Chapter 17: The Journey Home
After a comfortable night's sleep at an inn, Akira purchased a few days' worth of dry rations, left the small town behind, and set off on his journey home.
He had made his decision. He would investigate the suspicious village himself. That meant hiring a carriage was no longer an option; he couldn't, in good conscience, endanger the driver's life. Two nights ago, with no other settlements for miles, the village had been the lesser of two evils compared to sleeping in the open wilderness. He'd had no choice but to bring the coachman with him for lodging.
Now, armed with the certainty that something was deeply wrong there, he would not drag an ordinary person into it.
Besides, in terms of raw speed, Akira was already faster than a horse-drawn carriage. He had only hired one for the convenience, to conserve his energy. Now, he could only tell himself that a little fatigue was a small price to pay. He would treat it as an extension of his training.
However, to preserve enough strength for the potential dangers awaiting him, Akira refrained from using his Breathing Style to travel. Instead, he maintained a steady jog, his lungs and blood working in perfect harmony through Total Concentration Breathing. By deliberately controlling his pace, he arrived at the outskirts of the village just as the last rays of the sun bled across the horizon.
Demons, after all, were creatures of the night. Where they hid during the day, only they themselves knew.
As he approached, however, a strange scene greeted him. A large group of people was gathered by the stream at the edge of the village, their voices rising in a chaotic clamor. From the looks of it, the entire population had turned out. It was the complete opposite of the eerie, deathly silence that had cloaked the village upon his last visit.
Using the sparse houses as cover, Akira concealed his presence and crept closer, his eyes scanning the crowd.
An elderly man stood before the throng, shouting at the top of his lungs. Beside him, a woman was bound hand and foot, a thick gag silencing her protests. Akira recognized her immediately—it was the same woman who had offered him a place to stay.
The old man's voice was a ragged, grating thing, cracking with strain and so out of tune that Akira couldn't make out the words at first. He focused, filtering out the noise, and after a moment, the content of the tirade became chillingly clear.
"This wretched woman dared to defy the will of the River God!" the man shrieked. "She betrayed our village, betrayed our faith, and secretly amassed money from unknown sources!"
His yellowed eyes were shot through with blood, and his already ancient face twisted into a hideous mask of fury as he gnashed his teeth. The villagers seemed to drink in his fanaticism. Most of their faces were contorted with anger and disdain, though here and there, a few quickly averted their eyes, a flicker of pity extinguished before it could take hold.
"Tonight," the old man boomed, his voice reaching a fever pitch, "in my capacity as Village Head and Divine Envoy, I shall hand this unfaithful traitor, who sought to bring calamity upon us all, to the River God himself for judgment! Everyone, disperse!"
As his final word echoed through the twilight, the villagers broke apart in small groups, shuffling back to their homes. Soon, only the elderly Village Head and the bound woman remained by the babbling stream, waiting for the night to fall.
Having overheard the entire speech, Akira's mind raced with silent, scathing criticism. 'This man, for whatever twisted purpose, has enslaved this entire village in the name of a so-called "River God."'
He had forbidden them from leaving, demanded regular "offerings" of money and food, and instilled in them the fear that defying his god would bring disaster—a great flood that would swallow the village whole. And the woman was tied up as a sacrifice because someone had discovered her secret savings and her plan to escape this prison.
It was, in short, an absurd and pathetic state of affairs.
If nothing else, Akira was certain the "River God" was a man-eating demon, and this Village Head was its willing accomplice. He also suspected that others among the villagers were colluding with him. Faith like this, even in a remote and uneducated village, wasn't so easily established. It would have required at least one or two "miracles" and a few planted voices to whip the rest into a frenzy.
Akira didn't care how their twisted faith was born; he only needed to know one thing: what kind of power did this "River God" truly possess?
Logically, a demon capable of performing "miracles" would need a relatively powerful Blood Demon Art. If it was a demon of that caliber, Akira wasn't entirely confident he could slay it. But then he considered the Village Head's abysmal speech and how easily the villagers were swayed. Perhaps the "miracles" of the past were nothing more than clumsy theatrics.
Most, the Village Head kept repeating the threat of a flood. A flood that would be unleashed if they abandoned their faith.
