"If we can resolve this conflict, I'm willing to give anything," Kokuyo said to Chen Yu after thinking for a moment.
After all, he didn't want to start a war either. Their tribe was here, and wherever they moved, they couldn't leave the surrounding area. Even if they could go farther away, they would have to start everything over. There were also quite a few elderly people in the tribe. According to their history, the people who had first come to live here had all been young, able-bodied adults, with no elderly people among them.
If war broke out, they had no idea whether they could win. They could only hope the other side wouldn't make outrageous demands.
"My friend needs help. How about you help him? As for Magma, the one responsible, I'll discipline him myself. Don't worry, I won't kill him. But if he doesn't change, something like this is bound to happen again," Chen Yu said after some thought.
As he remembered it, Magma was nothing but a big, dim-witted brute. His only adviser was that little shorty, and those two seemed to cause plenty of trouble later on, too.
They had tricked Suika into going out, and the shorty had tied her up. Who knew whether she would have survived if Kohaku hadn't gone to find her? Then there was what happened on Treasure Island. Yo had originally had a good chance of defeating Ibara.
After all, however poor Yo's marksmanship was, he was the only one who had handled firearms before. Magma, on the other hand, had wasted plenty of bullets. In the end, they had relied on Senku risking his life to rescue Hyoga, who had only refused to join Mozu because their beliefs clashed.
Magma really needed to be taught a lesson.
"Oh, and one more thing. The man beside Magma needs to be handed over to me, too. They're always together, so this whole incident might have been his idea. What do you think?" Chen Yu pointed at the shorty beside Magma as he spoke, looking at Kokuyo.
"Well..." Kokuyo hesitated at Chen Yu's demand. If Chen Yu really hurt the two of them, he would be to blame, and it would be hard for him to keep living in the village.
"Then you must guarantee their safety. After all, you promised not to hurt them. Can you do that?" Kokuyo asked.
"Of course." Chen Yu nodded in agreement.
Then he turned to Senku behind him and said, "All right, now you have enough manpower. Even if you need someone with a particular skill, you should be able to find them."
"I'll be taking these two, then. Come on, Magma. Stop playing dead. I can tell from your breathing that you're awake." Chen Yu walked over to Magma, gave him that reminder, and left.
The shorty and Magma had no choice but to leave with him.
The two followed Chen Yu to a deserted spot.
"Magma, you need to atone for what you've done. As for you, you have plenty of sneaky ideas, but you never put them to good use." After addressing Magma, Chen Yu looked at the shorty.
"I'm not interested in your name, and I don't like calling you by it, either. Now, both of you need a proper taste of punishment. Hopefully, it'll scrub those filthy ideas out of your heads." Chen Yu snapped off a branch and lashed Magma with it.
"Don't think I won't hit you, you bastard!" Magma glared viciously at Chen Yu and shouted in anger.
"Then go ahead and try," Chen Yu said, looking at Magma.
That was only to be expected. Magma was the biggest troublemaker of them all. Without him, Senku and the others could have completed their plans much sooner, and the original author wouldn't have needed to drag things out for so long.
At those words, Magma and the shorty attacked from the front and rear, though the shorty still played support while Magma led the attack.
With a light motion, Chen Yu redirected Magma's force and threw him onto the shorty, making the shorty cry out in pain.
Magma struggled to his feet and charged again. This time, Chen Yu caught his wrist and drove a knee into his stomach.
The blow nearly made Magma vomit bile.
Magma clutched his stomach as he tried to recover.
"You have all that strength, but you don't know how to use it. Someone who only uses it against his own people really needs to be taught a lesson." Chen Yu sidestepped a punch from the shorty as he spoke.
"As for you, you have plenty of sneaky ideas, but you never use them for anything worthwhile. All your schemes rely on knowing your own people inside out. Against outsiders, you're nothing but an empty shell." Chen Yu kicked the shorty away.
Once Magma had recovered, he charged again.
But Chen Yu blocked every attack.
The three continued fighting like that. The shorty was the first to give out. He lay on the ground, unable to fight anymore. Only Magma, covered in injuries, kept trying to attack.
He was gambling, too, betting that Chen Yu would run out of stamina.
But he didn't know that nothing Chen Yu did ever took much effort.
At last, Magma couldn't hold out any longer. He tried to leave, but Chen Yu dragged him back. He needed to make Magma understand why the village had a chief and why everyone needed to listen to him. He also needed to teach him that killing was the most hateful act of all.
They had healthy bodies, yet they never valued them. Instead, they even planned to hurt other people.
By the end, Chen Yu struck Magma and asked, "Why don't you appreciate having a healthy body?"
"You have a healthy body. You can go wherever you want. Why don't you appreciate that?"
"Having a healthy body is such a wonderful thing. Why would you still hurt other people?"
And so, with every blow, Chen Yu said another sentence.
By the end, Magma's face was swollen and bruised. He had no idea why Chen Yu had suddenly changed, going from not landing any attacks on him to making every blow hurt unbearably.
Finally, Magma fell to the ground once more.
"You both have bright futures ahead of you, yet you feel no remorse at all for what you've done. Then again, living in this stone-age civilization without a proper legal system, how could you know any better?"
"Do you know? Where we come from, what you did yesterday would get you executed. Even if you weren't executed, you'd be imprisoned for life, kept in one place with no way to leave," Chen Yu said.
"I'm... not... one of your people... Why should I... listen to you?" Magma said with difficulty.
"But you're descendants of the only people who survived in this world. And while we're at it, you might even be related to Senku by blood," Chen Yu said.
He didn't know how many generations it had been, but thirty-seven hundred years meant at least thirty-seven generations, even under the ideal assumption of a hundred years per generation. Going by average life expectancy, it was probably only around fifty to seventy years.
"What?" Magma was stunned.
(I've already written it this way, so I might as well stretch the plot a little more. There won't be any mechanical ascension, anyway. Readership has passed a hundred, so I'll work hard to keep it steady.)
Before you continue