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As the samurai guide me to their carriage, every step I take is harder than the last.
My legs are turning to stone at the notion of not being able to come home.
Not today, tomorrow, or anytime soon.

I long to see my mum and sisters once more tomorrow, and maybe the day after.
But I know it will only cause everyone at home trouble if I don't go with these people now.

The carriage is only a few hundred meters away from where I joined the samurai, yet the walk took what felt like centuries.
Why have they not spoken a single word to me since we met anyway?!
They aren't being silent to just me. The only communication between the five samurai were hand signals and all their coachman gets after we arrive is a tiny wave from the boss, after which the ox and subsequently our carriage start moving.
Surely a 'no worries, we don't mean you any harm' or explanation wouldn't have hurt them!

To be fair, apart from surrendering, I haven't really tried to talk to them either.
Can you blame me, though?
With all that armour and their serious faces, they are like super scary and hard to approach!
What could I even talk about? 'Nice weather, don't you think?' probably won't cut it.
Ugh

After racking my brain about what to say for at least half an hour, the coachman is the one to finally break the silence.
"We've arrived."

"Where?"
Oops, I was so surprised I let that question slip out.

One of the samurai calmly responds: "At the location of one of your trials, new guy."

Oh, okay, it's one of my trials.
Nobody told me about a trial? Never mind multiple!
If this is the first, that probably means there's a second or even a third, right?

The leader-looking guy opens the door of the carriage, "So your first job is to dispatch the magic beasts roaming around the remnants of this village before they find a new settlement."

Okay, so I'm not sure what I should be more surprised about. Is this guy not the leader? He does not sound similar to the man father spoke with yesterday... At all!
Or is the more surprising fact that the air around here is absolutely frigid, and everywhere I look, I just see ice.

And everyone is getting out before I could ask a single question. Well, I guess this confusion can wait. For now, I have to go hunt a magic beast, I suppose.

One of them offers me a shortsword, "You can use my wakizashi if you want: I don't need both my swords right now."

"I'll just take my sickle if you don't mind."

"Presented with an actual weapon, he asks for a farming tool? You're a funny one, little guy."

"It's just what I'm used to. I don't think switching to a weapon you don't know on the battlefield makes sense."

"I guess that is reasonable, you really should try one of these sometime though, you don't know what you're missing out on..."
The youngest among the group interrupts
"This might even be your first and last chance to touch a samurai sword."

The leader who doesn't sound like the messenger stops them there and glares.
"That was not quite necessary, now was it?"

"You know how many kid prodigies we get saddled up with every single year, surely you're not saying you believe this one is gonna be the one, are you?"

"Are you talking back to your de facto leader?"

"No."

"Good..."

He now turns towards me again and starts explaining
"The magic beasts here are mostly glacial raccoon dogs. They live in a pack, but there are reports mentioning a bear as well."

"And you want me to take them all out?"
Take them all? I almost died fighting a single ember wolf, never mind a goddamn magic bear! I remember seeing one in my book, and it's fortitude, melee and magic power were all filled well over halfway! In a minor panic, I take out my encyclopedia and start looking for the entry on the raccoon dogs (weren't those the kind of things that can shapeshift)? That could prove very annoying!
I was, like... kind of confident about my strength. But if this is the first trial?!
Maybe I'm not as strong as they hoped I would be.

A mild chuckle from the leader makes me turn my head away from the book:
"Take all of them?"
As he speaks, he hides his laugh behind a cough and continues:
"We don't expect you to be able to fight all of them. If you think you can, feel free to prove me wrong!"

"I did hope your answer would be no."
Back in my book, I finally find the entry of a raccoon dog with a snowflake drawn next to it.

At least the bars are lower than an ember wolf, but I do not have so much hubris as to think I can take them all. Not even if the samurai take care of the bear... "I would be lying if I said I feel confident about fighting an entire pack."

Keeping up the polite tone is exhausting, but if the guy from yesterday was any measure of how the daimyo's samurai want to be treated, I should make sure I don't speak to them too casually.

"Just hunt them as you usually would. If things look too dangerous, we will jump in to help."

Hunt them as I usually would? The only other group I've hunted was a couple of bunnies!
Trying not to let my panic shine through, I respond as confidently as I can.
"I will trust you to have my back then?"

One of the other samurai responds instead of the leader: "Don't worry, kid, I will make sure you make it to our destination in one piece."

I don't know why a few empty words from a man I don’t even know relieve my nerves so much, but I can feel my heartbeat slowing down.
"Thanks a lot."

Tracking magic beasts is honestly not that difficult. To get started, there's the fact that whatever place they tend to hang out at usually gets ruined. The second part is harder to explain. Whenever I get close to a magic beast, I just get this kind of familiar, yet weird sensation. It somehow causes me to always find their general direction.
First things first, getting close to them.

Considering the village is frozen as far as the eye can see, I might as well just head in, hoping to at least sense something nearby.
The houses are all built in a big circle with wavy roads between them. the straw houses with wooden frames only have around the length of a foot between them, which gives a very warm comfortable atmosphere... If only it hadn't been covered in a thick layer of ice, it could have looked very picturesque. 

The samurai who just calmed me down instantly follows a few metres behind. The others glance at their boss before following suit.

I don't really like fighting on ice. When fighting magic beasts, one misstep or moment of hesitation can be fatal. When walking on ice, a slip-up is not that rare. I don't think the problem with this combination needs any more clarification.

After walking past maybe a house or ten, I can feel them. For some reason, I can't pinpoint their location, though. I suppose the best I can do is cautiously keep moving closer towards the centre of the village.

A couple of metres closer and I understand why I cannot pinpoint them. They're split up, and each of them is moving. As I tighten the grip on my sickle, I yell to warn the other.
"I don't know if they heard our carriage or conversation, but they knew we were coming!"

Sure enough, a moment later, I hear some noise on the rooftops. They probably know we can't reach there!
If I read it right, their main strength was magic. The endurance bar was only filled a quarter, melee strength was around a sixth, maybe? But the magic? The magic bar was filled close to a fifth of the way. The same as the ember wolf!
Except there's a lot of them, not just one.

The fourth bar was filled between a third and halfway. The most surprising was the fifth bar: the one that is never very full. It wasn't much, not even a sixth, but the bar was at least four times the size of the wolf's. Considering I have no idea what this stat means, I'll just have to hope it doesn't matter.
Oh, and information about the attacks? Yeah, that was pretty unique for the ember wolf. Maybe because they're common or because their magical attack is strong yet predictable. There was no special image of what their magic does or what it looks like.

Time's up!
Ready or not, here they come!