Chapter XIV: Bullies and Bitches

Shizukana Gake, Heian Kingdom

Month of the Garuda 32, 172 ,328 DE

Staying close to the edge of the Eastern Escarpment, I approach the city from the east side. As the forest thins out around the city, the Watch Tower pierces the starlit sky through the gaps in the leafy canopy.

Once again, my clothes are hidden away at the bottom of the trail down the Eastern Escarpment, but I really do not feel like going down and back up again, just to get them. I can collect them in the morning. It feels like returning from the Demonic Wildlands in just a loincloth is becoming a habit. I really need to get my hands on some form of dimensional storage device.

It has been a long couple days without much in the way of results to show for my time, but at least, I bagged another cat type Ferocious Beast, a Spotted Forest Cat. The Spotted Forest Cats tend to run a little smaller than the Striped Forest Cats, standing only about one hundred thirty centimeters at the shoulder on average. But they still make for good eating, and killing cats is my fifth favorite hobby.

"NO! Let me go!"

Before reaching the open land surrounding the city's walls , the scream of a girl reaches my ears. Her voice practically overflows with anger and terror. It also sounds familiar. Even though I have never heard her scream, I think she is a girl from my secondary school, Sato Aoi , the girl with the creepy laugh.

As the soft sound of something tearing, probably fabric, carries in the sudden silence, Sato Aoi's screams cut off abruptly.

"Why so quiet? I want to hear you scream!"

Another girl's voice drips with malice, as she taunts Sato Aoi. I recognize her voice, Matsuda Sakura. Born the third child of the Matsuda Clan's main line, she is a complete bitch on her best day and a raging cunt on a normal day. Anyone without a powerful background, who gets on her bad side, tends to come to a bad end, dead or crippled in some way. For some reason, she hates Sato Aoi, and it looks like Sakura intends to settle the books between them tonight.

Crack!

"Get your hands off me! Nooooo!"

"Little slut! Scream all you want. We're outside the city. No one will save you. A little trash like you sucking up to Prince Vorn. Did you think you could get a leg up on your betters like that?"

In the Heian Kingdom, if you are not part of the aristocracy or extremely wealthy, the little protection the law affords to commoners ends at the outer walls of the cities. The wealthy and powerful do whatever they want to commoners in the wilds and the smaller towns.

With a frown, I pick up my pace toward the sound of the voices. I have no particular connections with Sato Aoi. Other than her bringing me my clothes after my match with Vorn, I cannot remember ever saying more than two or three words to her in over five years. But I detest Matsuda Sakura.

"Matsuda-sama, can we have her now?" The voice of a male, probably a teenager, sounds familiar, but I cannot put a face or name to it.

"Use her. Rape every hole you can fit your pathetic dicks in!"

The male laughs, but I can hear the anger and humiliation underlying his laughter. "Much thanks for the gift, Matsuda-sama! Spread her legs. I'm going to be the first to fuck that stupid, low-born bitch's cunt! Little whores like her need to learn their place."

"No! No! Get your hands off me! NOOOOO!"

Through the trees, the lights of three steamer cars facing each other illuminate a small clearing in the woods. All three are custom-built models, not the assembly line jobs that can be bought by the more well-off commoners. With each having a length of more than six meters , steam engines take up the back half of each car. Open cockpits with bench seats and trunks make up the rest of the vehicles' lengths. The smallest of the three steamer cars could fit six people and the biggest ten. The huge rear wheels, with hard rubber tires, stand almost as high as I am tall, and the front wheels would reach my stomach.

In the smallest but most elaborately decorated steamer car, Sakura and two of the aristocratic bitches she hangs around with in the Academy sit on the front bench seat to watch the show. If not for the expressions of gleeful malice and hate twisting their faces into ugly masks, all three could easily be called beautiful. They must spend a lot of time practicing in the mirror to put on expressions that twisted.

Brightly lit by the headlights of two steamer cars, the sloped hood of the middle-sized steamer car has a naked Sato Aoi tied to its headlights by her wrists. A small, slightly built girl with toned muscles and small tits, she would be pretty if not for the tears and snot streaming down her face as she struggles wildly. Two males, who I recognize but do not remember the names of, hold her by the ankles, spreading her legs wide.

