Volume 3, Chapter 29 – Gloom

Name:Demon Sword Maiden Author:
Volume 3, Chapter 29 - Gloom

Translator: Aoi

Lily and Shiu were guided inside one of the lodge’s rooms by the old woman.

“You can lodge into this room. I shall go prepare some food for you.”

The old woman lit the quaint little oil lamp within the room, and its feeble flames lit up the room dimly, bringing the worn-down paper window and the cobwebs at the corners of the room into view faintly. However, the living conditions for a majority of the Heian Empire’s commoners were much worse than this.

Lily and Shiu observed this gloom-filled little room and had a feeling that the premises were a bit too quiet.

“Grandma, are there other lodgers within this lodge?” Lily enquired.

The old woman was taken aback, but she still replied promptly, “Yes, but they are all asleep.”

Saying so, the old woman left the room.

When Lily and Shiu sat down in the room, their senses caught a moldy smell in the air.

“Sis, this room stinks a bit,” Shiu said while frowning.

Lily observed the room and said, “Endure it.”

A few moments later, the old woman brought a wooden table with two bowls of miso soup, tea, and simple dishes arranged on it.

“Most of Tsutsujigasaki Castle’s merchants have left the city in recent times and traveling merchants rarely visit, too. This has led to a lack of variety in food ingredients, but please have as much as you wish, girls,” the old woman stated.

Looking at the food, which consisted of cold miso soup and bad-smelling dishes, Lily and Shiu really didn’t feel like eating it.

“Grandma,” Lily asked, “Since when did it become like this here?”

“You girls must’ve come from outside. It’s either miners or farm women that reside in the Kai Province, but we don’t have pretty well-bred girls like you here, which is a real pity.”

“Why is it a pity?”

“Hehe. Don’t mind it. I think it was about a year ago. This place was the cornerstone of the entire Kanto region prior to that as a majority of the crude iron was produced within Tsutsujigasaki Castle. Furthermore, as Lord Takeda is the overlord of the region, even though this place wasn’t as prosperous as Kamakura, the residents of Kai Province were full of zest, but with increasing frequency of extended nights... monsters began to appear within the city one day and no matter how many samurai were sent to subjugate them, it produced no results. By the way, why aren’t you eating the food?”

“Whoosh!” Shiu threw two shuriken towards the old woman who attacked Lily immediately and she collapsed to the ground with a scream.

“Woman! I have never seen a woman as pretty as you! I’m going to eat you!” The monster opened its hands clad in claws and squatted like a frog to muster strength into its thighs before pouncing towards Lily, attacking her with its two claws.

Lily unsheathed Crescent Moon instantly.

“Splat!” A shower of blood spattered across the molted roof in the next moment.

The monster had almost been bisected from the shoulder to the stomach, with only the skin on its back keeping its body joined. Unable to speak any further, the monster coughed out blood and fell to the ground before twitching miserably.

Lily arrived in front of the dying old woman whose forehead and heart had been pierced by the shuriken.

“Hmm?” Lily had a sudden flash of realization, “You are human?”

“Yes,” the old woman replied with a hoarse, trembling voice, “Although I’ll be departing to Yomi alone, I am certainly a human.”

“Since you are a human, why did you cooperate with a monster to run this homicidal lodge that harms humans?” Lily questioned.

“Hehehe. If I didn’t cooperate, I would’ve ended up as the monster’s food sooner or later. I’m an old woman with no place to go, so I would’ve just ended up dead from hunger or illness in this place if I didn’t eat anything. My husband and sons all died in the war with the Uesugi clan, and my daughter stopped sending me letters after marrying a samurai from Shinano. I heard that she also died in a city-wide massacre in a war and as a result, I also remained forgotten in this castle city. I had no food to eat nor money to treat my illness...”

The dying old woman’s eyes mocked the world, “Thus, I joined hands with this monster, Gorou An. My job was to lure the customers inside so that he could kill and eat them while my reward was the belongings of the customers. We lived such a mutually-dependent life for about a year now and killed over a hundred customers, yet the liege lord’s samurai never discovered or tried to subjugate us. It makes me wonder if people in this city can survive by themselves. Hehehe. Don’t you feel it’s pretty ironical, girl?”

“The strife between humans killed my entire family, yet this monster saved my life.”

Saying so, the old woman passed away while still wearing that mocking smile.

Lily didn’t wish to remain in such a filthy and gloomy region even a second longer.

“Let’s go,” Lily said.

“Yes,” Shiu followed behind.

After going outside, Lily breathed in a mouthful of relaxing fresh air and looked at the gloomy castle city, “The residents of this city are actually living together with monsters. This is much more terrible than monsters simply attacking humans. Just what is going on in this city?”

Lily turned her head towards the castle tower that towered against the orangish night sky and frowned slightly, “Takeda Tsunenobu, the Tiger of Kai, a heavyweight revered as the Great Scholar of East by the people. Just what exactly happened for your eyes to have been clouded so badly?”