The Fallen Ninja Village (2)
In the dead of night, when everyone else was asleep.
Even the mana-powered lights had gone dark, leaving the abandoned mine in absolute pitch black.
I shaped a space under the blanket to look as if someone was still lying there.
Nin-nin.
Emergency situation—so I only shouted the battle cry inside my head.
Anything that might get in the way, I stripped off with the Ninja Undressing Technique and stuffed it under the covers in a flash.
An instructor-level ninja might even pick up the rustle of cloth on a silent night if they were concentrating hard enough.
If you start by assuming other people can’t do what you can, you’re guaranteed to get completely wrecked.
Preparing for everything from best-case to worst-case. That was the way of a Runaway Ninja.
Ssshk—
The greatest naked peeping session of my life had just begun.
I moved like a snake gliding over sand, heading straight for the entrance.
In darkness this deep, the true value of Floating Shadow shone—the art of becoming one with the surroundings.
Camouflage was half skill, half circumstance.
You had to let the situation cover half the work first; only then did superior technique have a foundation to shine.
Checking the temporary quarters by the entrance, I heard voices and thin threads of light leaking through the gaps.
Gathering together in the dead of night instead of sleeping?
Important talk had to be happening. That was a fact proven by every Earth movie ever made.
I carefully bored a tiny hole in the wood-and-straw shack. A perfect peeping hole.
The moment I put my eye to it, I nearly blacked out.
— Chomp chomp chomp.
An unbelievable sight. The instructors—these bastards—were stuffing their faces with a midnight snack!
“Nothing beats a meal in the middle of the night, am I right?”
The bald one laughed as he tore into a big, greasy smoked chicken leg.
“It’s the little joys, you know.”
Squinty poured syrup all over a stack of moist-looking pancakes, looking thoroughly pleased.
“Gotta treat yourself like this once in a while for your mental health.”
“This lifestyle’s almost over anyway. Might as well enjoy it.”
The rest of the miscellaneous instructors were sampling food that had clearly been brought in from a nearby village.
No wonder the bastards were never around at meal times.
Wazabyot!
My soul and mind had already leapt out and were slaughtering them into a bloody mess.
Missing ninja candidates? Only the ones who couldn’t keep up with training had vanished.
Once they were no longer useful, the odds were high they’d been quietly killed to silence them—or sold off as cheap mercenaries or war slaves.
In the ruthless world of ninjas, that much was a perfectly logical explanation. Just another everyday occurrence in a fallen ninja village.
But instructors secretly eating three gourmet meals a day and even sneaking midnight snacks while the candidates lived on grubs?
That was the kind of shit the Axis powers pulled in World War II.
No different from the guys who snickered while munching chocolate against the backdrop of starving children in a war-ruined country.
That squinty-eyed bitch had long since been added to my personal SSS-rank war criminal list.
Looks like I needed to move the escape plan up.
And at last, the long-awaited day of escape arrived.
“This is the final practical lesson, so watch carefully.”
Squinty drew the ninja blade at her hip and swept her gaze around the abandoned mine.
She seemed to be trying to make eye contact with the candidates, but with those perpetually narrowed eyes, no real connection was happening.
The ninja village’s training curriculum ended today. From here the candidates would take the promotion exam and be sent out to operate in various regions.
But I had no intention of taking any exam.
I’d finished preparing to run yesterday. Not that the “preparation” amounted to much.
“In a situation like that, you do this.”
Squinty was showing off polished technique and a beautiful ninja blade, but not a single word was reaching my ears.
Plan one: that ninja blade with the red snake painted on the hilt was mine.
Even in this world of mysterious superpowers, the technology level was still roughly medieval. I was certain a weapon that finely crafted was almost unheard of.
The blade itself had no special external features, so if I just erased the snake design on the hilt and swapped the scabbard, no one would ever know.
Even if Squinty and her fellow ninjas came looking for the sword, I was confident I’d be fine.
