Descent of the Demon Master

‘What the hell is going on here?’

Nobuo couldn’t make heads or tails of this situation.

He was a martial artist. More specifically, a lowest-ranked grunt in a tiny gumi located in the remote corner of the Kansai region, Eihana-kai.

While a bottom-of-the-heap grunt in a regular Yakuza organization received barely enough stipends to cover their living expenses every month, organizations in the martial world offered far better compensation to their members.

Then again, such a thing was only possible because a martial art clan’s revenue was in another realm compared to a mere criminal organization.

As such, even the lowest-ranked gopher, like Nobuo, didn't have a lot to complain about. He was quietly confident that climbing up the career ladder by just a little bit would improve his life to the point of never being jealous of other people.

Helping him in his quest were Nobuo's skills. His gumi had already acknowledged him for them. A little more elbow grease, and he'd climb through his gumi's hierarchy in no time at all. And this thought made him optimistic about his life.

...Until this evening, that was. Unfortunately, his situation seemed to be changing way too quickly for his liking!

“Can you tell us what’s going on, sir?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Shut your damn mouth, okay?”

“...Sir.” Nobuo obediently stopped talking.

He was currently sitting inside a bus packed full of his gumi's people. And the interior of this moving vehicle was eerily quiet. Nobuo's seniors and higher-ups, usually full of bravado and oozing confident air, were silently glaring outside the bus's windows, their expressions stiff.

‘Are we… going to war?’

The atmosphere was flowing that way, at least to Nobuo’s eyes. That had to be it, otherwise this many people moving at once didn’t make much sense. And the higher-ups wouldn’t have told the grunts to pack their weapons unless they were about to fight an enemy.

‘But… Why?’

Wars were something rare. Uncommon. However, it was also something inevitable for people calling themselves members of the martial world. Nobuo had already experienced two wars, even though he was a relative newbie in this neck of the woods.

The first one simply ended with everyone drawing their weapons and glaring murderously at each other. But the other one? Nobuo really had to put his life on the line and fight. The mood inside this bus was reminiscent of the moments leading up to that war.

Despite the signs pointing that way, something about this situation seemed off to Nobuo. If they were really going somewhere to fight a war, the higher-ups should have briefed the gumi's fighters on who they were fighting and where they were headed before moving out. Knowing who you were fighting helped, after all.

Besides, to Nobuo's knowledge, no organization was antagonizing Eihana-kai at the moment. If this conflict was between individuals, this many people wouldn't have been mobilized. Which meant something else might be going down here, but what…?

“Nobuo!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Stop looking like a brain-dead idiot and keep your mouth shut!”

“My apologies!”

Everyone was on edge. The higher-ups sitting at the front of the bus seemed to know something, but Nobuo didn’t dare ask them for clarity. After all, their expressions pretty much warned everyone not to talk to them!

‘Well, I guess we’ll find out when we get there.’

Nobuo silently stared outside the bus window. It’s been several hours since they started moving. However, this bus was still speeding along as if its brakes had stopped working.

Eventually, though…

“Everyone, get out!”

The bus that had been driving without any regard for its passengers slammed on its brakes and screeched to a halt.

‘We are… at the docks?’

Nobuo watched as his peers at the front of the bus orderly climbed outside. He joined the procession while glancing outside the windows. He could see large shipping containers on either side of the bus. And then, a massive crane and the ripples on the ocean's surface were visible between the tall container stacks.

In other words, Nobuo was staring at the stereotypical image of a container port. Coming here wasn't the weird part of this trip, though.

A harbor like this was expansive. And civilians were forbidden from entry after certain hours. The proximity to the ocean meant this was a sensible place to dispose of bodies as long as one went about it smartly.

As such, many organizations historically fought their wars in docks and container ports like this place. Noir films often using docks as scenes of a shootout weren't completely works of fiction, in other words!

However, it seemed Nobuo’s situation wasn’t anything like fighting a war.

‘Who are all these bastards?’

