When The Cute Kunoichis Spied on Their Teacher's Secret-Volume 2, Chapter 1

1: New Sapporo Domain

White snow was falling, but the sky above was blue and the sun was shining bright.

“…”

Sugiyado Souha pushed up his scarf a bit in the back seat of the off-road motorcycle called Countless Calamities. This slow-melting artificial snow was a type of environmental defensive policy. Its chill felt more like a mist shower than air conditioning when it hit his skin.

He wore a thin short-sleeved dress shirt over a black long-sleeved shirt plus baggy pants. And more to remain inconspicuous than to fight the cold, he wore a scarf around his neck and a soft down jacket.

Dressing heavily and carrying ample equipment was not always a plus for a ninja.

Especially in Sugiyado’s case since he had springs to replace the ligaments in his legs and bolts in his spine.

At 5kg, his back would feel funny. At 10kg, it would explode with pain.

That meant a single jacket could be a serious drain on his life. Carrying a lifeline or a first-aid kit would mean not carrying some other piece of equipment.

“The northernmost Wakkanai Domain has officially announced their intention to reinforce the Karafuto Route as a new Dejima. They hope to expand their role as a friendly economic contact point with the Cyrillic Empire and…”

“The Insightful Databank Thinktank has used their official social media account to indicate a problem with New Sapporo Domain’s power consumption, so Princess Karin, the Domain’s substitute ruler, has announced their intentions to spend more on renewable energy so that…”

“Hakodate Domain, the Hokkaido Area’s main contact point with Honshu, is concerned about a recent increase in petty crime by motorcycle travelers and they are considering increasing the lodging tax to drive down the number of tourists who…”

“Hoozuki.”

“Oh, sorry. If there’s a channel you want to watch, just say so, Sensei.”

Silver ponytail Hoozuki glanced into the back seat through the mirror while holding the off-road motorcycle’s handlebars and also lowering the volume of the 1seg TV app on the phone attached to the holder. Her ninja outfit was composed of a one-piece swimsuit, a number of synthetic belts, and wide-legged pants, so it looked a lot like a riding suit. The back was left wide open, so it was kind of embarrassing having to hold onto her from behind. Even though her entire body was covered by a thin, flesh-colored elastic material much like a figure skater.

“It would take less than an hour to get from one side of the Hokkaido Area to the other if we could only use their underground linear motor train.”

“That doesn’t do us any good when the entire train line was decommissioned in the name of defense. And don’t drive so fast, Hoozuki. We aren’t in that much of a hurry.”

The Hokkaido Area was currently divided into six domains.

The most urban of those was New Sapporo Domain. Unlike New Yokohama Domain where Sugiyado Souha had lived previously, it was surrounded by flat land in all directions and the primary roads were laid out on a grid by thorough urban planning. It had a population of 4.5 million. The central commerce and industry district covered a square of about 15km and farms too large to seem possible in Japan stretched out from there. Seeing it in person made it clear why this was the only place in the country to use airplanes to sow their crops’ seeds.

All of the Four Occupations could be found here: samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants.

And even if they did get a lot of snow here, it was not the worst part of Japan in that regard, so it was not enough to bury a home. Thus, they were slower to invest in snow melting pipes and food supply shelters when compared to the Sea of Japan side of Honshu.

That was also why they could afford to use that unnatural artificial snow.

While not on the level of barbed wire or trenches, deep snow functioned as an obstacle to the feet of soldiers and the wheels of trucks. By intentionally creating areas of sludge, they could slow an enemy’s advance without pouring much effort into it themselves.

On the news, they often discussed meeting with other countries over a meal or establishing appeasement policies, but the truth was that outside forces were constantly trying to get at this locked-down country’s cutting-edge technology.

Due to the presence of the Karafuto Route and the Nakhodka Route, New Sapporo Domain functioned as a fortress defending Honshu from an invasion by the Empire. It was thought the battle would be fought in the Hokkaido Area since it was one of the archipelago’s vastest areas of land, so a lot of large weapons had been deployed outside the capital, including the armored samurai who were an inseparable fusion of human and machine.

The underground linear motor train mentioned before had been decommissioned because it was thought a network of tunnels connecting different points on the island would defeat the purpose of a defensive line on the surface. The tunnels had been reported filled with concrete.

Conflict with the Empire that ruled the Cyrillic region of the world was in a lull, but there was still a possibility of clashing with Eastern Europe just like they were at odds with Western Europe, North America, and South America. Two massive “metal bridges” extended diagonally up from the center of the giant farm, pointing outwards, in order to protect the Chitose Defense Airport which functioned as an airbase and a civilian airport. Needless to say, those “bridges” were in fact strategic antiaircraft lasers that were thought capable of intercepting ballistic missiles.

Some would find them reassuring, others would lament the fact that they were necessary to sleep at night.

“Hm, hm, hm, hm, hm, hmm.”

The girl with her long silver hair in a ponytail hummed to herself while climbing down from the off-road motorcycle she had parked on the curb. One’s skintight ninja outfit was generally meant to be hidden, but hers looked so much like a riding suit that she blended in without wearing much of anything over it.

The down jacket boy gave her a curious look as he set foot on the ground behind her.

“What has you in such a good mood, Hoozuki?”

“Nothing really. It’s just been too long since we’ve done this. …You could call this a secret date we can’t afford to let anyone find out about, couldn’t you? That’s my idea of a fun time. It’s what the kunoichi life is all about!”

“?”

“Hm, hm, hmm☆”

At any rate, they had made it into Sapporo.

Sugiyado was playing this by ear. He had to solve whatever problems Murakami Shouzou had been facing and save the grandson that old man had been so worried about as he died.

Sugiyado patted his down jacket to confirm the presence of the special ninja tools he had hidden in the sleeves and back of his short-sleeved dress shirt. Those tools were air-pressure kunais that used nitrogen gas and the same concept as the tools that forced open crushed car doors. When the blade was opened up like a U-shaped tuning fork, they could even pry open a tank’s hatch. His equipment had been provided by his students.

“Sensei.”

Ouka and Asagao must have used a domestic flight because they had arrived earlier and were waving to the two new arrivals. Ouka was of course not wearing her cutting-edge ninja outfit in this crowd.

She was smiling over at him with chestnut twintails, a fluffy sweater, and a miniskirt (which she considered to be her killer outfit!!).

“We have prepared some hideouts and a full set of equipment in each. We set up four bases in total, so use whichever one is most convenient at any given time.”

“Four,” groaned Sugiyado, eliciting a laugh from Asagao, the bob cut girl in a white military uniform with baggy sleeves and a short skirt. (She apparently did not care that she was wearing her ninja outfit in public.)

“Don’t worry about which one you choose, Sensei. But if you never use one of the bases, the girl who set it up might just go cry in secret.”

