Chapter 34 – Highway Star (1/2)

Translated by a 98% dead Clown

Stoic stood Hifumi, awaiting the Vichy soldiers in his Hakama and Dougi.

The byroads were blocked off, but he stood on the main—a road eight meters in width where a group could easily surround a man.

Yet Hifumi stood in the middle of it.

He expressed no caution; his eyes simply reflected the scene before him.

And he felt happiness.

Behold how many enemies have come! How many he could slay! This scene, this happiness, surely he could never have felt it were he still in Japan.

As the smile rose on his face, a katana rose in his hands; and with speed of lightning striking from the heavens, with the gentleness of a leaf carried by the wind, the katana was swung down.

「・・・Huh?」

The enthusiastic vanguard blinked, unsure of what had happened, but by the time he blinked again he had already drowned in blood. For his face had split open.

Again and again the sound of wind being cut was followed by shrieks.

A step into his range, and the katana tip would reap your life.

Cut the throat.

Pierce the eye.

Slice open an artery where the armor was weak.

Not once did the katana strike bone or armor.

As mechanically as if doing work, as beautifully as if an artist, he repeatedly carved their bodies from every angle.

「Surround him! Encircle and slay him!」

Their captain barked out orders, and as if snapping out of a trance, the soldiers attacked Hifumi from both sides and the rear.

And yet no one managed to wound him.

A sword only cut air around him; a mace merely struck earth.

「How can he evade it?!」

「Pierce the beast, damn it!」

「I don’t want to die…!」

「T-the blood is not stopping…」

Hifumi was quite surrounded: some desperately rushing to be killed, others already a corpse, and yet others soon to become a corpse.

The road was dyed red: and to a friend it may even have looked beautiful.

「Fire the arrows」

「Huh?」

「I’m telling you to shoot that monster!」

The captain angrily responded to his adjutant, who could not comprehend such a bizarre order.

「But, we will hit our own if we fire now」

「I don’t care. If we don’t bring it down, even more will die」

「…Understood」

Curtly replying, the Adjutant offered a prayer and ordered the bowmen to fire.

The arrows, much to the pride of their bowmen, flew tightly together.

Without waiting for the result, the captain began issuing orders to the remaining soldiers.

They were to dismantle the structures blocking the roads and attack the enemy from behind.

He had thus sent a hundred men on this quest.

「No matter how strong he may be, no one can fight this many men」

Ordering the another volley of arrows, the captain was sure of his victory.

A rain of arrows entered Hifumi’s view.

「Too few. They won’t hit」

Taking but a single step away, arrows landed around Hifumi.

A few soldiers around him were hit, and wallowed in agony.

Those who could still move he disposed of; those who were fatally injured he ignored.

He decapitated those who were hit in the shoulder, and then noticed that the enemy’s commander was ordering his men to clear the roads.

「So they had finally begun」

And after briefly cutting down a few more Vichy soldiers, Hifumi confirmed that a hundred men had gone off to clear the roads and smiled.

「So the slaughter finally beings? Come, be a man!」

A flash.

Seeing Hifumi decapitate five more men, even the trained soldiers stopped motionless.

Though he was drenched in their blood, he nonetheless pulled out a paper to wipe the blood from his katana, and, after doing so, sheathed it.

「Guess I should clean up a bit」

Darkness spread from Hifumi’s shadow and swallowed the earth around him. Hifumi use his darkness magic to dispose of the corposes.

Vichy soldiers were terrified, although it had no effect on them—you can’t store away a living thing.

With Hifumi in the center of a sea of darkness, the myriad corpses sunk and disappeared.

As if the battle had never happened.

「Now then, I’m going to go get your captain’s head. Do try to stop me please.」

At some point the katana on Hifumi’s waist was replaced with a 130 cm long pole.

「It’s my first time using this weapon. Surely you won’t resent me for not killing you quickly?」

They would probably resent him no matter how he killed him; the few soldiers who remained now had their heads smashed in. As before, they just kept on dying.

But unlike before, Hifumi was slowly walking forward even as he continued to slay countless men.

「Come on, keep the line. Ready your blades… Oh?」

A second rain of arrows has come.

Hifumi twisted the end of the pole, and a chain dangled out from within it.

With all their men firing in unison, there far more arrows this time.

And while Hifumi was deflecting the arrows with the chain and approaching the Vichy captain, distant screams reached his ears.

Although the blockade was made of a durable material, if many people were to press on it, surely it would eventually fall.

The same occurred, and many soldiers started heading towards the main.

The first among them were the youngest, those unaccustomed to war.

And after a few steps the ground beneath their feet disappeared only to reveal iron and wooden pikes.

Unable to so much as scream their bodies were pierced, and those who fell on top of them rendered fatal their wounds.