Reincarnated User Manual

Chapter 287: Gaijin (2)

He already knew where his comrades were.

It wasn’t through espionage. The Empire just hadn’t bothered to hide it.

‘It’s the North.’

Seeing how they were all gathered in one place, anyone could tell it was a trap, but Gaijin didn’t avoid such an obvious provocation.

That was because his patience had worn thin.

When he entered Rien, he killed any trace of his presence, but as soon as the fight started, sparks flew in his head.

The anger he barely suppressed grew explosively, like a coiled spring suddenly released.

Though he wasn’t always so hot-headed, the overlapping events had eroded his reason.

His eroded reason could no longer control his impulsive actions.

He could no longer tolerate even minor mistakes and harbored more hatred and resentment than necessary. The backlash of a life not going as planned only subsided when things went according to his will.

Gaijin’s savagery worsened day by day, and eventually, only those with similar dispositions remained around him.

But Gaijin didn’t think much of it.

He had accumulated 30 years of experience, and the weight of that experience was enough to support his crumbling reason.

You had to kill people without getting caught, and night raids were more advantageous than fighting in daylight.

Raids should be done by a small elite force, and if you engaged in slaughter indiscriminately, you were bound to lose in the end.

Even though he had only one arm, no warriors had yet emerged who could face him. If Yoru, blessed with seven blessings, grew strong enough, she might be able to defeat him, but her will had broken before she even had the chance to achieve anything.

Gaijin’s ego had swelled beyond control. And then,

“Who goes there?”

His sharpened senses detected a powerful presence. He had thought the presence was mixed in with the many comrades gathered in one place, but now that it was so close, he couldn’t ignore it.

Among them was a familiar presence—Yoru. But a presence even stronger than hers was overwhelming her.

“Who in the world is it?”

Gaijin tried to guess the owner of the intense aura.

Could it be Hugo Prient, once called the Empire’s greatest sword? But from what he had heard, Hugo had long retired due to old age.

The Sword Ghost, Glen Prient? It wasn’t him either. In his memory, Glen’s aura was as clean as morning dew, whereas the aura he felt now was as murky as stagnant water.

“It’s not him.”

Gaijin let go of the presence he had been suppressing. The opponent had already noticed him, and he didn’t want to waste energy on meaningless actions.

“It’s neither Hugo nor Glen.”

Black hair, black eyes—it didn’t match the image of any of the strong figures in his memory. At a glance, the figure resembled his comrades.

Then who could it be? Even as he drew close enough to emanate a vicious killing intent, this brazen demon stood his ground with an even more violent aura…

“Ah, do you not know what the term ‘sex slave’ means?”

He was brazenly molesting a daughter. The girl, barely covered by a flimsy piece of cloth, was being treated like a whore, as though she had been defiled in the streets.

He poked at her breasts with a dull blade and smacked her ripe buttocks with force.

Yoru’s face flushed red, but instead of resisting, she bit her lip and swallowed her anger in silence.

“…Is this a provocation?”

Gaijin spoke, exuding a chilling aura. Shiron, standing before him, tilted his head.

“Was it too obvious? I thought you’d charge at me immediately, but you’re surprisingly calm.”

Gaijin was more accomplished in the ways of sorcery than in martial arts. That’s why Shiron deliberately provoked him, trying to draw him into a physical fight.

But Gaijin remained exceedingly composed.

“Was Yoru perhaps an adopted child?”

Shiron couldn’t understand his reaction. If there was a bond between parent and child, Gaijin should have shown some reaction.

But instead, he gazed calmly at the prison courtyard, as though it were someone else’s concern.

“She is indeed my blood daughter.”

His muttered words carried a heavy emotion, but it wasn’t anger—it was a sticky, suffocating disappointment.

“Strange. I can’t believe a father could stay calm while his daughter is being humiliated.”

“Is it something I should be angry about?”

To Gaijin, Yoru was not a daughter he had pampered and raised like a precious gem.

“I raised Yoru to be a warrior, not a woman.”

“…”

“I taught her to fight back when she felt wronged and to kill if there was someone to kill.”

Yoru’s shoulders trembled at his blunt expression of disappointment.

“And what’s with that sorry state? Being captured is one thing, but shouldn’t she have committed suicide if she wasn’t gagged?”

He had been disappointed for so long that he had grown tired of it. At some point, Yoru’s eyes had lost their spirit, and all he heard was news of her secluding herself.

Since she had started walking, he had poured every kind of elixir into her and taught her martial arts, hoping she would become a leader for their tribe. His expectations had been high.

And with high expectations came great disappointment.

Before he knew it, Gaijin had let go of any affection for Yoru. He hadn’t even sent an assassin after her, despite her defying him all this time, but seeing her now, even that leniency had disappeared.

“I’m disappointed. Was your life so precious? Did you want to live so much that you’d endure the humiliation of being treated like a dog with a collar?”

“…That’s not it.”

“What do you mean ‘that’s not it’? Your comrades are sprawled out, and you haven’t even resisted. Are you not ashamed, not even in front of your comrades?”

Yoru ground her teeth at Gaijin’s cutting words. His remarks shook her more than the physical humiliation she had suffered from the man.

