“Magami,” Hayato said, contempt evident in his voice.
“In the flesh,” returned his gravelly voice. His face was a crisscross of strange white blemishes, scars, and wrinkles, and his hair was white like snow and tied back in the usual White Wolf fashion. The eyes that looked over each of us in turn were dark-blue and bottomless, like the sea during storm. The armour he wore was similar to that of the other Wolves I’d fought, though it lacked protection on his left shoulder, and had the top part of a real white wolf’s head on the right, teeth and all, though I was sure its eyes were glass. The leather and fur looked extremely scuffed and showed countless signs of battle.
“Where are the rest of your men?” I asked.
“You’ve already seen them,” he replied, inclining his head towards the prison we’d entered through. “I’m the last one capable of fighting. Those weaklings in there will be dead within a few days.”
“So, you’re the Last of the White Wolves…” Hayato murmured.[1] “That’s not what I’ve heard.”
“I am the King of Nothing. Whoever told you we have a thousand strong,” Magami said, and grinned, “they’re lying. Byakko-sama took control of my men over two years ago.”
“That’s not possible. You infiltrating my men!?”
“What did you expect? You’re not the only one skilled at spying, and once I got a few of your men hooked on our medicine, they became like clay for me to mould.”
“Why go through all of that if you weren’t part of the fight anymore?” I questioned.
“Because I knew that either Seiryū or Suzaku would eventually sever the head of the snake, leaving a void for me to fill. All the clans are like puppets following my lead.” He laughed. “It’s almost tragic how easily they trust each other. They have been eating out of my hand for years! How else do you think the thick-skulled Vermilion Samurai discovered all the Azure spies within the city? It was me! I’ve been stoking the flames all this time, and now, with that bald asshole dead, the light reveals the true puppet master!”
Hayato finally pulled his sword, and I followed suit. I could tell he was pissed. The infiltrator became the infiltrated, I considered. What irony.
“I expect you to put up a good fight,” was all he said before charging in with a thrust.
Magami sidestepped easily and punched the Shinobi in the jaw, staggering him. I leapt in with a thrust of my own, before the Wolf could draw his blade.
“Eager! Good, I like it better that way!”
Magami jumped at me and performed a spinning kick that caught me in the back of my head by surprise, sending me staggering forward, though I quickly recovered, just in time to see him pulling four small pellets from a wooden box and cracking them with his teeth. A roar escaped his lungs, and suddenly I got the feeling that we were no longer fighting a man, but a beast. A Great White Wolf taken human form.
At last, the Wolf drew his blade, short and straight like Hayato’s, and his shield, smaller than the kind I was now familiar with after the previous Stage, but still large enough to cover his torso. He whirled around in a disorienting pattern and then suddenly slammed his shield towards my head, which I instinctively dodged under, just as his blade sprang up from down low, anticipating my movements. I stumbled backwards, and he jabbed his blade at me, while using the shield to cover his back from a slash Hayato tried to sneak in. Then he kicked off towards me with a sudden burst of speed, knocking all the air from my lungs when his shield connected with my stomach, but not managing to cut me open thanks to my reactionary strike at his head, which, although it missed, made him freeze in his steps. There still remains a shred of the real fighter beneath, I considered. He is cognisant enough to not jump onto my blade like the Wolves did in their eagerness to kill, every single time I fought them…
Despite feeling the urge to vomit my guts out, I drew in a shallow breath, thanks to the thin air, and pushed back at him with a Quick Draw, making him backpedal right onto Hayato’s blade, which buried itself into his flank shallowly, though still deep enough to draw blood. Unfazed by the wound, Magami spun around on the spot with incredible speed, slamming his shield into Hayato’s face, knocking him to the ground, but I quickly descended on the Wolf with a Helm-Splitter, which, as soon as he reacted to it, I changed into a Deflect to catch his thrust aimed at my exposed lower half, and I chained the momentum into a flawless Lacerate that took a deep bite into his breast armour and upper right arm, cutting deep enough through the leather and fur to dye the white-and-grey in a crimson hue.
Magami looked at his arm blankly, then eagerly pushed forward again. I fell back, but then surged forward with a Deflect, catching his thrust again, and this time using the opening to drive my sword through his gut with a swiftness that surprised even myself. I swung around his side and pulled him with me, as my blade wrenched itself free at a crude angle that spilled his blood and guts onto the ground.
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The bastard didn’t flinch or show even the slightest sign of being in pain. Instead, he threw his shield aside and used his free hand to shove his intestines back into place, covering the horrendous tear with his hand, as though that was an effective way of closing a wound. Turns out it wasn’t.[2] Because, as soon he tried to charge at me with the same speed as before, the tear only widened and a disturbing amount of blood fell out and onto the ground.
