Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 195: Orders Behind Paper Walls
To the farmers behind the leader, Lannor looked as if he had merely patted the man on the head like one might press down a puppy. With a dull thud, the leader pitched sideways and hit the ground.
Then that tall figure swept his snake-like eyes across them. The courage they had wrung out of fear and frenzy dried up like water in the sun.
The remaining five or six villagers skidded to a halt. Their feet scraped hard against the dirt, all the force of their charge fighting against their own terror. The fierceness they had scraped together vanished from their faces, and they stopped three or four meters from Lannor, waving machetes, clubs, and whatever else they had brought in wild, useless arcs. It no longer looked as if they had rushed over to attack him. It looked as if they were trying to keep him from coming any closer.
Lannor tilted his head and watched them in silence.
Farmers. No doubt about it.
So they had taken him for the villain here?
No more arrows came. The only bow lay on the back of the man at Lannor’s feet. The fellow had probably been afraid that if he did not lead the charge himself, the others would never dare move, so he had gone in with the bow still on his back.
Most of them were gaunt, their upper bodies wrapped in loose, poor cloth, their lower halves covered only by loincloths. They were so thin their joints looked oversized, knotted, almost wrong. The leader was somewhat better off. He wore a crude set of armor with a few bamboo plates hanging from it, and a skirt of the same rough make covered half his thighs.
Lannor shook his head and ignored the farmers wavering between advance and retreat. He nudged the prone leader with the tip of his boot.
“Hey. Wake up, mate.”
He had some confidence in his own control. That slap would only have knocked the man out for a moment.
Sure enough, after two nudges, the leader’s eyelids fluttered open.
“I am truly, terribly sorry!”
The leader, Kotaro, now lay flat on the ground, forehead pressed to the dirt as he shouted his apology. He was a commoner, so he had no family name.
The farmers who had followed him were in the same posture, though they had wisely kept some distance.
Apparently, this was a very solemn form of apology in Japan.
When Kotaro had first woken from his brief unconsciousness, the feverish battle haze had gone out of him as well. After taking only a few more rational glances at Lannor, he had dropped all hostility and put on a look of terrified reverence instead.
Lannor found this harder to deal with than the man charging at him with a bamboo spear.
He knew well enough that lecturing a soldier-farmer from ancient Japan about dignity or individual personhood would be pointless. Still, being treated as some exalted figure made his skin itch. Kotaro’s thoughts were not the problem. Lannor simply disliked the feeling.
So he stepped aside, avoiding the man’s direct bow, then crouched beside him with both arms resting on his knees to level the height difference as much as possible.
“To attack you through our own blindness, and to disturb your journey to join the Hirata Clan, is a crime worthy of death. Please forgive me!”
“No, it’s fine. No one was hurt ... except you.”
As Lannor struggled through the man’s overly solemn apology, he caught several useful details.
Join the Hirata Clan? So there really is a conflict here. Has it reached the point of hiring ronin?
“Why were you so eager to attack me? You looked half out of your minds.”
Kotaro, still prostrate, respectfully lifted his head.
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