Novel Full Chapter 1736: Please Explain
Chapter 1736: Please Explain
*Clang!*
The ring of steel on steel carried from the east, sharp and rhythmic, two blades meeting at speeds that turned each exchange into a single sustained note of violence, and Black Fang looked up.
Her gaze moved east, past the smoke and the dying, toward the source of the clanging where Kaede’s radiant arcs lit the sky and a figure slipped between them like water through cracks in stone.
A smile crossed the Venomborne Terror’s face, and it was so genuine it looked wrong on her.
"Isn’t my little sister amazing?"
Chizuru flinched from the dirt where she lay broken, because the warmth in those words was everything the old woman had been denied.
Black Fang had two sisters on this battlefield, and the one she claimed had been the one the Fujimori discarded.
"What..." Chizuru’s voice came thin and wet through the blood on her lips.
Her eyes tracked the distant fight, the impossible angles, the impeccable footwork. "What happened to that girl’s swordsmanship? It’s not... that isn’t what we taught her."
Black Fang replied nonchalantly, still not looking back at Chizuru.
"He took us to a place where the primordial demigods live. While he fought the demon who now fuels his existence, Ayame and I spent a month training with a woman called Hanae."
Chizuru’s body went rigid.
The name hit something older than memory, buried in scrolls she’d read once as a newly appointed elder and never touched again, texts so ancient the ink had faded to ghosts on the paper. Founding records.
"That name..." Her voice barely carried. "I heard of her... But the records aren’t clear-"
"She’s the progenitor of all eastern humans, the oldest ancestor." Black Fang’s violet eyes finally settled on Chizuru’s face, though her expression remained flat save for the sadistic joy dancing in her gaze as she delivered the news. "And the strongest samurai to have ever lived."
"What...? Trained by the progenitor...? But she should be many, many millions of years old..."
"Yes, she is," Black Fang confirmed kindly. "Billions, actually."
"..." The old woman’s gaze drifted back to the distant fight where arcs shattered against a blade that moved like it had been forged in a different era, and the realization that settled across her face broke something that hadn’t broken yet.
Chizuru curled tighter into the hard ground, knees against her chest, and began muttering. "Nonsense... That’s nonsense, it can’t... The Progenitor of the Fujimori herself?"
"And all other eastern humans of Thalorind," Black Fang interjected, correcting the ramblings. "The Fujimori clan is said to be just one of many."
The Venomborne Terror was rather accommodating all of a sudden.
"... A cruel joke... The Goddess’s cruel joke on us..."
Her fingers clawed into the dirt, shaking. "An anomaly that should not exist... It’s not fair... It’s not..."
The words dissolved into something that wasn’t language anymore, a broken elderly woman rocking in the dirt with her eyes screwed shut.
Seeing Chizuru’s state of denial, Black Fang finally looked up.
Alexios stood with his longsword planted in the frozen dirt and his head tilted toward the sky, chest heaving, eyes closed.
The quiet on his face belonged to a man who had finished something he’d been owed and now felt great satisfaction, reveling in victory.
In his left hand, held by the topknot, dangled the severed head of the fifth Fujimori elder, Masato, the eyes still wide with the surprise that had outlived their owner.
Hozumi lay at the old king’s feet in a spreading pool of dark red, one hand still wrapped around a sword he would never swing again, his breathing shallow and hitching.
Black Fang’s eyes narrowed and the bloodlust that poured off her thickened the air between them, because the deal had been clear.
Alexios could only have one elder.
The king opened his eyes, looked at her, and chuckled.
"I accepted your deal but said I wouldn’t wait." He let the head drop. "You took your sweet time with those three, so I ended up taking one more."
The bloodlust thickened, and Alexios raised a palm before it reached his throat.
"You wanted to toy with that two-faced cunt’s mind, which I understand fully. I’ll have some great talks with Hozumi as well. However..."
He then shrugged. "I could say a lot of words right now, but eh. It is what it is, lass."
