Chương 18: Book 1, Chapter 18: Unbound

It was weird, but John slept decently last night despite the armed men camping next door in his warehouse. Maybe it was because Yuki was downstairs, and they couldn't get to his room without sneaking past both her and the motion detectors. It was clear that Yuki was willing to put herself at risk to make sure he lived after both fights yesterday with the Nameless, which was a strange feeling he didn't know how to deal with, to be sure…

But, if he were one of the soldiers, he wouldn't want to risk her wrath after seeing that little display, either. John shook his head, reviewing Yuki's math homework one last time. She was learning things fast. Very fast. He supposed it was mostly still basic math to him, but for someone who hadn't been exposed to any of this before, such mastery was already more than impressive. Maybe she had been exposed to something similar in the past. Yuki was, at the very least, several hundred years old.

Hell, maybe she worked in a relatively "white collar" position, handling numbers for a while before her big, mysterious rebellion.

"And that looks like our lesson for today," he shakily said after checking his notes, pausing to rub his throat afterward. Something about the word "lesson" seemed to irritate his throat.

"I do have one slightly embarrassing question, though." An amused smirk crossed Yuki's muzzle, and she tilted her head.

"Go on."

"There's one term I can't find a good translation for. The magical martial elites of this realm, the word makes it sound like they're…

'freed' in some way. I've seen the same term used to refer to slaves rescued from enemy ships in a historical document, but it feels like a misunderstanding," he explained, shaking his head. It felt like a risk to reveal this; it would give her a big hint as to his nature… but she'd doubtlessly figure out eventually that there weren't any equivalents back home, even if only through his reactions. She hmm'd before drawing a symbol, one he knew well.

"Unbound," she said, and he nodded vigorously.

"Yes, that's it!" The kitsune leaned back, a curious look on her muzzle.

"Your translation is accurate." He blinked in surprise but hurriedly jotted down a few notes.

"How so?" he inquired.

"In a way, they are freed from the limitations afflicting non-spiritual beings. There's only so strong one can get, even with magic, before you hit a wall of some sort," Yuki explained.

"Think. How strong can a mortal get? Now, how strong have you seen me be, even in my diminished state?" John's brow furrowed as he thought back to strongmen back home, unable to do even a fraction of what Yuki could while losing much of their agility. He assumed it was just a yokai thing.

Obviously, a human merely scaled up wouldn't be able to perform the absurd feat of jumping nearly two stories in the air while carrying five men, and there was a limit on how strong you could physically make muscles without running into other issues. Muscle fibres made of something else just didn't make sense.

"Yokai don't have those limits; a spindly limb of a jorōgumo can be stronger than an oni's tree trunk of a limb given the right circumstances, although gaining strength works a bit differently for us," she continued, sighing.

"I still miss seeing those tournaments in the spirit realm sometimes. They're so much more engaging than mortal ones. Something about nobody being afraid to temporarily lose a limb adds some much-needed aggression to proceedings." Wait, what? She continued before he could formulate anything to say about that bombshell.

"Really, you'd think the higher tier Unbound would feel the same, given they're much the same by that point, but no, they're still squeamish. Bah. In any case, an Unbound is an ordinary mortal who has partaken in the ritualistic consumption of yokai material in a way that binds it to them, transforming them from purely flesh and bone into something more spiritual in nature. This raises that achievable maximum and grants them increased magical abilities, albeit tinged with the donor's own." Oh. Oh…

That comment by the kappa about thinking John was some sort of "bits hunter" suddenly made much more sense. Holy shit, are the yokai getting actively hunted? Wait. Yuki actively ate souls earlier without flinching. The yokai were almost certainly hunting people back, too, and although Yuki said that the soul of someone like him wasn't worth eating, he had no doubt that the soul of the average person capable of hunting yokai would be. How was everyone so okay with this?

"Some of these relationships are beneficial trades, with blood or flesh traded for favours, others…" Yuki trailed off, smiling, "They always get a bit too proud, eventually. You'd be shocked how many free meals I've gotten from someone barely able to handle a sword." He gulped. Right. Yuki's history aside, at least for now, he was done asking questions. His heart couldn't take more.

"Thank you. That clears quite a few things up for me." Yuki nodded before getting up and stretching, easily touching the ceiling with her hands as her tails splayed out in every direction in turn. He was pretty sure fox tails weren't supposed to be that prehensile, now that he thought of it, but Yuki clearly did not care for little things like how biology was supposed to work, given her immunity to having a good chunk of her leg scooped out.

"The men are likely done with their breakfast by now. Shall I gather them?" the kitsune asked. He nodded.

"I'll meet you by the gate."

"Wait, before I forget… Let's disguise your Presence," Yuki said, holding her arms out for a… hug. Or, well, a utilitarian gesture that happened to be vaguely similar. His lips pulled tight, but he couldn't disagree. It felt strange to be walking into the kitsune's arms after yesterday. Still, as fast and as willing to tear apart their foes as Yuki was, there were, logically, plenty of times she could have moved to strike him down, which he could have done little about.

