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Review Corner
Notoki: Thanks~ Here's another chapter~
kaisar-dinasty: lmao you're here too lol. Well, sorry but the 2 timeline thing is staying so yeah. Thanks~ Here's the next chapter~
merendinoemiliano: Thanks~
Kept123: Thanks~ Here's the next chapter~
William Kalen Bryce Roy: Bye
NoName: Thanks~ She is based on her and a bunch of other comedy like isekai characters, and writing this does make me have that D vibe, so I do understand why it's fun like you said~ I do hope to write more fun scenes~
Loxxe: Thanks~ Crap actually forgot to edit that part, fixed it though, thanks for the info. It's cool, thanks for the encouragement~
ROCuevas: Civilization is here~ Thanks~
velinus: lmao yeah Ayame be full of crap lol.
NoManTales77: Happy to find that someone things that my sense of humour is funny, here's the next one~
nahariyanash: I've entered a hole that I cannot escape from. But thanks~
Anyway.
I Own What I Own.
Onigoroshi
Chapter 4
Glorious Civilization
It came as a surprise for everyone that his punch actually managed to do something against that horned demon in human skin. And it came as an even bigger surprise that the attack of a person like him actually staggered the monster, and he punched with his non-dominant arm too!
But still full of adrenaline, he moved again, intending to punch the stunned monster with his right arm this time.
And somehow, as if the gods above were smiling at him, the hit connected, staggering the horned demon monster once again. But when he tried to get a third hit in, it was when his luck ran out. It was, after all, when the horned monster managed to rearrange himself and caught his slopilly thrown fist in his own hands.
"You insignificant WORM!" He roared as his grip on his fist tightened, he could hear cracks and squelches as the monster's sharp nails dug into his fist, and he lifted him off his feet and threw.
He was easily lifted with one hand, and was sent sailing off into another tree, and he could hear the sound of cracking as he met bark face first. He doesn't even know how he was still conscious at this point, adrenaline already disappearing and turned once more into dread.
But before he could process what the actual hell had just happened, he was lifted once again, and even though his vision was blurry and filled with blood oh so redredredREDRED- he could see the wrathful face of the horned demon.
The whimsical part of him that still thinks that all of this was an extremely real and vivid fever dream, idly thought that it was a face befitting that of an oni.
"Thou dareth to- thou DARETH TO TOUCH ME WITH THY DIRTY HANDS!" The demon roared as his grip on his neck tightened, and he choked as he couldn't breathe,
He couldn't even raise his arms to try and make the demon let go of his neck. His hands feels like they were logs, stiff, unmoving, and most of all unfeeling, couldn't even make them do the slightest bits of movement.
"I'll end your pitiful life HERE AND NO-" But before the horned monster in human skin could finish, his face burst into flames. He dropped him, making him flop onto the ground, and though his ears were still ringing he could distinctly hear the monster's screams.
"MAGICIAN!" The monster roared, as he physically shook the fire off of his face, hints of burns in his face. Frantically looking over the clearing for the source of the fire,rage and wrath clearly painted on his face as he does so.
"SHOW YOURSELF YOU COWARD!" The monster roared, his head bursting into fire once more much to the amazement of everyone in the clearing, and the monster trashed again, before his head snapped to one of the trees. "There you are." He whispered with a murderous grin as he then sped towards the direction.
He crashed into a tree, creating a cloud of dust and broken pieces of bark, before the monster's whole body burst aflame. The clearing then was filled by the monster's screams, as he tried to put off the magical fire by shaking his body vigorously.
But he didn't stop, if anything being set on fire multiple times only made the horned monster angrier, wilder, as he ran head first from tree to tree, every attempt only causing him to burst into flames, destroying them in trying to find whoever the actual hell was using freaking magic to set him on fire.
But at one point something happened, and as the monster dashed with his claws out, grasping on empty air, the monster's murderous scowl turned to a grin. His grip tightened as he raised something towards the heavens.
He heard a girlish scream, as the demon raised his hand, as if he was holding something invisible. And he held something invisible, as somehow reality shimmered and shifted, revealing the glasses wearing brown haired girl.
"Ai….ka?" He rasped out the girl's name as she kicked the horned demon that was holding her in the ribs while struggling to escape from the monster's grip.
"Not only have you wasted my time, but you lot also dared to harm ME!" The monster roared as his grip on the brown haired girl tightened making her choke. "YOU WILL PAY THIS INSULT WITH YOUR BLOOD! DIE!"
"Uhmm, hey dude, that is definitely not the way that you should treat a lady. Especially a girl younger than you."
The head of every single person in the clearing who was still somehow conscious, including him apparently, snapped towards the source of the sound.
And the source of the sound, surprisingly and somehow mind bogglingly, came from the person who was standing right next to the horned demon, seemingly having been standing there from the start of the whole debacle.
The monster jumped, letting go of the girl that he was holding to make distance between him and the unknown girl. Sweating nervously at the girl apparently sneaking behind him without his notice.
"So uhh." The girl, hair as white as bone and horns as red as blood itself, asked the barely conscious group of students. "Do any of you all need help?"