Before the tension between them could grow, Black Fang’s senses caught something from the left, a pulse of abyssal energy so dense and so familiar it cut through the battlefield’s noise like a blade through smoke.
She turned.
The woman walking toward them looked like she had crawled out of a demon’s fever dream and enjoyed the trip.
White hair matted with blood, crimson tattoos blazing in interlocking patterns with the Bloodfather’s brand across her belly, tiny pointed horns crowning her forehead and a sleek succubus tail swaying behind her in a lazy rhythm that had no business looking so elegant amid the carnage.
Ryonosuke’s severed head dangled from one hand by the hair, the Mad Dog’s expression frozen in the snarl he’d worn when the Hexwitch took it from him, and the sword in her other hand dripped a trail of red across the snow.
Her pentagram eyes burned so deep the black at their centers had swallowed most of the crimson, and the smile on her blood-spattered face was radiant.
Black Fang observed her from head to tail.
"A fitting look."
Vex’s smile widened. "You really think so, master?"
She tossed Ryonosuke’s head at Chizuru, hitting the old woman in the head with the head.
Chizuru flinched and curled tighter, but did not react further.
"I adore my little horns, they’re so cute! Hubby will love them too, for sure..." Vex sang happily then did a slow twirl on the balls of her feet with her arms spread and her tail tracing a circle behind her, showing off every angle of the transformation like a girl in a new dress.
"I had a bit of a mental breakdown about my age and being outshone by the others," she said brightly, cutely. "So I may have ended up robbing Nyxara of a few things."
Before Black Fang could respond, the Hexwitch lunged.
Arms wrapped around the Venomborne Terror’s neck and Vex crushed herself against her with a force that had nothing to do with combat, burying her face in Black Fang’s shoulder.
"I’m so happy you’re okay...!"
The words came out muffled and raw, stripped of every layer of playfulness.
It was, by any measure, an unusual relationship.
Black Fang had saved a nine-year-old Vex from the lionkin who ate her family, then immediately tossed her into a monster-infested forest with a knife and told her to find her way out.
Most people would not describe this as maternal warmth, but she was the closest thing Vex had to a parent figure, and the arms around the Venomborne Terror’s neck said everything her lips didn’t.
Black Fang stood rigid with her katana at her side, accepting the weight without returning it.
Then Vex’s grip shifted.
The raw relief drained from the embrace and curiosity moved in behind it, the arms loosening just enough for the Hexwitch to pull back and meet her mentor’s gaze with a smile that had changed temperature entirely.
"Can I ask a question, though?"
Black Fang slipped out of the hug so fast her afterimage was still being held.
Vex watched her go, and her pentagram eyes sharpened.
"Your new look is also very fitting, master..." Her gaze dropped to the violet glow pulsing through Black Fang’s clothing below the navel.
"I thought things were very dire... The girls and I fought hard to hold the front down while Quin went to rescue you, but I suppose things got a bit ’complicated,’ or should I say ’heated?’... I can’t help but wonder what happened during that rescue of yours..."
Black Fang’s eyes moved to the treeline.
"What do you think happened?" Alexios chimed in from behind his planted longsword, as relaxed as if he were watching theater. "They-"
Black Fang’s death glare that hit the old king made the one he’d received for stealing a second elder look like a warm greeting.
"Shut it, old man," Vex added without looking at him, her focus still locked on Black Fang’s belly. "This is a very serious ladies talk. Don’t butt in uninvited. Go protect your daughter or something."
"..." Alexios closed his eyes, the triumph of his victory rapidly deflating thanks to the cold glare he was receiving from both women.
’Am I too old to understand this generation of women?’ he wondered, watching a demonic woman interrogate a serpent assassin about a glowing womb tattoo on a battlefield littered with the dead. ’No, they’re just a pair of crazies.’
"So, master...?" Vex purred.
"It’s none of your concern, disciple."