Before she could eve, Seiji was huggiightly, pleased to see her once more. He had finally found a friend after the days being stu Yumi’s mindscape.

  “Seiji, you o calm down.”

  Despite what Nerine wanted, Seiji didn’t let go of Saki or release his hold. His enthusiasm couldn’t be so easily reigned in. “Calm…what? But we finally found Saki!”

  “She doesn’t seem as happy about it as you, however…” But he didn’t get a ce to fully hear out or react to Nerine before he took a sharp elbow to the fabsp; There was enough behind it to knock him free of her and stagger him to the ground. “But guess you know that now…”

  Only slightly fazed by it, he rubbed his cheek from the hit, but otherwise brushed it off. “So where the hell were you Saki?”

  Fixing the fine silk of her athletic blend of a traditional kimono, which gave her legs freedom, Saki looked down at Seiji. “Looking for everyone.”

  “Hey, it’s like you thought, Nerine.”

  “Yes…” she agreed, while examining Saki thhly. There were clear differences between them. While Seiji araded their attire in for simple clothes the vilgers could offer, Saki looked like she might have been from royalty. Nerine hadn’t seen any sort of fabri the vilge or even on merts passing by. “And what have you been doing specifically, when not searg for us?”

  The subtext didn’t hit Saki immediately until she picked up on the gaze. “Oh my clothes. I have a rather well off sponsor.”

  “Sponsor? Doing what?”

  Seiji jumped up and closed the distance quickly. There was a bit of a glow in his eyes suddenly. “Sounds like an iing story! Want to e back to the vilge a? You tell us about it!”

  “How about no. I don’t really have time to waste on that.”

  Chapter 410 – Time to Waste

  Expeg to wake up alongside everyone else, Saki looked about to her left and right, finding nothing. She stared for mirying to process everything, and half expeg someone else to show up. But she was alone and without any clue to what was going on. All she had was the expectation that this somehow dealt with Yumi, but she wasn’t even here. Which left her w why she was even alone. It didn’t serve any point.

  Once she started to accept reality as it was now, she pulled herself up to a seated position. Before her was a tall white wall that stretched in both dires before curving out of sight. If she hadn’t already seen Atntis, it would have been impressive to her, but she had already seen grander. Not that size was really the point on her mind.

  Something else was on her mind.

  She looked up to the sky and shouted, “What the hell am I doing?! I already told you I’m not telling the story! And how did you already set a se when I haven’t even said anythi!”

  Seiji’s voice came booming down, “! It’ll be great! Knowing you, you’ve got a lot of ass kig and great fight ses!”

  “I’m not doing this, end it now! And with the absence of Yuki have you devolved even further?”

  Popped back to reality, Saki gnced over at Nerine, as they all still stood in the middle of the field with the demon sin. “Thought you had him under better trol.” Nothing o be said, Nerine just looked back at Saki with a look too easy to read as ‘You try trolling that.’ Saki sighed and looked back at Seiji. “Fair point. A better questiht now, why are you here?”

  “Oh I ahat!” Seiji announced proudly. He seemed to have gotten off his disappoi of story time quickly.

  “You?”

  The gre from her did little to stop his energy. “Yes, of course I know what the hell’s going on. We’re following Nerine’s pn to stay still. She felt it was better than wandering around and might have missed you.” He looked over at Nerih pride in his eyes. “Which turned out to be the right decision, since we found you!”

  She crossed her arms and looked over at the vilge and Nerine. “More luck than a good pn. This world is huge, easily a to scale version of Japan. We’re just as likely to run into someone walking.”

  “I haven’t been doing nothing!” Nerine looked a little ruffled by Saki’s ent. “I’ve been following up and hunting down rumors. We ’t aimlessly wander in the hopes of stumbling across everyone.”

  Catg the rising tension from a defensive Nerine, Seiji stepped iween them. He redirected the versation quickly to something that still bothered him. “So what’s that?” he asked, pointing at the dead creature behind them.

  “A demo by the name Gono. No bounty on him, but he had been attag vilges in the area. So I dealt with him while in the area after finishing my main job.”

  “Main job?” asked Seiji, being curious again about the backstory surrounding her arrival. Though Saki refused to indulge in his childish excitement hting.

  Even if she did refuse, that didn’t stop her from providing a more visual expnation of what she had been doing in the days siheir arrival in Yumi’s a demon filled vision of Japan. She took them back to her camp, which hardly had any real signs of being a camp. It looked merely like the pce that she stopped with a reizable enough roation to be a nd marker for her.

  “What the hell is this giant thing?!” shouted Seiji, the moment he saw that it wasn’t some strange rock or hill, but an actual living thing. Or rather, a former living thing, as Saki killed it some time ago.

  Saki poihem out to the front, revealing the rge shape to be as they already figured out, a head. A severed head of a demon with an awful smell in fact sat before them almost looking like it might be asleep rather than dead. With massive horns ah along with oily bck hair and a weird steel-like skin, all they could really do t that it had to be a demon. It had everything to belong to a cssic giant red oni from wood paintings.

