When Five People Gather (2)
My life as an Earthling hadn’t exactly been short.
With the money my dual-salaryman parents had diligently saved up, I’d wandered the world hunting for ninja villages, and I’d seen plenty along the way.
The Grand Canyon, the mining ruins of Wallonia, the Jukai Forest, the Sedlec Ossuary. Anywhere that felt like it might hide a ninja, I went.
Of all those places, the Jukai Forest had felt less like a ninja village and more like a yokai village waiting to happen.
Mannequins shaped like people hung from the trees—some yokai’s idea of a prank, no doubt—but that third-rate nonsense was just laughable.
I’d planned to spend a night there wide awake with nothing but a sleeping bag for spiritual training, but I was so exhausted that the second the clock hit midnight I unrolled the bag, flopped down, and slept like a rock. I still remember it clearly.
- Why are you all alone in this gloomy forest, aiyakkihihihi…
I thought I heard some weird noises now and then, but I ignored them and slept right through. My condition the next day was peak, so it didn’t matter much.
I’d never gone out of my way to study anything that wasn’t ninja-related, so I couldn’t claim to know everything—but at least I had the experience of seeing things with my own eyes.
And yet, I swear by the Buddha and the Four Heavenly Kings, I had never seen a creature like this.
- Kugege…
They were about the size of a Jindo dog, and they had bird beaks.
They were cradling eggs, and their feet even had webbed toes.
Ordinary avian traits. But the plump bodies basking in the sunlight weren’t covered in feathers—they were covered in fur.
A bird’s beak, a mammal’s torso, and a flat tail. A grotesque four-legged abomination that shattered every category and scrap of common sense humanity had ever built.
I couldn’t hold back my horror.
This… this was the true form of yokai?! They’d been desecrating the cycle of life looking like this the whole time?!
“They must be exterminated!”
Yokai that completely rejected the laws of nature—minions of the Sixth Heaven Demon King. Ocul.
Compared to these bastards, a kappa was nothing more than a shriveled denture turtle.
This was the reality of the interspecies breeding Satan loved so much. Hybrids drove pure species to extinction, stole only their best traits, and used them as the blueprint for evolution.
These Ocul bastards weren’t coming down to human villages looking for food.
Through cannibalism they absorbed human genetic data, transcended the limits of living flesh, and became heart-demons that would one day stand against the Maitreya Buddha!
“Wazabyot!”
The only reason these things were still running wild was because there were no ninjas left.
But I had arrived, so this world could still be saved. Today I was Shin Nobin, the blade of yokai annihilation.
Kuge-ek~
I blasted the mother right in front of me with a jet kick, then ninja-shuffle-danced across the eggs and crushed every last one underfoot.
Ocul that had been sleeping jerked awake, blinking their solid black eyes—no whites at all—and shrieked. There looked to be about thirty of them.
Kugegegegegegek-!
“Robin, my boy! What are you doing smashing them all?! We could sell them to restaurants for money! They could even become important reference material for my masterpiece!”
I chewed up Satan’s words and spat them out, leveling my arming sword at the pack.
The Ocul swarmed toward their doom like rats hypnotized by the Pied Piper’s ninjutsu.
“Robin! You can’t just charge out ahead like that! It’s dangerous!”
Bonita came pounding up, swinging her halberd as she joined the fray.
Right behind her was the yokai-obsessed Satan, completely worked up at the sight of real monsters, while Jina kept wailing “What do we do?” as she fumbled for her arrows.
Only Orphe, already used to ninja tactics, calmly drew her spear and walked forward.
Judging by the combat power of the mother Ocul that had just taken the express train to hell with its head buried in a rock, these things were worth about 0.01 Kakashi each.
Not even worth using ninjutsu on.
“—Helicopter Sword Style.”
Tududududu!
My arming sword spun without pause like a helicopter rotor and shredded the five Ocul in the vanguard.
In martial arts novels you sometimes see a master toying with weaker opponents instead of finishing them quickly. That’s always practice for a new technique—same logic as a mad scientist never turning down free test subjects.
Result: perfect. The Ocul were terrified.
