Chương 6: Book 1: Chapter 3 - Yōma [Part 3]

Analysis started. Warning: Additional data required for accurate speech generation. Estimated adaptation speed: High due to Japanese-language proximity. Recommendation: Continue passive observation. Avoid extended speech until update completes.

"No problem," Shimon whispered to himself in English.

"Avoiding speech is my strongest social skill." A man walking ahead of him glanced back. Shimon looked down at the road as if the mud had become fascinating. In this manner, he continued his journey, listening to snippets of conversation carried to him by the wind or tossed out by those he passed. Complaints about taxes. Complaints about soldiers. Complaints about the price of rice, the quality of sandals, the arrogance of men with swords, and whether the castle would actually pay what it owed.

Civilization, he was discovering, had many forms, but complaining appeared to be universal. Eventually, the road carried him toward the settlement. The sound of it greeted him first. Not the organized celebration of the castle. This was messier, lower, and more human. Voices layered over one another. Packhorses snorted and stamped as men tugged them through the mud. Handcarts creaked beneath bundles of firewood and sacks of rice. Chickens scattered between bare feet and straw sandals with suicidal confidence.

Somewhere a drum beat a quick rhythm, and smoke stained the sky in several thin columns beyond a low spread of thatched roofs. The village had swollen for market day into something larger, uglier, and far more alive. Farmhouses stood along the road with steep roofs of straw and reed, their timber frames darkened by age and smoke.

Mud walls and woven fences enclosed small yards where tools leaned against sheds, firewood sat stacked beneath eaves, and children watched the passing crowd with the solemn suspicion of village cats. Irrigation ditches ran beside parts of the road, carrying brown water down toward the paddies beyond the houses. A little ways off, he could see winter-bare fields, stubble, and wet earth waiting for the next season's work. Temporary stalls had been raised wherever space allowed. Mats were spread beneath reed awnings.

Baskets, hoes, sickles, jars, rope, rough cloth, dried fish, charcoal, sandals, charms, bundles of firewood, pickled vegetables, and more things Shimon did not know how to name crowded the edges of the street. A small roadside shrine stood half-hidden behind the market clutter, its stone figure wearing a faded red bib. And weapons, there were weapons everywhere. Spears stacked in bundles. Helmet bowls piled like cookware. Armor plates with broken cords. Arrows sorted by length.

Blades laid out on cloth, some rusted, some chipped, some in almost perfect condition. One stall had an entire row of damaged swords with little paper slips tied to them. Another man was selling what appeared to be individual armor pieces stripped from different owners. Post-battle economy, Shimon thought. A woman ladled something steaming into bowls. A boy turned skewers over charcoal until fat hissed into smoke. A man shouted prices for dried fish in a loud voice.

A pair of mummers in masks performed some crude argument that made several men laugh. Dice clattered in a ring of crouched gamblers. Somewhere nearby, someone played a flute badly, but with immense confidence. There was alcohol too. Men sat under an awning with cups, already loud despite the hour. A few women watched passersby from behind latticed doors painted in tired colors, their faces composed, their clothing brighter. Shimon looked once, understood, and looked away quickly enough that one of them laughed.

He was hungry, thirsty, and rather dirty. The realization arrived with the cruelty of the obvious. His body had been too frightened to make proper demands earlier, but now that there was cooked rice and something that might have been miso or fish broth or both, hunger woke like a roused beast.

He had money, but he also had no idea what anything cost, what coins he had, whether the coins belonged to an enemy army, whether trying to pay would expose him as a corpse-robber, or whether he could negotiate without sounding like a time traveler with a head injury. So he stood at the edge of the market pretending to be thoughtful. The chip continued to listen, his companion true. Local speech corpus: expanding. Comprehension estimate: 71% contextual, 53% literal. Speech generation pending.

A child ran past him with a sticky rice cake in one hand. Shimon watched the child go with the hollow resentment of an adult who had survived a battle, killed two men, slept in a cave, and still could not buy a simple breakfast. That was when someone bumped into him. It was not a dramatic collision. Just a shoulder against his arm, a muttered apology, a body entering his personal space.

