Chapter 105 - Accidental Intruders

"COME BACK HERE YOU PIECE OF SHIT!"

"HEY MAN! I'M SORRY. I DIDN'T KNOW!"

Two figures suddenly emerge from the forest and they fly up to the night sky.

A man in his late twenties whose toned body is exposed due to the absence of clothing on his top, and has his pair of huge earthen owl wings flapping on his back, is currently attempting to flee from a tracksuit wearing thirty something year old man who is currently atop of a giant flame wasp that is brightening the thick woods he passes by.

"YOU CAN'T RUN FOREVER! JUST GIVE UP!" The older man yells.

"AS LONG AS YOU DON'T HURT ME!" The younger man yells back still frantically flapping his wings.

"ALRIGHT! STOP THEN! I'LL HEAR YOU OUT!" The older man says.

"FOR REAL?!" The younger man is tempted to stop as he his already starting to get exhausted after tens of kilometers of intense flight.

"YES." The older man says.

"ALRIGHT."  The younger man then anxiously stops flapping his wings and decides to simply glide in a circular manner, having no choice.

He is close to his limit. There are also holes on his wings from suffering the man's flame wasp's flame stingers.

To his relief, his pursuer also slows down and looks to have calmed down.

"Speak." The older man orders coldly as he wills his wasp to hover.

"Can we land somewhere?" The younger man asks.

"No." The older man makes his wasp show its stinger, intimidating the younger man.

"Okay…" the younger man grits his teeth and starts to recount his story.

"I was delivering a package to my last customer for the day, which is her. Then… she… y-your…"

He nervously swallows.

"My girlfriend…" The older man clarifies through gritted teeth.

"Y-your girlfriend…" The younger man almost sighs in relief finding out that he did not sleep with a married woman.

"She invited me for a cup of hot cocoa. I was exhausted, and thirsty, so I took the offer. Then… one thing led to another…" He is tempted to run away seeing the grim look on the older man's face, and the flame wasp lighting that face from below it is not helping.

"Look, sir. That's really it. I really regret doing what I did. If it's worth anything, I would never have done it if I knew she's taken." He can only plead.

"So… did she have fun?" The older man asks.

"What?" The younger man is taken aback by the question.

"I said… did she have fun?" The older man asks again.

"I-I guess? I mean…" The younger man shrugs.

But as soon as his answer came out of his mouth, he regrets it.

"Is that so?" The older man's face takes a darker tone even with the light coming from his flame wasp.

"No… No. I saw wrong… I was a virgin before tonight, so everything's fuzzy." The younger man says in panic.

"Is that so?" The older man asks.

"Yes. For sure." The younger man nods.

"What's your name?" The older man asks.

"Ippei, sir." The younger man says.

"Last name?" The older man asks.

"*gulp*" Ippei swallows nervously, and his mind starts running.

He realizes that such pattern of questioning only comes from people who can ruin his life.

"Haruki…" He quickly comes up with a fake surname.

"Haruki huh…" The older man expresses his skepticism.

"Y-yes." Ippei says, cursing himself of coming up with a fake name that can also be used as a first name, therefore making his answer.

"Right…" The older man growls.

Ippei knows that he has angered the man and hastily looks around. A second later, he spots a very thickly vegetated hill nearby.

Seeing a potential refuge, he shoots a few earthen feathers from his wings to his pursuer's direction before diving down, hoping to use the covers of that hill's vegetation to hide.

Unfortunately for him, the crumbly feathers of his wings are not enough to injure his pursuer and it even angered the man.

"IPPEI! HOW DARE YOU!" 

Ippei's looks behind him and his eyes widen as the injury or at least distraction he hoped to achieve did not work. Instead, tens of smaller flame wasps are now pursuing him, all ready to shoot their stingers at him once they close a certain distance gap from him.

His hope is not lost however as the hill is already right below him.

As he unfolds his wings to land however, his brain short circuits.

The thickets he was hoping to hide in, suddenly disappears. What appears below him instead is what looks like a much clearer hillside, and a traditional house that still has its lights on a few tens of meters away from him.

The next moment, he feels his body land on something soft which he figures is a bush. He does not have time to process where he just landed as he sees his surrounding get brighter, which he knows is coming from the flame wasps that followed him. .

He quickly summons his wings once again to prepare to fight with the remaining energy of his ability, hoping that the smaller flame wasps are weak enough for him to put out.

Meanwhile, on the sky, the man with the flame wasp ability, is surprised to see his wasps suddenly disappear almost all at once. What he found more mystifying is Ippei's figure suddenly disappeared too. He then wills his ride and goes to where he last saw Ippei's figure.

The next moment, he is mystified that the forest he was about to burn down, is actually not a forest. With his flame wasp as a light source, he sees that he just arrived at what looks like a hillside garden.

He immediately finds that on a pathway, the flame wasps he thought have disappeared are currently assaulting a figure which he knows is Ippei's, shelled under wings.

"Ippei. How long can you keep it up?" He grins savagely, imagining Ippei's body peppered with burns from the stingers of his wasps.

"WHO GOES THERE?!" The wasp man and Ippei are interrupted from their activity by the arrival of a gaunt and tall, kimono-wearing man.