He promptly passed out after that.
The group were currently flying overhead of the treacherous yokai filled forest on the foot of Mount Ooe, the devils flying in a group led by the armored figure who was floating in the air with their own magic while the devils merely spread their wings to follow.
The fly through the air was filled with tension, what with most of the devils trying their best to navigate through the air while scrying the forest below, searching for any signs of the missing students.
Scrying magic was quite common magic, it was a magic that could be simply done by spreading one's own magical energy akin to that of a net after all, and for devils whose magic is dependent on their imagination, such a thing was incredibly easy to do.
Normally there wouldn't be any need for them to fly in a single group, it would have been easier for them to look for the scattered students by simply splitting up themselves and expanding their range of search.
But this was the infamous Mount Ooe, a mountain filled with terrible treacherous wild man eating yokai, and was an infamous forest which was filled with miasma that would interfere and hinder the spread of that kind of magic.
Which was why they were flying in the formation that they were in, with the armored figure who was knowledgeable of the layout of the forest as their guide guiding them to some of the scattered students and putting them to sleep with a simple hypnosis and gathering them back on an opened Gate that bypassed the mountains barrier.
Suddenly, the flying armored figure perked their head to a direction. "Ah! It seems that milord has already handled the situation at hand! As expected of milord!" The armored figure said, nodding their head, much to the confusion and frustration of the group of devils before them.
Thankfully among them, there was at least one person who was level headed, that being the glasses wearing noble devil, who raised an eyebrow and questioned the figure's statement. "Are the students safe then?" She asked, and though she masked it, she could tell that there was worry in her tone.
"You need not worry of their safety, milady." The figure said, turning towards her. "Milord has prioritized their safety. It is why she had taken quite some time to gather every single one of them who were scattered all along the forest, herding them away from imminent danger."
"I-I see..." The girl said, looking away and fixing her glasses. "That certainly fits the description that onee-sama gives about her..."
"I beg your pardon?" The armored figure asked, tilting their heads slightly and looking back at the girl's comment, making the black haired devil shake her head as she continued on forward to their destination.
"Ah, it was nothing. I was merely reminded of something that my onee-sama had said once before." The devil girl said she said without looking at the armored figure. "We should continue, you said that the students are safe now right?"
"Ah, yes! Indeed!" The armored figure said before falling silent one again with a hand on their helmet. "Milord seems to have gathered the students to her dwelling, that is where we shall be heading now. Let us make haste!"
It's a house! It's a bunch of houses! It's an actual civilization that isn't filled with people with horns and anger issues! Viva la civilization!
Hey there personal log, it's ya girl, Yoake. And she was currently crouching on top of a roof with her Sneak LV 6 on full front as she watched absolutely normal humans mill about doing normal everyday whatever-period-they-were-in stuff.
Still something that she should find out. When she does do so though, then she could at least have a timeframe to tell when exactly she could watch the series that she hadn't finished back in her previous life.
Huh? She could probably prevent disasters from happening and could potentially save millions of lives? Stop a war or two from happening? How would she do that! She would have to have an incredible influence to do that!
And if there's anything that she knows after reading a bunch of net articles and watching a bunch of television series, then fame and notoriety only brings suffering! That and a whole lot of stalkers!
Yanderes are a cool and interesting trope and all, and certainly psycho analysing them could be fun from time to time,but actually real yanderes are a big NO! Stalkerst too for that matter! They're just plain scary in real life!
Ah, why was she just sitting on the thatched roof of a random house? Well, isn't it obvious why she was doing that! She definitely won't fit here in this group of totally normal and average human people! She was an oni for goodness sake! If she just randomly waltzes on there someone will definitely get killed!
And by that she meant the humans, the humans would definitely die if she just accidentally swiped at them wrong. Goodness sake, their stats were the same as the small baby Yoake! In single digits! And those are the adults too!
She guessed that that just shows how actually strong oni are in the grand scheme of things.Even the children oni were born with innate skills like Sturdy or Strength after all, and from her quick Appraisal session of all the people in the small settlement that she found at the foot of the mountain, not many of them even have more than two skills.
And uhh, most of those skills were like, skills that she didn't even think were a thing, like Farming or Hoe Art, the art of using a hoe of all things, comparable to the skill Sword Art that she saw her 'father' had.
Wait, at one of her spying sessions she saw someone with a Sword Art doing one of those cool anime moves, does that mean that someone with a Hoe Art could do the same but with a hoe?! Like making an air slash just by tilling the field?!
Crap that actually sounds rad, maybe she should wait and watch until that one farmer old man has his Hoe Art proficiency raised to that level just so that she could watch him do something like that.
Good luck old man farmer! Do your best farming so that I could see a getsuga tenshou knock off performed with a farming tool!
Ah, she got sidetracked. Anyway, her goal was completed! She was finally out of that dang forsaken forest and was now in a random village in the middle of nowhere without a single yen to her name! Huzzah!
Crap how was she supposed to get actual good cooked food that isn't just meat being set on fire? She's in Japan isn't she! Let her eat rice! She wants some good fricking food after being stuck for over a month in that forest ravaging for berries and hunting killer rabbits!
