The Depths of the Octopus
The man laughed triumphantly. “Hahaha! Surrender? Looks like I’ll be the first Minamoto to capture a grandson of Taira Danjo alive!”
If he was talking about capturing a grandson, did that mean someone from a generation above us had already been taken prisoner? I was curious who it might have been.
Tochimura Kaminojo stared at me with a smug, self-satisfied expression. How interesting. He was looking straight into my eyes and still thought I was the one he expected.
I lowered the visor of my tech helmet as I answered.
“Who said anything about surrendering?”
“Even if you don’t want to surrender, we’ll make you! It doesn’t matter if we blow off an arm or a leg, so focus fire on those areas!”
A few days earlier, after getting showered with bullets in that restaurant, I had cursed myself. I possessed the ability to resolve the situation far more easily, yet I hadn’t thought of it and simply stood there like an idiot and taken the hits.
But after several days of careful consideration, I had established the basics of anti-firearm tactics. First came telekinesis. My current level of telekinesis wasn’t yet strong enough to bend or block bullets outright. My Willpower stat—the one tied to telekinesis—was plenty high, but my proficiency with the ability itself was still lacking.
Even so, at my current level of skill I could at least alter the direction of a gun’s muzzle. Since I didn’t want my supernatural power to be obvious, I only nudged each barrel slightly upward so the bullets would miss.
Getting shot and raising my Regeneration level was fine, but if I could avoid getting hit at all, that was even better. Getting shot hurts, after all.
When I closed the distance without taking a single bullet, Tochimura Kaminojo’s face twisted in shock.
“Stop him! Stop him!”
As I approached, the Tateyari began planting their shields in front of them, forming a wall. Punching through shields that couldn’t even be pierced by gunfire would be difficult. But I had a mythical-grade martial art: Shinkai Yatsude.
Shinkai Yatsude (Deep Sea Eight Hands) — Shintooban’in (Penetrating Disc Seal)
I slammed my palm down onto the surface of the shield. Although I had clearly struck the shield, the Tateyari holding the shield behind it suddenly coughed up blood and collapsed.
Heh heh heh. So this is what penetrating force feels like.
The Shintooban’in technique had been created specifically to attack enemies hiding behind shields or walls. They said that anyone struck by it would be left with a mark like a giant octopus’s sucker had latched onto them.
I would have liked to strip the fallen Tateyari and check the mark for myself, but unfortunately we were still in the middle of combat.
The Tateyari seemed to favor knives in close quarters; they all swung blades from behind their shields. However, they weren’t using a perfected one-man offense-and-defense system yet. Their two-man team tactic was still incomplete, so their close-range coordination was clumsy.
At this level, dealing with them felt easier than eating cold porridge.
I snatched the wrist of a thrusting knife, yanked it hard to pull its owner forward, and drove my knee into the Tateyari’s stomach at the same time. It wasn’t a Shinkai Yatsude technique—just pure physical ability—but the sudden abdominal impact made the man crumple. I glanced at him, then leaped through the gap he had left while being dragged forward.
The Tateyari were an elite defensive unit thanks to their shields, but that very strength became their weakness here. Once I started rampaging in the middle of their formation, the large shields only got in their own way.
In the blink of an eye I had slipped behind the defensive line they had created and began attacking the now-exposed backs of the shieldless Tateyari. I struck the backs of their necks with the edge of my hand, aiming for instant kills and crushing their cervical vertebrae.
I had drawn on the power of the abyss for the attack. It seemed to boost my strength considerably and proved quite useful. Of course, if my Abyss stat ever surpassed my Willpower, I would probably go insane, so I had to use it carefully.
Less than thirty seconds after I charged in, every single Tateyari was on the ground. To an outside observer it might have looked like they had panicked and simply fallen to my strikes, but there was one more secret at play.
I had been using Shadow Dominion to hold their feet in place the entire time. The Tateyari knew their own weaknesses well and surely had manuals for when they were attacked from behind, but they would never have planned for a situation where their own shadows grabbed their ankles.
Naturally, the Tateyari who could no longer turn around in the sudden crisis became nothing more than standing sandbags for me.
“H-how…!”
Tochimura Kaminojo, the only one left alive, stammered in disbelief.
I took off my helmet and flashed him a refreshing smile.
“Clever schemes are powerless before overwhelming violence…”
“You crazy bastard…”
I walked over to Tochimura Kaminojo, who had just paid me the highest compliment. He flailed and screamed “Get off me!” but he couldn’t stop my brutal grip.
Riiip! Riiip!
“W-what the—! What the hell are you doing?”
With an expressionless face, I tore every piece of clothing off Tochimura Kaminojo’s body. He looked utterly bewildered by my sudden actions.
“It’s small.”
“Y-you son of a—!”
“No wonder your wife cheats on you. I bet she’s getting it somewhere else right now, isn’t she?”
I wanted to humiliate him as much as possible, so I deliberately piled on every wounding remark I could think of. After all, who told him to get netorare’d right in front of me? He was the perfect target for mockery.