"OH NO! THE HERBS!!!" The gaunt man's appearance is immediately followed by the frantic arrival of a plain looking man, also wearing a kimono.

"THEY'VE BEEN BURNT TOO! YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!" The plain looking man continues to rage.

"I'll compensate you generously. All I ask is your silence." The flame wasp man says in dismissal.

"Silence my butt!" The plain looking man's arms suddenly transform into thorned vine whips and slaps it to the wasp man.

"I warned you!" The wasp man simply retreats, dodging the whips.

He summons tens of wasps, smaller than the ones assaulting Ippei, and sends them to the plain looking man.

*tatatata* The plain looking man is almost defenseless against flaming stingers.

"AHH!" and he cannot help but yelp in pain as the stingers start burning his skin.

"Goichi!" The gaunt man attends to the sloth demon, and hurriedly puts out the flame stingers using his sand ability.

"Thanks, Nishiki." Goichi is relieved of the rescue of his fellow sloth demon.

"I'm warning you. Stay out of this, and we all go home happy." The wasp man says to Nishiki who is about to attack.

Nishiki stops. He also knows that he is no match for the superioris, so he "INTRUDERS!!!" yells for help instead.

The wasp man is taken aback by Nishiki's yell, finding it too similar to how the security guards of his clan compound, yell out the same word.

A few moments later, Kotone arrives.

"Who are you?" She asks the wasp man.

The wasp man's eyes jump looking at Kotone's facial features, and the shine on her almost flawless skin.

"Nagasawa Amon, from Kofu's Nagasawa Clan. Pretty lady, I can only wish we're meeting in a more civil circumstance." Amon introduces himself.

"AHH!H!" Ippei at this time, manages to put out two thirds of the flame wasps that Amon has on him, but his wings are at an even more pathetic state, with only a few of its feathers remaining, while his body already has a few small stingers on them, slowly burning his skin.

"How about more?" Amon sends thirty more flame wasps to Ippei's way.

"What's your name, my lady?" He then turns his attention back to Kotone.

Kotone's attention meanwhile, is on the herbs that are being burnt by the flame wasps.

"Stop your flames." She requests from Amon. "Those herbs are hard to grow."

"I assure you, my lady, that I will compensate your herbs with better ones." Amon says.

Kotone at this point gets angry, looking at the continually burning herbs.

The next moment, *whoosh*  she is already beside Ippei and, proceeds to *sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh* put out the flame wasps with swipes of her katana.

Amon's eyes widen at the speed at which Kotone dashed to Ippei's rescue, and is at an even more intense disbelief at the blinding speed at of Kotone's sword.

Soon, all the wasps are neutralized.

"You…" Kotone then looks at Amon.

"*gulp*" Amon swallows nervously as he sends wasps towards Kotone while willing his ride to retreat and fly up ten meters up.

He is relieved that he was able to flee, seeing Kotone dodge the stingers, and subsequently puts out the wasps.

Unfortunately for him, Fumio suddenly appears in front of his flame mount. With but a swipe from Fumio, he sees his wasp mount collapse to unstable flames.

"AH!" He yelps in panic as he starts falling. He knows that he is not fast enough to summon another mount, so he can only brace himself for a fall.

Before he can hit the ground however, he is caught by Kotone.

Even though he is saved, Kotone's arm that caught him by the abdomen "*EUGHGHH*" rocks his organs.

"Wait… Let's talk about this, my fair lady!" Amon frantically pleads as he scampers backwards.

"What's there to talk about?"

He feels his back bump into someone however.

After turning around, he panics seeing Fumio, the one who easily clawed his big wasp with bare hands.

Despite his fear of Fumio, "Y-you can't hurt me!" he manages to express.

"Oh? And why is that?" Red suddenly appears out of nowhere, startling Amon.

"Oh? The intruders?" Yoshiko also arrives, late in the action.

"Boss." Fumio greets Red.

"Ki-… Master." Kotone greets.

"Sir… Here's what happened…" Goichi is also quick to report, while giving Amon glares.

"S-sir… Are these your herbs?" Amon asks Red.

"Yes, they are. And… You've made a mess of them." Red says coldly.

"I-I'm sorry. That villain over there was the first to intrude your property and I just happened to follow him in." Amon points to Ippei who is being dragged closer to the group by Nishiki.

"I'm not a villain! You liar!" Ippei still has the strength to pounce on Amon, but he is held tightly by the demon of sloth.

"Liar?! Who really did wrong here?" Amon yells back.

"I did wrong, but what you were doing was not fair! In fact, I'm an assault victim here!" Ippei argues.

"She's mine!" Amon growls.

"Not your wife!" Ippei bites back.

"Nishiki. Knock the guy out, please." Red orders.

The two intruders' thoughts are too loud that even just a brush of his spirit sense managed to get the whole story.

"Thank you, sir!" Amon says smugly seeing Ippei knocked out cold.

"Thanks? For what? I don't care about your business. It's what you did to my herbs that's the problem here." Red says coldly.

"Sir.. I assure you that me and my Nagasawa Clan can compensate your herbs two times over!" Amon promises.