AN: Yo, chapter 8 is a big one, so I'm splitting it into 5 parts. The first 2 are coming tonight.
Also, someone mentioned I should change 'NEW' in the title to 'Redux'. Really considering it now.
Shoutout to my awesome Beta's for their help, as well as my Pat's for voting for Nekoshou's Wolf the second month in a row. Links for Dis and Pat on my profile.
Enjoy.
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Chapter 8: Rapid Growth/Life in Sakura Village
A gentle ray of sunlight pierced through the thick canopy of trees, illuminating the resting form of Hei atop a black-colored boulder in the peaceful forest grove he stumbled on the night before.
But peace was not inherent to this forest, and an alpha predator of pure ferocity was about to remind the foolish human of that as it approached with a beat of mighty wings.
Amber eyes narrowed in bloodlust and hunger as the great beast cut through the air with a primal screech.
Hei's eyes twitched.
Talons glinting in the sunlight stretched forward.
A hand moved in a blur as a gun was cocked and pointed unerringly at the foe.
A gunshot rang loud and clear as burning blood spilled.
"…."
Hei's cracked-open blurry eyes landed on the little songbird holding a cricket in its talons, staring at his smoking gun barrel inches from its face in curiosity.
'Hell would have these demonic things.' He lowered his gun with a sigh and rubbed at his eyes with the palm of his free hand as the bird tweeted at him in the way all birds love to sing at sunrise, disturbing the rest of anyone who wanted to sleep in.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm up. Shut it, bird." Hei grumbled and sat up while his little neighbor puffed out its chest and waved its wings in a show of dominance.
Hei's brow twitched at the sight. "Cocky little shit, you're lucky I adjusted my shot." He was oh so tempted to shoot it, but he wasn't that petty.
His red eyes turned away from the hopping bird, all too happy with itself and its meal to take in the clearing as memories of the night before came back. 'Huh, how did I get here again?'
He hopped off the boulder and stretched his back, slightly surprised to not feel any discomfort from sleeping on hard stone all night. 'Mn~, I really needed that.'
It only really occurred to him then that he hadn't actually slept in a few days. Not counting getting fucked up by Yoru during her little evaluation, he hadn't slept all weekend due to his, as Leone would call it, angst fest.
'Maybe it was slightly angsty.' He admitted to himself in the privacy of his own mind as he looked back on the weekend. 'I've been really stressed lately, haven't I?' The old man's condition wasn't the only thing bothering him, but it was his primary concern.
The other aspect was his lack of real progress in a while.
'I didn't want to accept it, but the old man's been slowing down. The last time we sparred for real was right before he took me to join the guild. It's been a year, and all I've done is gain experience with the human side of the underworld. In terms of actual growth, I've been slowing down…'
He looked at his hand, rough with callouses from years of training that even his hot springs couldn't take away, and clenched it into a fist. 'I needed a wakeup call, and Leone and Yoru gave me that, if in two different ways.'
His fight with Leone dragged everything that was bothering him to the surface. He knew deep down he wasn't gaining as much with the old man anymore, but Hei kept ignoring it because he was comfortable. And then her appearance made all kinds of emotions bubble to the surface that he usually suppressed.
And his fight with Yoru reminded him that he wasn't hot shit. All his years of training gave him the skills and a foundation, but it didn't give him the raw power.
Or the tools.
He ran a thumb over his custom 1911's he so proudly put together not even a week before. 'I really can't just cruise through with mundane gear anymore. If I want to stick to guns, I need to improve them magically. Unless I somehow discover how to make a railgun pistol or something.' He snorted at the last thought.
He had been planning on stepping into magical gun and ammunition areas eventually. He put in the order with Tom for raw materials because of that, but he was lackluster in his pursuit of the goal, not really feeling that uncomfortable with his current stage just yet.
And those feelings were only magnified by his abysmal talent with magic. He could barely use a single spell formation he forced his brain to memorize each yeah with his Sacred Gear, and even then, things had to be extremely exact.
