Chapter 25: Sarutobi Clan
At night, the townspeople take turn to go above ground to poop, take bath and pee. The three girls and me, are wandering around Sooka with torchlights.
As we are walking between the forest and the town, we notice silhouette of 3 men and two small figures from nearly 100 meters away. In this snowy night, we are only able to detect them because of these torchlights.
"Orcs?" Clementine is juggling her dirk while glancing at other girls.
"Doesn't look like orcs " Ivanna draws her sword as the approaching figures are about 100 meters from us. These figures are in black.
"Ready!" The girls are ready with their stance as they are now The weak me stand behind them.
Rather blindly running towards us, the 5 silhouettes approach us in small steps.
"Damn, they are good." We are instinctively retreating several steps backward as Sekrit mutters, creating distance.
When they are 5 meters away, we could see their appearance clearly.
Their entire body are obscured in jet black clothing save their eyes. Said clothing are made of cloth, with gauntlets and other pieces of armor to improve defensive ability. Two short figures have metal plate covered their chest, but it bulged visibly, giving it the shape of a pair of feminine breasts. One is slightly taller than another female.
The other three are similarly-dressed figure but they are clearly men.
"Nice too meet you. Please forgive our impudence. We would like to request a duel with you." A voice comes from the muscular looking who is the second tallest among them. Based on that voice, he is probably in his sixties or seventies.
The old man attacks Sekrit and the tallest Man attacks Ivanna. Clementine dashes to the third man. The two female remain stationary.
The six exchange blows for quite some time as I am anxiously waiting whether the remaining two will attack me. The two females seems to be observing the fights but frequently glance towards me.
After over 10 minutes, I realize peculiarity. Our foes rarely use their weapons to attack the girls. They only dodge and parry while the girls are struggling to cut their opponents. Plus their two female members are just standing and spectating. If they are that free and have killing intent, they rationally should attack me.
"Don't look down on me!" Clementine shouts as her attack hits air again and again.
Sekrit furrows her eyebrows and look frustrated. Ivanna ceases attacking and is in stand by mode but her opponent stop attacking as well.
These people are superior than us but they clearly have no killing intention.
Their fights already shift to a compound of a village house.
If my sixth sense is correct, these guys are just testing our strength. Summoning my courage, I run to in between Clementine's and Sekrit's fight and barks,
"Stop this!"
The fights immediately cease as if they are never intended to start.
"Ho...ho....ho...ho...." The old guy takes off his mask and head cover, and laugh. His white beard is long that it reaches his chest.
The tallest man and others also do the same. He is a middle age man with thick black moustache, beard and side burn that connect to his beard.
The third man black beard but thin moustache, should be in early thirties.
The two female members have short black hair. The taller one is nearly 160cm and smaller one is slightly shorter. Their skin is perfectly snow white like Ivanna. The older is about 16, and the smaller one is about 14. Despite their very young age, the chest is bulging from under the black cloth. The bigger girl should be around B cup and the younger girl should be around B minus. The older girl's bang cover most of her forehead. Her bob haircut cover her cheeks and ears. Her short hair is more voluminous than Clementine's fringe short hair.
The younger girl's pixie haircut could be easily mistaken as boy's hair. The boyish pixie haircut however cannot hide her cute girly face, the obvious bulging on her chest as well as her big ass.
These five persons have slim, but short and less projecting nose like me, which are the first I ever encounter in this universe. Until now, all I ever see is various types of pointing nose.
Our three girls just keep silent before the laughing old man, perhaps because they had been indirectly defeated by the men in black.
Sekrit and Ivanna click their tongues while Clementine is biting her right thumb.
However, the opposing sides doesn't look down on us, doesn't manifest arrogance.
Once he stops laughter, he signals to his comrades, and they nod. The five of them now before us.
"We ask for your forgiveness. We just want to test your skill. No hard feelings."
"You .." the girls are about to raise their voice but I raise my hand first.
"It's fine as long as no one is hurt. But I hope you can explain your motives." I speak politely using businessman's tone that I am familiar with.
