The Fallen Ninja Village (3)
132 stroked his completely hairless head with his rough, uneven right hand.
The smooth sensation settled his mind and body. Checking how many precious strands of hope still remained—each one falling out as time passed—had hardened into habit.
People adapt even to loss.
“...”
He looked into the eyes of his disciples, with whom he shared not even the faintest bond. Their cloudy pupils, dulled by drugs, disgusted him.
A sacred and holy rite. The tradition of the Snake’s Tail. Trust forged through shared experience.
No matter what lofty phrases they wrapped it in, the act itself was always repulsive.
People say that even terrible things become memories with time. But he could say this with absolute certainty:
Only those who have never truly experienced something terrible can spout such shameless, self-serving lies.
- E-eek!
Eight years ago, in a place exactly like this one, 132 had cut off a little girl’s head.
Her body had been unusually small, her hands tiny and delicate.
He had not been able to meet her eyes until the moment he severed her life.
To forget the lingering discomfort that rose every time he gripped a blade, 132 had learned fist techniques instead.
When he snapped the neck of the first target assigned by the Snake’s Tail with his bare hands, the emotion he felt was relief.
After that, it became easy.
Wait for the target’s personal information. Confirm it. Kill them. Collect a fortune. Spend the money on high-end gear and a life of luxury. The same cycle, over and over.
The captain had been right. Do it long enough and you start to enjoy it. Get used to it, and you grow proud.
But this place dragged those unpleasant memories back by force. 132 wanted to believe it.
That he had only done it because he was high on the narcotics mixed into the incense, that it had nothing to do with his true will. Yet this place told him otherwise.
Having inhaled countless drugs by now, he knew the truth. The incense’s effect had never been strong. It was nothing more than a common fatigue tonic sold in any marketplace.
This fog was not some miraculous drug meant to make murder easier by drowning people in hallucinations.
It was a placebo—an excuse offered to those who could not find a convenient justification like “I had no choice if I wanted to live” or “That wasn’t a person,” so they could keep running from the truth.
“Uoh, uoh, uoh-oh. Uwaaaaah!”
One of the trainee assassins, finished with his self-hypnosis, raised a dagger high above his head.
A stupid stance with not a shred of efficiency—yet more than enough to take a human life.
Life was that light.
Every gaze locked onto him.
Once this one starts, the rest will all slip their leashes.
The instant 132 thought that—
Whish!
A dagger sliced through the fog and shattered the incense burner.
Clang!
Thick incense billowed out wildly from the broken vessel.
Unlike before, it was dense enough to obstruct vision. While everyone stood frozen like idiots in shock, a second burner exploded.
Crack!
“What the fuck! Who the hell was that?!”
132 deliberately roared to snap the other instructors back to their senses.
At the same time he quickly scanned the faces of the trainee assassins. They were covering their noses against the sudden wave of incense and staring blankly—so it wasn’t a revolt.
Someone ambushed us? The Snake’s Tail?
Ridiculous. Impossible.
The organization that gathered the finest assassins in the entire Iregal Kingdom had been ambushed?
Compared to true superhumans they might be nothing, but this was still a place filled with veterans of surprise attacks and assassination.
- Wazabyot!
A battle cry from somewhere made 132’s mind reel.
How does the few overcome the many?
First, there is the classic tactic born in the ninja homeland: the encirclement annihilation formation.
A simple yet elegant strategy—surround and wipe out five thousand enemy soldiers with only three hundred of your own.
Unfortunately, the only combat power available right now was me alone.
With 568’s abilities, anything I ordered him to do would turn him into a bloody pulp within five seconds.
In my current state, the only option was to strike first and drag everything into pure chaos.
A runaway ninja becoming a one-man army and turning a ninja village into a free-for-all. Absolute romance.
Including the masked woman, there were eighteen instructors total. Aside from the strongest—the masked woman and Kakashi—the rest looked roughly equal. Well, the bald instructor was no slouch either.
All of them would be excellent in murder techniques and experience, but their absolute mana reserves looked pitifully low.
Even that masked woman was honestly no different from a wolf playing king at a dog café.
Third-rate ninjas who only stab people in the back can never overcome an absolute difference in power.
Therefore this match was already mine.
The moment every eye locked onto the howling ninja candidate, I burst forward, snatched the daggers from the hands of four candidates, and immediately launched two of them into the incense burners.
