Chapter 42: Chapter 42: A Strange Cult and Assassination Attempt

__________ POV Jashinist __________

And as we knelt and prayed, we watched the woman's body before as it burn. I believe she was one of pure heart and body as well. A great offering to our lord and one of our most important rituals.

Offering a heretic to our lord in hopes that we will finally be noticed like our leader was.

Thankfully, there's no shortage of offerings.

We are able to easily lure in more and more people to provide as offerings to their lord, some were kidnapped from far-away villages, some were coerced into coming there on their own, and then drugged into submission.

Most of our offerings are comprised of women and children. However, children sometimes get the opportunity to join us as well. The children were akin to a blank slate, still pure enough to be converted to our beliefs.

Our church is ever-growing, unbeknownst to anyone else. Some of us had tried to spread the word of Lord Jashin to some villages, but they never did manage to receive many recruits from that.

Blasphemous pagans that lived without any purpose. Just thinking about their filthy existence makes me mad.

I can barely wait for the day when we would finally be able to grow strong enough. Strong enough to spread chaos and death to this dirty world and its residents.

Thankfully, we receive strength directly from their lord, should he notice our efforts.

Varying degrees and ranks within our religion receive different gifts from Lord Jashin. It is said that our leader has even achieved a state of semi-immortality.

Lord Jashin only grants that gift to one person each generation, he truly is fit to be our respected leader.

Ah, how wonderful it is to see our efforts be rewarded in such a way. Alas, we recruits have yet to receive our Lord's blessing.

More blood must be spilt, patience is something we must have, but not something we must ask of our lord. We must shower him in offerings as is customary.

Oh, there he is! Our esteemed leader! Master Kyumuro, the shepherd to our damaged souls.

Wearing nothing more than a black coat, showing off his tattoos and the symbols that adorn his body.

He even painted his hair white, to match the depictions of our Lord Jashin. He has even appeared in the dreams of former leaders...

A great man that has truly earned the right to wear the symbol of Lord Jashin on all of his limbs, and even on his tongue.

"Oh! Devout Followers of Lord Jashin! Tonight, he has spoken to me!" Master Kyumuro spoke out to us, calling us devout, such high praise for us unworthy followers!

"Hail Lord Jashin! Hail Master Kyumuro!" Our voices resounded throughout the praying ground.

Our Master nodded his head with a warm smile on his face. However, his smile soon turned upside down.

A frown?! Have we, unworthy followers, done something to displease our lord?!

"Our Lord has spoken!" Master Kyumuro repeated himself as all of us quieted down, waiting for his words.

"Today's sacrifice was nothing more than a pathetic contribution! He has grown bored of such boring ways!"

Oh, a pathetic contribution?!? Lord, we apologize for all of the displeasure we've caused!

"We must atone for our sins! We must atone for our sins!"

All of us moved in a trained manner, already knowing our customs.

We unsheathed our knives, placing a palm on the ground, we all stabbed into that palm, impaling it on the ground. The ground started turning red, as all of my brothers bled for our collective sins.

It is necessary to pay in earnest when displeasing our Lord, for he has given us so much, yet we can only provide him with so little...

"Such a way of praying for forgiveness! My devout followers, I commend you for your readiness and praise you for your unwavering faith!" Master Kyumuro's words rang like a song to our ears, as we bore through the pain.

"However!" Master's next words immediately dampened our spirits..."Lord Jashin will not be pleased with just this tonight!"

"We have received his direct orders! To repent, we must slaughter a village of blasphemous pagans in his name!"

Master Kyumuro spread out his hands, opening up his palms and smiling warmly at all of us.

Yes! Lord Jashin is giving us a way out! A way to repent for our sins!

"It shall be done! It shall be done!"

Our shouts echoed throughout the forest, as we all got up and started bandaging our bleeding palms.

Tonight we shall lead many wayward souls to our Lord Jashin! Praise be!

__________ POV Ken__________

... Crazed cultists, the lot of them.

Seeing them burn up a woman was crazy enough. Seeing them all plunge a blade into their own hands is something else entirely.

People are always much more open to causing pain to others than to themselves. These people are too far gone...

And that man leading them... 'Master Kyumuro'...

I don't know what his deal is, but it almost feels like he is dead... For some strange reason. It's almost as if Nature Energy just doesn't stick to him for some reason.

All living organisms must have Nature Energy inside of them, but for him, it seems to be constantly spilling out.

One thing's for sure, he feels dangerous. He gives me a strange feeling of uncertainty, I'm not sure if I can fight him on my own even...

Maybe I should've brought Saburo with me... Hmm... Too late for regrets.

But do I even need to fight this weirdo?

The commission was not worth much money, to begin with. At least nowhere near enough for all of this trouble...