If he memorized the spell formation for a foot-long ice shard to form and fly forward at a ninety-degree angle at twenty miles per hour with 20 units of mana as fuel, it would do precisely that every time. Trying to adjust a tiny thing led to other things needing adjustments, and it would all collapse in a domino effect.
Not to mention the mana requirements. He was barely into Tier 2, Low-Class, in terms of raw mana.
'Issei couldn't even teleport when he became a Low-Class devil, and I started lower than that.'
Hei started at Tier 0, and through stimulation from his Sacred Gear, he estimated he had just over 300 points of mana in his core by the current point.
It took a solid 200 points of mana to teleport, and that was just from two locations on Earth. To teleport between Earth and another dimension, such as Hell, that number would go up to double, triple, or who knows how much its cost.
And with the constant cost of his Sacred Gear weighing him down, he wasn't looking to be a magical powerhouse anytime soon.
Through trial and error, Hei realized that while Greed Island was the ultimate support Sacred Gear, it had a steep cost.
It didn't take up a set number of mana units; it took a percentage.
From all the cards he had up and running at once from seven years of tossing things around, he was using just under 40% of his core at all times, leaving him barely enough to teleport.
It still cost him nothing to activate a card, but each one that remained after activation, like his Safehouses, Fish Ponds, or Fruit Trees, had an upkeep cost.
For such reasons, Hei never saw the point of learning more than a few specific spells he would use for particular situations, like his sports bike. Not until he could improve his mana pool to a point where he could play around.
It was better to focus on areas he could improve in sooner, so he procrastinated on dealing with the magical side of his arsenal.
But Yoru showed him that this was precisely the time to do the opposite of procrastinating. It was time to take things apart and return to the drawing board to find a third path. One that needed to rely on something other than his mana pool or mundane weaponry.
All these thoughts and more flashed through his mind as Hei suddenly blinked in confusion. 'Why is this all occurring to me now? Was I so tired that I couldn't really process it all until now?' He scratched his head in confusion. 'The old man trained me to be able to work up to five days without sleep and still complete a task. That shouldn't be it.'
He looked around the forest grove again, taking in how peaceful and soothing it felt before his eyes landed back on the black-colored boulder.
'Hm?' When his eyes landed on it, he felt a pulse within him, almost like a second heartbeat pounding in his ears for a single moment.
Walking over, he ran his hand along the cool stone, feeling a strange calm take over him, settling his thoughts, before he pulled back. 'Is this some kind of natural treasure or something?'
He had read about such things before. Naturally occurring materials, from flowers to fruits, to stones and more birthed by nature that had a variety of effects. Some small and only valuable for low-tier individuals, and others even gods would fight over.
It was the primary source of how races like humans improved their mana pools. By taking natural treasures, refining them, and consuming them as potions, pills, crafting items, or such.
Hei's hand came back up, and he touched the hard black rock once more, feeling that sense of calm take over him again and marveling at how calmly he could reflect on things once more.
Flared emotions deep inside his subconscious settled, and he found a peace he had only felt briefly in the previous weeks, perhaps even months.
But before he could get lost in that feeling, a shout from the side ruined his peace.
"Nya! What the hell?!"
Leone crashed through the thick canopy and hit the earth like a blonde missile, upturning dirt like a bulldozer and shaking the trees around.
Hei stopped to stare at the woman who kicked his ass with her face flat in the dirt and snorted in humor. "Really stuck the landing there, Leone."
The blond silently flipped him off as she pushed herself up and narrowed her eyes as she looked around the clearing in confusion with a clear question on her face.
Hei turned away from the boulder with a raised brow at not getting a verbal response. "Earth to blond bombshell, you hit your head too hard or something?"
Said blond focused back on him and clicked her tongue. "Oh good, you're not in some random magical beast's stomach. Been looking for you for an hour, brat."
Hei waved a hand lazily as he kneeled next to the stream that flowed through the grove in a Y-shape, adding the serene sound of gently moving water over stones to the grove, and threw some water in his face. "Great conversation starter, Leone. And you sure you should be looking for me? You look more like you need a nap than anything else."
