Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 12 - Chapter 5

5. Youth, Power, and Guts

We went eastward, Haruhiro narrated silently. Then, along the way, southeastward.

It wasn’t all fun times. In fact, it was very rarely fun times, but it wasn’t all bad times, either. Like, in a raging storm, we’d generally come across a cave that we could take shelter in. Then the weather would clear up, and it would feel refreshing, like the whole thing had been a lie.

The food Setora makes can be really tasty, too. Kiichi gets temperamental, but he’ll nuzzle up to us, purr when petted, and be cute. There is a surprising amount of happiness that could be found lying about here and there. I just had a pretty hard time spotting it was there.

This journey has taught me things. It may not have been a bad trip.

Haruhiro went on with his internal monologue, getting up to the point of, This is how our journey ended.

“So this is the sea, huh,” Setora said quietly.

Kiichi stuck close to her feet, his raised tail swaying back and forth gently.

“It sure is the sea...” Yume narrowed her eyes and grinned.

Shihoru squatted down and let out a sigh. “Whew...”

“Haruhiro.” Kuzaku was facing this way. A serious look on his face.

“What is it?”

“You mind if I shout?”

“Huh? You want to shout? Well, I don’t see a problem...”

“Right, I’m gonna shout, then.”

Kuzaku cupped his hands in front of his mouth like a trumpet, leaned back, took a deep breath, and then...

“It’s the seaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...!”

“He sounds like an idiot,” Merry murmured.

Haruhiro agreed entirely, but he kind of understood how Kuzaku felt.

Haruhiro and the party were looking out over the sea from the final mountain peak. They had to be about three hundred meters above sea level. Once they descended this mountain, they’d be at the shore. From there, the boundless blue sea stretched out as far as the eye could see.

Haruhiro had had enough of mountains. He’d climbed up and down enough of them for one lifetime. Finally, at long last, this was the final one.

The previous day, with this last peak before their eyes, they’d deliberately chosen to camp out without ascending it fully. They’d been so excited that they’d gotten up while it was still dark out to watch the sunrise from the summit.

Ultimately, it had taken more time to ascend the summit than anticipated, so they hadn’t been able to see the moment the sun rose from beyond the horizon. But despite missing the first light, it was still a marvelous sight. If Haruhiro were inclined to poetry, he’d probably have composed a verse or two.

“...Yeah, I’ve got nothing,” he commented.

“For what?” Merry asked.

“Oh, no, nothing...”

Even as the shadows cast by the dim sky fell upon her, Merry shone in the dawn light. If he were a poet, he could sing her praises with beautiful words.

He murmured, “So pretty your mind goes blank.”

“I know, right?” Merry looked at the sea, letting out a little sigh.

Haruhiro hadn’t meant the sea, though. Nor had he meant the sun, which shone like a billion jewels were scattered over its surface. He’d been referring to Merry.

“By the way, Haru.” Setora was glaring.

“...Yes?”

“When I look at you, I occasionally—quite often, in fact—find myself frustrated to the point that I want to kill something.”

“That’s not very nice...”

“It’s not. Do be careful that I don’t kill you.”

“Um... I’d love to be careful and all, but what exactly do you want me to...”

For some reason, Kuzaku squatted down beside Shihoru, and barked like a dog. “Woof!”

Shihoru patted Kuzaku on the back, and on his head, too. Was his dogification progressing faster and faster?

This is apparently all my fault somehow. That much Haruhiro could guess. But, hey, what can I do? I’d love to do something about this indecisive personality of mine, you know? If I could change, I would, and I do try to take steps forward when I can, but it’s probably not enough. More, huh. I need to do more, huh. On the other hand, if I do take a decisive step, there’s the problem that I don’t know what will happen. Like, what influence it will have on everyone around me. I’m still the leader, you know? I can’t not think about that. There’s that to consider, so it’s not easy. It’s hard. Life is too hard...

“By the way, y’know?” Yume pointed in the direction of the sea. “Over there, there’s somethin’ like a ship. It’s tilted, isn’t it? Or is Yume just imaginin’ that?”