I do have a choice to make though... Letting these crazed cultists roam the world freely will definitely lead to a lot of innocent lives being taken.

I wouldn't really give a shit if they only targeted shinobi, but civilians didn't sign up for their lives being put in danger...

Hah. Well, I guess I can deal with this branch at least. I'm assuming they have more, but I'm not going to search the world for cultists.

I'm not that big of a busybody, though things might change if I get paid enough...

Anyway, since I'm here... Might as well give these cultists a bit of a lesson on brutality.

In the first place, I don't have to fight this weirdo in any way... I just have to kill him.

Kill him in such a fashion that I strike fear into the hearts of all of the other dregs that are near him.

With his death, they are bound to scatter like rats, after that it'll just be a game of hunting down as many rats as I can...

In my past life, there were plenty of people stronger than me, but they all still died to me, this situation isn't all that different.

Hmm, I can see that they're starting to head in one direction... Probably going for that village they want to sacrifice to their 'Lord Jashin' or whatever. Better get some traps ready, just in case.

__________ POV Narration __________

And so, the Blind Assassin got to work, easily tracking the large group of fanatics and realising the route they were taking.

They were headed for the third closest village to their base, one that was obstructed by trees. A great spot for a slaughter.

Unfortunately for the cultists, the ground would only be painted red with their blood.

Ken quickly got to work, setting up as many traps as humanly possible halfway to the village.

He didn't have the time to warn the villagers and evacuate them. But he didn't need to, at the end of the day he only needed to kill the cultists, and that would be the end of it.

'Once the leader is dead, they're unlikely to continue with their march towards the village anyway...'

Ken used all of the metallic wire inside his bag, setting up trap after trap, throwables and nets, even resorting to pitfalls filled with sharp sticks.

The holes were dug up in a hurry using his tail, but they were going to hold up.

After all, the rest of the cultists were mostly regular humans, not even shinobi.

Only two or three people besides the leader of the cult even had any chakra above genin levels, so Ken wasn't really concerned about them.

The leader himself seemed to be wielding a weapon, a large two-bladed red scythe that was tied to his wrist by a long chain that was wrapped around his arm.

The Blind Assassin stalked the group for a while, he had also managed to count them finally. There were a total of 87 people.

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Ken knew that he needed to kill them all, leaving even one of them alive would just lead to the cult rebuilding itself.

Eventually, the time came for Ken to kill their leader, as they were reaching the place where he had placed traps.

Ken stalked the trees until he was directly above the madman. With a flick of the wrist, a puff of smoke appeared and a large windmill shuriken unfolded itself in his hand.

A nice toy he had managed to buy at some point in his bounty-hunting journey from a wayward shinobi. He even had a few of them custom-made since he found them particularly useful.

Ken's chakra immediately flared up, and the windmill shuriken buzzed with life, spinning in his hand as it radiated lighting.

With another flick of the wrist, the shuriken flew towards the leader's head, aiming to decapitate him outright.

Just as the shuriken was about to cut into him, Kyumuro raised his hand and turned his scythe at an angle, blocking the projectile with relative ease.

The shuriken slid off to the side, causing sparks as it came in contact with the mad leader's weapons. It then embedded itself deep into the ground, creating a rather sizable hole as it only stopped spinning after a few seconds.

"Oh my! It seems we've got a rat!" Kyumuro shouted as the Jashinists behind him all took out their weapons, consisting mostly of tantos.

Kyumuro looked up, only to raise an eyebrow as he didn't see anyone there.

He turned around a few times, scowling as he prepared to disembowel whoever got too close to him.

Above, on the branches, Ken had already moved his position. He moved his mask to the side of his head and quickly made a few hand signs.

His speed was decent, but it was not all that great when compared to Jonin. Thankfully, he wasn't in any hurry.

As he finished his hand sings, his chest flared up, and he brought his head back, before opening his mouth and spitting forward a gigantic fireball.

'Fire Release: Great Blaze Ball!'

One of the techniques he had gained recently, it was extremely flashy and just as deadly.

The fire immediately caught Kyumuro's attention, who raised his head and looked at it with a scowl.

"You worms! Quickly form a wall around me!" He quickly ordered his men, who followed suit, protecting their leader with their bodies.

The fireball hit the ground in front of them, and the ensuing explosion shook the entire forest, as the trees around them fell to the side.

Ken landed on the ground and wiped his mouth a bit, before placing his mask back on and tapping his wrist once more, taking out his long blade in a quick motion, already unsheathed.

'Was that enough, I wonder?'

Ken walked forward carefully, the smoke was hindering his sense of smell, and the crackling of the fire was somewhat annoying his ears, but he could still feel that a lot of people had been burnt to a crisp thanks to that jutsu of his.

Just as he prepared to blow the smoke away with a swing of his blade, a scythe rushed towards him from behind the smoke screen.

