PREQUEL: TALE OF MUSASHI (CHAP8)

The next morning, Musashi, as usual, went to the Death Forest. He reached his destination and sat down, closing his eyes and concentrating. At the same time, Masato and the three disciples were waiting in hiding. After a while, just when Masato was about to signal for the three disciples to start, he heard a voice behind him.

‘’Yo!’’ A girly child voice. Masato looked back to see a floating little child with a ponytail on each side. From how pale she was, he knew what she was.

‘’G-GHOST?!’’ Masato backed away, eventually falling on his bottom.

‘’That’s rude!’’ She pointed her finger at him. ‘’ I am not a ghost. Ghosts hunt people, and I don’t do that. I am, in fact, a soul spirit!’’

‘’W-What do you want from me?’’

‘’That’s my question! Or technically, what do you want from my friend?!’’

‘’Friend?’’

At the same time, the disciples had been waiting long enough and charged by themselves at Musashi.

‘’UGH! Stupid humans! They don’t know how terrifying Musashi can be.’’ The spirit girl put her hands on her hips as she sighed.

‘’My apologies, Mr. Musashi. We must eliminate you here. And don’t say it is unfair because we all are fighting you. It’s just you’re too strong.’’ The three disciples surrounded Musashi.

‘’I will tell you this secret about Musashi.’’ The spirit girl got close to Masato’s ears and whispered. ‘’Musashi has this supernatural power. I guess because of how he was born or some other reason, but he could see the souls! That’s why he always comes to the Death Forest. He loves to listen to our stories, and we always love to hear from him! Everyone loves Musashi here! He makes us feel like we are not just some lost souls.’’

‘’E-Everyone?’’

‘’Oops! Silly me!’’ The girl backed down and started laughing hard. ‘’Let me show you.’’ She then got inside of him, and his eyes became white.

‘’W-What am I seeing?! This can’t be real!’’

What Masato saw was the whole surrounding area filled with souls. People from all different ages and centuries all were gathered around Musashi and the surrounding area. And then the spirit girl got out of his body.

‘’Now that you saw what Musashi sees...’’ Masato looked back to see two other souls behind the girl, one with his head almost chopped off and another with no teeth and many scars all over his body. ‘’You think you have the right to even get close to our dear Musashi, huh?’’ Her stare changed from happy to deadly.

Masato started to run away, screaming his lungs out. The three disciples heard that and shifted their attention from Musashi to the screams. In that time, Musashi opened his eyes and stood up slowly.

‘’Oi, he got up!’’ The three disciples shifted their attention back to Musashi.

As slowly as possible, Musashi looked back at them as he emitted the dark, smoky aura. They looked at his eyes, which in an instant spun spirally to change to red.

‘’S-Shinigami Eyes!’’ one of the disciples recognized it and backed down.

However, in an instant, the pale colorless trees were painted red with their blood.