No, that definitely wasn’t her imagination. How far from the beach was it? Not close, but not that far. That sailboat wasn’t sailing, so it might be fair to say it was stopped, but something was strange about it. Like Yume had said, it was clearly tilted.

“Has it run aground?” Haruhiro wondered aloud.

Whatever the case, they couldn’t make a call on it from here. Haruhiro and the party descended the mountain towards the sea. Thinking this was the last mountain, it made him want to hum a little tune like he was on a picnic, but if they let their guards down, something would trip them up. That was what it meant to travel.

They descended the mountain in what felt like two hours, then walked for about thirty minutes and reached a grassy field overlooking a rocky beach.

The ship in question was dead ahead. Its sails were white, and the body was not aged. It didn’t look to have been abandoned to rot there a long time ago, so it might have run aground recently. While this was an amateur analysis, that was the impression he got.

Incredibly, on the rock beach, there were people. No, he didn’t know that they were human, but there were multiple humanoid creatures. More than ten of them, sitting, standing, and roaming around.

“Maybe they’re the crew of that ship,” he murmured.

Haruhiro and the party were in a horizontal line, lying down on the ground. The people over there most likely couldn’t see them.

“Meow...” Yume squinted. Being a hunter, she had the best vision of any of them. “There’re six men... maybe? Human men, that is. Oh, there’s some non-humans, too? One might be an orc. Probably, at least. There’re kobolds, too. Oh, and a gobbie? What’s that one with the bandage wrapped around his face? Hard to tell. There’s one girl, too... Hrmm. Is that a girl?”

If it were just humans, that would be one thing, but there were orcs, kobolds, and goblins, too. On top of that, there was one human woman mixed in with the bunch. Just what kind of group was this?

“I have heard that humans and orcs co-exist in Vele...” Setora sounded uncharacteristically uncertain.

There were too many uncertain elements. Was it better not to get involved? It was a curious sight, but curiosity had been known to kill, and a certain idiot who had once been with the party had brought a lot of trouble down on them with his.

Yeah, thought Haruhiro. Let’s not investigate it. We’ll leave quietly, and pretend we didn’t see anything.

He said, “Creep to the rear, then head south...”

Maybe creep to the rear instead of creep forward was a weird way to word it. Haruhiro was about to correct himself when Yume made a strange noise.

“Huhwah!”

“Wh-What’s wrong, Yume?”

“She’s wavin’.”

“Huh? Who is?”

“The girl... But that girl, she’s got a mustache. Do girls grow mustaches? Yume’s never grown a mustache.”

“Well, maybe it depends on the per—Wait, huh? She’s waving?”

Looking down, there most certainly was a person who looked like a girl waving in their direction. But was this one of those cases where he’d think, Who, me? and then it would turn out to be someone else? Like, was there was another of that girl’s comrades behind Haruhiro and the party, maybe?

That would be dangerous, too. Yeah. Definitely dangerous. Haruhiro turned to check. Nope. No one there.

“Heyyyy!” the girl finally started shouting.

She was looking at them, wasn’t she?

He’d have given it a better than eighty percent chance she was. Ninety percent, maybe? It could be ninety-nine. Perhaps even one hundred.

“Heyyyy! You theeeere! Come ouuuut! If you’re enemies, we’ll kill youuuu!”

“D-Do we fight?” Kuzaku went to draw his large katana.

“Wait,” Haruhiro stopped him. If it was going to come to a fight, they should run instead. They were more than fifty meters from the group.

He was about to give the order to retreat when the mysterious bandaged man handed the girl a cylindrical object of some sort. What was that? The girl pointed that object towards them.

“Ka-boom!”

When the girl said that, there was a ka-boom, or a bang, and a whoosh, and Haruhiro pushed himself up with his arms. Had there been an impact just now? Something had flown this way, and hit the ground with incredible force. There was smoke rising from the end of the object the girl was holding.

“No way! Is that a firearm?” Shihoru took the words out of Haruhiro’s mouth.