She gulped and wiped a bit of drool that she had unintentionally let out as she imagined the feel of eating katsudon after such a long time. Or just a full course meal with fish and miso soup!
She was pretty much sick of meat at the moment, what with it being the only thing that the populace of the oni village back in the mountains eat and nothing else, they don't even eat vegetables the barbarians!
Eat your veggies kids! Or else you'll be muscle-brained idiots like those oni back in the mountain who got caught in a Tsuchigumo's spider web!
Wait, didn't she get caught in that spider-tiger yokai's trap too? She even woke up being caught upside down by the dang creature, does that make her just as dumb as those muscle-brained single digit INT oni?
No, no, no, she's different! And by that she meant different in that she has some actual common sense and human decency! Yep! She totally has those! Anyone with common sense would have done what she would in her situation! Yep!
But back to the civilization of humans that she found! She's not sidetracking, you're sidetracking self log!
It looks poor. To be frankly honest the village looked extremely poor. And no, she's not saying this because she's a broke person with basically her clothes that she was wearing as her possession, you're sidetracking again self log!
But being honest, the people here are all malnourished. The kids and adults are all skin and bones, even that farmer old man who she has put a lot of faith in performing that Hoe Art with his trusty iron hoe.
And they don't even have a lot as their possession too, only the bare essentials which was ragged clothing, and their beds were basically thatch too, she checked when she blatantly strode into their house with Sneak to check their belongings.
No, she didn't steal anything. She has morals you know! And she totally didn't not steal just because they basically didn't have anything worth stealing!
Seriously though this place was possibly going to be wrecked with a bunch of nasty things soon enough. The smell alone tells her that this place isn't the best at keeping their hygiene the best they can, and the dirty water in the village would make it filled with nasty stuff.
Tldr, this place was probably going to be a plague spot sometime soon. And she probably doesn't want something like that happening.
Why you ask? Well, food of course! This place does have a farm after all, kept and run by the old man that has Hoe Art, and no matter how crappy it is, this was probably the easiest and earliest opportunity where she could get her hands on some good food.
And by that she meant rice! Rice! She's born and raised in the land of the rising sun but she hadn't ever eaten a single grain of rice! What the hell is wrong with the oni back in the mountains and their meat obsession!
Right! She might as well try and get to work then. She does have a lot of leftover points from levelling four times last time, and thanks to her delving more into the magical arts, the higher the level a person's Magic of certain types, then the more varied the magic is.
And with her current stacked points she could buy Healing Magic. And if she leveled it up enough she might be able to get Purification so that it could remove the nasty nasty stuff in the well!
She'll need to have a test subject to level that skill up though… and that means that she'll have to hurt some living creature and heal it and create a loop of perpetual suffering… which is something that she doesn't really want to do.
Ah, now that she looked closely with Appraisal, there's a bunch of people here who were missing HP! She can just use them as test subjects! It's for your own greater good people! And she's healing you all you know, so you better be grateful!
And by that she meant make good food so that she could eat them! Do your best old man farmer! She'll wait patiently until harvest season comes in okay!
Oh hello, didn't see you there. Yoake here, and she's currently happy, healthy, and most importantly, alive!
Been a few months since she has been watching over the rural village on the foot of the mountain, and things have been surprisingly relatively peaceful while she stayed in an empty ransacked shack on the far side of the village.
Her Healing Magic that she got for a good healthy chunk of her hard earned skill points was now at LV 5! And she now could perform purification magic!
Which to be fair, was supposed to be used to do stuff like, purifying impurities from wounds and all, but she was going to use it to use it as a glorified water purifier! She's been using the magic for other things of course, other unimportant things like healing the villagers of their back pain while they were sleeping.
She ignored the fact that those people whom she healed revered the goddess Amaterasu for their alleviating health, some even revering the Sukunahikona who was apparently the Japanese god of healing and… hot springs?
She guesses that those two domains do have something in common, but to think that there was actually a full blown god of hot springs… She'll have to start praying to him from now on, hot springs are indeed a gift from the gods after all!
But anyway! Since a few months had passed and the health of the people in the village was getting better, and with her leaving the occasional pieces of meat in their food storage, productivity in the village skyrocketed.
Oh she knew that their farming methods weren't that great, everyone and their kid back in the 21st century knows a thing or two about farming, mostly because at one point in their life they all thought that life is heck and it's better to live as a farmer in a rural village than working for a black company or read a slow life manga that included farming methods.
And she was both, having been a closet otaku who works nine to five who at one point in her life thought that it might be better to just live a slow life. She still wanted to live a slow life if she was being honest, which was basically why she wasted a few months of her life just waiting to eat rice.
Rice is important alright! It's an important ingredient for a good meal alright! And eating just steak or cooked meat over and over again made the taste bland you know!
Well, not like she hadn't been working on her other skills, she's been hunting a bunch of animals in the forest after all, none of them were actually dangerous monsters that could even deal damage to her since her Sturdy reached LV 10, and most of the animals here are normal animals anyway, not the magical variant that has horns that could pierce trees.