That was not what he wanted to hear.

He recalled that standard practice with kunoichis was to always meet with them one-on-one when receiving a report on their spying duties. Because the possibility of jealousy-fueled conflict between the kunoichis was too high otherwise.

Ouka and Asagao began whispering to each other.

“(This is what I call paradise. A teacher and his student on a secret date in a romantic northern city? How can I not get excited about that? I hope we end up working together like this forever!)”

“(I know, Ouka. And his obligations here are entirely tied to that old man from the prison. Once he’s done with that, we’re free to start on our new harem life. With four of the Shogunate’s strongest kunoichis working at it, we’re bound to trap him in a sea of sex appeal this time.)”

He called out to those two to cut that extremely dangerous conversation short.

“Let’s review.”

He had gone to the effort of dismounting Hoozuki’s motorcycle. They already knew their destination, but it was important to share all basic information first. Think of it like syncing everyone’s clocks before a mission. It could not hurt to repeat yourself.

“Murakami Shouzou was probably a ninja who worked as a weapon craftsman within New Sapporo Domain. And someone wanted to eliminate him badly enough to attack Abashiri, the most secure prison in the country. They even used his own grandson’s shuriken to frame that relative for the crime.”

“We still haven’t managed to work out the identity of the ninjas you defeated, Sensei.” Ouka lightly waved her phone with a troubled look on her face. She must have had some kind of video saved on there. “They probably aren’t officially registered like we are. Calling them non-primary personnel sounds nice and all, but it looks more like local thugs were given government equipment and made to fight. That couldn’t have been meant to last long, so they were effectively made to be disposable.”

“Tch. And I bet the recruited soldiers had their fear stripped from them by showering them with praise about being the chosen few or the ultra elite or something,” spat out the black bob cut girl in a white military uniform.

That said, Abashiri was a max security special prison.

The average thug off the street could not break in without considerable help. Someone else must have led them in the attack. Everyone else had really just been meant as a smokescreen in case of a counterattack. Human lives had been spent like the chaff or flares used to divert missiles.

“What school?” asked Sugiyado.

“The Hole.”

Sugiyado had made the same judgment based on the collapsible shovel held by one of the assassins who attacked the old man.

Ouka gave a blunt response.

“Based on their equipment and muscle tone, they appear to be a school derived from miners. They excel at constructing infiltration routes by digging tunnels, using special ninja tools based off of shovels and pickaxes, and extreme close-quarters combat in closed and dark locations. They are probably also explosives specialists.”

That might sound reasonable enough when hearing it all rattled off at once like that, but “closed spaces” and “explosives” did not go together. Normally, combining the two would also kill the user with the blast, shockwave, and rapid pressure change. Forcibly making it work suggested these people preferred fairly acrobatic strategies.

They must have dug a tunnel to secretly enter the Abashiri special prison. That too was not something you could accomplish simply by handing the necessary tools to some thugs.

So he knew what they had to do next.

“We need to figure out who was leading them,” he said. “They must be near the top of the Shogunate hierarchy. They have to be at least on the level of a High Ninja, so they should be registered as such.”

Ninjas were intelligence agents and spies for the Shogunate, so they were public servants. Any ninja living in this city would have their information on the classified server of the castle at the center of New Sapporo Domain.

But…

“I couldn’t find anything. And I doubt any further searching will do much better. Ta ha ha.”

“…”

Ouka let out some bitter laughter, but she did continue.

Success and failure were simply things that had happened. Hesitating to report something or trying to lie about it to save face would break the thread of trust binding them.

“Instead of the data we want not existing on the classified server, it was more like the server we were accessing wasn’t really the one at the center of New Sapporo Castle.”

Asagao, their computer whiz, began hopping up and down as she provided further information.

“From what I could see through the screen, it did look just like New Sapporo Castle’s official databank, but it probably wasn’t. All the communication lines heading toward the center of the castle were diverted to the side along the way. The server sends and receives 10s of millions of requests every single day, but I doubt a single person is actually accessing the real one.”

In other words…

Silver ponytail Hoozuki stated their conclusion in an exasperated sort of way.

“The castle at the center of New Sapporo Domain has either been entirely isolated or occupied and it may have already been destroyed on the inside. And in a way that leaves no one the wiser in an age when countless cameras are constantly providing content for online videos and social media articles. This is a highly unusual situation.”

“Bara is off using her own methods to pursue the identity of whoever they had leading that attack, but the more sources we have, the better. And I’m also curious who our enemy is and what’s going on inside that castle.”

Sugiyado and the girls would normally have viewed these unknown ninjas as the force working to protect New Sapporo Domain. To reiterate, ninjas were a special sort of public servant. To claim that title, they had to be serving someone in that region. But that was also why they would not have needed to create a special route in if they were planning an armed uprising.

They would only have to turn 180 degrees around and aim their blade or gun toward the person they were meant to protect.

“Now, then.”

They had reviewed the basic information.

They all had an accurate understanding of it all. There were no discrepancies there.

Sugiyado Souha, the modern ninja who hid his silhouette with a down jacket and his lower face with a scarf, came to a stop and let out a gentle breath while looking up at a towering building.

“Let’s go see for ourselves what’s going on inside the actual castle.”

2: The Princess’s Castle

New Sapporo Domain was divided into a grid of districts like a Go board and one public facility took up four full blocks.

That facility was New Sapporo Castle.

“(Wow, check this out, Ouka. That’s the famous date spot they mention in all the guidebooks and tourism sites!)”

“(I know. They say any couple that has their first date there is guaranteed a long life of happiness together!)”

Asagao and Ouka were doing a poor job of hiding their excitement, but Sugiyado decided not to say anything since it made them look more like ordinary tourists.

They were on the walking path surrounding the castle outside its moat.

Everything in New Sapporo Domain was divided into those blocky districts, but this impregnable castle alone formed a perfect circle surrounded by a circular moat. The castle’s stone walls and tower had a Japanese design, but it also had some stone barracks extending flatly out from it, giving it a mixed Japanese and Western look.

The castle was located in the middle of a populous metropolis, yet four artillery emplacements had been built on the inside of the moat to aim outwards. All four were equipped with a large-caliber swiveling railgun.

The only ways to access the castle were the one bridge across the moat and the three piers. All four of those access points had a cannon keeping an eye on things.

With a population of 4.5 million, New Sapporo Domain was the largest metropolis of the Hokkaido Area, but it was also a giant military base and constant battlefield due to the over 25 years since it declared a quasi-war with the Cyrillic Empire and other nations. It was hard to imagine when seeing the colorful lights and the happy couples, but the slow-melting artificial snow that would continue accumulating even at average temperatures was a type of environmental defense policy. If a suspicious person or vehicle were approaching, the domain’s ruler would fire those cannons without even considering what would happen to the connecting bridge or the city on the other side of the moat. Sugiyado glanced over at the water past the railing.