Plan two: there wasn’t one. Once the curriculum was over, they were leaving the abandoned mine anyway.
If the chance came then, I’d just bolt straight into the mountains. I was sure I could run all day without tiring.
I’d long since remodeled body number 567 into a super-ninja.
Once I was far enough away, I’d vanish with Floating Shadow and stroll off. No one would catch me.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nin-nin?”
568 called me in a tiny voice.
Maybe because it was the last day and they were taking it easy, the other instructors were just sitting around outside the entrance. Squinty was lost in her own explanation, so a little talking wouldn’t get us punished.
“Do you remember what we talked about a few days ago? You’re planning to leave, right?”
Shock! 568 was aiming to become a Runaway Ninja too.
Two runaway ninjas from the same village would look completely uncool. Worrying about that, I asked shortly.
“Why.”
“You’ve got a plan all worked out, don’t you? Can you take me with you? If there’s anything you need, I’ll help.”
This isn’t some free-riding group project ninja, you know.
Instructors were still instructors, no matter what.
They had way more experience, knew the terrain better than I did, and most importantly, they had the numbers. If I didn’t get out fast, I was the one who’d be at a disadvantage.
And I was supposed to drag along someone whose abilities were overwhelmingly worse than mine?
It’d be faster to just switch to total-massacre-route ninja, kill every instructor, and leave.
“Annoying. Difficult.”
I cut her off cleanly, and her disappointment was obvious.
She fidgeted, chewing her lip, as if she was forcing herself to spit out something hard to say.
“...If I stay here, I’ll die without accomplishing anything. I—I have something I have to do. I can’t die here. Please. Help me.”
568’s shoulders and both hands trembled; her dark-blue hair, hacked short with a dagger, swayed.
Maybe she realized her words carried no real persuasion, because the dark circles under her eyes only deepened.
Was she really trying to avenge parents killed by the yakuza? A tragic story.
If I helped the gloomy girl, wouldn’t I be contributing to the birth of a yakuza slayer?
Imagining 568 wielding a wooden sword and punishing yakuza made my chest swell with grandeur.
Thinking about it that way, I suddenly felt pretty tempted.
“I don’t have anything I can give you right now, but if it’s something I can do, I’ll do anything. I—”
“Ah, you’ve finally arrived. Everyone, class is over.”
Perfect timing—voices of the instructors murmuring came from the entrance.
Lucky break. I’d almost gotten so deep in thought that the yakuza-slayer fantasy swallowed me whole.
This was why a man’s romantic delusions were so dangerous.
I wondered if the great men who deliberately chose the obviously screwed options had felt exactly like this.
Looking toward the entrance, I saw unfamiliar instructors (all wearing identical clothes) parking several wagons and unloading cargo.
The bald instructor who’d gone out earlier to greet them was single-handedly carrying four censers the size of a child’s body.
“Just how strong is that guy?”
That bastard should’ve been a super-strongman, not a ninja. Classic case of choosing the wrong career.
Then a masked woman in something like priestly robes stepped down from a wagon. Surprisingly, she was completely bald under the mask.
“Nin-nin...!”
There was only one reason a ninja shaved their head.
Not because of hair loss like the bald instructor—because they cut the time spent on grooming so they could devote every second to training.
Even I had to admire that.
I myself had never been able to give up my hair. This person was extraordinarily exceptional.
The skinhead woman—no, the masked woman—sat on a chair as wide as a desk that had been set up on the spot.
Giant censers were placed on either side of the chair, and the instructors, Squinty included, one by one took positions beside them.
“Remain standing. Receive your masks.”
Even the rage-control baldy looked chillingly serious today.
Was this going to be a killing party instead of a surprise party?
Once every mask had been handed out, the bald instructor lit the censers.
Green smoke spread like mist. In an instant the whole event had turned into a religious ceremony.
The atmosphere was so thick that if someone had said, “You get the idea, right? Kill each other starting now,” it wouldn’t have felt out of place at all.
“This year the most of you survived.”
