Chapter XLII: Idiots Never Learn III

The Great Plateau Near Shizukana Gake

Month of the Tortoise 2, 172 ,328 DE

A group of four men and two women turn on the hunters next to them. In a matter seconds, they kill more than twice their number. The six look more like mercenaries than hunters, but I do not recall seeing any of them before.

"What the fuck?"

As the confused ejaculation leaves my mouth, I look toward the north and finally find Vorn. While upwind, accounting for his diffuse scent in the air, the foliage of the tree he lies perched in does an admirable job of concealing him. The noble idiot would be unlikely to notice him in a million years.

"Pervert Master has friends beside Fat Noble?" While peaking over the saddle of my steamer bike, Aoi's question comes out like a surprised squeak.

I scoff. "If you want to count the smug cat and Mika-chan, you could say I have three."

The of another of the noble idiots' gun-toting lackeys explodes, and the gun he was pointing in my general direction falls to the ground, along with his corpse. The report of the fire-powder rifle reaches my ears a few seconds later.

Aoi looks at me with squinted eyes. "Mika-chan doesn't count. She has to be nice to Pervert Master. She is a cum dump for Bald Old Lecher Grandmaster."

"How did the shitty old man become Bald Old Lecher Grandmaster?"

"Bald Old Lecher Master is Pervert Master's master, Aoi's grandmaster." Aoi's grin gets bigger with every word that comes out of her mouth.

When I load my middle finger under my thumb, Aoi covers her forehead with with both hands. "No flicking Aoi's head!"

"That shitty old man isn't my master. He's just looking after me as a favor to my mother. He taught me some things about Engineering, but I learned more of what I know form his books than from him."

While I watch, the burly man, who appears to be the leader of the six mercenaries, ducks under the spear thrust of a hunter. As he springs forward from his crouch, crimson flames engulf his hand, and the impact form his sends the hunter flying backwards in the men behind him. The crimson flames leap form the mercenary's hand, as though they are alive, and explode on the hunter's chest. Fire inundates everything within three to four meters of the hunter. He uses a real Martial technique, something he needs to at least be in the Foundation Establishment realm to use.

The other five members of the mercenary group appear to be using their own Martial techniques, though none are as flashy as the leader's technique. Distortion in the air around one of the women makes it look like the is surrounded by heat shimmer, but she shows no sign of giving off any heat. With each swing of her her long, slender sword, brutal gashes open up in the heads, necks, and chests of her enemies, while her sword comes no closer to her enemies bodies than ten to fifteen centimeters. She should be using some form of air-based technique.

Two of the other men shrug off attacks, as though their bodies were made from metal or stone rather than flesh. I wonder if I punch one of my knives through their defenses or hurt them with my punches. If were in my true form, my teeth would easily shred them.

With the last man and woman, I cannot tell what they are doing, but both of them appear to have a significant speed advantage over anyone they face. As their enemies attack, they almost appear to flicker out of the line of the attacks. Their counterattacks find flesh and shed blood every time, but they do not take down their enemies with single blows. They leave behind small wound after small wound, a cruel style of fighting. Even so, it only takes they bring down multiple enemies every five or six seconds.

Those mercenaries stand head and shoulders over the hunters and the noble morons. Those people are real fighters. With their lethal presence and the smug cat sniping anyone that aim a gun at me, they noble idiots and their hired rats have completely forgotten my presence.

"Hikaru! Hikari! Stop fucking around! Just kill this trash quick, so we can get the rest of our money!"

Standing at the center of the noble idiots, Miura angrily observes the battle taking place on the right wing of his mob. After the Hikaru and Hikari pair kill seven hunters in barely two seconds, he turns an scans the left wing of his mob.

"Muta! Take your team and get the Beast! Take him alive if you can! But if you cannot subdue him, kill him before he escapes!" Miura's voice rises in pitch with each word until he ends up shrieking.

"You got, Boss! Let's go, guys! Get that animal!" With more than twenty men and four women at his back, Muta quickly moves in my direction.

When I see who Muta is, I cannot control my grin. His team has a reputation. They spend more time hunting other hunters than they do hunting Ferocious Beasts. They exemplify what I hate most about humans. From the rumors about them, they should all be in the upper range of the Formation Establishment realms, and the Yuan Qi flowing within them feels strong compared to the noble trash. They should serve for a warm-up.

I lost my knives in the fight with the Gnolls, and since I am not comfortable using the swords, I look around for something else. Grabbing a broken branch about the diameter of my thumb, I break off a meter long section and strip off the leaves.

In a well-practiced maneuver, Muta's team spreads out in an arc. They think they are blocking my lines of escape, but I have no desire to run away.

Holding a large axe in each hand, Muta sneers at me. "Brat, you think that little stick is a weapon?"

With a grin so wide it feels like it will split my face in half, I raise and whip the stick downward a couple times. "Nope. This is my bitch-slapping stick, and you all look like bitches to me."

Muta's face flashes a deep brick red color. "You little shit. Didn't anyone ever teach you to talk politely to your elders and betters?"

Finally getting my grin under control, I shift my expression to a condescending smirk and laugh mockingly. "Young or old, trash is trash, and bitches are bitches."

"Get him! Don't kill him! Break his arms and legs!" Muta springs forward. Twisting his right axe so that the flat of the blade faces me, he swings at my head.