Which meant that they were incredibly easy to actually hunt, which was good and bad since the amount of experience points that they gave wasn't really that good, and their taste was less… how does she put it, flavourful? It's just that those magical beasts are more tasty than their regular counterparts.
She's been growing a small field behind her shack, and even doing some tests on it. Like can she supercharge some farmable plants if she used her Healing Magic on them, can she make the plant instagrow, like using bonemeal in that one game about mining and crafting.
And it actually worked! She had to put a generous amount of her MP, basically all of it really, but she could instantly grow a whole small patch of rice! And now that she actually got rice, she can move on to a better village, this one barely has any of the necessities that she had lived with in the 20th century.
She's not going to keep sleeping on a bed of bark and thatch, no thank you. She's going to sleep in a proper bed, thank you.
Which was why she was collecting feathers during her new journey picking them up in her reliable satchel made out of that one youkai that had tried to kill her, the tsuchigumo. She carries with her a handful of rice seeds, and whenever she took a rest or a break she'll plant and insta grow them, and though it took a long time to actually process them to be proper rice using the pot that she pilfe-borrowed from one of the villagers, it was worth it.
She hasn't eaten rice in so long! And though it wasn't actually good and quality rice which was properly processed and cooked with modern convenience, it was still rice! She finally has some good fricking food! It wasn't exactly quality food though!
But well, food was food. And even if it isn't A-grade quality food, it was still good. So she'll take it as her win.
She walked again, and she followed the actual proper roads that the humans built this time so she's assured to find a human settlement at one point in the continuation of her journey.
Heya, Yoake here. And she's trying to find a way to hide her horns so that she could enter human society.
After all, there's no way that an oni like herself would be accepted in a bustling city, not to mention that there's always the possibility of there being actual monster hunters, and since it was feudal Japan there's the possibility of onmyojis and all that jazz existing.
She really hopes that she never actually meets them, or at least meets the extremely prejudiced ones that think that all monsters are evil and all that. That would be bad. Like, really, really bad.
Like, she's a monster and all, but it's not like she would be eating people here and there. Not like she likes the thought of eating humanoids in the first place, she still has a human heart you know! And she only ate that tsuchigumo because it wanted to do the same to her!
And not like she would ever eat humans anyway, do you know what they would do to themselves? Some of them have tattoos, use drugs, and eat unhealthily, especially in this period of time where a lot of them barely eat at all just like in that village she visited, they barely have any meat in their bodies!
So yeah, humans are totally off of the menu for her, and she'll only eat non-humanoid monsters too.
Where was she even going with this train of thought? Oh right, her point of not eating humans.
Like the group of bandits that she found in the middle of the forest, having a party in the middle of the night, seemingly celebrating after a successful pillage by the looks of it. She could tell by the number of tied up women who were merely wearing rags that there was at the edge of their hastily built camp. That and the number of katanas they have lying around, along with some pieces of armor here and there.
Was she still in the ages where banditry and pillaging were commonplace occurrences? That kind of sucks really, since that means that she can't sleep safely in the forests and mountains, the normal ones at least, she had never met normal people in the magical forest of killer bunnies where she came from after all.
Ah geez, this group of bandits aren't that far from the village where she pilf-took her rice and stuff too. They were totally going to go there after a while, weren't they?
And just as her mind wandered over at the safety of the first ever small piece of normal human civilization that she had found in this new life, one of the bandits, the bald guy, because every bandit group has to have a bald guy, spoke to the guy that looked like the leader.
How did she deduce that he was the leader, well, he certainly has the aura of one, dude was a head taller than everyone else, was shirtless and showed his bulging muscles, and had skimpy clad girls in each hand while drinking a large gourd of what she presume was sake.
The dude talked about their next possible target for pillaging, the small village that had started prospering recently, Hadakamura, and how it will be easy to raid the village since it has no defences.
The group all gave a hearty laugh. All seemingly vividly imagining how easy it would be to pillage the small prospering village, and of course in true classic bandit fashion, some were imagining what it would feel like when they get their hands on the girls there.
Some eyed the girls that were cowering even further in the corner of the camp, licking their lips but stopping themselves after a stern word from the giant leader, saying with a wicked grin how he wants to taste them all himself first.
Oh, they were scum huh. She checked their stats with her Appraisal, and found that their stats were laughably low, because if the people in the village were single digits and they were scrawny and barely bones, then these guys were barely any better, they were only higher by two or three! And the boss himself was only ten in STR with 4 in INT! He's dumb as hell!
She found it funny how the dude's Sword Art was lower than old man farmer's Hoe Art though. It was hilarious when she thought that the old man might be able to beat the muscle bound idiot if he used his hoe as a weapon.
Welp, she can't have them raiding the village. That was the place where she got her first proper main ingredient of food after all, the place was quite precious. And it was near the magical forest too, not super near, but as long as it stands then it could act as a landmark for the place.
Alright, let's exterminate them then. They're scum of scum and trash after all. Practically no one will mind if they're gone right? And they'll probably be a good source of experience points, at least better than just wild animals.