“Heyyyy! Come ouuuut! The next one’s going to hiiiit! It’ll hurt, tooooo! I’m one spicy sniper! Yes, indeedy! But not really, though!” The girl was babbling on and only half making sense.

“Was that... magic?” Even Setora was shocked. Kiichi was keeping low to the ground, and had begun a crawling retreat.

“No,” Haruhiro said. “It’s not magic. It’s a weapon.”

Haruhiro bit his lip and licked it. A firearm. Why a firearm? No, were firearms even a thing? He’d never seen one—right? In that case, why did Haruhiro, and Shihoru for that matter, know they existed, and what they were called? Was it their memories, knowledge from before they came to Grimgar?

Whatever the case, it was a weapon that propelled a bullet with gunpowder. A firearm. Also called a gun. Like the girl said, if a bullet struck them, they wouldn’t get off lightly. Merry was here, so she could heal any wounds if they weren’t fatal, but it was fully possible for a bullet to cause instant death if it hit them in the wrong spot.

“Don’t shoot!” Haruhiro shouted and raised one hand. He rose to one knee. His comrades were still shaken, it seemed. He was sorry to be acting on his own initiative, but there was no choice. This was a crisis situation.

“If you come out, I won’t shoooot!” The girl still had her gun at the ready. “But you aaaaall have to come out! Yes, indeed! I’m not blonde, after all! Oops, sorry! I meant bliiiiind!”

“What guarantee do we have you won’t shoot?!” Haruhiro shouted.

“Uh, I promise not toooo! Pinky sweaaaar!”

“We can’t pinky swear! Not this far away!”

“I guess noooot! But you’ll just have to trust me, I gueeeess!”

“You say to trust you, but we don’t even know who you are!”

“I don’t know you eitheeeer! That makes us even, riiiight?! Yes, indeed!”

Her way of speaking included, she was a very strange woman, but she didn’t seem to be an idiot. Would it be okay to tell her they were volunteer soldiers? This was enemy territory, after all, so it was a hard call.

“Haruhiro-kun!” Shihoru called his name.

When he looked over, Shihoru nodded.

Yeah, thought Haruhiro. She was right. There was no way to be certain about it, but these people probably didn’t belong to an organization opposed to humanity. If they did, they would have attacked the party without hesitation the moment they spotted them.

“Everyone stand.” Following Haruhiro’s order, his comrades stood, one after another.

The girl threw the gun to the bandaged mystery man, and pointed a finger in their direction. “All riiiight! Now, one of you, get over here and face meeee! I don’t care who, just bring it oooon! Yes, indeed!”

It would seem she was an even weirder woman than anticipated.

Haruhiro descended to the rock beach, facing off against the group.

The members of the group did indeed appear to be sailors. Well, not that he was an expert on sailors, but they seemed dressed for labor aboard a ship, and not just the humans but the orcs and goblins were tanned, too. They were exactly what you’d expect men of the sea to look like.

The girl was wearing a hat that rolled up on both sides and men’s clothes, and she sported a mustache. No, was it a fake mustache? More than likely, yes. Even for Haruhiro, a man, if he left his mustache to grow, it probably wouldn’t be as bushy as that.

Was she messing around?

It didn’t feel like it, though.

The girl puffed up her chest, crossed her arms, and looked at Haruhiro and the party. Her gaze was sharp. Overwhelming even. Though she was petite, she had an intensity that didn’t let them sense that.

“I am K&K’s K! M! W! Momohina! Name yourselves!”

“...K&K?” Merry furrowed her brow.

Momohina’s opened her eyes wide. “Name yourselves!” she repeated.

“Hey!” the men began shouting. “She said name yourself, dumbass!”

“We’ll kill the men and screw the women if you don’t!”

“I wanna screw them anyway!”

“Now you’re just letting your desires show, asshole!”

This was awful. The girls in the group were intimidated. Kuzaku snapped and tried to move forward.

“Tie uuuup!” Momohina shouted, and the men closed their mouths.

Haruhiro was befuddled. Tie up...?

Momohina cleared her throat. “...Oops. The correct answer was ‘shut up’! These things haaaappen. That’s all from the scene. Indeed!”