There were so many people here. No, forget 'So Many,' it'd be more appropriate to say this place was teeming with rough-looking people for some weird reason!

‘Where the hell did all these people come from?’

Nobuo nearly freaked out while scanning his vicinity. Of course, it was possible for so many people to congregate in a shipping port. As long as there was a good-enough justification, anything could happen in this world, after all!

What freaked Nobuo out wasn’t the number of people. No, he freaked out because… All these folks happened to be martial artists, just like him!

‘Huh. Even if we scour the entirety of Tokyo, I'm pretty sure we still won't find this many warriors, so what the hell?’

It was like Nobuo had stumbled into a massive-scale summit of martial artists.

Back in the day, well before Tokyo's biker gangs got routed and their spirit broken, over a thousand of these hard-living men would show up to a gathering like this. At least, that was what Nobuo heard. And this scene reminded him of that.

Something like this hadn't happened in Japan's martial world recently. As far as Nobuo knew, regular grunts like him had never gathered in large numbers before, although he did hear that an event like this had taken place many decades ago.

‘Also… Look at how sharp everyone’s aura is.’

None of these people seemed like your random trash character. Each and every martial artist here emanated a treasure sword-like aura. None of them looked like a pushover that Nobuo could casually toy with.

In that case, it’d be safe to assume all these people were elites selected from their respective gumis.

Even though the average age seemed on the younger side, which indicated the real powerhouses of each gumi hadn’t shown up, Nobuo wouldn’t dare underestimate any of these warriors.

“Attention!”

Nobuo's analysis of his surroundings was interrupted by a sharp yell coming from the front of the large crowd. He quickly stood at attention. Anyone dumb enough to stand out in this volatile atmosphere would always get the beating of their life—and Nobuo had no plans of becoming that dumb bastard today.

The hierarchy within a gumi was absolute.

The overall mood of Japanese society could never be described as liberal. In other countries, such a rigid hierarchical society built upon the idea of a few people wielding absolute authority would be unthinkable, but that was what happened in Japan.

The martial world was bound to be more rigid than the surface world. Even now, incidents of bullying and assault ran rampant within Japan's Self-Defense Force, so how much worse would it be in the world of martial artists?

One wrong reply or hesitating like a moron could get you beaten up mercilessly in gumis.

The one yelling from the front addressed the crowd again. “Your new destination is… Joseon!”

Nobuo’s eyes grew large as saucers.

‘What? Joseon? As in… Korea?’

Why was that man suddenly talking about Korea in this place?

‘Besides, which Korea is he even talking about?’

Was it North or South? If it was South, there might be a reasonable justification for it. However, if their destination was somewhere in North Korea… Well, that would be a rather concerning development, now wouldn't it?!

‘Huh… It’s not North Korea, right?’

North Korea was a land of the unknown. No one could predict what might happen in that place. Since the higher-ups possessed perfectly-functioning brains, they surely wouldn't do something that reckless.

“I-is it South Joseon, sir?” Nobuo inadvertently blurted out that question.

Almost immediately, angry glares intensely locked on Nobuo, and his body instinctively reacted by standing completely still.

“Yes, it is South Joseon,” said the man in front without much care. It seemed he didn’t want to waste time with Nobuo.

The cold glares that screamed, “We’ll see each other later,” eventually shifted away from Nobuo one by one, allowing him to sigh in relief.

‘Dammit. Me and my stupid mouth!’

If he could, he'd love to kick himself in the mouth. He knew nothing good would come from running his mouth, so why did he have to cause a scene like that? Unfortunately for him, that milk had already spilled.

The knowledge of incoming merciless beatings from his seniors tormented Nobuo to no end, but he was also somewhat relieved to know that North Korea wasn't their destination.

Someone like Nobuo didn’t have the right to refuse. As long as he remained a member of the martial world, the orders from the above were absolute. No such thing as the right to reject any unreasonable orders from your superior officer in a surface-world company existed here.

If you didn't like how your company did things, you could always quit and join other workplaces. Of course, there were financial penalties and stress from doing such a thing to consider. And you'd run the risk of not finding employment again. Even so, that option definitely existed.