Then, Shimon's body reacted before conscious thought did, his left hand snapping down and closing around a wrist like a sprung trap. The man attached to it froze. Slimy was the first word Shimon's exhausted mind supplied, and while it was unkind, it was not inaccurate. The man was narrow-faced, grey-skinned in the way of a poor diet and a poorly led life, with thin lips, sparse facial hair, and eyes that had been born looking for exits.

His clothing was ordinary enough to vanish in a crowd, patched but not desperate. His fingers were halfway under the fold of Shimon's stolen outer garments and armor, very near the pouch tied at his waist. For half a second, both of them looked at the hand. Then they looked at each other, and the pickpocket smiled. The thief twisted, trying to break free, and his other hand dipped toward something at his belt. A knife, maybe. A sliver of metal flashed.

Shimon moved with a serpent's swiftness, fast enough that several people nearby gasped. He wrenched the man's wrist outward until the fingers opened, then shoved him back. The pickpocket stumbled, recovered, and hissed something that the chip translated only as insult-threat-filth. He was rewarded for his, or rather his body's, reaction. You have learned Unarmed 2. The crowd's attention gathered, and that was the true danger. Shimon felt it before he understood it.

People were watching to see what category he belonged to. Fool, victim, warrior, or just plain lunatic? A man with two swords could not simply squeak, clutch his purse, and apologize for being robbed. A man with two swords needed to respond in a way that made sense to the world around him. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. A thought arrived cold and horrible. Killing the pickpocket would probably make sense.

A real samurai, or at least the version of one from films and games, might cut the man down for the insult. Or have him beaten. Or do something else publicly educational. The crowd did not necessarily want death, but it wanted a shape it could understand. Shimon did not draw his sword. Instead, he stepped forward and slapped the man across the face with his free hand, and it was not a little slap. His whole body went into it: filled with all of his fear, hunger, humiliation.

His palm cracked across the pickpocket's cheek with a sound sharp enough to cut through the market noise. The man hit the mud. For one perfect, awful second, the crowd fell silent. Shimon stood over him, spear in one hand, two swords at his hip, face blank because he had no idea what expression to use, and said nothing. The pickpocket groaned, and somewhere, someone laughed. Then another person laughed, louder. A man near the food stall barked what sounded like approval. The market returned to itself.

The pickpocket scrambled backward through the mud, one hand pressed to his cheek, eyes wide not with pain alone but with recalculation. He spat something that was probably a curse and crawled away, and Shimon just watched him go. Inside, his heart was trying to escape through his ribs. But, outside, he remained stoic and silent. The silence helped. He could feel that immediately. The crowd placed meaning into it for him. Grim restraint, offended dignity, or perhaps that rarer thing, perhaps even mercy.

All sorts of things that were more impressive than the truth The man held up one skewer of something browned and dripping fat, then raised two fingers. Price? Quantity? Shimon's chip, mercifully, highlighted a coin suggestion from his pouch based on observed transactions. He drew one small coin and held it up. The food stall man squinted, shrugged, took it, and handed him two skewers, causing Shimon to almost believe in God.

He moved away before anyone could ask him anything complicated and ate standing beneath the edge of an awning. The meat was tough, greasy, smoky, and so good that for several seconds he forgot himself. He did not know what animal it came from and he decided not to question it. Language corpus: sufficient for basic interaction. Speech protocol update at 72%.

"Great," he whispered around the second bite.

"Only twenty-eight percent away from sounding like an idiot with confidence." A drumbeat rolled across the market. But this rhythm was sharper, meant to gather attention. People turned toward a cleared space near the center of the market where a man climbed onto a barrel with the stiff caution of someone who had done it before and fallen off at least once. He was broad through the middle, wearing a short coat marked with a symbol Shimon did not recognize.

It was small, about the size of a family mon, worked into the cloth in dark thread: a stepped triangle with a large dot near its top and another set beneath it along the bottom edge, giving the impression of watchful eyes turned on their side. A sword hung at the portly man's side, but it looked more ceremonial than serious. Beside the barrel stood two men with polearms and the relaxed posture of people well paid to discourage interruptions. The man on the barrel clapped his hands. Then he began to shout.