She almost certainly intended him no physical harm, at least. John straightened and walked into her reach. The kitsune's arms gently wrapped around him, and she pulled him into her chest; the sheer height difference between the two made him feel utterly engulfed by her figure even before her tails closed around him. Warm Presence washed over him, and it felt like he was wrapped under a thick blanket on a cold winter's morning. The emotional…

overload from last time threatened to resurface, complicated feelings of homesickness and loneliness bubbling back up, but somehow, they didn't spill over, and he forced them back down. Perhaps he was more prepared or accustomed to her touch. Maybe he just got lucky. Yuki's embrace was tight, with her arms wrapped around his back and her thick, fluffy tails all over, like a furry cocoon, so he couldn't lean away.

Even his legs were kept in close contact with her, which made sense, he supposed, given the purpose of this little exercise. A wet nose gently… sniffed the top of his head, which was a bit more inexplicable. Still, he felt oddly safe. He shouldn't. He really shouldn't. Was he so touch-starved that a bit of contact was all it took to melt his heart and bend him into compliance? For all he knew, this could be part of an elaborate plot.

Yet, Yuki hadn't asked much of him, and even that wasn't taken without providing ample recompense. It would have been terribly easy for her to trick him into giving away his secrets for comparative pennies. She could have extracted promises of loyalty with guile, making him believe that the whole world was his enemy and that she was the only safe harbour amongst a stormy sea… but she didn't. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Yuki immediately aimed to correct his lack of skill with the spoken tongue and pointed out the exact problem causing distress amongst the locals, and he had no doubt that he could figure out some sort of passable mimicry of Presence given time now that he knew of it. She didn't try to sequester him away from others, and—albeit haltingly—he started talking with others again! Perhaps it was foolish after so few days, but he thought he'd like to call her a friend.

He'd not say so to her face, though, lest it appeared weird. The kitsune disentangled herself from around him, and the alien warmth against his body and spirit faded into nothing but a memory.

"There. Now we can go." At that, Yuki cloaked herself in that same curious golden-black fire and transformed into her Yumi disguise in a manner that entirely spat in the face of the conservation of mass before walking off. He had to figure out how that worked at some point, even if it was some sort of higher-order magic that was allergic to making sense. He knew she wasn't just shifting mass around, either, because the floorboards creaked less loudly when she was disguised.

He was also curious why she decided to give herself an appearance more than attractive enough to draw wandering eyes when she was trying to stay hidden, but he wasn't going to ask that. He was isolated, not stupid. He left too, not towards the gate, but to his workshop, making a quick stop to gather up a few items from the shop before tossing them into a backpack he had kicking around. It may not look very dignified, but screw it. Besides, he had plans.

If business owners acted anything like back home, marching in and demanding that they see even limited data from their ledgers would raise some hackles, and they wanted things to stay as quiet as possible. Some bribes were in order, but he wasn't going to trade any of his tools away, nor did he have any money. A bit of expertise and some skills you couldn't get locally would have to be a good enough substitute.

John headed to the gate after locking up the workshop where the group was waiting, and Yuki looked at him curiously but said nothing. The soldiers were too nervous to look at him for long. With a few quickly barked orders, they were off. The militia were uneasy, looking over their shoulders and into the woods… but Yuki was unbothered, although he couldn't tell if that was actually her being relaxed or if her Yumi disguise just made stress inherently less evident in some fashion.

The two of them hovered at the back of the group. John wasn't too concerned, although he was obviously still on alert. This many eyes made things easy to spot, and he had gotten pretty good at picking out Nameless ambushes. Besides, John had an escape plan, even if that relied on Yuki to scoop him up and sprint away while he provided support. Weirdly enough, it was a pretty good plan, especially now that he knew she could easily leap higher than most trees.

He should probably equip her with some magical equipment now that she was "read in," now that he thought of it. What would even be helpful to her, though? Drawing his little Nameless detector from his pocket, he scanned the woods for any sign of them, coming up blank. It felt strange to not have to fear being on the road. He still tensed up somewhat and felt more at home amongst the game trails, but there wasn't that nearly all-consuming terror that struck him prior.

Maybe he could get used to this, given enough time. If nothing else, these last five years proved he could bend to fit new scenarios rather than breaking. Nothing. The group walked more. Still nothing. They were approaching town. John froze as he heard a click, checking the counter only to reveal it was still at zero… and realized it was a bird a few seconds later. The little bastard scared the hell out of him.

As they approached the edge of town and started walking in, the mood of the men lightened considerably as they passed the pointedly not ransacked buildings towards the edges of things. An old lady waved to the lot, and the militia shouted a few greetings back to her, calling her Granny Porridge, which he assumed he must be mishearing, although Yashiro hushed them after a moment, glancing back towards John and Yuki. John awkwardly gave her a small wave, and Yuki dipped her head politely as they passed.

