-Vol 6: Dusk of An Era-

-To Tokyo(3): A bad news-

After arriving at the train station, Kenshin and Yuki took the earliest available train to Tokyo. Most of the trains to the capital were canceled for obvious reasons, with only a few in running condition and that too not for the common populace to board. On a train with total passenger count not exceeding 20, Kenshin and Yuki went to Tokyo. The ambient between became a little weird after that episode, with both not knowing what to say to the other.

“Kenshin… are you angry?” finally, not being able to take the silence, Yuki said with a puppy-dog look.

Kenshin’s heart melted the moment he saw her face, but well since he wasn’t angry with her in the first place, he replied instantly, “it’s not that I am angry. I just fell into a brief thought. I was wondering what I should do with the situation regarding you.” Then he looked outside the window towards the rapidly passing scenery and gave out a sigh, “I can't’ believe you have been suffering all this time and yet didn’t tell me about it… do you not trust me?”

“No, that’s not it, I promise. It's just that I didn’t want to involve in this business. Back then you used to be a low-class hunter, how can you be of any match against those oldtimers that refused to die? Even now, you might not be strong enough to challenge them. I don’t want to pressure you with my situation. I promise you, Kenshin, it's not because of a lack of trust.” Yuki hastily explained herself as she became flurried with words. Then she sadly looked down while playing with the helm of her shirt, “besides, even if you know early, you couldn’t do anything about it. Therefore, I never told you anything about it.”

“…” Kenshin kept his silence on this, he could tell from where she was coming from, and frankly speaking, even if he knew it from the beginning, it couldn't have changed much. Not to mention he was a weak hunter back then, even now, he wasn’t sure how he would fare against a true level 200 hunter. Aside from his confidence in staying alive and running away successfully, there wasn’t much he could do against them.

But…

That was from before. Now, he had the confidence to at least pull a draw against one or at most two at once, even if he couldn’t kill them. One should ask why he was so confident when he hadn’t even fought against one yet, and the answer was this, with skills like Opposites, Exploding Domain, Summon Minion, Give, Respawn and Burrow… he even forced that Princess of Darkness, can’t he pull a draw against these humans?

Yes, he can. Kenshin had this confidence, no, to be more precise, he gained this confidence. From the very day, he saw the OPness of his [Respawn] skill, he already knew he could never be defeated if he plays his cards right. There was a slight chance of him getting assassinated, but there was a pretty low chance of that happening with his Map and Dragon Sense activated all the time. Even if he gets killed, he will come back to life with 10 seconds of invincibility after that.

In conclusion, he wasn’t afraid of these so-called elders physically. On the contrary, he couldn’t take on them politically. But with what he discovered recently, there might no need for him to fear these guys’ political retaliation if he ever goes against them. The society was in danger of collapsing, during this time, many ‘unwanted factors’ would come out of the woodwork to make life difficult for everyone.

In that kind of world, how can these elders exercise their political power over him? They would have a hard time stabilizing their own power. That being said, he wasn’t willing to go and find trouble for himself, especially when the opponent is the controller of the world.

‘I wonder, what do those runes do?’ now with the stray things out of the way, Kenshin became curious about those runes he saw. It can be said that he had zero knowledge of runes. He heard the Hunter academy teach the students basic rune craft, but unfortunately, such knowledge wasn’t allowed to the public. It was strictly controlled by DCB and other big guilds.

‘I wonder if Tar’el knows something…’ he looked around, finding no one, he pulled out the sword from out of nowhere, startling Yuki who was thinking of something.

“W, what are you doing?” she asked with a tremble on her voice, looking around for any source of trouble. In her mind, the only reason why Kenshin would pull out a sword out of nowhere when there was something troublesome was about to appear. But contrary to what she had thought, Kenshin began doing something else entirely. He held the sword before his face and started to the conversation with it, “Tar’el, come out. Let’s have a chat.”

“Eh?” Yuki would have thought Kenshin had gone bonkers due to stress if not for the type of world they were living in. Starting a conversation with your sword was definitely not the worst she had seen. But she had the shock of her life, when, after Kenshin’s order, his sword actually vibrated and shined with a faint green color. From within, she saw a dull, light projection of a beautiful looking fairy came out.

“You look different,” Kenshin remarked, seeing the light projection of Tar’el that actually had muscles and skin.

“Well, since we have a guest here, I couldn’t just come out in skin and bones, can I?” replied the fairy sarcastically, before looking at Yuki in what the later conferred as pity, “you had it hard, didn’t you, little girl.”

“What are you talking about?” Yuki asked with furrowed brows, not understanding what the fairy meant. But Kenshin could somewhat guess what Tar’el was asking. Although he kept his mouth shut and allowed them both to sort it out. He was also a little happy that Tar’el’s actually known what happening with Yuki.

“That rune key on your body… the price to make that key is pretty stiff, isn’t it?” asked the fairy once again, but this time, Yuki didn’t feign ignorance and fell into a trance. Her eyes widened, and her mouth hung open. She stared at the little fairy and then into Kenshin’s face, who was also looking at her with a similar expression, “who, who is she Kenshin?”

“she is… my weapon spirit. An intelligent spirit that knows a lot of things.” He answered Yuki before looking at the fairy, “what are you talking about? Do you know what are those runes?”

“Indeed, I know. those runes are probably one of the most sinister things that one could cook up to become powerful.” Said the fairy with a grave expression.

“What do you mean, exactly what those runes do?” asked Kenshin curiously, now that the teaser had been provided by the fairy, how could he keep his curiosity down?

“That rune on her body, it's actually a key to a certain lock.” Said the fairy cryptically. Then she looked at the girl with a serious expression, “how many times that key has been used?”

“Seven times,” answered Yuki honestly. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, she didn’t try to hide anything. Anyway, she also wanted to let these things out of her heart. Hearing her, Tar’el nodded and looked at Kenshin with a serious expression, “Kenshin, let me give you a piece of very bad news. She, your mate, will probably live up to her 30s, no more…”

“WHAT?”