Book 7: Chapter 26: Naito Oka

A few vagabonds in tattered armor with dark, filthy, ugly faces that were indistinguishable from demons peeked at the Tsunaga sisters resting in the woods from the bushes at a distance from them.

The vagabonds swept their gazes across the samurai women dressed in revealing armor and nodded at each other before leaving stealthily.

Lily felt a little lost after failing to make progress with the Tsukuyomi Swordstyle again. “Just what am I doing wrong? Forget it. Maybe it’s just not the right time to practice it.”

Lily patrolled through the resting Tsunaga sisters after ending her training. Although two hours had already passed, she felt a little reluctant to wake them up after seeing them so tired.

“Hmm?” Lily sensed a few vagabonds of unknown origin running into the distance at the border of her domain suddenly.

“Oh, no!” Lily exclaimed in shock. As she had become too engrossed in the training, she had lowered her domain’s vigilance subconsciously, and had only discovered these men after employing her domain again properly.

These men had already gone far away from her by now, though, and had left her domain’s attack range.

“There’s no use in catching up to them now as there might be other dangers lurking around. It’s best if we leave this place as soon as possible! Fortunately, the monsters haven’t found us yet.” Lily concluded.

She then told Ijuin to wake up the sisters so that they could resume their journey.

…

…

At the same time.

Around 100 vagabonds had gathered in a cavern several kilometers away from Lily.

The stone gate inside the door opened slowly, and a short, black-armored samurai who wore a helmet with two golden horns on it walked out of it. The ash-skinned samurai had an emaciated face in spite of possessing incredibly thick limbs and was shrouded in a terrifying aura.

“What’s the matter? How dare you interrupt my training?” The samurai’s eyes glowed with a blue light.

“Shogun Naito! We found a group of samurai women passing through our territory!” A samurai kneeled down to report.

“What?! Someone actually dared to enter my territory, you say?! Even the monsters under Shuten Doji don’t dare to enter Mt. Kinojo as a sign of respect to me, so where did these women come from? How many of them are there, and how do they look?”

Naito Oka was a former feudal lord of Tanba. Not many people knew that he was one of the very few humans who had neither fled or given in to Shuten, and he called himself a Shogun for some reason.

At least, he was still human for the time being.

“T-There are a lot of them, sir, at least more than 200 of them, and all of them are very pretty! I swear that I’ve never seen such pretty and vivacious women even in Kameyama Castle before it fell into the hands of the monsters, Shogun Naito! I fear they came from the capital!”

Naito said icily, “Why did so many pretty women come this deep into Tanba?”

“I don’t know, sir, but it looked like they had just experienced a battle. Their clothes were pretty tattered and most of them seemed incredibly tired, so capturing them should be a cinch!” The samurai said.

A red-armored samurai added at this moment, “I heard that a group of talented young women from Heian-kyo called the sword mikos entered Tanba to act as the vanguard against Shuten Doji! I’m sure it’s them!”

“Hahahahahaha!” Naito laughed out loudly. “I bet these girls are mostly virgins. They must be dreaming if they think they can slay Shuten. Have they lost their mind or what? They should consider themselves lucky that they’ve come across me now.”

“It seems like they have faith and wish to save the Heavens, Shogun Naito.”

“Save the Heavens?” Naito looked up and said, “I’ve been training for hundreds of years in search of the Heavens yet I’ve still to succeed. How dare these silly girls fantasize about it! It looks like we need to teach them a lesson on behalf of their parents! Follow me, men!”

“Oooohhhh!” The hundred violent samurai shouted as they got up and followed Naito out of the cavern. However, the Tsunaga sisters had long left the place where they had been resting by the time these samurai arrived there.

“It looks like they left this area just a while ago, Shogun Naito!” A samurai said.

“Does anyone know where they are headed?” Naito asked.

“It shouldn’t be that hard to follow their tracks, sir.” A light-armored samurai with a longbow on his back spoke up.

“Shogun.” The red-armored samurai bowed to Naito. “There’s no need for us to pursue them. Based on the direction they left in, I’m pretty sure they are headed for Port Ayabe. We can take the path running through the mountain from our cavern and intercept them before they reach their destination!”

Naito pondered for a while and nodded. “All right. Let’s do that.”

…

…

Lily and the Tsunaga sisters had already come five kilometers away from where they were resting by now.

Lily felt a bit guilty about not being vigilant enough because of her training before, so she kept watching the surroundings using her domain while walking in the center of the file.

Ijuin led the group now, and she had positioned the strongest Tsunaga sisters at the front and back of the file.

The group walked a few more kilometers after that.

Lily found it a little strange that the monsters had not pursued them into this region. Although she had discovered some monsters here, most of them were pretty weak and scattered everywhere, not even daring to come close to the Tsunaga sisters.

This did not make sense.

