Chapter 71 - Talismans, Sigils, And Such

"Ah… I can't believe I'm helping in clearing their name." Gin shakes his head after doing one last read through of the script he worked on for the past few hours. 

"I know. The uh… detention of you has been rather excessive, but you were simply caught up between the politics, and clan bullcrappery." Fumio consoles Gin as he does a final check of the filming equipment.

"I know." Gin sighs as he fixes his suit and hair.

"Hey. You're getting skilled at that." He then comments on how comfortable Fumio looks in setting up the filming equipment.

"Hey. It's interesting." Fumio simply shrugs.

"Hey. How did you go back to the Kumagai unnoticed, film the things they've been doing, and come back casually like you didn't just trespass in a clan compound alone." Gin asks as he goes to stand with his back towards a wall covered in green cloth, and facing towards Fumio's camera. 

"I know boss said that you won't even think about betraying us, but I'd rather keep these secrets." Fumio shrugs as he adjusts the lighting.

"Hell. I get it." Gin gives up his curiosity.

"So ready?" Fumio asks.

"Ready." Gin nods, and with that Fumio rolls the camera.

<><><><><><><><>

Good day.

Despite the countless experts that confirmed the legitimacy of the footage our team shot, there are still many skeptics among the public. It is understandable. After all, many believe that demons are no longer among us, and that they were wiped out a lifetime's worth of years ago.

So, I have a follow-up regarding my report yesterday about the demon incident in the Kumagai Compound at Nikko City.

This morning, my team and I managed to infiltrate the Kumagai Compound once again. Here is what we've witnessed.

{Roll Footage}

As you can all see, some of the Kumagai clansmen have gathered in their clan hall. The white powder they are collecting in those vats is salt. Your common salt. You are all curious why the Kumagai need this large amount of salt, and you all will see in a moment.

To those who are not familiar, these two people leading this procedure are a Shinto Priest and a Catholic Knight, probably invited by the Kumagai Clan.

Using the salt collected in the vats, the Shinto Priest on the left is drawing a giant talisman on the floor, and the Catholic Knight on the right is drawing a giant sigil.

The two are basically making the same thing; wards that have been widely used by mankind during the great war and the few subsequent years after that, to ward off demons.

Moving forward, the wards are done and the Kumagai clan head enters the talisman of the Shinto priest, and proceeds to and walk to the middle of it.

As you all can see, nothing happens and he proceeds to successfully exit the boundaries of the talisman.

That means that the Shinto priest's talisman did not detect a demon inside the clan head.

But it seems that the Kumagai want to make sure so they invited this Catholic Knight.

The Clan head safely walks over the Catholic Knight's sigils, and exits it, therefore the Catholic magic did not detect a demon. The same result with the Shinto priest's talisman. It is safe to say that the clan head, passing the test of two kinds of wards, is clear of being possessed by a demon.

With the clan head's lead, the rest of the Kumagai clansmen also follow. This scene is not only happening in the Kumagai clan, but in Sagamihara's Hasegawa Clan.

The demon, assuming the identity of one Hasegawa Hideki, and disguising its demonic acts through serial murders, probably is what prompted the Hasegawa Clan to do the same.

These two clans' anti-demon efforts also prompted some other clans to do the same.

Here is a footage of ****** Clan from *******, ****** Clan from *******, and some others that we have not documented.

<><><><><><><><>

A few minutes later, "Phew… This is nice. Shit." Gin takes a deep breath and takes off his tie, proud of his work.

The filming of his segment was just done.

"Good job." Fumio nods as he quickly turns off the equipment.

"But I'm not sure if THN will take this one this time. After all, there are five clan compounds in our footage this time in our footage." Gin scrunches his brows.

"Yeah, well, this time, we're only uploading this to the internet." Fumio tells him.

"I only have a few thousand followers on my social media." Gin scratches his head, confused at the decision.

"Boss will handle it." Fumio shrugs.

"Aight." Gin can only accept.

"So. Where's Kotone-san by the way? Haven't seen her all day." He asks.

"Ah. Well, she does have a job." Fumio replies as he sorts what he just filmed.

"Oh… And you?" Gin asks.

"Staying here to train is my job. And picking fruits. And weeding things out. And whatever errands boss sends me outside." Fumio explains.

Unlike Red's more mystical secrets, Fumio is more comfortable sharing to Gin other things. After all, "I wonder what job Kichirou-san will give me?", Gin is now in Red's employ.

"You really wanna work for boss? There must be other jobs you can do with your skills." Fumio asks.

"Yeah. Kichirou-san told me that he will use my face from time to time, just like what we're doing right now. Well, for now at least." Gin shares.

"Huh… I wonder what he needs you to do that for." Fumio is confused by Red and Gin's arrangement.

"Ouch. Hey. It would break my heart to live on my savings. Kichirou-san is my lifesaver." Gin chuckles.

"Besides. It's risky to go job hunting for me. I'd rather do this for now."

He too, is confused why Red has to use him, when Red's Mr. Fool is enough to gather fanfare.