Leone grimaced, making the eyes bags under her eyes even more pronounced alongside the black and blue shiner over her left eye. "I'm fine. Stupid, greedy bitch has a mean left hook."
An honest chuckle burst through Hei's lips as he cracked a small smile. "Yoru didn't want to give up her stash, eh?"
"You have no idea." Leone mumbled and walked over beside him, idly taking in the clearing. "Nice spot, brat. Hard to find pockets like this among the Feral Forest."
"Feral Forest?"
Leone sent him a fanged grin. "Name of the surrounding few thousands of miles of forestry. The nature hotspot here makes everything grow much faster and larger, but turning a garden snake into a ten-story tall Rock Snake doesn't exactly make them smarter. Most things here are Feral and bloodthirsty."
"Joy." Hei rolled his eyes and shook off his hands. "I just took your advice about the only safe area being near the southwest direction and got lucky wandering around. Nice place to nap over on that rock if you want to relax."
"When I said the area was safe, I meant safer; this is still wild lands; it shouldn't be this quiet…." Leone trailed off as her eyes fell on the black boulder. "Is that?"
She hopped over to look while Hei dried his face with his shirt. "Don't know what that thing is, but it's incredibly calming for some reason."
Leone ignored him to tap the stone with a knuckle and closed her eyes for a moment, likely sensing something Hei was unaware of before she opened them and whistled. "Damn, brat. If you have luck like this, I should take you gambling."
Hei snorted at the suggestion and walked over. "Never been, but that's beside the point. Something you want to share with the class, Teacher~." Hei added the title teasingly, getting a widening of Leone's eyes as she turned to regard him curiously.
"That must have been some beauty sleep. You still the same angsty brat I picked up or an imposter?"
Hei's response was to flip her off. "So I've been stressed lately. Sue me. Want to tell me what the stone is? I think I want to make a bed out of it."
Leone almost choked at the comment. "A bed? Brat, this is a big fucking chunk of Moonstone. You want a solid gold crapper while you're at it?"
The young mercenary tilted his head as he considered the question seriously. "Do I? I guess I've always wanted to try it. Can't say there's a male around who hasn't thought of it at least once."
Leone laughed and slapped Hei lightly on the shoulder in humor, although that 'light' tap still made his knees buckle. "Ha! I like you more like this, brat. Seems you just needed some good booze and a cat nap to snap out of that funk."
"And the stone." Hei added with a shrug. Not really denying it. "It was mostly the stone. I think it gave me the best sleep I've had in a long time. Helped settle some things inside me."
Leone stopped laughing at that and looked at him oddly. "I haven't heard of Moonstone doing that before. It's not the most valuable ore out there; it's used in a lot of magical tool creations."
"If it's not valuable, then what was with the reaction?"
"Because of the size." Leone huffed and gave the boulder a light kick. "Never seen so much in one place, let alone a piece this big. Even if you smelt this thing, at least 40% of it is pure Moonstone." She wrapped an arm around Hei's shoulder and smashed his cheek into the side of her breasts. "So I say again, what kinda luck you got, brat? A stone this size is worth a fortune."
Hei tried to speak but had a wall of flesh in his way. He narrowed his eyes and jabbed the feline in a pressure point that made her twitch enough to slip away. "Don't do that. And like I said, I just wandered around."
The memory of the night before and how he fell into a trance, being called to the grove by something flashed by, but he pushed it to the back of his mind as he couldn't understand it.
He tried not to squirm under Leone's analyzing gaze, but thankfully she shrugged and let it go. "Well, whatever. What do you want to do with it?"
Hei blinked at that. "You're asking me?"
"Of course I am; you found it."
"Isn't this valuable to the village? It's right outside your barriers."
Leone laughed at that and threw her hands behind her head as she walked away. "The village is fine, brat. Don't worry about it. Finders keepers is a common rule among the supernatural, as long as you have the strength to hold onto it anyway." She added the last line as an afterthought, but Hei understood the hint.
"So basically, don't tell anyone is what you're saying."
She flashed him a fanged grin. "Yup~, none of us cats will really care, but any of the factions would kill you without a second thought to get their hands on that. The less people who know, the less the danger."