If she had to find a reason for it, it would be that the monsters had given up their pursuit for some reason and refused to enter this region.

Boom!

Flames exploded on the path ahead suddenly.

“What?!” Lily was shocked and rushed to the front of the file immediately.

She discovered that two sword mikos had gotten injured from the explosion resulting from the trap formation hidden underground.

“It’s a trap formation! No wonder I wasn’t able to detect it!”

Trap formations had a pretty powerful camouflage ability, so even Lily could not discover the traps specialized in ambushing people.

“Hahahahahaha!” An icy, aged laughter came from the front.

As far as Lily knew, the steep valley ahead was the only way to reach Port Ayabe. A cloud of mist pervaded the valley right now and a bunch of samurai wearing tattered armor walked out of it in succession.

These people had circled around to the front by using the path within their cavern, so even Lily’s domain had not detected them.

There was an extremely powerful aura mixed in among these figures.

“A middle-stage Throned Sovereign?!” Lily felt astonished as she had not expected to come across such a powerful foe here and wondered if he was one of Shuten’s generals.

The ghastly samurai walked out of the mist one by one.

Leading them was an ash-skinned, short man with blue, glowing eyes that made others quiver in fear. It was none other than Naito Oka.

“That must be him!” Lily’s sight locked onto Naito, as he gave her a pretty archaic feel.

Naito also noticed the vigilance in Lily’s eyes and smiled smugly. “Hahaha. It looks like this woman isn’t simple. She actually noticed me at a glance.”

Even though Lily did not fear these men, she feared that the Tsunaga sisters would suffer losses again if a fight broke out with them.

“We are the troops that the imperial court has dispatched to slay Shuten Doji. I get that you are slaving for him after getting threatened by him, but there’s no need for humans to fight among us, is there? I hope you will let us pass. The imperial court will definitely slay Shuten Doji one day, so my proposition is beneficial to you too.”

The samurai revealed stunned looks and broke out into loud laughter.

“Who do you think you are to speak so rudely to the Shogun, woman? Do you think you are pretty reasonable, huh? We wouldn’t mind letting you pass if you are as eloquent as you look!” The red-armored samurai said.

“Hmph. Do you think I’m following Shuten’s orders, foolish woman? Let me make it clear to you, then. I don’t fear Shuten or the court! Forget Shuten. The entire world will become mine the moment I finish my training, and I will become the Shogun not just in name, but also in reality then!” A hideous expression appeared on Naito’s emaciated face.

“We are the most skilled samurai in all of Tanba, but there’s one thing that we lack, and that’s women! How could we let you go when you’ve dropped in front of our doorsteps? We’re going to take all of you back to our hideout and turn you into our slaves! Isn’t that right, brothers?” The red-armored samurai said.

“Hahahahahaha!” The samurai chuckled arrogantly.

Lily furrowed her brows when she heard Naito show no regard for Shuten.

Although this self-proclaimed Shogun was somewhat strong, Lily concluded that Shuten had just not bothered to deal with him because he found it bothersome to do it.

“Hmph. It looks like negotiations have broken down, then. Maybe I’m not really eloquent enough. No, there’s probably no use reasoning things out with men filled with such naked, evil desire.” Lily strengthened the grip on her hilt with an icy look in her eyes.

“Grab these women, brothers! There are a lot of them, so you can just kill those who put up a resistance!” The red-armored samurai raised his battle-axe and charged towards the Tsunaga sisters with the other samurai in tow, issuing battle cries all the while.

There was no room for retreat, so Ijuin pulled her blade out and commanded, “Attack, sisters!”

The sword mikos and the jade maidens charged forward while the mirror girls backed them up with battle magic.

The mirror girls among the Tsunaga sisters did not purely contain samurai women as the majority of them were either onmyōji, arcanists, priestesses or dancers.

The sword mikos, on the other hand, consisted purely of samurai, and were skilled at using long-range weapons and close-quarters combat, while the jade maidens placed deeper emphasis on dexterity and speed, which was why many of them were good at using the bow, dual blades, daggers and general magic.

Kagura and the demon hound guarded the back against demon pursuers according to Lily’s orders while she charged towards Shogun Naito head-on.

Clang!

A loud sword clash echoed throughout the valley.

Shogun Naito got blown away by the powerful strike from Lily’s blade and stopped with much difficulty after sliding around a dozen meters back.

He spewed black blood from his mouth and clutched his chest with one hand while his other sword-wielding hand shuddered incessantly. “How powerful! I can’t believe you possess such incredible strength in spite of looking like a charming vixen, you s̲l̲u̲t̲!”

“Hmph.” Lily held her blade beside her and looked at Shogun Naito with crimson-glowing eyes. “Although you’re somewhat strong, don’t you feel ashamed to call yourself Shogun when you’re weaker than a woman like me? You’re just a frog in the well!”

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