Her face was red. She seemed embarrassed.

“Mm-hm...” Yume nodded in agreement.

Oh, you’re going to sympathize with her there? Yeah, you would, I guess.

Yume and Momohina. These two had some strange similarities. But Yume wouldn’t wear a fake mustache. She wouldn’t fire off a gun, either. And she wouldn’t issue a challenge out of nowhere.

“Um, when you say to face you, what do you mean?” Haruhiro asked, just to be sure.

Momohina, with her cheeks still flushed, grinned and gave a thumbs up. “We’re gonna throw down, mano-a-mano, obviously! You bet we are. Full speed ahead!”

“Full speed ahead!” The men echoed back with hoarse voices.

Mano-a-mano. That meant one-on-one. Bare-handed, then?

“You’re on!” When Kuzaku spun his arm in a circle, moving forward, Momohina’s mustache twisted and almost fell off.

“Duwhuh?!”

Momohina immediately pressed her fake mustache back on her face, but Kuzaku had lost his enthusiasm. Knowing Kuzaku, he’d remembered his opponent was a woman, and was wondering whether mano-a-manoing—no, that wasn’t a word that existed—whether going mano-a-mano with a woman was okay.

Haruhiro wasn’t keen on having a fistfight with a woman himself, but he wasn’t sure about leaving it to the women in the group, either.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” he said.

“Heh heh,” Momohina cackled. “Bring it on! This’ll be a cakewalk. Yes, indeed!”

Momohina cast aside her coat. The men let out a cheer, and Haruhiro hurriedly turned to the side. Momohina had been wearing a knee-length coat, but, naturally, he had expected her to be wearing a shirt underneath. She wasn’t. It was bare skin. She wasn’t naked, but she only had a band tied around her breasts in place of underwear, so it was hard to look at her directly.

“What’s wroooong? Heyyyy! Come at meeee!”

“Can you put the coat back on?” he asked.

“No way!”

“Why...?”

“It’s too heavy to move iiiin! Do you understaaaand?! This feeeeling?!”

“I don’t, really, but can you try to understand how I feel, too?”

“I don’t care about that, so let’s do this! Hoorah! If you won’t come to me, maybe I should go on the attaaaack? Here I coooome!”

Momohina closed in. In an instant, Haruhiro went into work mode like switch had been flipped, jumping back diagonally with all his strength.

Oh, crap. She’s fast. What?

“Hee. Let me guess, you’re no amateur, riiiight?”

That stance. Her left foot and hand were forward, her hips lowered, and her hand open slightly. There was no unused strength anywhere in her body. From a state that looked almost relaxed, she rapidly accelerated. She was the one who was no amateur.

“Entertain me!” she shouted. “Yes, indeed!”

Unlike with a punch or a slap, her arms, her wrists, and even her fingers flexed and assaulted him. Though this couldn’t be the case, it felt like they’d cut him if they hit him. Haruhiro relied on his reflexes to avoid Momohina’s attacks. If he tried to plan out what to do in his head in response to each more, he stood no chance of keeping up.

“Schwing, schwing, schwing, schwing, schwing, schwing, schwing, schwing, schwiiiiing!” she shouted.

What a fierce assault. Fast and flowing. It never let up.

Haruhiro quickly lost the ability to avoid it, and when he blocked with his arm, his arm wasn’t so much knocked away as pushed aside, and he lost his balance. He was cornered in no time. He had no other moves left. Reluctantly, Haruhiro went on the counterattack.

Punching and kicking wasn’t his specialty. He decided to take a combo attack from Momohina, withstand it, and try to grab her arm. A thief’s fighting techniques included a skill called Arrest.

Now.

The moment he thought that, he was flipped over. His arm was grabbed instead, and he was thrown.

“So cloooose!”

Momohina was going for a shot at Haruhiro’s face. Not with a fist, though. What did she plan to do with that unclenched hand? He didn’t know, but he was sure that one attack would work.

He didn’t do it intentionally. The limiter in his brain must have come undone by itself.

Assault.

