{Excerpt from the article ‘New Gods’ by Avatari, the *****, published by Avatari}

{Name: Satoshi, the gentle hurricane

Race: Youkai: Tengu (*****Mythical Grade)

Territory: Limit Mountains (Spirit Realm)

Specialty: Combat (Martial Artist: Weapons Master)

Job: Spirit King

Diplomatic Notes: He has a gentle personality and is easily impressed by people who push hard against challenges and never give up. He is what you would consider a good hearted old man and has trained many people who showed grit and guts even if they didn’t have much talent when they came to him.

Like most Mantra Artists his mental state is extremely stable and there isn’t much that can annoy him or change his mood. Even when he is annoyed it is almost impossible to notice since he is so good at controlling his feelings.

Combat Notes: It’s not fun to fight someone that you can’t sense at all. Satoshi is a master of stealth, even the keenest senses can’t find him if he chooses to disappear. The problem becomes even more alarming since his attacks are nothing to joke about.

Satoshi uses the World Weapon Forms Martial Art. Its founding Mantra is ‘The world is your weapon’. This Martial art uses everything as a weapon and has many forms. The greatest part is that the forms don’t have a limit on the amount of power that can be put into them and as there is a wide variety of Forms that means Satoshi can express his power in different ways.

The ability to disappear from senses and the ability to create different kinds of attacks means that he can target almost any weakness and put all his power into the attack without the target ever noticing his actions, it is a wonder why he isn’t a Hunter.}

Jade was shocked into paralysis, he was hoping that the person in front of him wasn’t a tyrant that would force him with a line like ‘Give us all you have or I’ll kill you’ or a hero that would say ‘It’s for the good of humanity you shouldn’t even ask for a payment’ because in both cases Jade would rather kill himself than yield.

The old man smiled warmly and said “There’s no need to be afraid, I’m-“. He was interrupted by Yubi shouting angrily “Old man! You’re trespassing!” He turned to Yubi and said “Yubi-san, there’s no need to be so angry I’ll pay the fee for trespassing”.

Yubi shouted “You better! And don’t add san to my name… so old fashioned”. Satoshi laughed, turned to Jade, who had relaxed when he saw that Satoshi wasn’t what he had feared, and said “Pardon her. As I was saying I have a different deal. You might not know this but there are 8 Daimyos but there are only 7 in this meeting. That is because one of them has been captured, she is a Primordial Human like you, Rank 9 though. We would appreciate it if you rescued her”

Jade replied “Considering you can kill me in my sleep and you’re choosing not to go for this mission I can assume that she was captured by some really strong people. Am I right?”

Satoshi answered “Partly, she wasn’t captured by people but by a monster, a Rank 23 monster”. Jade was shocked by the information and his brows furrowed as he took time to phrase his next question.

Jade asked “Why?” It was the most logical question. Monsters had even more reason now to kill anybody they find with the event going one, so why would a monster capture a human? Various reasons appeared in Jade’s mind but he needed Satoshi to verify the answer.

Satoshi said “How much do you know about the Noble Conqueror job?” Jade shook his head and said “I don’t know it”. Satoshi nodded and said “The prerequisite to getting the Noble job is to save a large amount of lives and become a Rank 7. The perquisite for promoting to the Noble Conqueror job is for a Conqueror to save a lot of lives and become a Rank 15. So you can understand how a monster with that kind of job is different from regular monsters. From what we’ve seen it has various monster races in its territory which is something we’ve never seen before in any horde”

Jade’s eyes widened in shock and Satoshi continued “One of the privileges of the Noble job allows the user to notice when any creature enters its territory regardless of how stealthy the creature is, it is called the Noble Territory privilege and it is also available to Noble Conquerors. As you would expect, Hunter’s Camouflage is the weakness of this privilege but you are the highest ranked hunter I’ve seen. But you are not of a high enough Rank for your privilege to have an effect on this monster”

Jade nodded at Satoshi’s statement; with him being at Rank 11, Hunter’s Camouflage could deceive creatures up to Rank 18 since it increases the tolerable Rank difference by 1 Rank for every Rank gained above Rank 7 and had an initial tolerance of 3 Ranks. He would have to reach Rank 14 to be able to deceive a Rank 23 and that was assuming the Noble Conqueror job didn’t have privileges that protected it from Hunter’s Camouflage.

Satoshi continued “But you have spatial technology and you can get in and out quickly. The reason the Daimyos wanted to buy the spatial technology was mostly because of this situation but since you’ve been using spatial tech for a while and you are a Hunter I thought it better if we gave you this mission”

Jade nodded he agreed with Satoshi’s thinking but he said “I’ve faced a Rank 20 creature. From my experience spatial technology isn’t so broken when compared to them”. Satoshi nodded and disappeared only to reappear behind Jade.

Jade was shocked as Horus showed him that Satoshi had teleported from its spatial map. The space around Satoshi and behind Jade had become unstable and Satoshi appeared behind Jade. Jade looked at Satoshi and Satoshi explained “I call it Sugata. It is a technique that requires a certain amount of Agility stat to be achieved. Monsters with the required Agility stat can use it. But it has limitations, it can only teleport between a few 2 to 3 kilometers maximum. I specialize in the Agility stat and I’m only able to teleport a maximum of 3.45 kilometers.

But here you are in Japan from Nigeria, you have long range teleportation capabilities and the fact that you survived after getting close enough to a Rank 20 to have your IP check it and still stand here today alive and in one piece means you’re up for the job”

Jade thought about it and realized ‘I can do it, I’m just scared of another encounter with a monster in the 20s. But I need more information’ Jade said “You didn’t answer my question. Why would a monster capture a bag of free souls?”

Satoshi sighed and said “To learn. The monster is smart compared to the other monsters and I’m sure it has seen the uniqueness of humans. Especially after the event announcement, it knows that there is much to learn from us”

Jade nodded but Satoshi continued “The other reason is probably because it is finding a mate. It is a Youkai, an Oni so it can probably try to mate with humans when it gets its reproductive organ after advancing to the King job which I’m sure it can do easily. We’re afraid it might rape out the person it captured when it learns more about humans just to see if it will work, we don’t want a broken Daimyo”.