So she hopped off from her vantage point, after pinning her baggage at the tree that she had hidden in first of course, and struck one of the bandits with a heel drop.
The results surprised everyone, including herself, as the man's head turned into mush from the hit. Leaving a headless corpse that immediately topped over as soon as she landed down and a splatter of blood that dirtied her tsuchigumo made hood and geta that she also pilfered from one of the many villagers in Hadakamura.
Individual Nanashi has been killed.
The eyes of every single person in the group of humans turned towards her in shock, and she too, was freaking out. EW, EW, EEEWWWW! How was she going to clean this from her clothes?! She only wanted to like, break his neck with the heel drop! Not turn his head into mush! This was disgusting! How did this even happen!?
Oh right, her stats were in the twenties now. Theirs were like, five or something low and single digits, she's basically five times their strength. And that wasn't counting the boost that her Monstrous Strength gave her.
She checked the bottom of her geta and tried her best to peel off the pieces of skin that stuck to her geta, but she couldn't really clean it because suddenly someone screamed and a bandit holding a katana attempted to strike her down.
Ey, wait, wait, she's still standing on one leg here! She tried to move and instead wobbled forwards and tripped, making her fall directly onto the sword. Ah… she's going to die to a random dude with a katana… how embarrassing… at least she ate rice before she died again.
As she closed her eyes and thought of her short but fulliffling misadventures, he blade then made contact with her head. And promptly shattered, leaving shards of metal in the ground, and with HP not even chipped from the feat.
Everyone was then silent, even herself as she clamped her mouth and slapped her head while shaking it. Idioooot! What do you think would happen when you have Sturdy LV 10 against conventional weaponry! Even at a lower level could lower the damage dealt by a tsuchigumo to merely single digits! And wild boars that could kill normal people don't even deal damage anymore! Of course it would affect weapons like normal katanas too!
Allright. She's not a person that's murder happy but lets kill everyone that saw that. Let's kill them all. Let's erase this encounter. This never happened. And anyone that said otherwise is lying alright?!
Someone screamed, this time it was filled with fear, something about an oni and immediately tried to flee the premises. She's not gonna let you off the hook! Her black history dies with you too!
With as much speed that she could muster, she picked up a random pebble in the ground and threw. And with the help of her Throw, the projectile hits its mark, creating a hole in the man's head.
Individual Masara has been killed.
Individual Yoake, Oni has increased from LV 7 to LV 8.
Skill proficiency level-up bonus acquired.
Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill [Sturdy LV10] has evolved into [Stronghold LV1].
Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill [Monstrous Strength LV7] has become [Monstrous Strength LV8].
Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill [HP Auto-Recovery LV7] has become [HP Auto-Recovery LV8].
Skill points acquired.
He promptly fell, instantly dying from having his brain pierced by a piece of rock thrown with enough power that it reached the velocity of a bullet. Screams erupted, but she was determined to kill her shameful history! None shall remember her accidentally tripping into a katana!
And oh, she leveled up just by killing two of them! Humans seem to have lots of experience points huh? Guess she'll level up a lot from this.
Ever since he was born, he was only known as Kuma.
He was born to a one night stand from a noble and a prostitute, but as most nobles and rich merchants with wives, as soon as the existence of their infidelity was known, they would be disposed of in order to keep their dignity.
For all of his life he has been on the run with his mother, never having the comfort of a good night's rest in a bed, never having the comfort of a roof over their head, always on the run from the people that the nobles sent to dispose of them.
He grew up hating them. Hating the royalty and hating the rich who were able to sleep in luxurious houses and eat delicious food without hunting them, without preparing them and cooking them.
He hated the nobles and the royalty who never experienced the hardships of living in the woods, surviving with scraps and eating he could find from digging through trash. Never experience being starved enough to beg for food, to dig trash for scraps. He hated them never having to endure the pain of being beaten by thugs for stealing food, for trying to survive.
But most importantly he hated the person who made him and his mother suffer. He hated his father who he never met, he hated him with all of his being. That man's existence is the reason why he was living, out of spite and will so that one day he could kill the man.
He was the man who brought him and his mother suffering. He was the man who made them lose their home. He was the man that made them suffer. He was the one that killed his mother!
He'll kill him. He'll definitely kill him. He'll make him suffer the pain that he and his mother had felt throughout their life, he'll make him suffer for taking the life of his mother, his beautiful and kind mother. His mother was a saint, for being able to smile even with the life that they lead.
His mother would always teach him many things, many interesting and fun things. She taught him the many beauties of this bleak and dark world. And that man took her from the world.
He dreamt of it every night. He dreamt of seeing her body lay lifelessly in the rain, a pool of blood formed under her body, a knife sticking out of where her heart was.
He'll make that man experience pain for taking the life of his mother. He'll make sure of it.
And that was why he joined the group of bandits. Training day and night to strengthen himself, to make himself stronger so that he could beat anyone in his way that would stop him from reaching his goal.
That day the small orphaned boy that he was had died, and the bandit Kuma was born.
