Nagare: “I can’t believe this”

Shoyo: “A road trip! This is great!”

Nagare: “Blue Sparrow Branch of Protectors is no more, you fool! Now we have to transfer to another branch!”

Shoyo: “Well, you heard your master. A branch cannot keep being active with only one member, besides, he said that the Golden Dragon Branch is seeking more recruits due to the increase in demon attacks. Look on the bright side; you will get to kill more powerful demons”

Nagare: “Is that something I am supposed to be excited about?”

Shoyo: “Aren’t you?”

Nagare: “No! I am a Demon Hunter, not a thrill seeker. I carry out my duty to protect the humanity from the threats of demons and monsters; it is not something I do for entertainment”

Shoyo: “Aren’t you being tad bit too uptight about this?”

Nagare: “I have no idea what you could possibly mean”

The two of them were now travelling on foot to the location of the Golden Dragon Branch, their new base of operations.

On foot, it would take at least three days to get there, and that is if they don’t get lost.

Luckily, Nagare’s master gave him a detailed map to their destination.

Hiromasa: “Nagare-kun, please don’t get lost again”

His master’s words echoed within Nagare’s mind.

Nagare: ‘What does master think I am? That was only one time, one time!’

Just to be safe, Hiromasa secretly asked Shoyo if he could use a map to navigate, and when Shoyo nodded, Hiromasa sighed in relief.

Hiromasa: “The kid has a lot of untapped potential, but he is needlessly serious and dense….And as far as sense of direction goes….”

Shoyo: “Understood. I have it covered”

Hiromasa: “Thank you, Ryoma-kun”

As they kept walking, Shoyo couldn’t help but laugh on the inside.

Nagare ended up going the wrong way at least five times by now.

The only reason they actually stayed on the track was because Shoyo was joking around and making Nagare unconsciously follow his lead.

Shoyo: ‘When he is distracted, he does not think about the way he is going and instead follows the person next to him, which in this case happens to be me’

Shoyo: “Naga-kun, Naga-kun!”

Nagare: ‘How long is this guy going to keep doing this? This is most annoying’

Nagare couldn’t have known that Shoyo was doing such irritating stunts in order to make sure his partner did not get lost.

For the first few hours, they followed the map, but then they found out that the bridge they were supposed to cross had been completely destroyed.

Even if they jumped as far they could, they would still fall to their deaths.

Shoyo: “Don’t worry, Naga-kun. I know of another way of getting there”

Nagare: “You do? How? Have you been to this place before?”

Shoyo: “Sort of…Anyways, just follow my lead”

Shoyo: ‘I am lucky that this bridge had collapsed. Nagare’s map reading skills are something else all right’

Even patience has its limits, and Shoyo could only sigh in relief for not losing it after Nagare ended up going the wrong way for umpteenth time.

After a full day of walking, they decided to camp outside.

Nagare proceeded to pull out a pouch with his food supplies.

His food supplies included: bread, dried meat, and clean water.

Shoyo: “Time to eat”

Nagare: “Hey Shoyo, do you want some…”

Nagare stopped talking right at the moment he saw Shoyo’s razor sharp teeth sinking into a bark of a broken tree branch.

Instead of paying heed to Nagare’s shock, Shoyo kept munching on the tree branch, devouring it with each bite.

Nagare: “Never mind”

By now, Nagare had been observing Shoyo for a while.

Shoyo was unlike any human being Nagare had ever met before.

His healing power aside, there was something inherently strange about this man named Shoyo.

Apparently Shoyo was left handed, but his left hand had only four fingers while his right had five. It did not look like one of his fingers was cut off, so Nagare presumed that he was born like that.

His smile may look ordinary, but his mouth was full of razor sharp teeth. Rather than teeth, they were more like knives.

Once, when he visited a market, Nagare saw a merchant selling items he called ‘shark teeth’, and whatever was inside Shoyo’s mouth eerily reminded Nagare of them.

But the strangest thing about Shoyo was his eyes. He almost always had them closed. Nagare could only wonder how exactly he navigates or whether he keeps them half open.

One time he briefly saw Shoyo’s eyes.

Demons have strange eyes, more often than not, their eye pupils are slitted like that of a cat or in other cases their eyes take on strange shapes like swirls or patterns.

It was a general belief that eyes of demons were different than that of humans.

Shoyo’s eyes had black sclera, and the color of his iris was green.

Nagare had killed many demons, and some of them had black sclera, but with Shoyo, he was not so certain.

Silver, sunlight, and Holy Magic, they were the three known weaknesses of demons. Yet, Shoyo was immune to all three.

And as far as the desire to consume humans goes, Shoyo did not seem to have it, at all.

Instead, he was an extreme omnivore.

When his master offered him some food on a plate and some chopsticks, Shoyo ate everything, including the chopsticks and the plate.

Nagare remembered Master Hiromasa’s words: “I don’t know what he is, but he is definitely not a demon”

Nagare: ‘Nope, but he is a weirdo who eats tree barks’

After setting up a campfire, Nagare dozed off to sleep.

He slept for a few hours.

Nagare: ‘You know, it is kind of nice. A warm campfire, a wide open sky, the grass is like a soft pillow under my body…It tickles…Does the grass crawl like that? Stop it, stop it…’

When he opened his eyes, Nagare realized, to his horror, that he was covered in insects.

There were roaches, centipedes, and millipedes all over him. And the most disturbing part was that they were enormous, each one was at least as long as his foot if not longer.

Nagare: “AAAAAH!”

Standing up, Nagare shook off all the bugs clinging to his body before trying to make a run for it.

Nagare: “Shoyo! Where are you?! We are getting out of here!”

Then, he saw Shoyo roasting a two foot long roach on a stick over a bonfire. He had a foot long caterpillar on a stick he had already prepared in his right hand.

Shoyo: “Hey Naga-kun, do you want some?”

Shoyo took a bite of the cooked caterpillar.

Nagare: “NOOOOO!”

Shoyo: “Could it be…you are afraid of bugs? Uh-oh…”