“A moat, huh?”

“Normally, we could pay them an official visit as Elite Ninjas or, if they weren’t willing to receive us, use fake IDs to disguise ourselves as tourists or government officials.”

That sighing response to their teacher’s comment came from 11-year-old Asagao.

White snow was still falling around them, but it was all artificial snow meant to construct an environmental barrier against an attack. The actual temperature was warm enough for short sleeves and the moat was at no risk of freezing into a giant skating rink.

They slowly walked around the moat and passed by some other groups of cheerful tourists. While remaining cautious of those tourists’ phone cameras, of course.

“Since we don’t know what’s going on inside, we can’t know what changes have been made to their security,” said Hoozuki to keep the conversation going. “Crossing the moat on the bridge or by boat would be too risky. If we’re found out, we’d be torn to pieces by a 900mm rapid-fire railgun, Sensei.”

“The railguns are how you really know you’re in the Hokkaido Area. On Honshu, they use ship’s guns. They would never use stationary weapons in a big city.”

“Bara wasn’t happy about this. Her Serpent Monster uses solenoid coils that she simplified for portability, so they count as technologically-inferior coilguns.”

As a gadget lover herself, the silver ponytail girl must have understood the feeling she was describing.

At any rate, they had to get across that moat.

A moat was an ancient and very basic defense, but that was also why it was so effective. Physically cutting off all routes in in all 360 degrees made it very difficult to sneak in.

Extremely small Asagao gave a cruel laugh in her white military uniform with baggy sleeves and a short skirt.

“Keh keh keh. How about we put on some mizugumo to glide right on over? Or we could dive underwater with a bamboo tube in our mouths to swim over on our backs like otters.”

“That moat is bound to be filled with a liquid sensor using electrolytes. Simply put, if you so much as stick your fingertip in the water, they can sense something is amiss due to the change in electric potential. The bottom of the moat has to be covered in a ton of electrodes. The turtles and koi that live in the water will be ignored, but anything deemed to be hostile will get zapped by 5 million volts. And that’s 5 million volts while in the water.”

Even the famously deadly electric eel only provided a voltage of around 600 volts. However, the three students did not look at all surprised to hear their instructor’s lecture. This moat was used to protect a castle, so of course it would have defenses like that.

Ouka asked a question with a tone that suggested she was testing the older boy.

“So we can’t use the bridge, we can’t use a boat, and we can’t use the water. How are we supposed to get across, Sensei?”

The instructor did not hesitate to answer.

There was only one real answer.

“We walk across.”

3: The Moat

A low rumbling passed by overhead.

“…”

Sugiyado Souha looked up to see a thick ceiling of reinforced concrete. But he was not indoors.

The deadly moat was located about 20m below him.

In other words, he was below the one bridge across the moat.

Whether it was a large building, warehouse, or bridge, any structure that needed to support a large space with minimal materials would use trusses, rigid frames, honeycombs, and jungle gym structures made out of steel beams. A close-to-home example could be found by looking up at the ceiling of a gym.

Sugiyado did not care how many checkpoints and security cameras they had on the top of the bridge. He only had to plant his feet on the jungle gym structure laid out below the bridge and make his way to the impregnable castle that way. If no one saw him, he could not be found. That was the foundation of ninja movement.

At this point, there was no need for disguises or camouflage.

Hoozuki had already been wearing her ninja outfit as a riding suit, but Ouka had changed into her cutting-edge ninja outfit as well. It looked like a sleeveless kimono with a sideless skirt. It provided excellent defense against bullets, it strengthened her athletic abilities, and it showed off her soft body in a provocative way that would create an opening in those who saw it. Her outfit was a deadly system that used her as a component.

Asagao had not changed either. She was still wearing her white military uniform with baggy sleeves and a short skirt, but that was not meant for use in direct combat.

Hoozuki followed behind Sugiyado and spoke in an excited way with her silver ponytail falling on her seemingly bare back. It took a close inspection to notice that was a flesh-colored elastic material and not her bare skin.

“Sensei, I notice you aren’t leaping from beam to beam or anything like that. You just find these really clever routes that go against everything the designer expected.”

“Shh.”

He had them all come to a stop just before a castle patrol boat produced white waves in the water directly below. It had a 12.7mm Gatling gun and a 40mm automatic grenade launcher attached to its front armor. If that spotted them, not much would be left of them. Their bulletproof outfits would not do much against weapons of that size. And the boat would have a drive recorder installed, so it would not overlook them just because the pilot happened to be inattentive.

However.

“Incredible,” said extremely small Asagao in an exasperated way. “We just slipped right past its optimized anti-personnel auto-search.”

“We have the camera angles to thank for that. They’re only focused on the water’s surface and under the water.” Sugiyado sighed while leaning against one of the bridge’s beams. “They could have tens of thousands of cameras installed, but it was still humans who installed them and those humans will only point those cameras in the directions they expect a threat to arrive from. After all, installing and maintaining the cameras takes time and money, so they stop after covering ‘every’ route in. If it turns out there was a route they didn’t consider, well, that just makes avoiding the cameras a walk in the park.”

“The moat guards appear to be ordinary bodyguards.”

“Ouka, keep in mind that tourists cross the bridge to visit the castle,” said Hoozuki. “I doubt we’ll see anything out of the ordinary in the areas open to the public.”

Sugiyado listened to them while toying with the scarf over his mouth.

“If the ordinary workers are being manipulated without their knowledge, this likely goes all the way to the top of the command structure. I wonder what’s going on in the black box of the castle tower.”

There were cameras below the bridge, but those were all meant to check the water level during periods of heavy rain and they were not very thorough. By paying careful attention to where they stood on the complex jungle gym, they could easily slip behind the cameras.

When using an elevated route, it was always crucial to keep in mind where your shadow would be cast on the ground, but that was not an issue here since the bridge itself cast a giant shadow that covered up their own.

Ouka moved right up next to him and whispered to him.

She sounded like she was enjoying herself.

“I can see the other side of the moat below us, Sensei. We’re as good as inside the castle now.”

Once past the moat and on the castle grounds, they no longer had to fear the railguns that were fixed in place and could only swivel so far. After reaching the end of the complex arrangement of metal beams below the bridge, Sugiyado finally set his feet on solid ground again and spoke through his scarf.

“We’ve reached the southern railgun emplacement.”

“That’s equivalent to the sannomaru in a traditional castle, right?”

Arriving on the castle grounds was not the end of their journey. The grounds were divided up by several castle walls, they would find labyrinthine paths inside those walls, guards could throw stones or launch arrows at them from atop the castle walls, and armored samurai would be waiting to open fire on them in the open areas of the ninomaru and the honmaru. Attempting to navigate the labyrinth the castle designers had put in place was not a winning strategy.