He studied the blade, learning the art of the sword. He learnt how to play dirty, aiming for vital points like the eyes, throwing and kicking dust against his opponents, doing sneak attacks and ambushes, backstabs and all.
As long as he gets stronger, as long as he gets closer to killing that man, then he doesn't mind if he has to dirty his hands. So he threw everything else and devoted himself to banditry, to get followers that would help her achieve his goal.
He became the leader of the group, winning against the previous leader in one on one combat, killing him in the process and becoming the leader by proxy.
The bandit group respected strength, but he also used cunning to get where he is now, and it was why he has Nezu as his left hand to always remind him of the things that he could miss, just like how he pointed out about the recently thriving small village of Hadakamura.
Hmm, it isn't a bad choice. They could certainly use more resources, he might even be able to rally some men to join their cause. Getting some more women would be helpful too. Morale has been quite low as his men were probably tired from the consecutive raids, and the number of women that they have were getting quite low, new ones would always be appreciated.
Some began eyeing the girls that they already have, newcomers that he had recruited from their most recent excursion, he asserted his dominance on the group by telling them that he has first taste. Showing them where they belong in the hierarchy of the group.
Things were not perfect, he still didn't have enough manpower to attempt a raid at that man's home, and he was still far from his desired strength, but it was going well. He was amassing strength slowly and steadily, and soon enough he could attain his goal.
He was closer, and he was a patient man. He will avenge his mother's death no matter how long it takes him. His dream will be achieved one way or another.
But it all came crashing down when a monster, no, an oni came crashing onto their celebration.
The creature killed Jimina the moment it appeared. Killing him before any of them even realized it, crushing his head and reducing his skull to dust with her feet. The monster crushed whatever remains of his head, crushing them under her heel.
None of them could do anything, they were left stunned and shocked at the appearance of the horned monster. His eyes were locked on her, looking at the quality pelt that it wore, her molten gold eyes, and most importantly the pair of horns that was on top of her head.
He saw how her eyes turned to disgust, still stunned at the death of one of his strongest men and watched her peel off the pieces of skin that was stuck underneath her geta. "Disgusting." The monster said with a sneer, making shivers run down his spine.
He was snapped out of it when he heard one of his men let out a roar, a battle cry that he knew belonged to Masara, his second in command. The man raised his blade and charged towards the monster, performing his signature move that would bisect people in two.
But the oni did the impossible, against Masara's extremely sharp katana, the monster had headbutted, and snapped it into pieces. Masara stood shocked, seeing his precious blade that he had sharpened and maintained daily, being broken so easily must have broken his spirit.
And it did, in an act that was unlike the brave and headstrong Masara, the Masara who would always follow him into battle with a manic grin, he turned tail and ran away with a shriek.
But he didn't make it far, the oni moved so fast that his eyes didn't register her move, it was a blur moving so fast that he didn't even know what it did, but Masara immediately dropped dead. Not moving at all as blood flowed from his head and soaked the dirt below him.
Someone screamed, no, a lot of them screamed, trying to run away from the monster that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere and showing how the monster was invulnerable to their weapons.
The oni moved again, faster than his eyes could see, and more and more of his men died as they tried to escape, all killed before he could even understand what was happening. The oni moved so fast, his men lost their heads in a blink of an eye.
And soon enough it was only him left standing. His eyes never left the oni who was bathed in blood, looking incredibly disgusted as it looked at herself being drenched in the blood and guts of his former men.
"Eww. Disgusting." The monster said, trying to wipe and shake off the blood and grime that was stuck to her. He couldn't move, fascinated by the beauty of the monster that he had only heard of in folklore and stories, like the one that his mother had used to tell him before bed.
'Oni are creatures that would eat humans.' She would tell him. 'They are dangerous monsters who would not obey anyone. They could decimate armies on their own, and only incredibly strong warriors and onmyouji are able to defeat them.'
This was it. This was what he needed. This was the thing that he needed to finally achieve his goal. To kill that man.
The monster turned towards him, and he held out his hands. "W-wait!" He said with shaking hands, hoping that it would stop the monster. He knew that he couldn't move, his whole body was shaking from fear.
The monster tilted her head, and raised an eyebrow. It twirled one of her messy white locks, discolored in red blood. "What? Do you have some last words?" It asked him in a soft voice that was like that of a girl, surely a way of the monster to lure in prey.
He tried to calm himself, even with the threat of being killed easily like all his men before him. He was still sitting, more correctly he couldn't even stand when the monster appeared, he couldn't even move.
He straightened his back, and stared at the monster with a grin. Faking confidence as he extended a hand, using all of his will power to keep himself from shaking. "Why don't we talk? Surely someone of your stature is able to be negotiated with yes?"
"Hm?" The monster closed her eyes for a single second, and opened them again to answer his question. "Nah I'm good." It said immediately with no change in emotion.
His eyes widened and he raised his hands to stop her. "W-wait! I-I can give you riches! I can give you men! Women! Anything you want!" He said with a shaky smile. "I-I can give you anything! Anything!"