They stand straight and walk into the vacated wooden house beside us, his gesture is high sign for us to follow. I give cue by my eyes for the girls to go along with them.
There are only 4 wooden chairs in the house. I sit on a chair and give them go ahead to use the chair after the girls quickly park their asses onto window stools. The men sit in the chairs.
"What are you?" Sekrit ask right after they sit.
The muscular old man sit straight, his large back doesn't touch the chair's splat at all. The same goes for other two men.
Their palm rest on their laps.
"My name is Sarutobi Hiruzen. I am the leader of Sooka hidden village."
He then turn his face towards the middle aged man.
"He is my only son, Sarutobi Azuma." Then, his face turns to young man.
"He is a clan member, Sarutobi Sasuke. Kurotsuchi, come forward."
The older girl with voluminous bob haircut walk to his side.
"She is my granddaughter, Sarutobi Kurotsuchi."
After the introduction, Kurotsuchi stands with one arm akimbo, the other resting on her grandfather's shoulder, and winks towards me. Her cuteness makes me blushing. I also sense anger from the direction of Ivanna.
"Ehem. Nice to meet you." Pretending to be calm, I direct my words to her.
"She is Sarutobi Mirai, a clan member." As Hiruzen introduces, the younger girl walk to my side. She has no expression. I smile at her but she just nod emotionlessly.
"Sarutobi is noble family that own Sooka. Are you related to them? Ivanna interrogates while walking to my side, standing. Now, impassive Mirai is on my left and irate Ivanna is on my right.
"We are the same family of different branch. We The noble family communicates openly with federation while concealing the hidden village, keeping dark of our presence. Unlike the noble family, we stay out of world's sight and develop our skills."
"So you guys hole up. Do the noble family of Sarutobi know about you?" Sekrit interrogates.
"Only handful of them know us. The ones who are aware of us frequently communicate with us."
"If you are that skilled, why orcs ravage Sooka?" Clementine interrogates.
Hiruzen closes his eyes for a minute, then open his eyes.
"Hidden village is far from Sooka. But my daughter possess ability of clairvoyance. We know the orcs' invasion but their exact time and whereabout are beyond her."
"You..."
Before Ivanna could further asks, he resumes while looking at me.
"For the past 1 month, she envisioned the advent of a 'tie-breaker' !"
"Tie breaker, what the hell is that?" Clementine interrogates.
"From before I was born, the ultimate prophesy is one day there would be a person called tie breaker's coming into this universe. The political ties between countries, kingdoms and noble families, and military are balanced by a tie. Tie holds all this thing together even if the situt is unjust. Tie breaker will break this tie for best, or for the worst."
"What time breaker git to do with us?" Clementine raises her voice.
"3 days ago, my daughter foretold the tie breaker will come to this village. Unfortunately, when he comes is beyond her."
I don't like where this conversation is heading.
The middle aged man edges in,
"My elder sister vaguely see the image of the tie breaker. He has black hair and nose like us, but his skin is dark brown. Not too short and not too tall. There are women accompanying him. On the same day as the orcs' maraud, she detects you, who resembles that, stepping into Sooka."
"That fortune teller is my mother." Hiruzen punch Kurotsuchi lightly after she disclosed that.
"I'm sorry to disappoint you but I am not that 'tie breaker' guy." I turn down their hope.
They just coolly grin as if they already knew I would gainsay.
"And that bring down to this. We would like to hire you to help us. " His proposition is fluently conveyed as if it is schemed in advance.
"We need you to run down the forest on the east of Sooka. My clairvoyant oracle daughter's omen is something beneficial will occur to you, and to us if the tie breaker goes there."
"Isn't dangerous there? There are orcs after all." I deny.
"My daughter forebade you will orcs but the number is not many. I will give you 1,000 raw gold coins once if you go there."
Suddenly, two large boobs sandwich my head from behind. The boobs owner, Sekrit enjoins,
"We will go there for that 1,000 cold coins. But how can you assure us it is tried and true?"
Hiruzen immediately responds as if he has already decided in advance,
"My precious granddaughter, Kurotsuchi will tag along. Mirai also will stick to you."
The three girls become speechless.