  Patting the hard skin, Saki cimed her kill. “This was my job. Some weird variant of an oni that made his home in the mountains around here and found people to be more filling than other things. Apparently, he had been dormant for a while and only retly started feeding again.”

  “So you’re what they call a Demon Hunter?” Nerine checked, already assuming it from what she had seen.

  “Not so much, I’m a bounty hunter, you have to get some lise and gh tests to be a Demon Hunter apparently. But the pay is no different. And the es are better, since I hear rumors from the underground about suddenly appearing super humans.”

  “Does that mean this art of your pn as well?”

  “No, I haven’t heard any rumors about you two at all. You have to stand out for rumors to be created.”

  Seiji looked back at Nerih a look almost like a question of why. Seeing even Seiji retrag support for her, she lost any strength to her defense of her pn. It hurt far more thaher of them could see. She turned away from them after her sou and acceptance.

  Not that it stopped Seiji from tinuing. “Have you heard any rumors about the others?”

  “A few, though they all have been dead ends. Knowing Yori’s tendency tely with his focus on Yumi, finding him should only be a matter of time. Finding Yumi and Yuki has been more of my priority, though I worry about finding Yuki given his nature. He may blend in the best.”

  “This does seem like something he would enjoy.”

  “Which could also make him the easiest, which is why I haven’t ruled out any rumors.”

  “Now that you’ve found us, we’ll join you and help in the search!”

  Saki sat dowo the demon head staring out at the horizon ahead with her mind already advang. “It’ll definitely be helpful having someohat heal me. I’ve been careful about not taking high risk bounties, so that I keep searg. But with Nerine I be bolder.”

  The thought of being used like an item in a game, something that she would have no uanding of the refereo, but still found it indignant, turned around quickly. “I’m not a tool to be carried around!”

  “Having some fshbacks right now…” None of it sted for long as she narrowed her sights on Nerine. “Having two more at my back is more important.” Saki stood up aed the demon head into the air before starting to march away with the expectation that they would follow her.

  Seiji quickly chased after her without a sed thought. His mind was focused on the new adventures and fights that he could get into. The thought of fighting the blue oni that parthe one Saki killed colored his visions. A good fight from something titanic made him grin slightly.

  Left behind for a moment still not fully vinced, Nerine had to rush to catch up. She wasn’t about to be left behind. “You still have an image of me in your mind to pull me out when you need healing.”

  “Maybe a little,” she teased.

  Nerine sighed at her fate. “Where are you my King?”

  As short trip back to the vilge, Nerine expihings to Mr. Horri. While a little sad to see them leave, their short time was uood. The walk back to the city that Saki treated as her temporary base only took half a day to reach, though it did leave Nerine pletely exhausted. She id on Saki’s bed in the mansion of her sponsor while Saki and Seiji went together to colle the giant head.

  Seiji looked ba the dire of the rge pile that they left other demon parts all stacked together. “Don’t you need proof? Couldn’t someone else try to cim they killed the damn thing?” It wasn’t the only demon carcass and out in the open for ao poke through it. He found it surprising that there wasn’t even someohere to watch over it.

  “Nope,” she replied quickly. Her hand stretched out to slide open the door as things quickly became dark and shady fast. Seiji followed behind her. “No pig fights, they’re all strong and I know you.”

  “…yes…”

  She could feel the disappoi in his voibsp; All of the bounty huhat filled the room were skilled in different ways and worst of all most of them didn’t share the same noble fairness of a fight that Seiji did. Despite his strength and power, she doubted that he would actually win any of them.

  Ahead of them was the ter with a young woman behind the slightly poor appearing wood ter and wall. Though as many foolish dead idiots learned, it was anything but. Saki stepped forward ying down a rolled part in front of the woman. “Got my reward?”

  “Your kill’s been firmed,” the oke with polite and well measured words. She turned around and pulled out a drawer from the wall. Returning to the ter, the drawer glowed with gold s.

  Saki quickly pocketed the ey of the reward and o the woman. “Thank you.” She then faced Seiji with the look of leaving. But her eye picked up someone in the er. They were making subtle movements at her. She grabbed Seiji’s arm and pulled him in close. “No talking.”

  “Huh?”

  “Promise me.”

  “Alright, fine. What’s this shit all about?”

  She gred up at him to shut him up and then pulled him along with her. Weaving through the tables, she sat down at the er table with a well worn man. “You don’t call me over. Got some trouble?”

  “On the trary, I’ve got something you want.”

  Leaning ba the chair, Saki pyed her hand defensively. “I’m in no rush for a bounty. We don’t owe each other anything.”

  “Oh, but I know you’ve been making inquiries, a lot. And I happen to have some that might i you.”

  Saki tried to hide her annoyance, seeing that he had the stronger hand. “What are you asking?”

  “One hundred.”

  “Not ied.”

  “Even if I told you there’s a fake Demon Hunter making a name for themselves?”

  She saw Seiji’s eyes start to light up. He picked up on it as much as she did. ‘That could be Yumi!’