I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

No one stepped forward. No one dared interfere. They simply stood there, stiff and wide-eyed, as the sound of a body being dragged over dirt scraped through the air again and again, harsh and ugly, broken only by the occasional murmur that rippled through the crowd.

“He got beaten by a ronin?”

“That one is different. Look at him… he’s terrifying.”

“Shut up, idiot! Do you want to die?”

“No… look where he’s going.”

And then the whispers faded.

Nathan was not wandering aimlessly through Minato, nor fleeing after a reckless act. He was heading in a straight line toward Morosuke’s castle, without the slightest hesitation in his stride or the faintest hint of unease on his face. He walked as though the fortress ahead were not the den of the most feared man in the district, but simply the next door he intended to open.

By the time Nathan reached the castle gate, the silence around him had become oppressive.

“What are you doing here?” one of them demanded.

“I want to see Morosuke,” he said.

“You heard me.”

He and the others leaned slightly, trying to get a better look at the man weeping on the ground. Nobusuke’s face was filthy, swollen, and twisted with pain. For a moment they did not recognize him.

“Open the door,” he said.

“I have his brother.”

Their eyes widened all at once.

Shock tore through them so violently that all four instinctively drew back. One nearly stumbled. Another half raised his spear, then lowered it again as if his own hands no longer knew what to do. The man on the ground, dirty, bruised, stripped nearly bare and shaking in pain, was unmistakably Nobusuke.

Nathan exhaled through his nose.

With a smooth motion, he unsheathed Kyomei.

All four guards flinched.

Nathan swung.

BADOOOOM!

The great wooden doors burst inward in a storm of splinters and shattered beams. The impact tore through the guards before they could even cry out properly, hurling them backward into the courtyard like rag dolls. Two were killed instantly, their bodies broken by the sheer force of the blast. The other two slammed across the ground in mangled heaps, bones snapping on impact.

“GYAAAAAH!”

Nobusuke stared, his face draining of what little color remained in it.

His mind refused to make sense of what he had just seen. A sword had swung, yes — but doors did not explode from a swing. Men were not thrown through the air like leaves because someone cut at empty space. Only one person he knew possessed power terrifying enough to warp reality through sheer strength like that.

And yet this was different.

A tremor ran through him.

Then he threw him.

BADAMMM!

For half a breath, there was stunned silence.

“What happened?!”

“Call everyone!”

“Kill him!”

He had barely crossed into the courtyard when the sound of steel answered him.

Nathan stopped.

Some held swords. Others carried spears. A few had bows slung behind them, though none seemed eager to be the first to test them. Their formation tightened slowly, uneasily, each of them trying to hide the fact that they had seen the destroyed gate, the dead guards, and the black blade in Nathan’s hand.

“You’re dead, ronin!”

He only stood there amid the wreckage, Kyomei loose at his side, while splintered wood and dust settled around his feet.

“Bring me Morosuke,” Nathan said coldly. “I only want to speak. If you wish to live, leave now.”

Then the men surrounding him burst into laughter.

“You’ve got no idea where you are, ronin!”

“You’re dead!”

The insult was thrown with the easy contempt of men who believed they still controlled what happened next. Yet none of them lowered their guard. Their feet shifted across the blood-splashed stone. Hands tightened around hilts and shafts. Weapons rose, angled toward Nathan from every side, waiting for the moment one man’s courage would drag the rest along with him.

And the charge began.

Nathan moved.

SPATTER!

For the smallest instant, the man remained upright, his expression still half-formed in confusion, before both halves peeled apart and crashed to the ground on either side of him. Blood fountained across the courtyard in a violent red spray.

Only for an instant.

Kyomei flashed through the air with lethal precision. It did not swing wildly, nor did Nathan waste a motion. Every cut was direct. Efficient. Terrible. He stepped into the crowd like a storm given human shape, and wherever the black blade passed, bodies came apart.

A chest opened to the bone.

Another man stumbled forward in two uneven pieces, his insides spilling onto the stones before he collapsed.

Men who had charged with confidence now shouted in panic, stumbling into one another, trying to strike from the sides and rear in desperate bursts. Some lunged from blind angles, hoping sheer chaos would catch Nathan off guard. But his reactions were monstrous. He twisted past a spear thrust by a breath, stepped under a descending katana, then answered each failed attack with immediate death.

Nathan shifted half a step and opened the attacker from shoulder to hip.

Nathan caught the motion without even looking fully at him and drove Kyomei through his throat.

The slaughter accelerated.

He looked as cold as winter steel.

Then fifteen.

One by one they collapsed around him, their courage broken long before their bodies gave out. The lucky ones died quickly. The unlucky remained on the ground, missing limbs, clutching open wounds, shrieking until their voices cracked into wet, animal sounds.

“Monster!” one of the last men cried.

Nathan did not even turn fully around.

The man’s arm came off at the elbow.

Nathan’s second swing took his head before the scream could escape.

At last, Nathan turned.

Nathan looked at him.

The soldier let out a ragged scream, turned, and ran for the interior of the castle.

Then he gave Kyomei a light swing to the side, snapping the dark, murky blood from the blade in a thin arc across the ground. The steel settled clean in his hand again, though the scent of slaughter still clung to it.

He crossed the ruined courtyard at a slow, measured pace, stepping between corpses and through spreading pools of red as though none of it were worth a second glance. Behind him, the cries of the dying thinned into whimpers. Ahead, the castle interior waited in tense, rising panic.

He had come to tear his way straight to its heart.