Hei hummed at that logic and scratched his chin. "I haven't put much time into researching magical ores. Does the village have a library or something?"
Leone barked a laugh at that. "Nah. You can try to trade; someone might have something. We're all pretty well traveled, but if you want to know about ore, talk to Ghis, she dabbled in blacksmithing."
"Huh, thanks for the advice." Hei shot her a suspicious look and got a bright grin back.
"Don't mention it. But next time you got a gift, run it through me first, kay~?"
Hei's worries melted away with a snort as he casually summoned his grimoire. "You girls are worse than my wholesale dealer."
"Just wait till the millennia-old drinkers start noticing you."
Hei didn't respond to that, knowing the woman had a point, and chose to ignore the topic as he put his hand to the boulder again. "Store."
The boulder vanished into smoke as a card materialized in his hand, and he placed it into his free slots as Leone whistled. "Not bad. Dimensional storage is pretty uncommon."
Hei shrugged, not commenting on his ability. "I would have figured they were pretty common. No moleskin pouches or something?"
Her lips twitched in amusement. "Harry Potter? Really?"
"What? Magic is magic."
Leone laughed and slapped his shoulder. "And that's why you're my student! I've never been a magic fan, but say that to any dedicated mage type, and they will likely try to immolate you."
"Can you stop hitting me?" Hei grumbled and rolled the shoulder she almost dislocated. "And you didn't answer the question."
She chuckled and waved a hand to follow as she started walking back to the village. "Don't be a baby; you barely flinched when Yoru snapped your limbs."
"Pain is still pain, Leone. No one enjoys it."
"Some people do."
Hei shot her a dry gaze. "Pervert."
She lazily swung a hand at him as he ducked under it. "Shut it, brat."
He smirked back. "You didn't deny it."
"Want to see how far I can punt ya?"
"I'll pass."
The two chuckled, and Leone gave him a curious gaze. "You know, how are you so pain resistant anyways? That old man only had you for less than a decade, and I know people more than double your age who can't ignore things like you do."
Hei hummed at the question, looking up at a couple little critters skittering through the branches. "Hard to say. The old man's training was brutal. I'm no stranger to getting injured, but when the adrenaline kicks in, I stop paying attention to distractions."
Leone raised a brow. "A broken limb is more than a little distraction, brat."
"I don't have an answer for you. I just do it. Maybe it's because I know I can heal anything that happens to me, so I subconsciously ignore it."
"Anything?"
"Anything physical." He didn't elaborate more, and Leone easily recognized she wasn't getting more from him on his Sacred Gear.
She gave him a considering look at his answer to the main question and filed away another mystery about her new student. "I see. Well, whatever the reason, it will take you far with Yoru's help."
"I'm going to regret learning from her, aren't I?"
The blonde barked a loud laugh that startled birds half a mile away. "Oh, you have no idea! The only one to come close to that fitness freak is Ghis, and she doesn't bother working out without how much time she spends hunting. Oh, that reminds me, Ghis wants to talk to you later."
"About?"
"No spoilers~."
Hei rolled his eyes at the smug look she sent him and let it go. "Whatever. Any idea what the schedule is going to be? I forgot to ask Yoru yesterday."
Leone nodded at the question. "You'll be with me in the mornings. It's the best time to work on what I have to teach you. Moving forward, we'll work at it from sunrise, but we're starting late today cuz I had to find you."
Hei snorted and crossed his arms. "Sure. And it has nothing to do with fighting over liquor."
"Don't sass your teacher, brat."
"I'm pretty sure it's my right to sass you."
"And it's mine to kick your ass."
"Not unless you're teaching me something."
"I'm teaching you how an ass-kicking feels."
"Weren't you telling me the schedule?"
Leone chuckled and playfully swatted him with her tails. "Ruin my fun, why don't you. Yoru's got you from after lunch till sundown."
"Isn't that like six hours?"
"Yup~, have fun with that."
Hei's brow twitched, but he pushed it away to focus on the moment. "So, where do we start?"
The blond flashed him a bright grin. "We start with…..fixing my house!"