Haruhiro jumped away from Momohina, then immediately sprang at her. He didn’t think how to use his hands or feet, didn’t think about feinting to get his real attacks in, none of that. He didn’t look at his opponent’s movements, or attempt to sense them. He cut off all of his responses to just attack.

Attack.

His heart pounded, his blood vessels expanded to many times their normal size, and the blood coursed through his body at an unbelievable speed. It didn’t matter that his opponent was female, or that she was human at all, to Haruhiro in his current state. Meat collided with and crushed meat. They could both be reduced to bloody pulp for all he cared. In fact, he wanted that. When attacking with Assault, Haruhiro was himself, but at the same time not himself.

Even so, it wasn’t enough.

Momohina slipped past his right hand, his left hand, his right foot, and his left foot, turning them aside. She was toying with him. Like he was a child.

This is no good.

Momohina was a weird woman, but not an idiot. She must have known from the beginning that she would never lose a hand-to-hand fight. She had lured Haruhiro into a battle she was sure to win. The contest was already decided.

“Is that! The best! You! Can do?!” she shouted.

Having parried the attack Haruhiro had poured every last bit of strength into, she confidently went on the attack. Assault cast aside all reason, completely abandoning defense in order to focus on the attack. If she got him now, he had nothing to give back.

“Delm!” Momohina slammed her palm into Haruhiro’s left flank. Though a direct hit was to his flank, it echoed all the way to the top of his head.

Even as he reeled, Haruhiro fiercely tried to grab her. Momohiro shouted “Hel!” and “En!” striking his left and right shoulders, then his solar plexus with “Balk!” The punishing blows were like stakes being driven into him. At this point, Haruhiro was already losing consciousness. The only thing keeping him on his feet was stubbornness, or guts, or coincidence.

“Zel!” Momohina stepped in, kicking Haruhiro’s left knee.

He fell backwards. He couldn’t keep his footing any longer.

“Arve!”

If Momohina had landed a clean hit on his chin with the palm she brought down, who knows what might have happened to Haruhiro. He might well have died.

Momohina deliberately chose not to hit him.

That wasn’t all. Momohina used the right arm she’d made miss to hug the falling Haruhiro, and to spin him around. At the same time, boom, there was an explosion somewhere else.

Screams and cheers went up and Momohina sat Haruhiro on the ground.

It must have come off at some point during the fight. Her fake mustache was gone.

Momohina’s face was very much that of a young girl. Her real age was unknown, but she looked even younger than Haruhiro and his party. Wait, what had that explosion been just now? Could it have been Blast?

Delm, hel, en, balk, zel, arve... Come to think of it, she’d chanted a spell, hadn’t she? Huh? Then what? Was she a mage?

“I am Momohina! The K&K Pirate Company’s KMW! I’m a kung-fu master, a mage, and a woman! Woo!” she shouted.

The men threw their hands up and cheered with gruff voices. “Oooooooooooh!”

K = Kung-fu Master. M = Mage. W = Woman.

Oh, so that was it. Well, it wasn’t like there was any other KMW, so it was pretty much a straight description of her.

“How’s that?!” Momohina looked down at Haruhiro arrogantly. She looked so... smug. “Flawless! Victory! Oh, yeah! You admit defeat?”

“I admit defeat.”

“Goooood! Now then, from here on, you people are my underlings! Under, under, underlings! Okay!”

“Huh? W-We are...?”

“You bet you are! By fighting mano-a-mano, we formed a bond of bloooood!”

“You say that like fighting makes friends. No, I guess that’s not quite it...”

“It’s fine, it’s fine! Don’t sweat the small stuff! Youth! Power! Guts! It’s YPG! This is pirate law, okay?! Yes, indeed!”

“Pirates...”

Come to think of it, she’d been saying something about the K&K Pirate Company. The men were sailors, and Momohina was apparently their captain. Their ship was run aground over there.

Okay, then. This was a group of pirates. That was their pirate ship, and Momohina was the captain. Thus the mustache? No, she didn’t really need one, did she?

“...Wait, we’re underlings? To a pirate? Huh? Seriously?”