There Was a Monster

The journey was dull, so we would skip right over it.

After several days on the road, Shinji and Hidan finally reached the area where the sacrifices were believed to have disappeared.

It was a ruined little town. The past wars of the Shinobi World had destroyed it time and again, until it finally became a desolate place under no one's jurisdiction.

Still, plenty of homeless people had chosen to settle there.

The Land of Fire lay to the east, the Land of Rivers to the south, the Land of Wind to the west, and the Land of Rain to the north.

Thanks to its unusual location, even swindling and scamming could support a large number of people.

As for illicit goods, fugitive thieves, and rogue ninja, there were even more of those.

So it was entirely possible that the Jashin Cult's shipment had gone missing nearby. Perhaps some gang that didn't know better had stolen it.

Shinji had learned all of this from Cult Leader Takihata before coming.

At first, he too had thought either the locals were responsible or someone from the Land of Grass had double-crossed them.

But when he actually set foot in the desolate little town, he suddenly felt something was wrong. It might not be that simple.

"Smell that?"

"Yeah. A stench of blood this strong couldn't have built up in just a day or two. It's intoxicating!" Hidan took a deep breath, an increasingly euphoric look spreading across his face.

"Something's wrong. We haven't seen a single living person since we came in."

"Don't tell me someone got here before us and killed everyone?"

Shinji frowned. Things were getting tricky. "Let's search more carefully. Someone must have slipped through the net."

Once they found someone alive, they would naturally learn what had happened here.

But whether this desolate, ruined town really had become a ghost town or they were simply searching the wrong way, they walked for over ten minutes without seeing a trace of anyone alive.

What the hell!

"Where else could those homeless bastards go?"

Hidan's muttering reached Shinji's ears.

That was right. So many people had nowhere else to go. Even if they died, they would probably die here.

So where were they?

Shinji suddenly entered a dilapidated house beside them, bare of all furnishings. They had passed plenty of houses like it along the way. With the doors, windows, and most of the walls long gone, a glance was usually enough to see everything inside and tell whether anyone was there.

Shinji hadn't given it much thought before, but Hidan's offhand remark had given him an idea.

Now that he went inside to investigate, he did indeed find something!

"What's there to look at in a dump like this?" Hidan kept grumbling.

But just then, Shinji rose from a crouch and said, "I know where everyone's hiding. Follow me."

Once outside, Shinji insisted on going into every house he saw, no matter how ruined it was.

Finally, in the third house they checked afterward, Shinji pushed aside the scattered straw with his foot, revealing a wooden board underneath. Then he gripped its edge firmly and lifted it.

A pitch-black opening immediately appeared before them.

"Underground?"

Hidan looked somewhat surprised.

Shinji shook his head. "I'm not sure yet, but a lot of the houses here seem to have cellars. Those people might be hiding in them."

"What's so hard about that? We'll know once we go down and look!"

Confident in his abilities, Hidan lit a torch and jumped straight in without another word, not caring how deep it was or whether anyone was lying in ambush.

Shinji could only shake his head at the sight.

Before long, Hidan's voice came from below. "Come down. There's an old man in here who's almost dead."

Hearing that, Shinji first tore open a small blood pouch he carried with him.

He poured out the blood before lighting a torch and jumping down as well. The cellar was no more than five meters deep, and as soon as he landed, he saw Hidan standing a short distance ahead.

"Where is he?"

"Here."

Shinji walked over and saw an old man in his sixties slumped against the wall. His face was haggard, his body weak, and his lips badly cracked. He barely had a breath left in him.

Had they arrived even a little later, they might have found nothing but a corpse.

"Hey, old man, wake up!" Hidan shoved him hard.

Seeing how rough Hidan was being, Shinji quickly stopped him, afraid he might accidentally kill the old man.

"Give me the water."

Taking the water from Hidan, Shinji carefully moistened the old man's parched lips before trickling it into his mouth drop by drop.

Finally, a minute later, the old man slowly came around.

"Am I already dead? Are you... soul reapers? So soul reapers don't have eyebrows..."

Though the old man's voice was hoarse, his meaning was perfectly clear.

It was strange, really. Ever since that fire had singed off all of Hidan's hair and eyebrows, his hair had gradually grown back, but his bare brows showed no sign of doing the same.

Having that sore spot touched sent Hidan's temper flaring, and he wanted nothing more than to send the old man straight to the soul reapers.

Luckily, at this stage, Shinji could still keep him in line.

After restraining Hidan, Shinji explained that they were travelers passing through. They had heard there were good things for sale here, so they had come specifically to look.

Then, regardless of whether the old man believed him, he asked what concerned him most. "Where did everyone else go? What exactly happened here?"

At the mention of it, the old man gave an involuntary shudder, as though remembering something terrifying.

"A monster! There's a monster! So many people were killed!"

Shinji and Hidan exchanged a glance. Sure enough, something was wrong.

"There's no hurry. Take your time. What exactly was this monster like, and why were you hiding here alone?"

Fear filled the old man's face, and his body began shaking violently. "A monster, a man-eating monster... they were all eaten. Those still alive only dared hide in the cellars... I'm old, no use anymore, so they drove me out to save food. If the monster had its fill, it wouldn't go looking for them for a while..."

The old man slurred his words, and his extreme terror made his account jumbled and incoherent.

Still, Shinji managed to understand the gist of it.

Essentially, a man-eating monster had suddenly appeared here one day. The people couldn't defeat it, so they had been forced into hiding.

But supplies were limited, so anyone deemed worthless had been abandoned.

The old man before them had been thrown out as bait, an offering for the monster to eat.

Yet, as luck would have it, his time hadn't come. Somehow, he had stumbled into this cellar and managed to cling to life.

But without Shinji and Hidan's arrival, even if the monster hadn't eaten him, he could only have hidden here and waited to die.