Akira glanced at the stream not far away. It was barely two meters wide. What kind of being could possibly use such a meager source of water to flood this flat, open terrain?
'If a demon could really do that,'he thought with a touch of dry amusement,'wouldn't Muzan's position as the Demon King be in jeopardy?'
The more he considered it, the more convinced he became that the "River God" was a fraud built on cheap tricks and pre-arranged collusion. The only remaining uncertainty was the demon's actual combat strength.
So, he decided to wait and observe. From his current position, he was confident he could escape as long as his opponent wasn't one of the Twelve Kizuki. And a demon of that rank would have no need for such an elaborate, pathetic scheme just to eat.
Time crawled by. As the last sliver of twilight vanished from the sky, Akira carefully shifted his weight, settling into the starting stance of Thunder Breathing's First Form. He was ready to either charge in for the kill or turn and flee at a moment's notice.
Under his tense gaze, the water in the center of the stream rippled. A dark shadow slowly rose from the depths.
And then, Akira saw...
'A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?'
The thought flashed through his mind, so absurd that it nearly broke his Total Concentration Breathing. Standing in the pale moonlight was a demon with a turtle-like shell on its back and dark green skin. The effect was completed by a large, bald head that seemed to glow an eerie green.
But the creature's hideous, sharp teeth and ferocious expression quickly snapped Akira back to reality. He refocused, his eyes tracking the demon's every move, assessing its strength.
The demon walked step-by-step from the middle of the stream toward the bank. It was a distance a normal person could cross in a single stride, yet this thing took four or five clumsy steps to reach the shore, even nearly slipping as it tried to climb onto the muddy bank.
From the looks of it, this demon's physical prowess was even worse than the one Himejima-san had thrashed all night long.
"O, great River God, please judge this sinner's transgressions."
From the moment the demon appeared, the Village Head had been prostrated on the ground, his body trembling as he bowed his head so low it seemed he wanted to bury it in the dirt. This posture conveniently prevented him from witnessing the demon's rather comical entrance.
The bound woman, however, saw the entire thing. Her eyes, wide with terror, now held a flicker of surprise and a strange hint of relief. But as the demon finally righted itself and its sharp claws reached for her throat, she squeezed her eyes shut, trembling.
Faintly, through the veil of her fear, she thought she heard the distant sound of thunder.
'Thunder Breathing, First Form: Thunderclap and Flash.'
Akira chanted the words in his heart. In the next instant, he erupted from his hiding place, a flash of incandescent lightning. When he reappeared, he was already standing behind the demon.
He turned, watching as the demon's head, cleanly severed from its neck, tumbled to the ground and began to disintegrate into ash. A complicated mix of feelings washed over him.
His first solo demon kill had been far, far too easy. All his tension, all his careful preparation, had been for nothing. Then again, he reasoned, a demon that had to hole up in a place like this and rely on playing god just to feed couldn't have been very powerful to begin with.
The woman slowly opened her eyes. She saw the somewhat familiar face of the boy from two nights ago, then looked at the crumbling remains of the demon, her expression a mask of shock and confusion.
With a flick of his wrist, Akira sliced through the ropes binding her hands and feet and cut away the gag. He then pointed a thumb at the Village Head, whom he had knocked unconscious with a precise chop to the neck.
"It's up to you to decide how to deal with him," he said slowly.
With that, Akira stood and turned to leave.
Information related to demons was not to be disclosed lightly. Ubuyashiki Kagaya had stressed this in their past correspondence, explaining the reasons in detail, and Akira agreed with the Corps' policy.
As for the Village Head, if the woman chose to kill him for revenge, so be it. Regardless, Akira would mention the man to Kagaya. Someone who colluded with demons to harm his own people could not be allowed to remain free. He hadn't killed the man himself simply because he didn't want to dirty the blade gifted to him by Kuwajima Jigorō with such filth.
With a blend of excitement from the kill, a touch of regret for the anticlimax, a pang of disappointment, and a slight disgust for the wickedness he had witnessed, Akira continued his journey home to Mount Momo.
What would become of this village in the future, he neither knew nor cared. His part was done.
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