Runaway Ninja vs. Yakuza (7)
The dark underground waterways of Goldon brightened under the glow of lanterns.
Splash. Splash.
Men armed to the teeth with every kind of weapon advanced in formation, stepping carefully. Every eye stayed fixed on the edges of the light; every ear strained for the slightest sound. Yet the only noises that reached them were the drip of water and the wet slap of their own boots.
“No one standing guard.”
Berian, Dorn’s right-hand man and a master of dual blades, asked the question more to confirm than to inquire.
“Told you. The Goldon bastards don’t even know about this place.”
Dorn—called the Dog Butcher, action captain of the Delbanas Bandit Alliance—snorted hard through his nose.
This waterway was the very spot he had stumbled into years ago, fleeing in a blind panic after his first kill. Goldon, built in the ancient age when the Watchmen still ruled, was riddled with secret passages even the current lord knew nothing about.
If I’d known it would come to this, I never would’ve told those idiot assassins.
They were all dead by now, of course.
Once again the lesson Dorn had learned with his own flesh and blood proved true: anything important, you do yourself.
“Place is huge, and there’s really nobody here.”
“Dorn-nim was right. That guy wasn’t any assassin Goldon sent.”
“Smith fretted for nothing. Acted all high and mighty just ’cause he’d seen a little action.”
“Honestly it never made sense. How’s a beggar lord supposed to hire an assassin like that?”
“Maybe the assassins cooked up some weird plot to squeeze more coin out of us. Looked shady from the start.”
“Bullshit. They killed their own side.”
“Silencing them, then. Creepy bastards like that would.”
Tension loosened; the chatter grew louder. Every rough, vicious face among them belonged to one of the forty elites Dorn had hand-picked for the fall of Goldon.
“Ladder ahead.”
Clever Bilden, walking point, lit up a weathered ladder with his lantern. A little rust, but still solid enough.
“Get ready. The second it gets noisy up there, we climb.”
Dorn drew the hand-axe from his belt and poured mana into it.
Clank—
The vine-patterned grip drank the mana and swelled. The hand-axe became a full battle-axe that thrummed with power.
A greenhorn and an old man. Two knights.
Doable. Even seasoned knights had been split clean in half by this favorite weapon of his.
That little shit Tren dies today.
Goldon’s garrison—barely a hundred strong—could never pin down every last one of the swift, ferocious Hyena packs.
Enough.
When Delbanas first claimed she could control monsters, Dorn had laughed in her face. Even after an entire village fell to a Hyena raid the next day, he refused to believe it. She must have simply lucked into some way of luring them, he told himself.
Only when she casually tossed a new recruit into the middle of a Hyena pack did he finally accept it. The beasts finished their meal and wandered off without so much as glancing at the man.
The other bandits had joined out of fear of Delbanas herself, or for the chance to carve up the villages around Goldon. Dorn was different.
Delbanas knows something. She’s planning something far bigger. Stick close, play the helpful subordinate, and the real prize will fall into my lap.
Until now he had fought only to survive. Time to look at the bigger picture. Hated and hunted by half the world already—if he was going to die no matter what, better to die chasing ambition.
First earn Delbanas’s trust. Then learn how she controls the monsters.
That was the thought running through his head when Berian spoke, unable to hide his unease as he pointed at the ceiling.
“Dorn-nim. Something’s wrong. The Hyenas should have broken into Goldon by now.”
Come to think of it, quite a while had passed.
“Already wiped out?”
“Didn’t hear any fighting.”
“Maybe the monsters just ran?”
“Bullshit.”
Anxiety spread fast. Half the men had been chosen purely for raw combat power; the noise they made was endless. They were closer to cruel murderers than seasoned warriors, and it showed.
Dorn growled low.
“Shut your fucking mouths. Unless you want your skulls cracked open.”
“…”
Dorn’s reputation was so black that even hardened criminals knew better than to talk back. No one did.
“Should we pull back for now?”
Cautious Berian’s eyes flicked toward the way they had come.
“Hmm.”
Fail here and the only option left was a siege. Goldon might be a relic of a bygone age, but it was still a proper fortress. Even with superior numbers the cost would be steep—most of it paid by Dorn and his personal retainers leading the charge.
He wanted to avoid a siege at any cost. Yet—
“We withdraw.”
Too many variables already. Dorn decided the job had gone sideways and turned his back.
Thwip!
“Huh?”
The woman at the rear, lantern in hand, crumpled.
“Fuck!”
Berian lunged, flipped her over. A slim throwing knife had shattered the lantern and buried itself in her heart.
Thwip! Thwip!
“Gah!”
“Hhk!”
Belated screams rang out as lantern after lantern died. Men with small shields shoved forward into guard stances; the rest drew steel and scanned the darkness for the source of the knives.
“Stop gawking and bunch up!”
At Dorn’s order the men scrambled into a tight knot.
Drip. Drip.
Silence swallowed the waterway. No footsteps in the mud—only the endless drip of water. A few of them shivered in the ominous quiet.
Ssshhk—ssshhk—
Something moved in the dark. Lanterns swung wildly, but the light never reached it.
“Toss a lantern that way.”