Sugiyado sighed in his unzipped down jacket.

“The New Sapporo Domain has to constantly provide its four railgun emplacements with a massive amount of power and metal shells and I doubt they do that in a way that’s visible from the outside. There must be unofficial hidden passageways connecting the central castle to the four railgun emplacements.”

“And we can use that?” asked Ouka.

The boy nodded.

“We can arrive directly below the central castle. From there, we only have to climb up toward the surface.”

4: The Kunoichi Back Home

Now, what was Hanasawa Bara doing during all this?

“Hm, hm, hmm.”

The splashing of warm water echoed through the bath.

It was an indoor bath, but it was a natural hot spring. Bara usually preferred to pour in some Western aroma oil for a more relaxing experience, but a hot spring was not bad every now and then. The cypress bathtub gave the cloudy bathwater a unique and indescribable aroma.

But she could not relax in here forever.

A timer emitted a crude electronic tone.

“Hm? I suppose it is about time.”

The cloudy bathwater parted and she walked to the dressing room in the nude.

It was easy to assume she did everything in the most luxurious way possible, but she actually preferred a standard towel fabric to a fancy silk one. That texture was one of the few joys she had encountered after the fall of her family. It may have been similar to Sugiyado Souha’s love of Happy Churn.

The sexy girl gently grabbed a towel and dried off in front of a large mirror that reflected her full body. She always used two towels to dry off. The first she used on her face, her large chest, and her hips. Then she grabbed a new towel to dry off her arms, legs, and back.

She did it all in front of the mirror for much the same reason as a pro dancer.

The way she moved her body and shifted her weight had a large influence on her sex appeal. She liked to practice various actions and judge herself on them on a daily basis so she was always cognizant of how she looked doing different things.

After thoroughly drying herself off, she donned a special flesh-colored material that clung to her skin, much like the skintight material that figure skaters wore to stay warm. It was a cutting-edge piece of equipment that used a spider web structure to defend against bullets and blades and that used a combination of electric-potential-elastic belt cylinders and chemical winches made from a high-polymer water-absorbing gel. She put on ordinary underwear over that. There was actually no real reason she had to wear that, but humans were easily influenced by their imagination. Obvious underwear worked better at distracting the enemy than something that blended in with her flesh.

A normal kunoichi would normally finish it off by putting on the outer portion of her ninja outfit, but Bara was not your normal kunoichi. She needed another step in between.

She had something to attach to her lower back.

A mass of synthetic fabric larger than a pouch and smaller than a backpack more or less sat atop her large butt. Needless to say, that was the battery pack for the Serpent Monster coilguns hidden in her hair. Over that, she put on an oiran-style kimono that left her shoulders bare. Leaving the front of the kimono open helped hide the fact that the kimono and the knot of its sash were being used to hide the lump on her lower back. Finally, she stuck her phone into her cleavage. For a ninja, information was more important a weapon than blades or bullets.

Her hair was still a little damp and she did not have time to use a hairdryer, but it was not enough for her lovely ringlet curls to be squashed flat.

Her red hair doubled as the barrels for her coilguns. She had a wire-like framework installed through her hair to provide the optimal distribution for the solenoid coils.

“Hm, hm, hm, hm.”

She hummed as she left the dressing room. She sniffed at her kimono and hair to enjoy the lingering scent of the hot spring. Her bare feet slapped against the floor as she walked through a large indoor space with (her ultra-thin ninja outfit making it look like) her skin was flushed pink even along the line of her nape. She made her way to a room detached from the main building. It was a metal box larger than a one-room apartment.

“How are you feeling?”

She opened the metal double doors and asked a mocking question.

The space was shaped like a long rectangle and a closer examination would have shown it was a large cargo container. There was also someone imprisoned within, but no one could tell that from the outside.

A professional would not be so terrified of leaving behind any hairs or fingerprints that they used a powerful stain remover to get rid of all bloodstains on the walls and floor after every single job. Once their objective was complete, they would crush the entire container and toss it in a blast furnace to eliminate all the evidence. It was simple, easy, and thorough. A ninja’s tools of the trade had to be 100% reliable.

A single chair sat in that space surrounded by metal walls, but it was not for Bara.

The chair was bolted directly to the floor and it was equipped with a few belts that were strapping a man to the chair like he was just another component of the chair.

The man’s head had slumped to the side.

Bara roughly grabbed his hair and shook his head side to side, but he did not react in any way. Much like a houseplant someone had forgotten to water.

Again, there was no chair in here for Bara.

If she only needed to kill some time, she could do so outside the container.

She was not the type to spend much time on this sort of thing and she did not act any more cruelly than necessary. All she did was mechanically extract all of the information they needed. No more and no less. Although that made her feared for a different reason.

She let go of the man’s filthy hair, circled to the front of the chair, bent her knees, and shined a penlight into his eyes. His breathing was normal, but his eyes did not dilate like they were supposed to. That kind of physiological reaction could not be suppressed even with self-hypnosis.

This was the polar opposite of the pleasant towel texture.

The man had ended up like this because of the perfectly ordinary white cloth tape attached to his neck and chest.

(This itch tape is based on the hairy caterpillars that gather on rose hedges, but it worked even better than I expected. But it affects different people so wildly differently that you need to run an “allergy test” first. Expose them to it for too long and it might destroy their psyche.)

Since this topic was so risky, Sugiyado had not taught it through online video lessons like he had with everything else. Sleep deprivation, overwork, weights, ice, smoke, needles, blunt impacts, joint pressure, water buckets, electricity, drugs, and more. Bara had experienced and overcome a wide variety of torture methods at the hands of her instructor in the name “anti-torture training”, but all she had learned was that humans were not built to endure these specialized techniques – a simple fact that your average kid off the street already knew. With unlimited time to work with, anyone would reveal everything they knew sooner or later, or they would die before doing so. According to her instructor, Bara’s face had been a mess of tears and snot while she trembled and begged for her life despite knowing it was only training. Why did she only know this secondhand when it was about her? Because during all the trembling and convulsing, she had passed out more times than she remembered and she could not seem to coherently piece together what fragmentary memories still remained with her. …She thought her face would burst into flames from embarrassment when she thought about the fact that he must have cleaned her up after she made such a mess of herself in that closed room.

Thus, torture countermeasures were less about whether you could endure what was being done to you and more about how you could get the torturer to stop. Taking control of whoever was in charge was the top priority. You could make a plea to their emotions to get them to break with their side, you could set a fire or cause a power outage to let your companions know where you were, you could amplify the guilt so the torturer could not maintain their mental stability, or you could intentionally let yourself be badly wounded to destabilize your vitals. There were countless methods.

So.