An invisible tension lifted from the group, and they relaxed once more. How curious. Did they think he was going to go berserk on them for saying hi to some random woman? Surely, he had done nothing…

He recalled that his only interactions with the people of this land were mostly limited to shadily watching them from afar, nearly boiling a man alive in his armour like a crab, leering menacingly while Yuki talked him up as some sort of legend, and slaughtering some Nameless in front of them with means beyond their comprehension. In their shoes, he wouldn't trust him to not freak the hell out, either.

Still, while the walk into town wasn't soothing, exactly, they drew the eyes of anyone who passed and the hair on the back of his neck prickled up every time there was somebody in the blind spot behind him, there was some relief in seeing the place hadn't been raided by Nameless while they were gone. The people they passed were a bit confused and worried, granted, but part of that was likely due to two mysterious figures being escorted by a local honour guard, which must be an unusual event around here.

They headed down a different road, away from the market. It was quieter than last time. John supposed it was still pretty early. Perhaps things would get more lively later, or maybe it was just an off day. Eventually, they came to a squat, wide building with a dirt field in front of it. The courtyard was walled, but the door was open, and a good two dozen men were doing drills inside, a few of which he recognized from yesterday. Interesting.

The ones wielding melee weapons all had some type of magic augmenting their weapons, be it earthen spikes, flames, or ice, but the archers had nothing of the like. Magic seems heavily tied to durability, so people less skilled in it would be terribly fragile in melee combat, so they must be putting them away from the frontlines. Interesting. A few less engaged in their exercises moved to greet their returning comrades but stiffened upon seeing John and "Yumi" at the group's tail.

"Dismissed! Wrap it up and go home," Yashiro ordered his group, and the men accompanying him rushed to obey, hurrying past the men in the courtyard to the barracks to get… hopefully cleaned before they got home. He didn't want to mention the smell earlier; it wasn't fair to hold it against them after they ran for their lives and were thrust into a fight for their lives. Would it have been too embarrassing to provide them with a bucket and brush, at least? Something to confer with Yuki about later.

Thinking they were being subtle, a few of the men quietly looked over to him and the two others still out in the street, finishing up what they were doing before heading inside to interrogate their fellows about what the hell happened. One, though, was actually making his way over to them! They must be some sort of second in command, John wagered.

Also, he was starting to suspect that either the title of sergeant was either a mistranslation or poor Yashiro was getting overworked to hell for too little pay; he was pretty sure sergeants only had to deal with eight to a dozen men back home. He could only imagine that havoc privates or whatever the equivalent here was could get up to when you couldn't just call them up and yell at them.

"My lord and my lady!" the man greeted, snapping off a sharp bow.

"Sir!" He bowed again, this time to his actual superior officer.

"Things have been under control in your absence. We feared you had been waylaid last night. Is everything alright?" The man was short, maybe a bit on the pudgy side, at least compared to Yashiro's rather buff form, but held himself like a professional, all sharp angles and measured stillness. Despite that, the bags under his eyes left no doubt that he was up the entire night. Whatever animalistic marking he had wasn't immediately apparent, much like his commander.

Yashiro glanced at Yuki, and the disguised kitsune nodded. John could barely hear her sniff the air before doing so, doubtlessly scenting if the man was a Nameless.

"Everyone here is fine. Your ledger of expenses, please?" John gently requested, and the man stiffened.

"I'll meet you later this evening to discuss things, Izumi. Please follow the good sir's orders," Yashiro ordered, and what was his probable second-in-command nodded before dashing off. He wasn't away long, quickly bringing out a book, which he passed to Yashiro, who held it out to him… but the disguised kitsune grabbed it first. Yuki turned to him.

"Would you mind? I have experience with ledgers," she requested, and John nodded, wordlessly handing her a notebook as well. The disguised kitsune proceeded to flip through the ledger at startling speeds. What John could see before she flicked to the next page looked like pretty impenetrable spreadsheets, and it hurt his soul to know that civilizations across multiple universes were besieged by the same great evil.

Perhaps it was a law that any civilization that rose would inevitably stumble across spreadsheets, like an ancient art waiting since the dawn of time for new practitioners. A few minutes later, Yuki snapped the book closed and handed it back to Izumi, who hurried off to put it back as the disguised kitsune jotted down some notes at a blistering pace on a blank page. Crap. Now that he thought of it, he should have told her he was saving that section for more language notes. Whatever.

He probably would end up tearing those pages out to keep them safe somewhere back at the fort. She closed the notebook once she finished, handing it back over to him.

"Most of these look pretty normal," she stated, shaking her head, "Of course, there was a spike in the cost of replacement arms and armour when the war kicked off—you should probably ask your men to be more gentle on them while training—and later when it startled to escalate, but that's to be expected. Perhaps it's a bit out of line beyond what you'd expect… but I'd need a bigger sample size to make sure." John turned to Yashiro, smiling.

"Do you know where there's a blacksmith?" The man awkwardly nodded.

"Aye. There are two, but they're not quite enough to supply the community, so we have to rely on imports. Would that still work?"

"That's perfect! Lead the way."