“I—”
Hayato zoomed past him in an instant, reaching a halt a few metres away, flourishing his blade and returning it to its sheath. Magami sputtered a few ruined syllables, then his knees gave out and he collapsed onto his back, his hand falling away from his wound, releasing the tide of organs attempting to escape his body. Blood bubbled from the gash in his throat and from the corners of his mouth, mixing with foamy spit, as he tried to breathe but continued to choke on the blood flooding his windpipe.
A sudden gust ruffled my hair and cloak dramatically as I walked over to him. I leaned over the dying Wolf, the last of his kind, and said, “Mitsui sends his regards.”
Magami coughed a laugh, spraying a mist of blood into the air. Then the light faded from his eyes, while blood continued trickling from his neck and stomach. A red ice crystal settled on his cheek, as the snow fell from above, and, before long, the red snow covered the entire fortress, like a thin sheet of frozen blood.
I looked at Hayato, and smiled half-heartedly.
“I will open the gate, and signal Mitsui-sama,” he announced.
I didn’t respond.
Part of me wondered why this fight had been so much easier than the rest, but I also wasn’t sure whether or not I’d entered the Dance of Death. It was actually becoming quite hard to notice when it happened, though it was the only explanation I could come up with, considering how easily I’d managed to Deflect Magami’s attacks. A strange part of me was disappointed, I realised in terror. Shockingly, I craved the challenge that my fight with Nobushige and Jirō had offered. And, I mean, this man was supposed to have been the leader of the White Wolves and yet hadn’t even come close to the Laughing Swordsman in terms of strength…
A tiny wisp materialised in the air above Magami’s body and I put my hand through it.
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‘Box of Wolf Pellets’
-Consumable-
Pill > Medicine
“A wooden box of tough pellets that, when chewed and digested, numbs all pain and puts the body in a state of pure ecstasy. Highly addictive. Side effects include rapid deterioration of the body, seen in the greying of one's hair and internal bleeding, as well as auditory hallucinations and apathy. It was once used as a pain-relieving medicine to numb patients before they underwent surgery, but it has long since then become monopolised by the White Wolves who use it to create fearless soldiers that are easily controlled.”
Use
Discard
Weight: 0.1 kilos
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I opened the box and saw that it was nearly filled to the brim with tiny round pellets. I doubted I would ever use one, but, at the same time, it could be a useful item to have for when shit really hit the fan, and it only weighed 100 grams, so it wasn’t like carrying it was going to slow me down.
“Be careful with those,” Ginko commented, startling me again.
He looked around the fortress, barely registering the dead body in front of us, then continued, “This looks quite different from the city and the temple.”
“They’re built in the style of a faraway kingdom,” I replied, not having the same reservations with Ginko as I had with Hayato.
The Mushishi gave me a knowing smile, before saying, “The flow of time itself is convoluted, is it not?”
Then he walked away towards the opposite end of the fortress, leaving me staring at his back where his wooden box remained strapped.
What the hell does that mean? I wondered to myself. Had I just triggered some strange meta-commentary from the Mushishi that clearly didn’t belong to this time period?
Four distinct notes sounded from a horn on the wall, pulling me from my thoughts and sending me into a sudden panic, as I expected a horde of White Wolves to descend on me, but then I saw its source.
So, that’s what he meant by ‘signal’… damn near gave me a heart attack…
I joined Hayato on the wall next to the massive horn he’d used, and we waited for what felt like an eternity as the snow fell, but in reality was probably no more than ten minutes. Riding up the trail came Lord Mitsui at the head of a hundred men. The sight made pride swell in my chest and almost brought a tear to my eyes. It had a profound impact on me, and I supposed that seeing the resurrected Samurai Lord overwhelmed me with relief.
The White Wolf rejects in the cells were not taken as prisoners, but were instead granted a swift and merciful end, and despite their knowledge that the men before them were their executioners and not saviours, many of them seemed grateful, especially those who’d been starved for several days already. A few, particularly those with completely white hair, seemed to not even notice we were there, and just continually thrashed at their bonds until they met their end.
I watched as Mitsui chopped the head off of Magami’s corpse and tied it to his saddle. Before Hayato and I followed him back to the city on horses[3] given to us, Ginko came up to me and told me that when I had time, I should return to the fortress, because he needed my help for something. It seemed the Mushishi had some kind of quest that diverged from the events of the main story I was following, but given my eagerness to quickly advance and link up with FrozenFury and his group, I declined to help him. Instead of relenting, he told me that he’d be waiting for me nonetheless. It seemed on track with the other time-irrelevant quests this World and the Forlorn Kingdom offered. Part of me wondered if he would act as though only a day had passed if I came back a year from now to complete his quest.
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[1] He said the name of the Stage!
[2] Who would’ve thought…?
[3] I ended up having to need a ‘driver’, since, you know, I’d lost my ability to control horses… So much for the idea that muscle memory stayed behind, though perhaps the muscle memory had been the exact memory I’d lost, rather than the memory of what a horse was and how to ride it.