Bloodless torture methods were a lot safer and more beneficial for the people hoping to get information out of someone. Even professional soldiers could come down with PTSD, so capturing someone and unilaterally harming them was not necessarily “safe”. But if things were managed in a digital, numerical, and emotionless way, you did not have to worry about being shaken yourself. Of course, Bara was the type to be shaken here if this man claimed to have a sick sister or a is girlfriend who was taken hostage.

She crossed her arms and lifted up her large chest while asking a question much like an overbearing doctor.

This was one of the people who attacked the Abashiri special prison.

“I have a question. What is your name?”

“Sarutobi Ryugo.”

“What is your real name?”

“Tanaka Haruo.”

Just like when you did not get the answer you wanted from a search engine or AI speaker, she repeated her question slower and more clearly and got the information she was after as easily as pulling it from a drawer.

This was all ninjas were.

The exciting legends and genealogies of famous ninja families were all camouflage meant to hide the truth. There was no actual ninja family of Sarutobi. The word “ninja” was widely known, but no one knew what they really were or what they really did and no one tried to dig too deeply into those questions. The general public image of ninjas derived from entertainment was all a bluff that did not come close to showing what real ninjas were like and existed to give real ninjas an easier time of doing their jobs. There were ninjas who specialized in infiltrating acting troupes and film studios to influence how ninjas were portrayed. It was an official duty of theirs, but one they had to keep hidden.

Hanasawa Bara’s real name was not Hanasawa Bara.

She had abandoned her old name with the fall of her family.

“I would like to know about your organization. Who are they?”

“Mountain.”

“More specifically.”

“The Nobushi.”

She got an answer, but she still clicked her tongue. The time lag before he answered had been off. Despite the many stimulations tormenting him, there should have been some hesitation.

(Is this a detour? Am I being directed into an intentional labyrinth?)

“Again, who do you belong to?”

“Sea.”

“I said to be specific.”

“The Pirate Gunners.”

As expected, he gave a different answer this time. And she doubted either of them was accurate. He had been given a few “insurance” stories that were false but would be convincing enough to satisfy the questioner enough that they stopped the torment.

This man was a disposable pawn recruited on site.

Getting any useful information out of him had been unlikely from the beginning, but she had not expected it to be this hopeless.

(On the other hand.)

She looked away from the man’s face and toward the phone she pulled from her cleavage. It was gathering a variety of data – brainwaves, heartrate, perspiration, body temperature, eyeball movement, facial muscles, etc. – but all of it said this man felt confident. Whatever he had been told in advance, once he was captured by the enemy and separated from his organization, he should have been filled with distrust and beginning to wonder if he should really continue to obey them.

(I doubt this is just him being a particularly tough guy. Someone must have filled him with this abnormal confidence. But how could they do it so well so quickly and who would specialize in that method?)

Bara sensed someone else’s control at work here. Would an amateur taken in for a single job really trust the parent organization so strongly? She might find a hint to the enemy’s identity there.

5: A Brain at 15 Below

Japanese castles were all about height.

A mound of dirt was built up and stone walls were built around that to create the foundation, barracks and an armory were built atop that, and the very top was built into a castle tower that would provide the solid defense the castle’s owner needed during wartime. Tall castles acted as a status symbol, but it was all based on the exceedingly simple logic that blades and bows had a harder time attacking you when you were high up in a tower.

On the other hand, Western castles were all about width.

Height was only needed for soldiers to launch arrows and throw rocks from atop the walls and for the towers that were used as lookout posts and holding cells. The castle’s owner would be seated behind several castle walls in the main tower’s hall facing the garden, but that was not necessarily the tallest point of the castle.

Some said this was due to the earlier inclusion of cannons in Western warfare, meaning the castle had to be surrounded by a fortress loaded up with cannons. Others said it was due to the greater available land in the West giving them more space on which to build their castles.

“(Okay, we’re about at the point where there’s no getting out of this if we’re caught! Minor thrills and tension are the perfect spice for a dangerous love!! Ahh, if only I could let Sensei feel the pounding of my heart right now!!)”

“(Ouka isn’t going to intentionally get us caught for a thrill, is she?)”

Ouka and Hoozuki’s comments were best ignored.

New Sapporo Castle had used some Western castle design, but its overall scale was very Japanese. The additional facilities like the barracks and food storage were spread out to the sides in a very Western way, but the main central castle itself was built upwards in the Japanese way. The current isolationist policies may have placed some restrictions on the castle designs.

“No point in just staring up at it,” said Sugiyado Souha while hiding his mouth below his scarf which included some special anti-facial-recognition designs.

To reiterate, the 900mm rapid fire-railguns required a massive amount of power and they could not allow that line to be cut off, so they would not use open power lines.

If they could find the entrance leading underground, they would have a direct route to the central castle.

“Sensei, where should we go first?”

“The server room.” He did not even need to think about it. “I’m curious about the tower at the top, but we need to start by checking the data on that classified server we can’t access from the outside. If the enemy is keeping us from it, there must be something there they don’t want us to see.”

No one asked how they would find that without a map of the place. Large computers like that needed to be kept cool to avoid overheating. Not many locations in a building could bear the weight of the computers and the cooling equipment while also providing enough power to run it all. Just like a library, they would avoid placing it on a higher floor.

That meant it might be inside the stone walls.

They had defeated a few of the attackers at Abashiri, but those had only been disposable pawns recruited on site and were unlikely to provide much information. The “real ninjas” that had led them were apparently found in the New Sapporo Domain and the classified server used by government workers was redirecting all requests so not even Elite Ninjas like Ouka could get in.

Who had killed that old man?

The castle’s server room would be the best way to find the answer. Even if the hardware had been destroyed, there had to still be some kind of hint left there.

They had left that conspicuous cross shuriken at the scene in an attempt to frame the old man’s grandson. In the same way, different ninja schools had different ways to overcoming the same problems.

“…”

Sugiyado gently stuck the tip of his air-pressure kunai out through the metal grating to use it like a mirror and check around outside. Only then did he gently push up the cover located above his head.

That was enough for him to feel the bomb he carried in his spine.

At 5kg, his back felt funny. At 10kg, it exploded with pain.

Even now, he could feel the gentle touch of the grim reaper’s invisible fingers on his back.

He found himself in a large, windowless room.

It was located within a stone wall, so the lack of windows was no surprise.

Computers the size of industrial refrigerators were lined up across the room like a library’s bookcases or an apartment complex’s buildings.

Ouka released a white breath from her small mouth and then spoke to him.

“None of it looks like it was destroyed, Sensei.”

“The chips or data inside might be a different story.”

Asagao’s short-skirt military uniform must not have been warm enough for this chilly room because a shiver ran through her body and she pressed against Sugiyado’s hip for warmth. Sugiyado, who had a down jacket for warmth, toyed with the scarf covering his mouth as he decided on a plan of action.