With his pants around his ankles and his pinkie-sized dick sticking up like a toothpick, a fourteen or fifteen-year-old male shuffles forward to close the meter or so between himself and Sato Aoi. From the small of his back to the top of his thighs, his ass looks like the corrugated surface of a washboard.

Now, I know why the male voice was familiar. Harada Gohan was in my primary school. I used to beat the shit out of him and his four older brothers on an almost daily basis. They thought they had the right to abuse me with impunity, but even the five brothers together did not have the ability to do it. After they brought a dozen of their house retainers to gang stomp me, I gave them a lesson they should never forget, since it is permanently etched into their asses. In my last run-in with the brothers, I switched all five of them until their asses were nothing but raw meat and salted them with sodium nitrate. Their howls would have been glorious if not for the shit covered rags stuffed in their mouths muffling their screams.

After moving to secondary school, we are in different schools. I am in Shizukana Gake Academy of Magic Technology, and Harada Gohan is in one of the martial academies.

When their daddy, their Clan's Master, freaked out and wanted to torture me to death, Old Man Jones did something to threaten the City Lord. I have no idea what he did or how he did it, but a few times since then, the City Lord has seen Jones in the crowd at public events. Each time, when the City Lord caught sight of Jones, he looked ready to crap his robes.

After Jones brought the City Lord to heel, the City Lord made the Harada Clan back down. The Harada Clan is just a medium-sized clan in Shizukana Gake. Even if the Harada daddy is an arrogant prick, he is not stupid enough to defy the City Lord, who has the power of the Heian Kingdom behind him. Since then, when I get into fights with their younger generation trash of the powers in the city, no one so much as makes a peep about it.

That was not Old Man Jones' first run in with the big clans, but for the most part, the only things he clashed with them over were related to Engineering products and trade. The big clans will generally not go all out to stomp on commoner tradesmen, because they will run afoul of the few Heian Kingdom laws protecting commoner. The kingdom needs trade, and more than half the trade is carried out by commoner-owned firms and trade houses.

Looking at the rape gang, I grin. It is time to bully some younger generation trash, my third favorite hobby.

Kicking a dead branch into the air, I grab it and break off a thirty-five or f orty centimeter piece. Since I still have the dead pussy across my shoulders, using my full strength and speed, I throw it sidearm.

"AAAAAAAARRRRR!"

The piece of branch passes right in front of Harada Gohan's groin, tearing off his dick in the process. With a shriek that could wake the dead, he grabs the stump in an attempt to stem the flow of blood, and i n just a few seconds, he passes out. It looks like he, still, cannot handle pain. When I switched him and his brothers, little Gohan kept passing out.

The malicious grin on my face gets bigger. Old Man Jones may have to get involved again.

"What the fuck?"

"What happened?"

"What's going on?"

After a moment of shock, the rest of Sakura's little band of toadies looks around in surprise while shouting, but not one of them sees me in the Darkness.

Moving at a leisurely pace, I walk into the clearing, illuminated by the lights of the steamer cars. Harada's twelve ass-fucking buddies stare at me with their mouths hanging open. I suppose from their point of view, a scarred gaijin in a loincloth with the bloody carcass of a dead Ferocious Beast on his shoulders walking out of the forest in the middle of the night would be a bit surprising.

The people of the Heian Kingdom, Sengoku Empire, and the few kingdoms to the north of the empire are all of the same race and basic culture. When Old Man Jones is pretending to be a teacher for me, he sometimes says they have the same "ethnic phenotype", but other than him, I am probably the only person on the Great Plateau that knows what those words mean. They come from Old Man Jones' home world, which he says was destroyed a long time ago.

Gaijin is the Sengoku language term for people who are not of their race, in other words barbarians. I am not of their race. While my hair is as black as theirs, my eyes are forest green, and my facial features are distinctly different, looking more like the people from the Nine Jewel Kingdoms along the northern edge of the Great Plateau. Jones looks much the same.

"You didn't invite me to this little party, Gohan-kun. I'm shocked, shocked and offended, I tell you. That makes me mad. You know what happens when I get mad, don't you Gohan-kun?"

