"Tell me, what's going on here?"
Shinji hadn't wanted to get involved in the first place, or he wouldn't have let them capture the woman and the white fox.
But there was no helping it. Someone always seemed to have had enough of living and wanted to find some fun.
"Don't kill me. You can't kill me..."
Blackie Number Two seemed terrified, repeating those two sentences over and over.
"Pain Intensification!"
"Aaaah!"
Shinji hadn't done much. He had merely multiplied the man's sensitivity to pain several times over, then gripped the Black Spear and twisted it twice in the wound, immediately making him howl with his eyes bulging.
"Can you talk now?"
"I'll talk! I'll tell you anything you want to know."
"Good. You could've spared yourself the suffering if you'd done that sooner."
As the effect of Shinji's [Cursed Speech] wore off, Blackie Number Two finally stopped his anguished howling.
Only after catching his breath for a while did he say, "Several days ago, Kumogakure received intelligence that a girl suspected of being able to turn into a white fox had been spotted near Hanayagi Village... The higher-ups speculated that the target might belong to a clan from the now-destroyed Land of Beasts, so Lord Raikage sent us to investigate."
"Once we confirmed her identity, we immediately began pursuing her and trying to capture her, but she slipped away through gaps in our efforts several times. After that... everything that happened afterward was a misunderstanding."
"Bakay only provoked you because he was in a bad mood. He absolutely meant no harm!"
To save his own life, Blackie Number Two had even started telling blatant lies.
Shinji glanced at him. "What's your name?"
"Makai."
"Huh? Makai? Then what's your relationship with that Bakay?"
"Ah, he's... he's my cousin. But we're