“—A person who works with their hands is an adventurer. A person who works with hands and brain is a craftsman. But only a person who works with hands, brain, and heart is an artist!”
Watching the Ocul back away filled Satan with sudden confidence, and he started spouting nonsense at full volume.
“Taste the blade of a great literary master!”
The overclocked otaku shoved past Bonita and Orphe—who were actually trying to protect the two deadweights—and charged out.
“Hiyah!”
Satan brought his short sword down reverse-grip style straight onto an Ocul’s skull.
The blade punched clean through to the jaw… and at the same moment Satan’s thumbnail tore clean off.
You idiot, you don’t stab reverse-grip like that.
High on the thrill of his first exorcism, Satan didn’t even notice. He laughed, locked onto his next target, and tried to yank the short sword free.
But pulling a blade buried that deep isn’t easy for a complete amateur.
“Muhahaha! Huh? H-huh? Why won’t it come out?”
A guy who’d never even sliced pork belly at home was never going to pull off a ninja massacre.
This Satan bastard was clearly a life-form lower than an amoeba—no hands, no brain, not even a pair of tits.
- Kukyaat!
True to their nature as yokai with an outstanding sense for the weak, the Ocul lunged at Satan with their webbed feet.
“Hoeet!”
The chubby little monsters bounced in, surrounded him, and started slapping him silly with their flippers.
Exactly the moment an archer’s covering fire was needed—and Jina was off wandering around looking for her arrows.
“Dad bought these for me… they’re precious…”
This is why poor people shouldn’t have kids.
While Bonita covered Jina with a face like she’d just chewed shit, Orphe stepped in and swept the Ocul gang-beating Satan away with her spear shaft.
Looking at that practiced movement, yeah—Candidate Number Two. Compared to those two, Orphe was a celestial maiden.
“…Whimper.”
Satan was covered in mud from being stomped all over, but the weird little noises he was making suggested he was still fine.
Good thing the Ocul’s killing power was so pathetic. No wonder this was the recommended big-money quest for apprentice adventurers.
They were numerous and not easily scared, so for ordinary farmers they’d be a real pain.
Back on Earth a single wild boar could cause a panic. Thirty or forty dog-sized Ocul running in a pack would basically be a natural disaster.
Kuget!
I cut down the last Ocul that tried to flee.
They seemed to get slower on land; even while running away they bounced along like rubber balls. It was hilarious. Once I confirmed the situation was cleaned up, I flicked the blood off my blade.
I’d been swinging so much the edge was probably ruined. Today was going to be a rough day for Orphe.
“Robin. You’re strong. Even among guild adventurers, people who fight that well are rare.”
Bonita, who had spent the whole fight just covering the two trolls while watching me work, offered the compliment.
If she ever saw the runaway ninja Shin Nobin instead of the wandering swordsman Robin, she might scream in pure shock.
“Nin-nin. Bonita’s halberd-dealing was excellent as well.”
Bonita hadn’t reached the stage of reinforcing her body with mana, so she couldn’t use ninjutsu, but she had solid fundamentals forged in real combat.
And her physical specs alone—she looked about 190 cm—already put her a cut above.
Maybe because of mana, women in this world carried half the load of humanity’s combat power, unlike Earth.
I remembered Orphe telling me there were more female knight orders than male ones.
She’d said there was some reason for it but never properly explained. She did mention that mixed knight orders were the most common, though.
“Nining? What does that mean?”
“Robin’s from the kingdom’s frontier, so he uses dialect a lot. It doesn’t mean much—just something like ‘got it,’ ‘let’s go with that,’ or ‘is that so.’ Kind of a verbal tic.”
“Ah, dialect. I know a few frontier dialects myself, but it must be from a different region.”
Bonita tried to mimic it clumsily and asked; Orphe answered for me.
I’d apparently cooked up some annoying backstory and then completely forgotten it.
If I just stayed quiet, she’d handle it. I scratched my head and checked on the two diaper-babies.
Jina had recovered all her arrows and looked satisfied enough to smile a little. Satan, already fully recovered, was gently stroking the fur of a dead Ocul with both hands like nothing had happened.
Stroke, stroke.
“Hmm… oh… so this is the feeling.”
