Chương 57: Book 1, Chapter 57: Yoink

By the time the sun had started to crest the horizon, filtering through the trees in little wisps, they were down to the last two buildings.

"Nothing yet, huh?" John asked Yuki, casting a glance out the door towards the now tied-up and clothed priests. Strangely, they seemed a lot calmer than they previously were, but that was probably because he took away the "demon eye" that threatened to curse them at a moment's notice. Honestly, part of him was surprised they took it so seriously, but he supposed a twenty-one-gun salute at five in the morning was a pretty good way to throw people off balance. She shook her head with a frown.

"No. To create an Ofuda as strong as the ones around the town requires potent ink with a very distinctive smell. I've not caught a whiff of it yet. I suspect that the Head Priest has been creating them in private without telling the rest of his flock, or at the very least, he does not trust them enough to create them." They technically hadn't asked about the Ofuda themselves, after all. Perhaps they should, but there was prudence in revealing as little as possible.

It let him and Yuki control the narrative in case something happened.

"They weren't very prepared, were they?" John commented.

"When you talked about them having other ways to counter yokai, I got worried." The kitsune dryly chuckled.

"If the priests were half-competent, they would have had layered charms around the whole area rather than just relying on the holiness of this place, and they would have reached for sacred incense and talismans when awoken by an attack. Be cautious still, but this is fairly good proof that the secrets behind creating those Ofuda were handed to them by Kiku." He paused for a beat as they stepped back outside, welding the door shut behind them so completely that you'd have to smash the frame to get it back open.

"Do you think that the priests we have would know anything? The town's perimeter isn't exactly tiny, so if the head priest had to place them all himself, it might have been too restrictive time-wise. We weren't there for all that long, and he would have had to have heard of what we were doing, come over, and place the Ofuda all within an hour or two or so, right?"

"It wouldn't hurt to check, but I doubt it, Kiku probably wouldn't let anyone she doesn't have on a leash be involved in something so sensitive. They probably had all the Ofuda, save one, pre-placed, and then the set was activated when someone put the last one into position. Think of it like drawing a circle. It only is a circle when you finish, before that it's just a curved line," she explained. John sighed.

"It can never be easy, can it?" The kitsune chuckled.

"Oh, it wouldn't be life if it were, my friend. At least we won't have to check the shrine. The tiny borehole to the spirit realm would taint the talismans during production." Her friend, huh? A faint smile formed on his face as the two of them made their way to the next target: the head priest's personal residence toward the back. The whole thing was larger than the rest of the buildings, and clearly better made.

To be honest, John was surprised that they didn't find anything in their stock rooms, but if they were going to find anything still, it'd be here. The building itself was obviously luxurious, even from the outside, with brand-new paint and a series of flashy adornments, as if the man was afraid of getting called subtle. The slightly oxidized copper dragon carvings along the edges of the roof alone were probably worth more than most could earn in a year or two… and was that a mahogany door?

It was trimmed in teak, too, although it was beyond John where the hell this guy got so much hardwood. Wasn't mahogany from the New World? Perhaps it was just a look-alike. It wasn't as if he were an expert botanist. Still, he would call foul if it were somehow cheap.

"If anywhere was going to be trapped, it'd be here," Yuki commented, halting herself perhaps forty feet in front of the door.

"John, do you mind? Oh, and turn on your warding." For a second, he wondered what the hell she expected him to do about it before he suddenly remembered his own capabilities and dug out his telekinetic focus, slotting it into his gauntlet as he tapped his necklace, forcing his warding on.

"Trapped, eh? What do you expect? Crossbow tied to the door? I can't imagine he'd risk something explosive or flaming, given how expensive the place looks. It's probably what all his funds have gone into. Perhaps we should break in through the windows?"

"Even more likely to be trapped, sadly, although he probably left one of them open to get back inside. It's likely going to be a curse or some sort of poison. If I were him and had no other resources, I'd put a blessed item and balance something that'd defile it nearby so it gets knocked over when the door opens and hope the immediate influx of bad luck kills whoever broke in in short order.

If Kiku gave him blood, he'd also be able to process it so it drops a vial when the door opens, soaking the area in a cloud of poisonous gas that will wither everything within range." What? Yeah, screw it, just add another two existential threats for him to worry about to the pile, that's fine. One, bad luck is real, and it can kill you. How? Random coincidence? Spontaneous aneurysm? Did he have to avoid stepping on cracks, too?

New priority: he had to find a book on local superstitions and check in with Yuki about which ones actually worked. Two, Kiku's, and by extension, Yuki's blood was so toxic that it could act as a fast-acting bioweapon. He had that stuff on him when he was first treating her! How the hell wasn't he dead? Why didn't she think to tell him? Was he resistant? Did she know he was resistant? You know what? Problems for later, when they weren't still technically in enemy territory, even if they had momentarily subdued it.