“We’ll have to start with this. If it has data on the ninjas, then we have what we wanted. If it doesn’t, we can guess at their identity based on how it was erased. But be on the lookout for decoy data. They’ve already planted false evidence once.”

That said, deception was a standard ninja tool, so there was no point in discussing whether it was right or wrong. Although anyone who broke a taboo would have to be prepared to accept their punishment if they were caught.

It was unknown how the outside requests were being redirected to a fake server, but that method would not work if they were directly accessing the hardware from within the castle. He checked the syncing device that connected the multiple computers and then he checked for a connection port. He hooked his phone up to that with a cable.

“Found it.”

“What does it say, Sensei?”

Asagao stood on her tippy-toes to look at the small screen and he tilted his phone so she could see.

“The Hole.”

“So we were right,” said Ouka with the sound of someone who had found confirmation of something unpleasant.

Modern ninjas were not divided into schools based on actual families like Iga or Koga. The schools had names like Harlot, Bandit, Assassin, Informer, etc. They were all people who had been left with no choice but to become ninjas to make a living for themselves or to fight. Ouka, Bara, Hoozuki, Asagao, and even Sugiyado Souha were no exception. If you wanted a respected family name you could be proud of, you were better off becoming a samurai.

The Hole was shorthand for the type of ninja that had started out as miners and other expert hole-diggers. They all had their own unique history, though. With some, their ancestor had lent their abilities to a daimyo or other important figure. With others, they had caused some sort of scandal and needed to go into hiding.

“Specifically, the Stonewalls. While they did work with dirt, their main job was constructing castles. But instead of the carpenters who work on the actual building, they would handle the preliminary phase that involved digging a moat, filling it with water, and building the stone walls needed for the foundation.”

“What weapons do you expect them to use?” asked Hoozuki.

“Probably something you would use to dig a tunnel,” he replied. “So mostly construction tools like pickaxes, shovels, and hammers. For projectiles, they might throw stones. And as a hidden surprise, we should expect some explosives. That shouldn’t work in a closed environment, but the technique to safely set off explosives inside a tunnel would give them even more precise control of explosions than a fireworks maker.”

Instead of modifying weapons like swords or spears into “a weapon customized from a weapon”, they would have started with cooking tools and the tools of their trade. After all, ninjas were not samurai. Their status was officially protected by the government now, but they had been unofficial saboteurs back in the day. They would have grabbed a kitchen knife, a saw, or whatever else was handy and customized it for easier use. Ninja tools like the kaginawa and kusarigama might look pretty out there by people who did not understand where they came from, but most of them actually had their origin in everyday items.

For example, the shuriken is the best known ninja tool, but before the standard stick shuriken and cross shuriken had been developed, ninjas had started with any number of other objects: kanzashi, tatami needles, star decorations, square clasps, gears, long nails, scissors, chisels, sword guards, etc. And since the original kunoichis had been sex workers, they would not be the ones wielding carpentry tools like nails or chisels. Shurikens were a last resort and leaving them behind would provide evidence that might just reveal what kind of ninja you were. It was possible to build a profile of an enemy and work out their identity based on the ninja tools they used.

The enemy here were hole-digging experts. Their techniques for infiltration, sabotage, disruption, and all other tasks would all start from there.

“Then they would probably be the perfect people to bring down a castle, Sensei,” said Ouka with a troubled look. “They can dig a tunnel into the castle grounds, pull out the foundation to bring down the castle walls, and even guide a bunch of polluted water into the moat for a biological attack. All they have to do is abuse the techniques they already have.”

Asagao asked a question as a follow-on to the twintail girl’s comment.

“But, Sensei, they were stationed here to protect the castle, weren’t they? They haven’t built up a bunch of labyrinthine defenses, so what actually happened here in the castle?”

“This isn’t limited to New Sapporo Castle. The Stonewalls are vulnerability advisors. They take a look at castles and fortresses from a tunnel-digging perspective and play the enemy in some training to give advice on how to improve the place’s defenses. You could call them inspectors that find their allies’ vulnerabilities and provide a report so security can be improved.”

Silver ponytail Hoozuki loudly clicked her tongue at that.

“That isn’t good, Sensei. It means the Stonewalls might have complete plans of New Sapporo Castle. In fact, they might as well have master keys to all the Shogunate’s crucial facilities across the archipelago.”

Their job was to determine the weaknesses in the country’s most important bases and help fill in those security holes, but what if they failed to report on all the holes they discovered? They would have free access to any missile base or underground shelter they wanted.

That explained how they had so easily accessed the Shogunate’s max security prison in Abashiri to safely take that old man’s life. They would have measured out for themselves exactly where they needed to dig a tunnel to get in.

“Any actual names or numbers?” cautiously asked Hoozuki the cool beauty. “And what about the grandson of that old man…Murakami Shouzou, was it? We still don’t know his name.”

“I found it all here, but it’s been blotted out so I can’t read it. There’s some separate security system in place.”

“Sensei, you can leave that to me. I’ll have that rude mosaic gone in no time.”

With a barbaric smile, Asagao held her phone out above Sugiyado’s phone. She must have accessed his with short-range wireless because it filled in the missing parts of the documents like some kind of AR. The randomized redaction signal was removed and the hidden text was revealed.

Just then, they heard a low rumbling.

This was different from when they had entered. The heavy main door to the room was opening.

“(Asagao, the data is on your phone, right? Then let’s withdraw for now.)”

“(Don’t be silly, Ouka. I couldn’t possibly copy over all the data from this entire server room. It’s larger than a library. The data is organized by an index, but it’s scattered all over these systems. Grabbing the data from just one of them won’t give us anything readable!)”

“(In other words, we have to stay here while the decryption completes? What should we do, Sensei?)”

Hoozuki the cool beauty pressed him to make a decision.

They could already hear approaching footsteps.

They had no idea who this was. This large space had more computers than a library had bookcases, so the odds were low whoever-this-was was headed to the exact machine they were plugged into. But the fact remained they had nowhere to hide. Simply walking down the central aisle would let you see if anyone was hiding behind the machines lined up like bookcases.

What would they do?

Would they run?

Would they stay?

Or would they eliminate this person?

“…”

Sugiyado Souha grabbed his down jacket and swung it out like a crescent moon.

And.

And.

And.

6: Find a Reason for Your Choice

“…?”

Someone seemed to gasp in slight puzzlement.

There seemed to be more than one person here.

One person casually peered down the row Sugiyado’s group was hiding in and someone else spoke to them.

“Is something wrong, Princess?”

“No.”

Just like with a library’s bookcases, there was nothing for Sugiyado and the other three to hide behind.

And yet that was the response from the kimono-wearing beauty of around 20 who had been addressed as “princess”.