“Are you not ashamed, Elder?”

But Yoru wasn’t entirely without words.

“What did you say?”

“We’ve already lost. How long will you keep insisting otherwise?”

A vein bulged on Gaijin’s forehead. Yet Yoru didn’t stop.

“What happened to the warriors you were so proud of? They haven’t even slept properly, let alone rested. They don’t even look alive. And what about the children? Their faces, which should be full of laughter, are instead streaked with tears and weighed down by sorrow.”

It could be dismissed as weakness, but after traveling through the Empire for a month, she couldn’t help but feel it. Pride compelled her to deny it, but the more she did, the clearer the gap between the Empire and Silleya became.

“Even a stray dog eats until it’s full. But what are we? Forced to eat rancid meat, and even that’s scarce, so we have to survive by gnawing on grass.”

“…Such weak words.”

“Is pride more important than life? Is the Empire so terrible that we have to risk the entire tribe’s lives to fight against it?”

“You’ve turned into a coward.”

“Isn’t the immediate danger more pressing? Did the Empire cut off your arm? Even if there’s a personal grudge, isn’t there no end to this?”

Yoru once thought the same way as Gaijin. She took pride in serving a grand cause, believing it was only natural for people to kill and be killed.

However, Yoru’s thoughts gradually began to change.

The villagers who had always welcomed her no longer did so. It wasn’t that they ignored her, but rather they had lost the energy and ability to offer hospitality.

Looking back now, it was strange that they had ever cared about what Yoru was doing when it was already difficult for them to simply survive.

Silleya’s enemy was not the distant Empire,

The monsters made them doubt whether they could survive tomorrow. Even if the Empire had provoked the situation, ideology had no place in the face of such immediate threats.

“We’ve lost. Even if we don’t surrender, can’t we stop fighting?”

They could live quietly within the Empire.

If they did as they always had, like the spies before them, there would be no reason to be discovered.

The fallen comrades were the proof. Before Shiron had stepped in, no one within the Empire had paid attention to their existence.

They weren’t elves or dwarves—they could easily assimilate.

“So, what are you trying to say?”

“…Lay down your sword and surrender. That way, our people can survive.”

“The Empire is the one holding hostages. Don’t you think that’s cowardly?”

“The living must live.”

“Even if they die in battle, the people will be proud.”

“…Did you ask them that yourself?”

“That’s the mindset of a warrior, which you wouldn’t understand.”

Gaijin pulled a dagger from his waist. Shiron responded by raising his holy sword.

“As expected, you are arrogant.”

“Why do you keep calling me arrogant, you bastard?”

“What? You were relaxed until our conversation ended, weren’t you?”

“…Who says I was relaxed?”

Shiron sneered. A massive current of air filled the space.

Boom!

Boom! Ka-boom!

Mana so thick it was visible to the eye turned into a storm, and pillars of fire erupted from the ground one after another. The searing heat scorched the earth.

“Urgh…!”

Yoru shielded herself with her arms from the intense heat. Shiron, paying no attention to her, stretched out his hand.

Unexpectedly, the delay had allowed him to prepare this much magic. The fiery energy surged, and the ground melted into a sticky mess. Yet, even in the midst of all this, Yoru remained unscathed by the flames.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

A thick storm had formed a wall between the hostages, and the ground surged, moving people to the back.

It was a mastery of mana manipulation akin to divine skill.

There were only three visible phenomena. Dozens of techniques were unfolding, and hundreds of calculations flashed through his consciousness.

Thus, there should only have been one casualty.

Drip—

“…?”

Yoru’s eyes widened as she suddenly felt warmth.

Drip—drip—

Hot liquid flowed from her mouth.

“Blood…?”

A searing pain belatedly rose up her throat. Hot blood flowed from her nose, and the sensation of her body burning overtook her.

-Aaaargh!

Screams erupted from the people who had been pushed back.

For a moment, Yoru thought it might have been Shiron’s doing, but his face was still fixed forward. As if the screams that had just occurred had nothing to do with him, his gaze cut through Yoru’s confusion.

“That coward. No blood, no tears.”

Shiron extinguished the flickering flames. What was revealed through the smoke wasn’t a blackened corpse.

Yoru questioned it.

How could someone remain so intact amidst those flames?

“Are you saying it’s cowardly to get help from our people?”

Gaijin brushed off the soot on his body as he spoke. The dagger he held was smeared with sticky blood, and he seemed to have no intention of hiding whatever he had done.

Blood Sacrifice Magic.

He had transferred the damage he should have taken to his people.

Blood sacrifice magic doesn’t work on those recognized as enemies. Ironically, Gaijin recognized all 300 of his comrades as allies.

“Did you hesitate and stop your attack?”

Gaijin shoved the dagger into his shoulder. At that moment, Yoru felt an excruciating pain in her shoulder.

Thud—

“It seems we’re the ones holding the hostages.”

Gaijin laughed as he looked at Yoru, who had collapsed in pain. His eyes narrowed into crescents, as if he was gauging Shiron’s reaction.

“What a joke.”

Shiron laughed in return and swung his holy sword.