I desperately wanted to dash over and demonstrate the Takoyaki Killing Method on the guy currently having a moment, but I held back with superhuman patience.
I still had four chances left, so I’d postpone Satan’s disposal. They say even the Buddha’s face only lasts five times.
“Alright, let’s gather the loot and head back. I’ll handle the skins. Everyone else, please take the beaks, claws, and tails.”
Bonita pulled a dagger from her belt and started skinning the Ocul.
Satan, still petting a yokai, caught Orphe’s dark-circle-filled stare, then smoothly switched to pulling claws without changing posture.
Those eyes really were scary. Jina was working too, but so slowly it barely registered.
One glaring idiot and one completely useless idiot. Finding the answer was a runaway ninja’s duty.
“Then let’s meet again at the guild in three days at lunchtime. Everyone did well.”
The moment we reached the city and finished the various clean-up tasks, Bonita took off first. She looked busy—maybe she had a side job.
Those two diaper-babies must have raised her blood pressure sky-high, yet she never showed a hint of anger. The upright character of someone who was both a warrior and a salaryman. Worth learning from.
“Ahem. To celebrate our first successful quest and wish for future victories, how about a meal together? There’s a decent chicken specialty place nearby. They only let parties of four or more in. Lucky for us, our numbers match perfectly, don’t they?”
Satan, a confirmed professional solo diner, was treating the group assignment as a chance to eat fancy food.
Honestly, chicken sounded good, so there was no helping it. No one objected, and we headed for the restaurant.
The sign had writing on it, but I couldn’t read the letters so I had no idea what it said.
Still, the picture of a chick holding a chicken leg made it pretty clear this was a chicken place.
I should ask Orphe to teach me the writing later. Living without studying was getting hard.
“Innkeeper! Four more beers over here!”
We’d been eating at a leisurely pace when Satan talked us into drinking, so I just ordered. I didn’t know how old Candidate 567 was, but I was an adult so it was fine, and I was curious about this world’s alcohol anyway.
Orphe was drinking too, so she was probably roughly adult age.
“—So the Hall of Artists has fallen into corruption. That ‘ty’pical, ‘tra’ditional, ‘to’tal, and ‘se’cular way of thinking is ultimately closing off the literary world!”
Holy shit, it was a full-on “ty-tra-to-se” rant. Satan was already drunk and shouting at the top of his lungs, while Jina cried beside him.
“I absolutely have to succeed… Father’s been really sick since last year… He’s the only family I have left… He raised me all by himself when I was little, through so much hardship… When I was a kid I almost got bitten by a dog and Father…”
A full-course banquet of collective monologues. My patience might be strong, but I couldn’t stand wasting time. I wasn’t the Buddha—I was a runaway ninja. I muttered something about having business to take care of, left money on the table, and left with Orphe.
“Everyone’s living hard lives.”
Orphe’s cheeks were bright red—she was clearly drunk. She walked with a weird gait that made her armor clank and rattle.
“The people we saved last time were probably like that too, right? You said a runaway ninja is someone who specializes in that kind of thing?”
“Not ‘we’—just me. A runaway ninja protects the people and stands against the yakuza, yokai, samurai, and fallen ninjas.”
Distorting the facts is a crime under some law or other. I hoped she appreciated my sincere effort to keep her from becoming a lying yakuza.
Orphe gave a bland little smile.
“Yeah, yeah. Yakuza and the rest. I don’t really get what those are, but they’re all bad, right? But can a person really live like that? There’s no profit in it. It’s unrealistic.”
Hominids can’t understand human thoughts. Was she a hominid too? Kind of disappointing.
“It’s like the ancient heroes from the fairy tales I read as a kid. Cool.”
Thankfully she wasn’t a hominid. Damn it, I knew I could believe in her!
“If you have the ability, living that way might be fine. But I…”
Orphe trailed off mid-sentence and toppled face-first onto the ground. This is why people need to know their own alcohol tolerance. Know your limits, know your boundaries—only then can you break free of them.
A foolish mistake I, a Limitless Man, could never understand. Still, she hadn’t mocked my beliefs, so I decided to just carry her.
Clank.
“Nin-nin.”
Holy shit, she was heavy.