The Blind Swordsman wasn't taken by surprise at all, he simply leaned to the side and batted the weapon away using his blade.

'As expected, cockroaches don't die that easily...'

Ken then swung his blade in front of him with a lot of force, causing a large gale that blew Kyumuro away and revealed the area to everyone that was still to the side.

There were dozens of burnt corpses, cultists turned to charcoal. Still, just as many had survived, not being close enough to the explosion.

Kyumuro already had his scythe back, having used it to slow himself down. Now he was standing right where he had been when the attack had started.

"Tsk! You dare kill my devout followers?! Lord Jashin will not forgive such transgression!" Kyumuro shouted in anger, as the cultists that should've been cowering in fear, were only emboldened, all rushing towards Ken with their weapons out.

'As expected... You can't scare away madmen...' Ken thought to himself as he parried a few knives, before swinging his blade and cutting into their wielders with ease, bisecting them as he dodged a red scythe from the side.

The scythe lodged itself into the heads of one of the cultists, but no one seemed to care, they all continued rushing Ken with crazed expressions.

"Stop moving around you pest!" Kyumuro shouted as he tried to pull back his weapon from the head of the cultists.

"..." Ken just scowled underneath his mask, before he turned and made a quick hand sign.

The ground underneath Kyumuro shifted as the cult leader had just managed to pull back his weapon, grasping the handle in his hand.

Alas, he only had time to look down before a clone of Ken impaled him through the chest with a chakra blade, pushing his heart out of his body and onto the dirt in front of him.

The clone then exploded into a burst of lighting, further frying the cult leader as he was dying.

The windmill shuriken that Ken had thrown earlier had just been a lightning clone, the fireball had been nothing more than a distraction, to take Kyumuro's thoughts away from the shuriken... And it seemed to have worked.

'I guess he wasn't much after all...' The Blind Assassin thought to himself as he jumped up and dodged a few slashes from the fanatical cultists.

The 40 or so cultists that were left didn't even notice that their leader had his heart gouged out. They simply continued attacking Ken with fervour, waiting for him to land.

Ken, while in midair, started spinning more and more. As soon as he landed, the cultists tried attacking him, but it was too late.

He had already gathered enough momentum, and a violent tornado quickly formed around him as he continued spinning.

'Dragon Twister...'

The tornado grew in size, as it lifted all of the cultists off their feet and threw them into the sky.

Ken continued spinning more and more, some of the collapsed trees also being pulled into the tornado and thrown into the sky.

From a distance, it just looked like a small natural disaster.

Then, Ken stopped spinning abruptly, he stood still in the eye of the tornado for a bit before slashing down his blade, breaking the wind stream apart and the tornado at the same time.

All of the cultists that had been thrown into the sky forcefully hit the ground, dying on impact as Ken dodged a few of their bodies and trees.

And just like that... The Cult of Jashin was exterminated.

Ken proceeded to walk over to the leader's body, sensing it from up close as he tried to figure out just what about him had managed to creep him out.

'... Even after his heart was gouged out, it still feels the same... Though he is certainly dead, there's no trace of his wounds healing in any way.'

Ken reached his hand down, wanting to feel the wound himself.

Just as he did, the body moved, the red scythe slashing towards him at insane speeds.

Ken managed to block it, raising his blade just in time, but Kyumuro's other hand also moved, pulling a steel rod from his sleeve and thrusting it towards his chest.

The Blind Swordsman managed to slightly bend his body, but the steel rod still stabbed into his shoulder.

Ken rolled away as he narrowly avoided getting cut by the red scythe on his way out.

'What the hell?... How can he survive something like that? Even I'm not sure if I could...'

"Hahaha! Curse Technique: Death Controlling Possessed Blood!" Kyumuro burst out laughing as he licked Ken's blood from the steel rod in his hand.

The blood from his chest seemed to fall and form into a strange symbol on the ground.

Just like that, Ken sensed a strange energy creating a connection between the two of them.

Ken scowled at that, he prepared to dash forward, but the madman seemed to be just as fast as he was.

"Lord Jashin! I offer this heathen's blood to you! May it satiate your hunger!" Kyumuro raised his scythe, and plunged it into his own stomach, smiling sadistically as he did so.

Ken was shocked when he sensed that... But what shocked him more was the fact that he was forced to stop his advance, clutching at his stomach with a scowl on his face.

He was so shocked in fact, that he fell to one knee.

'W-what?...'

"Hahahaha! You fool! To think you would try to face Lord Jashin's brilliance on your own! Foolish!"

The man then looked at the ground, at his feet was his heart. He smiled sadistically as he kneeled and looked Ken in the 'eye', before stabbing into it with his steel rod.

"Sleep tight!" The mad cult leader said as he watched Ken's body go limp.

____________________________________________________

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