She had black hair that fell all the way to her ankles and she wore an old-fashioned junihitoe.

Was that the official uniform of the castle’s princess?

“Nothing is wrong. Now, Murakami, what did you want to tell me that required coming all the way down here? Couldn’t we have discussed this in the tower?”

Needless to say, she had not lied to protect some unknown intruders she saw. She had no reason to do so.

Then why had the princess said that?

The answer was very simple. When she had looked down that row while walking down the central aisle, she truly had not seen anyone there.

It was all thanks to that down jacket.

Sugiyado had frozen his removed jacket and used it as a shield while backing against the wall with the girls.

It was one of the oldest tricks in the book.

That ninja technique was so primitive it was more often used in comedies, but the human eye was notoriously bad at seeing things under certain conditions and in certain environments. For example, it was well known that your sense of perspective failed to work on a pure white snowfield or salt flat.

It was all in how you used it.

This large space was kept as cold as a refrigerated warehouse to keep the large computers from overheating, so freezing his removed down jacket and covering its surface with white frost was enough to create the perfect camouflage. If someone saw it from a distance while taking a general look at the scene, they would fail to notice anything. And since it was frozen, it would also fool thermo sensors. Both due to the white frost and the down jacket’s layer of air used for insulation.

There was, however, one problem.

“(Wait, wait, wait. I’m going to stick out. Closer! Move in closer!)”

“(I can’t move any further than this, Asagao!)”

“(Ouka, you just want to stay as close to Sensei as you can get, don’t you? Just so you know, I’ve heard coming on too strong on the first date can scare guys away!)”

It was a makeshift shield, so Sugiyado and the other three had to squeeze in really tight to fit behind it.

But the boy ignored that close proximity as he focused all his concentration on his ears to listen in on the conversation happening outside the barrier.

He had already noticed a few things of interest in the initial short exchange.

Princess.

And Murakami, the same family name as the old man.

“…”

Sugiyado shoved his face into the chest of the closest undeveloped girl. Right now, he needed any kind of unusual memory he could find.

(Something other than a ninja would have been best, but I can’t be picky right now.)

For the most part, long-term memories were not so much forgotten as they were fused with other memories until they lost all meaning. But if you intentionally placed the memory in the wrong category to separate it from similar experiences, the information would last longer.

“(Eek!? S-Sensei! As one of your fully-trained kunoichis, I’m not going to get flustered over something like this, but I’d still prefer you didn’t breathe in the air from my chest! Could you please explain what this is about? O-or at least don’t bite too hard?)”

Despite what she said, Ouka seemed plenty flustered, but that was not what he wanted to remember. The distant conversation was his top priority.

The conversation was held between a young man and woman a little older than Sugiyado.

But after walking another row along the central aisle, they moved out of view.

“I must earnestly ask you to reconsider everything that is happening here.”

“How many times must I repeat myself here? I have no choice in the matter. Murakami, you cannot become a hero. That has already been determined, so accept your lot in life. An individual’s power is not enough to change history.”

“Princess.”

“These dangerous ideas of yours will only put New Sapporo Domain in danger, so I cannot allow any of them to bear fruit. Ask me about this once more and I will be forced to imprison you. Even if you are my most trusted ninja.”

They both must have been restless because they returned to this aisle.

Sugiyado could not let his guard down.

If they appeared in the corner of those two’s vision for even a split second and their presence here was detected, alarms would go off across this entire area of the city.

Asagao whispered a question while pressed against his back.

“(So is that Princess Karin? I heard she has temporarily taken over the domain for her bedridden father.)”

If the old man’s grandson was her “most trusted ninja”, he must have worked his way very deeply into the castle. And even if this was an unofficial discussion, it was unusual for the princess temporarily ruling in her father’s stead to leave the castle tower during her official duties. These two must have had a fairly strong bond between them.

“Princess, I know you are aware what circumstances the New Sapporo Domain…no, the entire Hokkaido Area finds itself in.”

“Yes, the underground linear motor trains have long since been stopped and the problems only worsen. But that is exactly why I intend to do what I consider best. And unfortunately, that differs with the path you prefer. Return to the path I have prepared for you, Murakami. The path you want will only bring bloodshed to this northern land and its innocent people.”

“…”

“Do you defy me, Murakami?”

“I will suppress my own desires and do what is necessary. Even if it means burning the castle down.”

“And that is why you called me down here, isn’t it?”

“Prepare yourself.”

Something glinted in the young man’s hand.

His ninja tool was a silver-colored musical instrument resembling a long flute or baton. That iron flute was a versatile weapon that could be used to bludgeon, launch poisoned darts, slash or jab with the claw on the side, and even swing around on a chain to break armor.

But Princess Karin actually seemed to respond with a snort of laughter.

She brushed her long hair from her shoulder with one hand and spoke down to the young man.

“What do you hope to accomplish after capturing me? I do hope the answer isn’t ‘kill me’.”

“…”

“Whether or not this rebellion succeeds, you will no longer have a place in this castle. Murakami, you have heard about the ‘trouble’ outside, haven’t you? You have nowhere to run. Not anymore.”

“Princess, are you saying-!?”

“Hee hee. I have merely received reports as the local political ruler and keeper of the peace. No more and no less.”

The junihitoe beauty remained entirely calm even as she made a sort of confession by revealing information that only the culprit could know.

She placed a hand over her mouth to hide her teeth even as she smiled.

“Won’t you please do as I say, Murakami? Do you not find the words of your substitute ruler to be trustworthy?”

He could never say he was doubting the person he had sworn loyalty to. That alone could be deemed intent to rebel.

So the isolated young man had to force out his words.

“I am simply following the path I believe to be right. Even if it means crossing blades with you.”

But was this the truth behind the attack on Abashiri and the killing of that old man? To rob this disobedient ninja of anyone else to rely on and leave him trapped in her castle? Had it all happened for no more reason than that?

This was an isolationist military nation.

It was ruled by the Shogunate who had maintained the principle of Kirisute Gomen in the modern era, so the Shogun’s family and the Daimyos were given preferential treatment in all things. The crime of rebelling against them was punished by execution of the culprit’s entire family. And that applied even if the rebellion was discovered and stopped in advance.

In that sense, Princess Karin’s preemptive strike may not have violated the Shogunate’s laws.

“…”

But silver ponytail Hoozuki frantically grabbed Sugiyado’s shoulder.

“(What do we do, Sensei? At this rate, the princess will be killed!? That ninja’s relative was killed just in case, so he has no reason to stop now!)”

“(But, Sensei, if we intervene to rescue her, the entire New Sapporo Domain will know we’re here.)”

Asagao was not wrong either. The ninja world was not the same as the samurai one. They were sometimes faced with a decision that had no right answers.

There was no time.

Sugiyado Souha replayed everything he had seen and heard in his mind.