Tochimura Kaminojo made choked, miserable sounds— “Kuh… ugh…!”—his face sinking into despair.
I knelt down, then kicked the neck of the devastated Tochimura Kaminojo with all my strength. The kick was so hard I felt the bones snap under my foot with a sickening crunch.
I had sworn I would definitely kill him, but actually doing it left me with strangely mixed feelings. Killing someone in the heat of battle was one thing; executing them like this felt distasteful to me.
“Dispose of the body.”
“Y-yes, sir!”
At my command the Mumentai sprang into action with heightened urgency.
Mimata Chieri approached me with a bright expression.
“Junior~! That was amazing! As expected of Fujigasaki Rinka’s disciple! To take out an entire platoon of Tateyari with your bare hands!!”
True to her assassin background, Mimata Chieri didn’t seem the least bit bothered that twelve people had just died right in front of her. She appeared far more impressed by my martial arts skill.
Watching her chatter excitedly at my side, I found myself thinking that Mimata Chieri was the truly impressive one. She really seemed perfectly suited for this line of work. Since she enjoyed a job that matched her aptitude, it was probably a good thing for her.
The two of us headed toward the villa while the Mumentai cleaned up the corpses.
I put my helmet back on and entered the villa. Sawasu Amika and Murakata Keiji were still completely naked and stuck tightly together. Usually once the erection subsided, even vaginal spasms wouldn’t keep them locked like that. Why was he still hard?
Having a hunch, I searched through the discarded clothes of the naked Murakata Keiji. Sure enough, his pocket contained a stamina pill. The drug had kept him erect the entire time, preventing them from separating.
“Ugh…”
I let out a long sigh and called Taira Kokoro. Since I figured I might need to blackmail that bastard Murakata Keiji someday, I made sure to capture the sight of the two of them naked and stuck together on camera.
Taira Danjo and Fumimoto Takayuki received the report together.
One of the Mumentai who had been with Taira Ryuta was the unit’s deputy commander. Taira Danjo had dispatched him specifically to observe and report on Taira Ryuta’s actions.
“Kuhahaha! Adultery upon adultery—what an entertaining situation!”
“Indeed, sir.”
When Taira Danjo first heard the report, he frowned at the news that the bomb operation had failed due to the jamming device.
“That Tochimura Kaminojo fellow’s plan was quite impressive. It seems he predicted every part of this scenario.”
“I believe he should have anticipated interference if he was going to plant a bomb.”
“True. So what happened next? It was twelve against five. Did you step in yourself?”
Taira Danjo had assumed that in such a disadvantageous situation the Mumentai deputy commander must have intervened to resolve it. Fumimoto Takayuki seemed to agree, nodding along.
“No, sir. Young Master Ryuta handled the situation himself at that moment.”
“Ryuta did?”
“He suddenly stepped forward alone and slaughtered all twelve with his bare hands.”
The Mumentai deputy commander played the footage recorded by the camera mounted in his helmet for Taira Danjo and Fumimoto Takayuki. On the screen, Taira Ryuta could be seen sweeping through the Tateyari like a storm.
Watching the video, Taira Danjo let out an admiring sigh.
“Impressive. Is Fujigasaki Rinka’s martial art truly that outstanding? What do you think?”
“Of course, among the countless PMC operatives employed by the Taira Group, many could achieve similar results. However, the number of people capable of killing twelve opponents with their bare hands is around five.”
Because the Tateyari were a low-ranking Minamoto unit, quite a few people within the Taira Group could display the same level of skill Taira Ryuta had shown. Most of them, however, required weapons to do so.
“Then you’re saying that boy Ryuta possesses combat ability within the top five of our entire group?”
“It is difficult to make an accurate assessment from a single battle’s data. The opponents were merely a low-ranking Minamoto squad, after all.”
“That is correct.”
Fumimoto Takayuki and the Mumentai deputy commander answered Taira Danjo’s question in turn.
Yes, it was still too early to tell. He hadn’t fought a high-ranking Minamoto unit—just a bunch of Tateyari.
“Entrusting him with a PMC wouldn’t be a bad idea. At first I thought he was being presumptuous by asking for authority with nothing but a favor owed, but now I see. Knowing his own strength, sitting around in the Talent Development Center must have felt like a waste.”
“Young Master Ryuta is still young. Isn’t this the age when blood runs hot? Desk work at the Talent Development Center may simply not suit his temperament.”
“Still, we made a promise, so he’ll have to grant me one request. Heh heh heh… Ushin, if you thought I would keep taking losses like this, you are sorely mistaken…”
Suddenly, Taira Danjo murmured the name of Minamoto Ushin, the head of the Minamoto Group.
Fumimoto Takayuki grew curious about what kind of request Taira Danjo planned to make of Taira Ryuta and how it related to Minamoto Ushin. But he did not ask. He knew that simply staying at Taira Danjo’s side would eventually reveal the answer on its own.