Combatants Will Be Dispatched - Volume 6 - Chapter 3.5

5

In the woods a short distance from Hideout City.

As demons look on from a distance, Rose has her tail raised in an intimidating pose, while countless Bashin tribe members face off against her.

“Oh damn, that’s a huge group! Where are the Combat Agents?! Why aren’t they here?!”

Even thinking about numbers, there are way too many of them here.

In the worst case, we can resort to sweeping them aside with machine-gun fire, but given that the Bashins are practically naked, the result would be a gory mess.

Among the residents of Hideout City looking on from a distance are the demon children.

It wouldn’t be good for their emotional development to witness a machine-gun massacre.

As though detecting my anxiety, Viper speaks up in response.

“The Combat Agents are all off working on the road to the giant lake. Ms. Alice is in the city conducting trade negotiations, while Ms. Snow went off to the city boasting about how she was going to buy up food and supplies at a cheap price…”

And of course, I bet Grimm’s asleep. Dammit!

“…Tch! …Tch!”

Facing off with Rose is a large Bashin tribesman as well as the Bashin girl we encountered a while back.

It seems the girl wants to communicate something and is appealing to Rose in her muted tone.

“I don’t quite get it, but you’re here to fight again, right? Fine. I’m Rose: Combat Agent and chimera of the Kisaragi Corporation! I accept your challenge!”

“—!  !”

The young Bashin girl shakes her head intently from side to side, but Rose pays no heed, sucking in her breath—

“Drown in a sea of hellfire…! Sleep for all eternity! Crimson—”

Rose falls over and rolls on the ground, fire spilling from the corner of her lips after I smack her in the back of the head.

I guess having her fire breath interrupted midcast causes her to lose control of the attack.

“Aaack! Wuh are you doingth, Bothh?! If I wasn’t a combat chimera, I’d have nasty burns inside my mouth!”

“Um, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be able to breathe fire at all if you weren’t a chimera, but hang on a sec. They don’t look like they’re here to fight.”

Yes, while the Bashin tribe are all carrying weapons, none of them look like they want to attack us.

I thought they might have been here to protest our construction near the giant lake, but that doesn’t seem to be it, either.

It is then that the Bashin tribesman begins to mumble…

“Ummm. ‘Is the white-armored woman who keeps interrupting this girl’s rite of passage one of your people? If so, we would like to know why she keeps getting in the way…’ is what he’s asking.”

White armor…? Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.

Since she’s not one of us, I let Viper know the Bashin tribe can deal with the interloper however they see fit.

“‘In that case, we’ll deal with her on our own. We’re sorry for troubling you with such a large group.’”

The Bashin tribe is a lot more civilized than I gave them credit for.

If anything, our chimeras who refuse to let down their guard are more savage than they are.

“I don’t quite get it, but I guess you solved everything by talking? I’m always competing for prey with that girl, so I wanted to finish her off here, but…”

“Aww, how boring. I was hoping I could toy with these savages…”

Yeah, based on what Rose and Russell are saying, they’re totally the savages.

And I think we are done, but…

“ !”

…Little Bashin, who was quiet up until this point, begins to plead her case.

Having noticed, the Bashin tribesman murmur something to Viper.

“…Um, he says, ‘We have nothing else to say as a tribe. But…we wanted to ask the chimera girl a question. Why does she also continually interrupt this girl’s rite of passage?’ to Ms. Rose.”

At Viper’s interpretation, everyone turns to look at Rose.

It seems that Little Bashin can’t speak the spirit language yet, so Viper can’t interpret what she’s saying.

“What’s a rite of passage? The thing is, whenever I find a delicious-looking supopocchi to hunt, that girl shows up and gets in my way. So ask them why she does that!”

“—!  !”

Little Bashin emphatically shakes her head, and the tribesman murmurs again.

“‘Members of our tribe are considered adults when they can hunt a supopocchi on their own. That’s what we call our rite of passage. We do controlled breeding of supopocchi in our forests by hatching their eggs, but the chimera girl comes into our forest territories and takes the ones that are ready for harvesting…’”

“You’re totally in the wrong here, Rose! You’re hunting animals they painstakingly bred!”

“B-but the forest belongs to everyone! You can’t just claim a piece of it for yourself! Besides, I don’t know what the difference is between wild and human-bred supopocchi! If they’re that important, put your names on them or something!”

As Rose lashes out, the little Bashin girl shakes her head again.

“—.  …”

“‘Because of this world’s climate, supopocchi eggs can’t hatch naturally without human intervention. All the supopocchi in this forest were bred by humans.’”

“We’re going to apologize to them. I’ll order some gifts with my Evil Points to make up for it.”

“W-w-wait, Boss! How was I supposed to know about the life cycle of a supopocchi?!”

I make sure to grab Rose, since she’s trying to flee as the situation turns against her, and order a gift package of confections from Kisaragi—

“‘No, it’s enough if you recognize our breeding efforts. We did cause you problems when we were doing our drive hunt with a giant pack of monsters, so…’”

I figured they were trying to interrupt our construction efforts, but they were just doing a drive hunt.

Still, it sounds like Rose has been taking their animals not just once, but multiple times…

“I know this isn’t much, but please accept this both as an apology and as a greeting from your new neighbor.”

“‘Oh-ho, thank you for being so polite! But we only have our hand axes to give you as a gift in return. Please, accept this…’, Mr. Six, I’ve heard that axes are the second most important thing to the Bashin tribe, next to their lives. What should we do…?”

Having been offered the ax in exchange for the sweets, I have Viper tell them that I can’t accept such an important item as a gift, but the Bashin tribesman is adamant that he can’t accept our gift without providing one in return.

After a moment’s thought, I have Kisaragi send me two tomahawks.

I don’t know what they prefer, so I order one each from two major weapons manufacturers, Flowning and Smith & Johnson.

“I’ll accept your ax. These are personal presents from me. Go ahead and choose the one you want and take it. Also, the girl seems pretty close in age to our chimera, so I hope they can be friends.”

“‘Such a beautifully crafted and functional weapon! Despite being made entirely of metal, it’s easy to grip and the weight balance is nearly perfect… Ohhh! And this one’s designed perfectly as a throwing weapon…!”

“…You can go ahead and keep them both.”

Since the Bashin tribesman is having trouble choosing between the two, I insist he take both.

The tribesman holds each ax in either hand and freezes, and after several long moments spent in thought, hands one to Little Bashin.

Given that he then bows his head and urges the little Bashin girl to thank me, maybe he’s her dad?

Little Bashin stares, transfixed by the ax before she cradles it to her chest and looks up at me.

“Thank you…very much…”

She speaks softly, but in words I can understand.

“Since they’ve taken two axes, giving them the sweets as well would be too much, right? I’ll go ahead and eat this.”

“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah—!”

“Dammit, we’re trying to clean up your mess, you idiot! Hey! Stop fighting, you two!”