The bald one screamed and scanned the surroundings, but a third-rate who couldn’t even see through fog had no chance of spotting my Floating Shadow.
“Ghk!”
“Grrrk!”
My pair of daggers danced as they sliced open the throats of four instructors.
My first kills against pure garbage. Nothing special.
Stab first, recover fast, prepare the follow-up—that method really did help a lot.
I had to admit Kakashi’s advice was excellent. First carve a deep cut into an arm or leg to cripple them, then finish with a confirmed strike to a vital point. Most trash went down that way.
- Wazabyot!
I poured mana into a battle cry to amplify the chaos.
The masked woman rose to assess the situation—I immediately hurled a dagger at her heart.
Clang!
She drew a sharp throwing knife from somewhere and knocked the dagger aside.
That hand speed wasn’t because she saw me or read my movement.
It was a third sense forged by countless experiences, blocking on pure instinct.
Even rotten, a croaker is still a croaker—she clearly had the qualifications to lead this trash ninja village.
But all she had bought was time for me to close the distance. I immediately gifted her a full-body tackle.
“Ngh!”
She had been trying some strange technique and was caught in an odd stance; she quickly curled up into a defensive posture.
But one deer cannot stop a runaway Thomas the Tank Engine.
Thud!
The masked woman bounced off and slammed into the wall.
Her balance was shot—her pupils wavered. I drove a dagger straight into her gut.
“Hup!”
She seized my right hand holding the dagger and twisted.
Shit, a joint lock? My mistake for not considering the Ami school just because she was a bald woman.
But no runaway ninja was going to fall for something like that.
I dropped the dagger, pretended to pull my arm free, and slammed a headbutt into her.
Crack!
“Ugh...”
Blood streamed from her nose as the strength drained from her arms.
I didn’t waste the opening—I grabbed both her arms and drove the index finger of my free hand straight through her skull.
“—Takoyaki Killing Method.”
My fingertip throbbed a little, but it was tolerable.
“...Ghk.”
I confirmed her eyes had rolled back, then snatched her throwing knife and flung it into the head of the short, stocky instructor charging to help her.
Confused by the acrid incense, he tried to locate the sound—far too late.
He collapsed limply with the blade buried in his skull.
“Nin-nin.”
In the end, this was their level. At best they only had experience ambushing opponents slightly stronger than themselves. Against overwhelming power and talent, a weakling’s cheap tricks meant nothing.
The nature of third-rate ninjas—endlessly fragile the moment a fight turned into a frontal clash—meant they could never beat me.
I picked up the longsword the stocky instructor had been holding.
Twelve instructors left. Barely two minutes by feel, and I had already killed six.
Still, if any of them possessed something like the ninja clothing technique, they would have enough time to regroup, so it was too early to relax. Everything so far was pure ambush profit.
With the biggest variable—the masked woman—dead, I could take my time hunting Kakashi.
“Y-you bastard!”
“Where is he?! I can’t see him!”
One, then another, then another. They fell like autumn leaves in a gale.
Some instructors even used Floating Shadow to approach me.
Showing off wrinkles in front of grandma—I simply cut them down.
Boom!
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Just as I finished off six plus five more, a massive boulder came flying straight at my position.
I flipped five full somersaults through the air in a stylish dodge, then checked the direction it had come from.
“567!”
Of course only the bald instructor could pull off something this insane.
He had somehow geared up with gauntlets, greaves, and even a helmet—looking rock-solid.
This guy really should have been a pro wrestler.
Fighting someone who had come fully equipped was going to take way too long.
“Don’t you get the situation?! 567 is killing the instructors! The instructors are dropping! They’re just dying! They’re just turning into corpses!”
568’s voice rang out from somewhere.
The incense was finally clearing, and he must have already confirmed the dead instructors.
“You want to live like this forever?! Snap out of it and help 567 fight the instructors! Or we all die right here!”
Perfect agitation. If the candidates just bought me a little time, the bald one would be cake too.
“Sh-shit!”
“Yeah, these sons of bitches had it coming!”
“Kill them!”
The candidates, reclaiming the emotion called “rage,” surrounded the instructors who had been trying to regroup.
This was the true encirclement annihilation formation.
The bald man, flustered by the unexpected turn, locked eyes with me. I had only one thing to say.
“Wabarat!”