"I doubt that." The monster said, rolling her eyes. "A bandit such as yourself definitely does not have that. Like, your dudes are all dead anyway, and I doubt someone like you would have your riches stashed somewhere in a safe house. You seem more like the trope bandit that would spend all his loot immediately you know?"
He didn't quite understand what the monster said. 'Trope'? What does that mean? Was that a word that onis uses? That didn't matter for nor, what's important is that the monster was raising her hand to finish him.
He felt fear fill him as he realized that his words were ignored easily. He raised his hands once again, and begged the monster to spare him. "N-no! Wait! Spare me! Please! I can give you anything you want! Don't kill me! I-I still have something I want-I need to do! Someone I need to kill!"
It was then that he blabbered his past, hoping that he could gain sympathy or pity from the monster so that it would spare him. "W-wait! Spare me! I-I need to get my revenge! You can help with that! You can kill anyone in the capital! A whole estate full of nobles! I'll let you kill them all!"
The monster gave him a strange look at his declaration. "Revenge? What are you a disgraced noble or something? Or are you like, the son of a mistress?" The monster asked in an incredibly casual tone, as if she hadn't just massacred over thirty men easily without even breaking a sweat.
"I-I am. I want to get revenge on my bastard of a father! A noble bastard that threw away me and my mother! The bastard that made us suffer and killed her!" He shouted out in rage. He then finally managed to move his body, adrenaline coursing through his veins, and did something that he thought he never would have done.
He bowed. Against all his pride as a man and a warrior, his will to survive was far greater, his will to complete his mission and fulfill his mother's wish was much greater. He couldn't die here, not while that bastard is still living lavishly without a single worry. "Please! Spare me!" He shouted.
He couldn't see what the monster's face was like, but he gambled on the fact that it had let him even speak. Hoping that the monster would help him achieve his goal, hoped that it's murderous frenzy would be intrigued by his story and follow him to the capital, where it could let it rampage and let him achieve his dreams of killing that man.
"Now listen, I'm not a main character." He heard the monster say. "I definitely am not someone who'll preach to you like, how revenge is bad and that this is definitely not the path that your mom would want, nor am I an anti-hero who'll say things like, 'how did you respond to the many people that begged to you like you are now' or something like that."
From the corner of his eyes, he saw that the monster had crouched, and he raised his head to meet it's molten gold eyes directly with his own. "Heck, I literally just killed our whole group, and I don't really feel bad about it! Well, probably because of the things that you've probably done and the fact that you planned on assaulting that… What's its name again? Hadasomething village."
The monster then waved off the fact that it had massacred his whole group of people and continued talking. "If anything it's great and all that you have a goal at your age. God knows I was just browsing the web and randomly reading manga or doujinshi while working nine to five just to fill my gacha addiction. Ah right, gambling's bad kids! Don't do it okay!"
She said that last part of her strange speech to the group of girls that he and his group had kidnapped from their raid, who were still alive much to his surprise, which solidified his line of thought that perhaps this monster had some sort of strange morals.
Or it was saving them all to savor them by itself. It could be either. But he was gambling for the former, for it had a higher chance for him to survive this encounter.
"Like, seriously! Rate up is a god damned lie! What do you mean it has a higher chance of getting the 5-star on the banner! It gave me dupes after dupes of charas that I already have! I had to waste all of my life savings to just build a decent team after getting the character too!" The monster ranted all while looking incredibly annoyed and releasing a wave of murderous intent, making him shiver and planting his head into the ground again.
It was getting heavy. Like a ton of bricks was placed on top of his body. It was getting harder to breathe too. Was he-was he truly going to die. He heard the monster say something in a questioning tone, something about intent, but he couldn't grasp what it said, just like all that it has been saying.
He felt the weight disappear, and he could breathe once more. "Sorry, sorry. My bad. My bad. Didn't know I could do something like that. That was cool though, I'll have to level that skill up." The monster said, and it was something that he didn't understand again.
"Ah well, I think I've wasted enough time. I'm a busy girl, well not really, but I do have better things to do than listen to a snob's sad story, like farming my skills and actual farming. Never thought I'd be a farmer, but hey it increases my Healing Magic so, yeah." Saying something that he doesn't understand again, the monster moved before he could even react, and he felt light for some reason.
Then he dropped, felt the cold ground dirt below him, and he couldn't feel anything else. Not his hands, not his feet, no parts of his body responded to his will. But he was able to see blood, his blood, dripping from where his heart should have been.
He-he's going to die. No,no,no this can't be happening. He can't die here! He can't die! He still hasn't killed that man! He still hasn't avenged his mother! There was no way that he can die here! "There's no-no way... That I'll die here-!"
But he was out of luck, and his vision dimmed. Everything became blurry, and his last thoughts were that his ambition would never be fulfilled. "Oh yeah! Almost forgot!" He could hear the monster exclaim even as his vision had turned to mere blurs.
The monster clapped her hands, or at least he thought that she did that, and said something absurd as the last words that he would ever hear in his life.
"If you're ever reincarnated or something like that, I hope your life would be better than this one at least."