"Beast! What the fuck are you doing here? Fuck off, before we kill you!"

"Oooo, such sexy talk. Are you trying to get me into bed with you, Sakura-chan?" I display my well-practiced, snide, condescending smirk. And I do practice it in the mirror. If not done just right, a smirk will lack the proper ambiance and attitude. I have spent many, many hours perfecting mine.

"Fucking bastard. I'd cut my own throat before I'd fuck an animal like you!" For a supposedly aristocratic young lady, Sakura has the foul mouth of a low-born whore, but it is the one thing I like about her. She does not mince words, acting like a hypocrite, using euphemisms in place of curses and coarse language. She is not the type of person to say something like 'Oh, I don't use that kind of language', while thinking it, like normal hypocrites. She just says what she is thinking. You could say her brain is directly connected to her mouth, and whatever enters her bitchy little mind comes right out of her foul mouth. It is very refreshing.

I laugh. "Don't worry, Sakura-chan. I have too much respect for my dick to put it in a diseased hole where too many have gone before."

With her face turning red, Sakura points at me and sprays her words in a most unladylike manner. "Bastard! Kill him! No! Capture him! Castrate him!"

Other than Harada Gohan, who is unconscious, and the tallest one, the rest of his little collection of ass-fuckers glare at me. From his blank expression, the big one looks like he is watching something that he could not care less about.

One of Harada's crew reaches for a handgun, holstered at his waist. From the faint underlying scent of fire-powder in the air, it should be a fire-powder handgun and not a Yuan Qi handgun. Before the ass-fucker even gets the handgun halfway up, I break off another piece of the dead branch and pitch it into his face. With blood spraying from his ruined nose, Harada's butt buddy falls to the ground unconscious and probably permanently disfigured. He was in the same primary school as Harada and me, but I do not even remember if I ever heard his name.

I laugh, again. "He thought a gun would make him invincible. What a retard."

With the exception of one member, the tallest and oldest, the rest of the rape crew glance between myself and each other, with expressions of shock and anger. Since I cannot remember bullying any of them, this should be their first time seeing me in action. Even though, the rumors of my cruelty are legion, rumors are just rumors. They cannot help but be surprised at seeing one of their own get his dick ripped off with a jagged piece of wood.

The tallest one, who I have never seen before, stares at me and my prey. His eyes shift from the ripped-open throat of the Spotted Forest Cat to my thickly muscled, scar covered torso. He examines me from head to toe, before staring coldly into my eyes. There is no sign of any emotion at all in his own eyes.

"Well, are you going to just stand there jerking each other off? Or are you going to find your balls and attack me?" I switch from my well-practiced smirk to a mocking grin. But I have practiced this grin in the mirror, too. If I do not craft my expressions properly, they will not be as effective at pissing people off.

"Commoner scum! Die!" One of Harada's butt buddies loses his cool. Even though he is afraid of me, rage over being insulted for his lack of manhood wins out.

As Harada's butt buddy charges toward, I dance backward but move in an arc away from Sakura's steamer car. I do not want her at my back, nor do I want to get too far from the rest of the rape gang. I laugh, as the butt buddy flies past, without getting a grip on me. "I thought an ass-fucker like you would run faster!"

"Asshole!"

"Cowardly trash!"

"Get him!" The tallest member of the gang yells, but as the rest charge forward in a ragged group, he does not move and only watches. Despite the seeming anger in his voice, his expression remains calm and cold. If he thinks that he can use the rest of the rape gang to gauge my abilities and fight or run with impunity, he has another thing coming.

Crack!

"Arrrgh!"

My low snap kick shatters the kneecap of the first one to get close to me. As he stumbles, a thrust kick to his face cuts his scream of pain short and sends him flying into the oncoming rape gang pack. Three more stumble and fall over him. They look more like a comedy troop in a stage play than the younger generation of noble clans.

"Come on! Come on! Is that the best you bitches can do?" As I hop onto the front trunk lid of the third steamer car, the suspension barely shifts under my weight, plus the dead cat's weight. This car was built to carry a lot of weight in rough terrain. And beneath my feet, its hood feels tougher and sturdier that a normal steamer car's hood would be. This car was probably built for going into hostile terrain, where Ferocious Beasts run free.