The chip translated in fragments at first.

"—men of courage—service—coin paid in good weight—by order and seal—Adventurer's Za—" Shimon stopped chewing as the words grew clearer as the speech model caught up.

"Listen well! Listen well! The field beyond Konodai is fat with the dead, and every dead man is a lantern to hungry things. The routed men of the western host crawl through the reeds and woods. Some still carry blades. Some carry wounds. Some carry curses, and where curses fester, yōma gather." A murmur moved through the crowd at that word. Yōma. Shimon felt the forest sounds crawl back under his skin. The man on the barrel lifted a string of coins so that they flashed in the grey morning light.

"The castle has no men to waste chasing every rat through the grass. The headmen want the roads clear. The merchants want their carts free from harm. The shrines want the dead burned before worse things wear their faces. So the Adventurer's Za calls for able hands. Work in groups. Bring proof of kills. Bring word of nests. Bring back the living if they are worth ransom, heads if they are not." A laugh ran through part of the crowd, but such gallows merriment did not reach everyone. Several men had moved closer.

Scruffy warrior types, Shimon thought. They were armed men, mostly young, mostly poor, with the hungry posture of those who owned violence and not much else. Some wore armor pieces that did not match. One had a helmet hanging from his belt. Another carried two swords with the casual comfort Shimon had failed to imitate all morning. A third had scars across his cheek and a spear whose blade had been polished very recently. Their eyes passed over the crowd. Then several of them looked at Shimon.

The two stolen swords, the stolen spear, the stolen armor, the height, and the strength of the slap that had flattened a pickpocket. But, most of all, they registered his silence and a few gazes narrowed in predatory calculation. Shimon looked back because looking away felt like blood in the water. The orange screen opened. [QUEST RECEIVED] Hunt the Yōma Issuer: Adventurer's Za Objective: Join a hunting party clearing routed soldiers and yōma drawn to the Konodai battlefield.

Investigate reported activity and bring proof of yōma slain. Optional Objective 1: Identify source of yōma activity. Optional Objective 2: Rescue surviving non-hostiles. Optional Objective 3: Acquire proof of guild recognition. Reward: Coin, Experience, Local Reputation Failure: Injury, Death, Consumption, Spiritual Contamination Accept? Shimon stared at the word consumption.

"Consumption," he whispered bitterly.

"As in tuberculosis, or as in being eaten?" The world did not answer him. He could just walk away. That was the obvious answer. Walk away from the quest, from the armed men, from the battlefield, from yōma, from everything. Find somewhere quiet and become a very quiet farmhand. Live anonymously and avoid combat. Avoid quests and avoid experience. Avoid whatever the world and the system wanted from him. Except that doing quests meant growing in power, and growing in power meant that he was safer.

Farmers died easily in worlds like this. He hated that he knew that. The world had already explained the design language to him with brutal simplicity. Violence gave numbers. Numbers gave survival. Survival gave tomorrow. Also, despite everything, he had been overtaken by a macabre curiosity. What were the yōma? The chip flashed him a blue message. Speech protocol update complete. Local Accent Model: Lower-status Kantō region dialect. Warning: High-status speech not recommended.

Warning: Prolonged conversation may reveal anomalies. The young man Shimon exhaled. The sounds waited behind his teeth: older vowels, and rougher edges. One of the scruffy samurai near the barrel jerked his chin at him. A question, probably. A challenge, maybe. Come or leave. Declare yourself or get out of the way. Shimon considered the quest. Accept? The correct answer was no. Progress, however, demanded yes. It was also the only strategy he had, to put one foot forward.

He willed his acceptance and the world answered. Quest Accepted: Hunt the Yōma. The orange text faded as he adjusted his grip on the spear, stepped toward the barrel and the armed men, and heard himself speak in an accent that belonged to this place, this impossible version of Japan.

"Let's do this."