In the silence thick with cold sweat, the masked woman finally spoke.
The mood was on a completely different level from a principal’s morning speech.
A low, resonant voice laced with mana wrapped around the abandoned mine, creating crushing pressure.
That confidence that didn’t even bother hiding her power—she was definitely the strongest of Snake’s Tail.
At this level she could casually surpass 1.5 Squinties.
“Put on the masks.”
The instructors were already all masked.
Naturally, not a single candidate dared disobey.
568 trembled as she glanced at me, then put hers on. After watching them put them on one by one, I followed the majority.
“The moment you wear this mask, you cease to be human.”
The sudden declaration of dehumanization almost made me scream in surprise.
It was a mask with the sorcery of evil yokai built in!
“Therefore your hearts do not waver. You do not shed tears. You do not think. You do not hesitate.”
Oh. It was just a shitty metaphorical expression.
Thinking about it again, even for another world, infecting people that fast would be way too broken.
“That is what it means to become the tail of the snake and the scorpion.”
The instant the words ended, the instructors dragged people whose hands and feet were bound out of the wagons and threw them down in front of the candidates.
“Choose one and stand before them.”
At the bald action leader’s order, the hesitant candidates eyed one another and picked someone.
No explanation had been given, but everyone already knew in their heads.
The person they chose right now would be the first sacrifice they killed.
The candidates had been broken in body and mind by the brutal training, but they still hadn’t crossed the final line.
Murder.
Today was the day every candidate would be reborn as a murderer.
“Ugh...”
Strange groans leaked from both the candidates and the sacrifices.
The sacrifices’ appearances varied. People of every age and gender stared at me with eyes full of fear.
I calmly examined every detail of them.
The man’s body had been hardened by farm work; the little girl’s stick-thin arms and swollen belly were the result of starvation.
Drool kept leaking from the toothless mouth of a frail old man; milk stains remained on a woman’s clothes.
Not yakuza, not samurai, not yokai. Every last one of them was an innocent commoner I was supposed to protect.
“Do they look like ordinary people to you?”
In the silence that returned, the masked woman spoke again. 568 quietly closed her eyes.
I could hear her grinding her teeth from here.
“The ones who abandoned you were ordinary people too.”
The green mist now completely dominated the space; the scent itself was laced with a component that clouded the mind.
The eyes of the candidates and the people who’d been dragged here gradually glazed over.
“Everything has a first time. Do not worry.”
While the masked woman’s speech continued, Squinty took daggers from a tin box and handed them out to the candidates.
A strange heat burned in the eyes of the candidates who hesitated under the drug’s influence before picking them up.
A despicable scheme to erase their aversion to murder with narcotics, inject pleasure, and transform the candidates into bloodthirsty killers.
“If you keep doing it, you’ll start to enjoy it. If you enjoy it, you’ll get good at it. If you get good at it… you’ll become proud.”
I couldn’t hear the speech anymore. From the moment I decided to crush Snake’s Tail for killing innocent people, that was all I could think about.
“567. You still haven’t chosen a ‘sacrifice,’ have you? Being careful is always a good attitude, though. The first step is the most important, after all.”
Squinty, who still believed I was the cautious type, quietly whispered as she handed me a dagger.
Whether it was the drug mist or not, unmistakable delight colored her voice.
“I personally have high expectations for you. In just a little while you’ll be strong enough to become my partner. I guarantee it.”
The trash ninja Squinty giggled softly, as if something was endlessly amusing.
She was nothing more than a murder maniac herself. Whatever scraps of respect I’d still had for her vanished completely.
I was so appalled that even “Nin-nin” wouldn’t come out anymore.
Snake’s Tail—a third-rate ninja organization that trained disposable trash and committed the inhuman crime of slaughtering civilians.
Escape? That wasn’t enough. This organization deserved far greater retribution.
To you who have lost duty, mission, and reason and gone mad, the judgment I will deliver is only one.
Total ninja massacre.