Dorn pointed with the tip of his battle-axe. Bilden understood at once and hurled the lantern like a shot-put.
Clatter!
At the edge of the light stood a figure in black, blade already drawn.
Whoosh!
Berian closed the distance first, swords flashing—only for the figure to vanish like a mirage.
“Wha—?”
Those were Berian’s last words.
Shhk!
The same black-clad shape reappeared silently behind him and opened his throat. At the same instant more figures in identical garb dropped from the ceiling like rain.
“Ah—ah!”
“Wha—!”
Everyone stabbed upward. The moment steel touched cloth the figures dissolved.
Thwip!
The final lantern went out.
Whoosh—
In the pitch-black waterway something sliced the air.
“Th-this…”
A soft shhk, and the men standing in front of Dorn simply ceased to exist.
“C-Captain! Th—”
Bilden’s shout cut off mid-word; he too fell silent.
Gurgle.
Silence settled over the waterway. Something hot and sticky flooded the floor, soaking Dorn’s boots.
“Wh-who are you?”
The nauseating sensation finally snapped him back. Both hands locked around the battle-axe as he retreated step by step.
“Y-you’re the one who came to the tent? You were with Goldon all along?”
Everything a trap? He tried to keep his face blank; it was useless. His lips trembled violently.
Can I beat this thing?
Cold judgment said no. He hadn’t even seen it move.
“I’m Dorn. The Dog Butcher.”
Not even the enemy’s breathing reached him. Dorn’s eyes raked the darkness.
“Action captain of the bandit alliance. Delbanas’s right hand. I won’t resist. Capture me alive and you’ll get a mountain of information.”
He had to live. Slowly, carefully, he set the battle-axe on the ground.
“Pick it back up.”
A slightly winded voice spoke from very close by.
“…Tell me what you want. If I can do it, I will.”
Dorn lifted the axe again in an awkward grip. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead.
No intention of letting him live?
Still, buy time. Any time at all.
“Explain the situation.”
“Situation…? Ah—Delbanas planned to send monster packs against Goldon. We were going to climb up in the chaos.”
“Control yokai? By feeding them konjac?”
“Yokai, konjac—whatever those words mean. Some code you people use?”
Why keep talking if he meant to kill him?
Because the bastard was tired? Or because some magic tool’s duration was running out?
Is this my chance?
Dorn knew well how bizarre the tools of famous mages could be. Delbanas herself owned boots that let her accelerate in an instant.
Something that casts illusions and erases presence? Plausible. And he did sound a little worn out.
Fast and strong enough to take Berian’s head without effort—yet after slaughtering forty men without pause, fatigue had crept into the voice.
“Are you with the Sword Saint Society?”
Dorn asked.
“I’m no samurai.”
Instant answer. A question that hadn’t needed asking. Every word had been stalling—waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark, waiting to pin the exact location.
“Yaaah!”
In raw strength he would not lose. He judged the spot and brought the battle-axe down—
Thud.
“Huh?”
Both hands were caught mid-swing.
“Ah?”
No matter how hard he wrenched, they would not come free. Wearing a fool’s expression, Dorn locked eyes with the figure.
“0.7 Kakashi.”
Those incomprehensible words were the last thing Dorn heard before his head went flying through the air.
Shit. I rushed over so hard I never even got to shout the technique name once.
That’s a demerit.
“Told you, right? The Hyenas were the bait. The waterway was the real play.”
Orphe finally arrived, panting so hard she looked exactly like a puppy.
“Check out this axe. It shrinks and grows.”
I fed it a little mana and the handle of my brand-new loot stretched out again. Looked pretty decent. Had a feeling I’d find a use for it if I kept it.
“Delbanas’s men, yeah? That corpse over there is Dorn, right?”
Orphe pointed at the bodies.
“Seems so.”
“You wiped them all out. Good work. Explaining this mess would’ve been a nightmare anyway.”
Taking down one assassin was within the realm of common sense. Butchering a yokai pack plus forty yakuza was not something a wandering swordsman could pull off. If I wanted to keep the Nin-Him-Sum (see Chapter 1) going, Orphe was right—better keep it secret.
“So we just leave the bodies here?”
“Yeah. The Hyenas and other monsters or animals will clean them up. Nobody comes through this place anyway.”
Neat and tidy.
“Hand me my pack.”
“Here.”
I opened the backpack Orphe passed over. Glad I’d stuffed the ninja suit in there. Evil lurks everywhere; a runaway ninja has to be prepared.
“This thing… fucking… won’t fit.”
“You’re trying to put a battle-axe in a backpack? Even if the handle shrinks…”
“I’ll just dump some stuff.”
Hadn’t cleaned the pack out in ages. Digging all the way to the bottom turned up some weird books.
“Aren’t those the Martolan lord’s books? You never returned them?”
“Huh. Guess not.”
Easy enough to forget. Even if I went back to Martolan someday, that was a long way off. I tossed them on the floor without much thought.
“Still won’t go in.”
Seriously? Stubborn little bastard. I’d just come back for it later.
Anyway, this axe was mine now.
“Let’s head back.”
“…Yeah.”