"Are we sure we're at a safe distance?" he uneasily muttered, looking at the door.

"Without a doubt," she affirmed.

"If it were a relic powerful enough to blow through your warding and my Aegis in one go at this distance, I could sense it, even if it wasn't far out of the means of both Kiku and Iwao. If it is poison, we'll also be safe, and the rain will wash it out of the sky." Well, he couldn't really argue with that. Besides, whatever was going on with the sisters seemed to be magical in nature, and it would be carried by particles, right?

With a proper vector like blood, his warding would be more than capable of blocking it if it were running. It wasn't like Kiku's normal… everything, which seemed to be carried by the mere sight and sound of her, like some sort of accursed memetic attack. He really should stop being a coward and try to ask Yuki about that more thoroughly, but now wasn't the time.

"Alright," he sighed, pointing at the door… and awkwardly shuffling a few feet further back, just in case.

"Actually, why don't we just cut a hole in the wall? What is he going to do, rig the entire thing?" Yuki halted as if she had been flash-frozen on the spot and gazed into the distance towards the sunrise, strangely unbothered that she was staring directly into the sun, with her eyes not even watering.

"Good idea, John," she stated, holding a hand out to him, and he tossed her the welder. She'd probably be better at taking the hit if she triggered a trap anyhow; if Yuki could operate with a scooped out leg, she could handle breathing a bit more of her own-ish blood… or a curse, probably. Even if it was an instant heart attack bomb or something, yokai seemed to hardly care about the laws of biology at the best of times. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road.

Support the author by reading it there. With a sigh, John sat back as Yuki went to work, cutting into the wall with a pale black beam, liquifying expensive-looking dark-stained wood as she sawed a portal into the wall. Her technique was a bit off, though. She was using it more like a physical tool, moving it back and forth rather than using it as a cutting torch. Strange, it must be a habit.

"Yuki!" he called, and her ears perked, eyes turning to track him from out of their corners.

"Think of it less like a saw and more like you're trying to catch something on fire!" She blinked before nodding, now holding the tool more steadily as she continued cutting through the wall with ease. Hmm. It would be nice to breach walls like this from a distance, wouldn't it? He had to add that to the list. Creating a mid-range remote control for something would be easy, and he already had the technology for levitation.

It wouldn't exactly be a novel problem to come up with a universal attachment point and mount a tool onto it. It could be used for cutting, welding, lifting, construction… or even weapons, although he couldn't imagine it'd be easy to aim without a video feed. Maybe with a laser light for targeting? He couldn't do proper focusing, but something like a simple short-range pointer was achievable.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw the priests looking over at him, the men now dressed, bound together, and moved under the cover of one of the cleared buildings. They couldn't even hop away together, as each priest was tied to the one next to him, the thick rope making sure any attempts to get away were short-lived unless they could manage a twenty-person synchronized hop. Not gagged, though, despite Yuki's earlier desires.

"What are you looking at?" he hissed instinctively, and all the men awkwardly turned away, mumbling apologies. Actually, while Yuki worked, he had an opportunity… John had spoken to them before. Sure, it didn't go the best, but he could surely do it again, right? If he just kept the conversation on top and didn't deviate, he would be fine. He had to be. John may have been shaken, but he wasn't broken. He would never be broken.

Steeling himself, he strutted over, his stance stiff and perhaps a bit too robotic, but the men flinched and tried to scoot away regardless. John stared at them with the closest to an even, level gaze that he could manage, ignoring instincts screaming about danger. John was just glad they had clothes other than their formal robes. Mercifully, they'd never wear those again, given they were all welded to random floors, roofs, or pieces of furniture.

He wondered what the townsfolk would do when they heard of the willing collaboration of the head priest with the Nameless. Actually, perhaps he ought to keep that on the down low, at least until the spiders are dealt with. Truth be told, while he probably wouldn't try too hard to save any of them from danger, if word of this came out, it'd lead to far too much bloodshed.

There'd be a riot, and while they were stomping over here to reclaim "their" wealth, they'd probably attract the Nameless, who would cull them on their way back to relative safety.

"So, does anyone know where Iwao has been for the last few days? Yesterday, specifically. Did he take any trips out? Did he send anyone out to do something for him? Did anyone put up any Ofuda in strange places lately?" John finally asked, voice strung tight as a violin as he looked over the crowd. The slightly out-of-shape priests withered under his gaze but said nothing as he scanned them for anything he could use, but they all uniformly refused to meet his gaze.