And with that the life of the bandit known as Kuma had faded, never was he ever written in the annals of history, nor will he ever be remembered by anyone in particular.
The only one to remember him would be those who survived his raids and pillages, and his killer, whose only memory of the man being 'the guy with a classical tragic backstory fit of a revenge plot side arc.'
Wheew! That was a pretty good workout after a long few months of just normally hunting animals with magic and not fighting anything as dangerous as the tsuchigumo. But still, were humans really worth that much experience points? She leveled up a whopping five times just by killing around thirty incredibly low leveled humans! It's a steal!
Though that did bring her to question how come she leveled up that many times. She understood how she leveled up three times when she beat the tsuchigumo because it was a higher leveled yokai compared to her, but these were humans whose levels and stats were way lower than hers. So what gives?
Sure there were a lot of them, but she basically leveled up every six kills! That's kind of absurd! Her level was in the two digits now! Level 12 with a whole bunch of points to spend for skills and stat ups!
Well, a part of her Parallel Yoake who is more inclined to think on hard things like math and stuff already came with an explanation, or at least a hypothesis.
Her class that she was born with was Oni, wild horned creatures that hunt and eat humans for fun and games, so they were basically their daily prey, though it'll be a cold day in hell when she actually eats humans, especially these ones, they reek of alcohol and barely bathe! They're stinky!
Anyway, one of the Parallel Yoake in the Yoake Council that is her head hypothesized that because humans were the natural prey of oni, she as an oni gains an innate experience boost when she kills humans.
So even though they were extremely weak, emphasis on the extreme here, they still gave her a lot of experience points for killing them.
Huh, she didn't feel iffy after she killed them. Or feel anything at all after killing them. Was it because they were bad people in general who had done an incredible number of immeasurably bad deeds to people or because she had just been desensitized to death and gore after living in this world for around a few years and surviving in a wilderness with killer animals and yokai?
Probably a combination of the two, thanks to the Parallel Yoake Council again who's willing to switch roles for the Panic Yoake seat, it definitely helps her to keep calm in these kinds of situations.
Oh this definitely is not healthy now that she thinks about it. But until she finds a way healthier way to cope with all these magical and mystical shenanigans, this is the best she's got. She'll ask a psychiatrist when the job gets invented down the line, if she survives that long that is.
Alright! She killed the bandits, leveled up a bunch, and saved maidens in distress, now what?
Oh right, she should probably get rid of the bodies. She could probably burn them to cinders with her Fire Magic. That'll work. Let's do that. She's not really a huge fan of cremation, but at least it's some sort of burial for them, and it's then nothing at least.
It was then that she felt something bounce off of her back, so she looked back and saw that one of the girls that were previously in the bandit's captives had somehow managed to escape, with painstaking hard work it seemed by the scratches and patches of ripped skin where rope used to tie her, and was now brandishing one of the katanas towards her.
A sneak attack! Towards her! It didn't succeed though, especially since her Sturdy just recently evolved into a higher skill named Stronghold, it was still at LV1 though, still basically nullified the attack though.
She eyed the trembling girl, who was shouting for everyone else to run away while she distracted her, but she could see that everyone else had either fainted or were too scared to actually move.
Ah, yeah, her fault. She learnt how to leak killing intent apparently when she went on a tangent, though the actual skill was just named Intent, she could probably utilize it to do a lot of things if she level it up, oh, maybe if she levels it up enough she could use it to force choke someone just by looking at them! That would be kind of cool!
Oh wait, the girl's preparing for another attack now, this time she's aiming for her eyes too. She could possibly heal and survive from the attack, but she doesn't really like any sharp things anywhere close to her eyes so she'll dodge thank you very much.
She moved her head back slightly, evading the girl's sloppy attack, and the next few attacks too. She saw that the wounds on the girl's hand were getting worse, so she disarmed her, lightly, and by that she meant LIGHTLY, tapping the katana that she held and accidentally throwing it out of her grasp with enough force to stab it onto a tree.
That and also throw the girl on the ground with a yelp. Whoops.
She walked closer to the girl, walking slowly so as to not startle her, but it seemed that it did the exact opposite. The girl began waving her arms out and crying too, repeatedly saying how she shouldn't come near.
She ignored her anyway, and crouched beside the girl, who of course acted logically when a monster approached her. She tried to attack her, picking up a random rock and hitting her with it on her face.
She didn't feel anything though, even as the girl repeatedly hit her face with the rock repeatedly, she ignored it and casted her Healing Magic on her. Light emanated from her hand and the girl's wounds began to heal.
The girl's eyes widened in shock, and she looked at her wrists and hands in awe. She held a smug grin as she saw her own handiwork. All that training paid off it seems! And a satisfied customer is always appreciated! Do call Yoake for your healing needs anytime!
She stood up and went on to go to the other girls that were held captive, working on healing them one by one and of course, releasing them from their binds.
Alright! She did a good deed today! It does feel good when you actually do something good once in a while. She informed the girl that had tried to attack her about the location of the village proper, and went on to continue her journey to find something else to do.
After of course, asking where the next nearest civilization was. She was kind of walking without any map or directions.