However, that wasn’t the case in the martial world.

If a martial artist got kicked out of a gumi after causing trouble there or willingly left it for some other reason, they would never be able to join another organization. Which was ironic. Despite these gumis constantly at each other's throats, they could be shockingly united in matters like this.

As such, anyone thrown away by their gumi had no choice but to live as a regular person in the surface world. And if they were seen using their martial arts among regular people, even if it was only one time… They would be earmarked for extermination.

In other words, anyone leaving a gumi would be monitored for the rest of their life. Knowing this, how could Nobuo or anyone else dare complain?

‘We’re going to South Korea, eh?’

The Japanese going to South Korea wasn't something weird in this day and age. Tourist groups went there all the time, after all. However, even the blind could see that this crowd wasn't going on a vacation to South Korea.

With such scary-looking tools of murder gripped in their hands, what else could they be thinking of doing other than… wage war?

Nobuo nervously gulped his saliva down.

‘We are invading South Korea? Really?’

It felt like the inside of his brain blanked out just then.

Nobuo had gone through a couple of wars in his lifetime, even if they had been minor in scale. And he heard plenty of stories about other gumis going to war with each other.

Even so, a national-level war? Nobuo never imagined he'd get involved in something this monumental.

‘This is insane…!’

The era had changed. Nowadays, wars were fought not only with military strength but via financial and diplomatic channels, too. Even if the overbearing savagery of strength still reigned supreme in the martial world… A war between nations? Was that even possible?

Nobuo nervously chewed on his lips. He realized it was too late to wonder whether the war was possible or not. It had already started, after all!

The higher-ups had gathered this many warriors in one spot, so they surely wouldn't suddenly turn around and tell everyone, “Sorry, we were trolling you.” They were already riding on the back of this tiger. The only option left now was to charge forward and hope for the best!

“Substantial rewards will be in store for any gumis achieving great feats during our time in Joseon,” said the man in front. “Of course, you will also be rewarded handsomely for your contributions. We shall closely watch who makes contributions... And who fights most courageously among you!”

The more Nobuo listened, the drier his throat became.

‘This… This is not a joke!’

It really was a war! What kind of a dogsh*t nonsense was this?

Nobuo sneakily glanced to his side. Others must be hearing this crap for the first time as well, so he wanted to check their reactions out. However, as if to betray his expectations, these bastards didn't seem to think of this development as concerning.

Actually, it was worse than that. Some of them were clearly trying to hide their excitement, only to fail spectacularly!

‘You insane bastards! We’re about to fight a war!’

People died in wars. More pertinently, though... Where was the guarantee that the person dying wasn't going to be you?

There was a real risk of dying tomorrow, yet these idiots were getting excited? They were all insane! Unfortunately, this was the tiger's back. And Nobuo was trapped on it.

He couldn’t change or do something about this situation even if he didn’t agree with any of it.

Nobuo couldn’t help but seriously ponder his life choices that led to this moment in time.

“...Huh. So, we’re getting in, eh?”

Nobuo silently sucked in a deep breath as the warriors up ahead began climbing aboard a massive cruise ship.

The higher-ups weren't giving Nobuo or his peers any moment to catch their breaths and think. Maybe this whole arrangement—not telling them the destination or goals, then shoving everyone inside a ship as soon as arriving at the docks—had been a deliberate ploy by the higher-ups.

After all, people wouldn’t have enough time to think dissenting thoughts by doing things this way!

‘Are we really doing this?’

Nobuo got scared by the prospect of war. However, he had another reason for hesitating. That was because he…

“...Uh?”

Just as Nobuo stood there in confusion and hesitation, his hearing caught some people conversing in a familiar language. He turned his head in the direction of the voices.

That was when he noticed a man with a fairly-robust physique standing next to an older man in a wheelchair. And they were accompanied by another man who looked like a stereotypical Japanese.

Nobuo muttered in Korean. “Koreans…?”

The gazes of those three men instantly locked on Nobuo.