"Come on now. Look around. Head Priest Iwao clearly heard that we were coming and skedaddled, and he didn't warn any of you. He could have taken you with him!" John argued, putting as much false affability in his voice as possible.

"Come on, by now you know I'm mad, but I'm not that mad at you," he lied.

"If we wanted to hurt you, we already would have, but we can't guarantee your safety if Iwao's treachery ends up placing you as our enemies." Of course, he couldn't— wouldn't —guarantee their safety anyhow. Their wills wavered, and their eyes started to land on John. He smiled as genuinely as he could, using the thought of bulldozing the area to the ground to fuel it. Minus the shrine itself, of course. No bad-luck-induced heart attacks for him, and he didn't have any issue with…

what was the name on the shrine's gate, again? Ōkuninushi? Anyhow, it probably wouldn't hurt to have better, less dickish priests move in and actually do their jobs afterwards. Ugh, just the thought of this level of neglect filled him with disgust. Even if these men didn't wrong anyone other than him directly, they still saw their local town collapsing and did nothing, even as they swam in luxury.

It was hard to picture what a healthy situation with the yokai looked like, though, given that he didn't have proper context, but he could only imagine how different it would be.

"Look, let me level with you. We've dealt with the tax collectors. The next thing we're dealing with is an infestation of hostile yokai that'll absolutely kill you if they somehow win. Eventually, we will finish with them, and you don't want to be a problem when Lady Yuki and I have free time." Ideally, they would flee with nothing but clothes on their back, but he'd take some base cooperation for now.

"He said he was going out for a walk yesterday, just after dawn," a quiet voice said, and John snapped to the source. He was a younger man tied to the end of the cord of the men, perhaps twenty years old at most, and weedy, as if he hadn't entirely grown into his frame yet. His dark hair was short and dense, though perhaps a tad greasy from the sheen, and his brown eyes were attentive, showing an undercurrent of fear and little else.

Several other heads snapped to him, too, and he wilted under the attention of his older colleagues.

"Continue, please," John politely asked, stepping a bit closer.

"Uh, well," he said, casting a nervous glance at the rest of his erstwhile 'allies,' who glared at him before turning back to John.

"I was on gate duty yesterday, and he left early and came back in the late afternoon."

"Traitor!" spat one of the men, turning towards the youth, thick globs of saliva landing on his face, as an angry rumble started to come over the group. Interesting. Assuming the man was telling the truth, which it sounded like he was, that would mean Head Priest Iwao left early, and Kiku likely informed him of the situation as it developed, leading him to set up the last of the Ofuda. Perhaps his timing was off, and they planned to activate it to trigger the field mid-raid to deal with Yuki, somehow?

It still didn't explain the lack of follow-up. Importantly, the fact that he didn't return to pick up the Ofuda meant that either he had the last required one on him or that he had it stashed elsewhere to pick up when needed, possibly in a box near a deployment site.

"You guys heard about what they did to the tax collectors yesterday! I'm not going to let that be us!" the young lad hissed back, trying to scoot away from the man, yet dragging the chain of captives with him. Neither possibility looked good for their prospects of finding an intact example here.

"We're supposed to stick together, you son of a bitch! Does your oath mean nothing to you? Huh? After Iwao took in your ungrateful ass, you still can't stop being gutter trash, right?" growled out the agitator, trying to scoot over the adjacent men to get at his target. The crowd quickly grew in agitation, several men awkwardly shuffling themselves around trying to get closer to the young man, although none of them could do much.

Thankfully, the one he was actually attached to hadn't done anything yet, but he was a large, bulky man who could probably squash him or bite off an ear, and he seemed to be growing agitated, too.

"Enough," John said evenly, grabbing the shouting man in his telekinetic grip and squeezing him like a stress toy. Not enough to break bones, mind you, but enough to make sure he got the point as the air left his lungs and none could replace it.

"You will act civilly, or I will gag and throw you into the woods." At that, he dropped the man, leaving him gasping for air. He couldn't leave him here. The only cooperative priest was going to get killed the second he turned his back. Movement caught his eye, and he glanced over as an annoyed-looking Yuki walked her way over. She shook her head, but said nothing, holding out a sealed bottle of ink and what looked like fine paper that had an almost iridescent shine.

"You sure that's what they used?" he asked Yuki.

"Positive," she affirmed. Without a working example of the Ofuda, though… Actually, hmm. Would something made with the same material be close enough, even if it wasn't the same form of charm? There was only one way to find out. He turned back to the captive priest, the one who had been brave enough to speak out.

"What's your name?"

"I'm Takuto. No family name, sir," the man demurely replied.

"Well, Takuto, good news! You're coming with us," John said, leaning down to untie the man.

"We have a job for you."