The old man in Abashiri had seemed to know something, but he had been killed by the Stonewalls and his grandson had been framed for the crime.

The data on the Stonewalls had been hidden so not even Elite Ninjas like Ouka’s group could access it.

New Sapporo Castle had likely been taken over by the Stonewalls without anyone outside the wiser.

The way those two spoke to each other suggested that young man had a fair amount of authority within the castle and that remained even after it was secretly hijacked. f𝗿e𝙚𝘸e𝐛𝚗𝐨𝙫𝚎𝙡.c𝒐𝐦

Princess Karin was working to protect New Sapporo Domain and this Murakami ninja was trying to stop her.

Even if it meant drawing his blade and harming her.

“(What do we do, Sensei?)” whispered Ouka as if making a final check.

He knew there was no time.

“…”

So he gathered his resolve.

7: The Clash

The wind whipped up.

80% of a ninja battle happened during the advance preparations. After all, they were primarily saboteurs. They would be easily crushed if it came to a head-on battle, so they always needed to do a thorough investigation before fighting. They would blend into the local area, construct false connections to gather information, locate enemy weaknesses and seams in their relationships that could be secretly widened into greater rifts, procure necessary materials, determine the optimum time and place, and then, after all that had been done, sneak in and make a surprise attack from the shadows.

So once things began, a ninja always moved swiftly.

In that moment, Sugiyado Souha swept aside his camouflage – the frozen down jacket – and rushed out with the force of a crossbow bolt. He had mastered the use of his body in the fields engineering and perception.

First of all, his movements were fast.

He suddenly sprang up from a curled-up position to reach his top speed almost instantly. If a normal person tried that, they could easily tear a ligament or muscle.

Also, his movements slipped outside of people’s perception.

After initially charging top speed toward his opponent to instill instinctual fear and caution in them, he began to jump irregularly around, kicking off the side of a large computer and then landing on top of it.

Those 3m obstacles could be cleared with sport techniques.

They were laid out like the bookshelves in a library.

That meant there was plenty of space between the top of the computers and the ceiling. But people naturally assumed other people would stay on the floor and use the aisles, so their eyeballs would refuse to move in the right direction at first. Meanwhile, he filled the nearly 20m distance between them.

After running to the end of the row of large computers, he pulled two air-pressure kunais from the back of his short-sleeved dress shirt. Once he spread those deadly wings, he only had to take flight.

He attacked from directly above.

On one side was the young man dressed in a pitch-black ninja outfit.

On the other side was the Japanese beauty in a junihitoe and with ankle-length black hair.

Sugiyado knew exactly which one to aim at.

His target was Princess Karin, who was temporarily ruling this domain.

The unpleasant clang of well-forged steel on steel reverberated through the room.

He had planned for a counterattack from Murakami – hence the two kunais. But who had deflected the second one?

Yes.

Airborne Sugiyado Souha pushed back against the Murakami youth’s attack, but he had also set things up so his other blade would tear into Princess Karin’s vitals.

There was only one possible person who could have deflected that air-pressure kunai.

“I see.” Sugiyado kicked off the wall to shift the timing of his fall just enough that they could not target him as he landed. “Princess Karin, it would seem you aren’t just a sheltered girl who was put in charge simply for being her father’s daughter.”

“…”

She had pulled something from her sleeve at the last second, but it was not a dagger like you expect of a powerful family’s daughter.

It was a handheld hammer.

The one-handed hammer was entirely made of metal, even the handle. It could be used to simply hit things, or the string wrapped around its handle could be unwound to swing it around more erratically. Also, the handle was hollow. Why was that? It was the same as the disguised knives the Cyrillic Empire specialized in. By loading a matchlock gun bullet, it could be fired from outside the hammer’s range for a surprise attack.

She used a mining tool combined with an explosive.

And she was skilled enough to deflect an attack from a former Hidden One like Sugiyado Souha.

She was definitely with the Hole.

She showed all the distinctive signs of the Stonewalls who specialized in digging tunnels.

Yes.

There was a lot of confusing information here, but only a few key pieces mattered at the moment.

A trap had been laid for Murakami and his blood-related grandfather had been killed.

He fought with an elegant iron flute. He was a ninja, but a very different type from the muddy hole-diggers.

If Murakami was a Song ninja a step removed from the Stonewalls, then Sugiyado was much more curious about what Princess Karin had said here.

“It’s all for New Sapporo Domain and the north as a whole, huh?”

He could make a pretty good guess what this was about.

“But I haven’t heard what exactly you’re doing. Anyone can claim to have justice on their side, but what that means differs a lot between different people. Now, I just hope this isn’t anything as dangerous as a destructive coup d’etat or joining forces with the Cyrillic Empire.”

“Insolent boy.”

“Whatever’s going on in this domain, I am praying that you are the real Princess Karin. If a body double attacked her ruler and took her place to take control of the domain, there isn’t much hope left for you.”

Make no mistake here.

Sugiyado Souha was no longer a ninja serving the Shogunate. He was no more than a prisoner. Wielding a blade and even being outside the prison at all only added to his list of crimes. He was not fighting on the Shogunate’s command or to bring about world peace.

An old man had died with regret in his heart.

In his final moments, he had worried his fate would put his grandson in danger.

That lonely old man had taught Sugiyado so much while he was in prison.

So.

White steam erupted across the entire area. Sugiyado had jabbed an air-pressure kunai into a nearby pipe and the chemical coolant for the computers had rapidly vaporized.

He spun around.

He did not care about Princess Karin’s conspiracy right now.

“Hey!!”

Murakami tried to shout something within the obscuring steam, but Sugiyado was already on the move. He flipped the air-pressure kunai around in his hand and slammed the bottom of the grip against the side of the young man’s neck to knock him out like a switch had been thrown.

“Sensei,” whispered a voice in his ear.

“Take care of it, Ouka.”

He hated to admit it, but Sugiyado Souha had a weight limit. At 5kg, his back felt funny. At 10kg, it exploded with pain. He had no hope of carrying an unconscious person around on his own.

Then Asagao, the youngest girl who specialized in information warfare, spoke to him.

“(I’ve managed to piece together all the data on the Stonewalls. I’ve recombined all the necessary parts on my mobile device, so we can leave this place now, Sensei.)”

Then leave they would.

If Princess Karin was acting like this, taking a peek inside the castle tower would not be a good idea.

They needed to leave New Sapporo Castle.

“––––––”

Sugiyado heard a whispering beyond the white steam.

Either due to the ankle-length hair or the multilayered junihitoe, she appeared to have the silhouette of an inhuman serpent.

And that monster threw resentment his way in human language.

“You have sealed your fate here, insolent boy.”

Curses were common in this field.

But Sugiyado had yet to see one that actually accomplished anything.