"…."
"…."
Hei turned around and walked back to the forest grove.
"Wait! I was just kidding!" She grabbed him and locked him in a headlock. "Come on, I'll take you to my training spot."
"Is your training spot near your house?"
"…."
"I'm going home."
"Oh, shut it."
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AN: Part 1 done.
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Response to Reviews:
/: calderoneric758 – All the cat sisters are Grade A waifu material. Kuroka should be chap 10.
/: loki98065 – Grayfia and Joy will have a maid-off. One day.
/: Druidic – Thank you!
/: Dragon Master 888 – Joy is love. Hope you enjoy the nights posts.
/: runelt99 – I am a monster. I accept my fate. XD. Trihexia simping for Joy is just hilarious crack. And Ophis going around in a maid outfit because she thinks its what the supremely powerful wear.
/: danielsnow – Thanks! Glad you enjoyed. Hei having a stall is 100% gonna happen.
/: Hwang Manuel – That's fair, I was just curious what people thought about it. Glad you enjoyed the omake :D.
/: danielsnow – Good catch. That was a typo.
/: Hwang Manuel – Let the Chaos REIGN!
/: Guest – Please read carefully. I only ever said that Humans START weak. Vasco is an example of human potential blooming. Just as many human heroes who existed in ancient times were.
/: TheFatGuy2020 – Thanks! Makes me happy to see an old reader enjoying the newer ride.
/: derlock – Your words are too kind. I thank you and will do my best to make the story as fulfilling as I can.
/: operation meteor – It's an honor to hear such words from you man. I hope to one day reach the level of what you managed to achieve. Your story is a work of art.
/: forgottenwarriors3 – The improvements shall come with time. But for the sake of realism, not everything will be as simple as it seems.
/: mhihabak – I appreciate you writing a polite rant lol. There are reasons behind why I make the story take such a path. And it's for not only Hei's growth, but the characters as well. If you choose not to read more, I wont force you, but hopefully you'll stick around and see where the things go as we progress. This story wouldn't be completed without at least 1 mil words.
/: danielsnow – I appreciate the awesome review man. Guns are awesome, we just need to revamp them and bring them to life to show the world that. Thanks for the ideas, I was brainstorming with people on the QQ forum for the story and I got a solid path to take for them.
The name The Nekoshou's Wolf Redux is something I wish I thought of earlier. It sounds way better then The Nekoshou's Wolf – NEW.
I'll try to include more POV parts when I can. A triplets POV would be challenging, but I'll try my hand at one. I already got ideas floating in my brain for when it should happen.
Hope you enjoyed the updates!
/: Noahbadoah – Thanks for reviewing when you could! Hearing my readers thoughts is always helpful and is pure motivation. I'm glad you're enjoying the new ride. The Lupa legacy has more surprises in store, I'm changing things from how I did them in the OLD version of the story, so old readers don't have to worry about spoilers. It's going to gradually appear and result in a future arc.
/: Thomas MCF – WOW! Dude, I saw your review on my other story as well as this one. I can't even say how happy I am to have read them.
Feedback can be hard on websites like Fanfiction cuz it's hard to talk to readers. QQ makes it easier, but fanfiction used to be quite harsh with reviewers, so I can't blame authors for not wanting to encourage anyone.
I'm trying to revamp or outright change the old content. Theres so much more I could have done, and I'm trying to make it happen this time.
I agree on things being a tad slow. The build up wears on those who want some action, but I felt it was appropriate here, so I wanted to keep it going. The end of Chapter 8 has a short time skip, so things will get moving. The old man's part is coming soon.
You're exactly right on Hei being distracted before, hope you enjoyed the new posts. I'm trying to imagine Hei as a person rather than someone without struggle or feelings.
Hei's reasoning will be shown as it goes along. There are underlining reasons for his actions beyond what even he is aware of. Stay tuned for that part.
I'm glad you're enjoying the guns. It's only up from here.
Ghis is a badass character, and it's sad more people don't use her outside Mushoku.
Thanks again for the awesome review, and hope you stay tuned for more.