Three more from the rape gang jump onto the steamer car, while the rest move to surround it and cut off my avenues of escape. Before they can attack, I spin around and, using the corpse of the Spotted Forest Cat as my weapon, I slam into two of them, sending them flying off the steamer car.

Crack!

"Arrrrrr!"

As the third one tries to hit me with a big round kick, I hammer my shin into his. His shinbone snaps like a twig, and with a scream he collapses, holding his leg. Based on how easily his bone fractured, he can only be at the Flesh Tempering level of Body Tempering, so weak.

Cultivators start out as Martial Artists who practice Body Tempering, or as it is properly called Martial Body Tempering. Before learning to manipulate and externally project Yuan Qi, a Cultivator tempers his or her Body to handle the enormous stresses caused by doing so. Once a person completes Body Tempering, they enter Qi Condensation and begin gathering a reservoir of Yuan Qi within their Body.

Anyone that can at least sense the Yuan Qi in their body and circulate it can practice Martial Body Tempering. It has six stages the Martial Artist must progress through: Strength Building , Skin Tempering, Flesh Tempering, Bone Tempering, Viscera Tempering, and Blood Tempering. With each stage, a Martial Artist's Body grows tougher and stronger. The process can be sped up through the use of Precious Herbs.

For a fourteen or fifteen-year-old from a noble clan, it is a joke to only be at the Flesh Tempering stage. At the very least, he should be at the Bone Tempering stage, but that would, still, not be impressive for a member of a noble clan.

With a laugh and mocking grin, I kick broken shin off the steamer car. He hits the ground and does not move, either unconscious or dead. He cannot be so weak that I killed him. I think. With narrowed eyes, I can the see faint movements of his chest.

The other two, who I sent flying before, lie on the ground in obvious pain. One clutches a broken shoulder, and the other holds his ribs. None of them have even reached the Bone Tempering stage? Are these the absolute trash of the noble clans? With the status of their births, they should have had the resources to have easily reached the peak, or at least, the upper two stages of Body Tempering.

"Who's next? I'm getting bored. You trash aren't even enough to make me put down my prey."

As though just seeing it for the first time, their eyes focus on the dead Spotted Forest Cat across my shoulders. The eyes of several of them open wide, and their faces go pale. At their level, they could carry the carcass, but not move and jump the way that I can. Despite seeing me carry it around, their lust, fear, and rage addled minds never paid attention to it. In their minds, I was nothing but "the Beast", someone who was barely human and beneath their notice. With the realization sinking in, fear digs its hooks deeply into their minds.

Grabbing the tied legs of the Spotted Forest Cat, I twist my body, and adding the momentum to my strength, I hurl the corpse at three of the rape gang that are one on top of another.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Just staring with their mouths hanging open, they do not even attempt to block the corpse, and its hurtling mass slams them into the ground, with the clear, sharp sounds of breaking bones. One of them gasps and groans in pain, but the other two are already unconscious.

"Stay your hand, trash!" The big one shouts at me.

"Everyone get away from him. Itsuki put a tourniquet on Gohan's dick. Don't let the idiot bleed out."

"Yes, Miura-sama." One of the older members of the rape gang, runs to Harada, and taking the shoelace from Harada's leather shoe, he wraps it around Harada's dick and balls before cinching it tight. The way he tied it, Harada may wind up losing his balls along with his dick, and judging by the malicious glint in Itsuki's eyes, he clearly knows it.

After watching Itsuki put on the tourniquet, Miura stares at him, until Itsuki shrugs his shoulders with a blank expression. Without showing any reaction to Itsuki, Miura looks back at me.

Harada may be a second-rate clan, but Matsuda and Miura are different. They are two of the five most powerful clans in the city. No one in Shizukana Gake dares to fuck them. No one but me, or Old Man Jones, that is.

Staring coldly at me, Miura curls his fingers, making a come hither gesture. "Get your low-born ass over here, gaijin. You need to learn respect for your betters."

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