[-][-][-]

Chiyoda

"There! …" A man in his 30s excitedly points at a monitor displaying CCTV feeds.

"Finally…" His partner, around ten years older, perks up.

"Where?" The older man then leans closer to the monitor, looking at a square displaying the feed of a side-walk.

"Guy in green." The younger man says.

"Okay…" The older man taps a few keys on the keyboard, and a profile appears on his laptop.

And a few more taps, he sends the profile to someone.

"Phew. Already the second one this week, right?" The older man asks.

"Yeah." The younger man nods.

"Probably the demons up north all fled here. Probably to get away from Mr. Fool." He guesses.

"Yeah…"

*ding**dong* suddenly, the older man's phone rings from a text.

.

.

"Hm?" A few minutes later.

"Damn it." The older man almost smashes his phone on the table.

"What's wrong?" The younger man rarely sees his partner annoyed.

"It's that damn reporter. Made another video. Spread in the internet real fast too." The older man reports.

"What?" The younger man quickly searches for any videos about Gin, and opens one, and him and his partner start watching.

After watching the latest video of Gin, the two are in a daze.

"It's worse than I thought." The older man says.

"Yeah." The young man can only agree.

"It won't take long before B-Level Clans start doing what we're doing." The older man shakes his head.

The two are clan members of Chiyoda's Murakami Clan, and are working under Murakami Clan's secret Demon Hunting Squad.

Clans like them that have the longest histories, and have more resources to spare, have long found out about the rise of the demons in the past few decades.

They not only treat demons as enemies, but also resources because of the demon's cores.

One of the ways they find demons, is by setting up demon warding sigils in sidewalks and crosswalks, and cover those locations with high-definition, facial recognition featured CCTV cameras.

If these two men, through these security cameras, see a person that tries to circumvent walking on the demon warding sigils, just like the man in green that the young man spotted in the CCTV, they will immediately match that person to the government database, and if that person is in the database, they will send that person's profile to the ones who are responsible for the actual tracking and killing of the demon.

Murakami's secret demon hunting squad would usually harvest one demon core twice to thrice a month from their hunt. The demon cores, being expensive and rare commodity, fetch high price among people of high society, making them a nice side-gig for the Murakami Clan.

Now that Fumio and Gin exposed some clans' demon warding activities, the other clans who never saw demon hunting as a good source of income, will get an idea.

"More clans trying to hunt demons, the more demons will lie low. And the more demons lie low… the less commissions we get. I mean, our squad only catch two demons a month. If that becomes even less, we're fucked." The older man starts panicking.

"Hey calm down, senior. Heheh." The younger man consoles.

"Easy for you to say. My girl's going to college this year. I need those commissions." The older man gives his partner a glare.

"Hey. It's better to not panic, that's all I'm sayin." The younger man shrugs.

[.][.][.][.][.]

Somewhere in Saitama. 

A Mountainside.

A man hurriedly ties up an unconscious man, in case his captive wakes up immediately.

Done tying up, he takes out his tanto, draws it, and is about to deliver a stab, when *crshh**crshh* he hears something behind him.

He instinctively knows that the sound is produced by someone stepping on dry leaves and twigs. The sound of the twigs is followed by a familiar voice.

"Hands off the demon, or I'll pepper you with arrows." A woman calls out.

"And why would I do that? Eri-san?" The man turns around and tries not to close his eyes at the bright sun rising behind the woman.

"Jiro-san?" The woman drops her bow.

The two after all, are from neighboring rural clans.

"Nice to see you." Jiro greets, still holding the point of his tanto against his captive's neck.

While he has a smile on his face, he wants to curse Eri to the depths of hell.

His clan having more foresight than the Kumagai, and lesser number of members, already started looking for hiding demons amongst their members as soon as they heard of the rumors that leaked out of Kumagai.

His clan however did not find a demon through the sigils. After all, the demon noticed immediately and knew how to hide.

Jiro on the other hand, by chance, noticed that a fellow clansman, an acquaintance of his, was acting oddly.

That made him suspicious. That suspicion led to hours of observation. The observation led to a confrontation. And that confrontation led to pursuit.

A great achievement is right within his reach, but Eri suddenly gets in the way.

"Nice to see you too. But please, hand over the demon." Eri does not want to fight.

It has been a while since she last saw Jiro and she does not know how strong the man is now.

"Look, Eri-san. I've been tailing this one for a few hours now." Jiro argues. He is also as wary as Eri.

"Well, too bad. You're trespassing." Eri argues back.

"Come on. It's my clansman it's possessing." Jiro argues again.

"How do I know that?" Eri is skeptical.

Jiro, with a swipe of his tanto, cuts his captive's shirt open, revealing a clan emblem tattooed on his captive's chest.

"Convinced?" He smugly asks rhetorically.

Eri is about to retort when, "Hah..hah…hahhh…" , the two of them hear a familiar laughter reverberate in the air.

"Oh no…" Jiro's smug smile transforms to a face of defeat.

Like the two feared, a man in red jester costume appears out of thin air in between them.