As Muta's speed explodes to twice that of a normal human, my Mind accelerates, and I easily see his movements. Swaying backward just enough to avoid his axe, I whip him across the face with my branch, leaving a bleeding welt from his right ear to his nose. Before Muta can arrest the momentum of his swing, I whip him across the other side of his face.

"Bastard!"

Seeing two of Muta's band closing in form either side, I step in close to him. Dropping my branch, I grab him by the shoulders. With his axes in his hands, he looks like he does not know what to do. Obviously, he does not want to drop them. He could hit me with the butts of the hafts, but some people do not think of anything but the sharp parts of their weapons as weapons.

Giving Muta a sneer, I hammer knee into his balls. Other than a heavy exhalation of air, he make son sound. Old Man Jones made sure to drill ball-shots into my fighting style. He calls it the signature move of the most evil man he has ever known. Though he always says it with the utmost respect.

A greenish pallor colors Muta's face, and his knees turn to jelly. If not for me holding him up by the shoulders, he would collapse. Smiling nastily, I hurl him into his closest team member. Spinning around, I bend down and duck under the other team members spear. Grabbing my branch, I whip it across his wrist, tearing open his skin and fracture the bone.

The man drops his spear and throws a punch at my face. Grabbing his fist, I hammer my other fist his elbow, shattering the bones.

"Argh!"

My kick to the balls lifts him into the air. I spin to go after the man I knocked down with Muta, but I see two of Muta'a team closing in on Aoi.

"Little girl, you come with me. I'm gonna show you a good time." Despite his heavily muscled body, the middle-aged looking man has a gut that make him look like he is pregnant.

"Hey! Fat pig! That little girls is mine!" The woman has a hard face that could never be called good looking, and her scent has a wrongness to it. She does not smell of Chaos, but she has something twisted about her.

Looking like an enrage chipmunk, Aoi glares at the pair. "Aoi doesn't like fat pigs or ugly cows!"

As I stomp on the throat of Muta's man that I threw him into, I see another of Muta's men pull out a Yuan Qi handgun. His explodes before the gun has cleared the holster. Hitting the cleanly with such a quick from around nine hundred meters, the smug cat has good reflexes and aim.

Most of Muta's lackeys look around nervously. They know the general direction the shots have come from, but they have yet to find the smug cat.

"Oi! What's happening!"

Boom!

The heavy report of the fire-powder rifle follow three seconds after the shot. At the sounds of the screams and the gunshot, most of Muta's surviving rats look at one another nervously. From their expressions, they seem to be close to breaking and running away. A number of Miura's other hired cat herd look around nervously.

"You! How did you do this!"

Near my steamer bike, grass and vines completely enwrap the legs of the wo attacking Aoi. As I go after more of Muta's band, the foliage continues to climb up their bodies, until they are so tied up, they can do not more than wiggle like worms.

While I break the limbs and necks of more attackers, Aoi stand with her back straight and her arms crossed over her chest. "Tree-chan Master taught Aoi good things. You twisted perverts cannot have Aoi. Aoi's body belongs to Pervert Master."

Miura and his noble idiots have no leeway to worry about me. The mercenaries have already killed or disabled nearly a third of the rest of the hunters and mercenaries. A number of them fled rather than face the six mercenaries. While I do not know them, they must have a fearsome reputation among their brethren. Without needing to worry about interference for the moment, I go after the rest of Muta's team.

After the last of Muta's band falls, I stand over Muta with my branch in hand. "I can't cultivate. You thought you were stronger than me. You're an idiot. I'm a Body Cultivator, and I finally broke through to the Small Completion stage of my art. Too bad for you, and your weakling trash."

With his hand blood-covered hands cupping his groin, Muta glares up at me, but he does nothing more than groan in pain. As I casually wave my branch, his fear-filled eyes follow its movement.

I smirk. "I told you this was my bitch-slapping stick. I abuse the weak and the strong. Your part of the weak in case you didn't"

With a savage grin, I land into Muta, targeting the exposed skin of his face and hands. Each whipping strike tears of skin, leaving bloody, abraded trails of raw flesh behind.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

"No! Stop! We don't have any grudges between us!"

Muta's shrieks draw the attention of some of Miura's hired rats, but they do little more than glance in our direction. They have too much to worry about with the band of mercenaries tearing them apart. Even if they did not, there is not one among them that would be likely to raise his or her hand in Muta's defense.

"Then why did you attack me?"

"I just did this for the money!"

Crack! Crack! Crack!

"I'm doing this for practice. You're my warm-up for Miura and some of his bitch-idiot friends."

Crack! Crack! Crack!

"Toomey! Get your ass moving! Take Beast down before has a chance to run!"

"He's more dangerous than you said. I want ten times my money." The voice come form the middle of the pack of noble morons, but I do not see the speaker among them.

Miura glares into the crowd of nobles with a grim look on his face for almost five second before replying. "Fine! Ten times! But if you do not deliver you'll face my clan's wrath!"

"Boy, if I decided to run, the hidden old monster behind your clan couldn't kill me. If I didn't run, no one else is a threat. You just pay up if you don't want me to treat your as the way Beast is treating that moron's face."

The speaker seems to fade into existence as he moves out of the crowd of nobles, and the hackles on the back of my neck stand up.