at two assassins, knocking their heads clean off as their lifeless bodies fell to the ground. The last two assassins remaining felt chills run down their spine as they began to flee for their lives.
As they were quickly running for the door, Daisuke threw the knife he had stolen from one of his fallen opponents.
However, the knife hit the door as the assassins managed to get away. After a few seconds, the knife fell to the ground, making a loud clanging sound.
While he felt disappointed that he couldn't finish off the two assassins, what mattered was that he had survived.
Now alone all by himself, the heat of the moment began to calm down. He began to reflect on what just happened.
"Why was I reborn...?" his brows furrowed as he approached and examined the spot where he woke up. "I thought I—" he paused mid-sentence, as he remembers the last moment he was alive before he died.
"I guess I failed...huh?" Daisuke looks down to the ground, with his bangs falling and covering his eyes as he forces a smile, expressing disappointment for failing to gain the power he sought. His adrenaline-filled heart was the only thing keeping him standing at the moment. He tried breathing in-and-out to slow the pulse, but it didn't work.
He raised his head up and turned towards the corpses, wondering why they targeted someone like him. He crouched down and examined one of them for a moment before he noticed something—a family crest.
To confirm his theory, he looked at the other bodies, and they each had the same crest. This proves that this was an organized attack, not just by their numbers but by association.
It was a funny feeling. Daisuke never knew what it felt like to have a target put on his back until now. Even as a former assassin himself, he always had government protection, and various aliases to go by.
"Looks like some feudal family wanted my blood for some reason. But for what?" his mind wracked at the possibilities. He examined himself looking at his body and checking for if he had any belongings. It was obviously a new body, so there must have been something this person had on them, right?
He then noticed that he had a ring on his index finger. It had a diamond in its center, indicating that it was expensive. But what could this be for...? He just couldn't place his finger on it.
He also noticed that his hands were starting to shake, which was a bad sign that the adrenaline was beginning to wear off. Daisuke gritted his teeth as he wondered on what to do. He needed to work out a plan of some sort. He stood up and began to walk towards the door, but stopped as he began to hear footsteps from behind it.
He listened intently, wondering if there were more assassins coming. Daisuke started reaching his hand for the knife in anticipation.
The door swung open, knocking Daisuke's hand away and causing him to stumble back a few feet. Several people dressed in fancy clothing entered with looks of horror on their faces as they saw the scene before them.
Daisuke felt a strange sense of familiarity with them but could not understand as to why, as he knew he has never met them in his life.
"Oh my god...Leo!" a young girl cried out, as she ran to him seeing blood splattered all over his body, embracing him in her arms. Daisuke was confused by the sudden gesture but couldn't bring himself to pull away from the situation.
"Are you alright? We heard that there were assassins targeting you and we rushed to stop it, and—" the girl continued before stopping mid-sentence, burying her head into his lower chest.
What the hell is happening... he thought, as he suddenly felt himself smothered by attention that he was unfamiliar with. The girl hugging him was fair-skinned with red hair but with a baby-ish face, giving a rather cute appearance to her.
Who the hell is 'Leo'? They can't be referring to me, right? Daisuke was confused by being called that, but he didn't question it either while he was being embraced.
A young woman with greenish-blonde hair approached him with the same worried look, inspecting his injuries.
"You seem to be in critical condition, yet here you are standing," she said with initial suspicion, before clearing her throat. "Perhaps it's the adrenaline," she corrected herself.
He said nothing, but his facial expressions clearly showed that he was exhausted. He was panting, and his legs were starting to tremble.
As he began to collapse, everyone around him freaked out and rushed to his aid, especially the girl who was embracing him. Daisuke's eyes lost almost all natural light as his frail body collapsed to the ground. He looked at the young girl with a blank expression before turning to the others.
"Stay with us, Leo!" the girl shouted, as her face tensed up even more while she was desperately holding back her tears.
"He needs medical help immediately," the greenish-blonde haired woman said with a clear tone of voice. "I'll get the healers," she followed.
She rushed out of the room as fast as her feet could carry her to go and get help. In the meantime, Daisuke's consciousness was slipping.
Is this really the end for me...again? he thought, as his vision became blurry from the blood loss. "Seems like a really disappointing reincarnation. I have to die again so soon after being reborn." he added.
I suppose it was nice being the center of attention, though.
The idea of love and compassion was foreign to him, but he understood that what he was experiencing was pleasant—too bad it had to be bittersweet.
Finally, everything faded to black. His thoughts ceased.