Chapter 94

Prologue, The Hakuchō God

Legends about exterminating monsters are never any good.

In most old tales, a ridiculously strong traveler shows up, is begged by the villagers to slay a terrifying monster, defeats it, gets a reward, and leaves.

Do you know why those stories always end in a happy ending? It's because the traveler doesn't care what happens to the village afterward.

Just think about it.

We're talking about a monster that had infested the village for decades. There's no way the villagers hadn't tried to defeat it before. They must have considered training someone even stronger than a passing traveler to kill it.

The reason they didn't is because they were afraid of retaliation. Or maybe, they had already tried and suffered horribly for it.

Our village has a story like that too.

Long ago, there was a valley in the village where clear spring water flowed. Due to an earthquake, the mountain collapsed, and now it's a giant hole underground, but it used to be a mortar-shaped mountain valley.

A giant centipede lived there.

White and long, with twenty-four segments—a massive centipede.

In exchange for letting humans use the spring water, the giant centipede demanded a sacrifice once a year.

One year, the daughter of the village elder was chosen as the sacrifice. Desperate to protect their beloved daughter, the parents begged a master archer who happened to be passing by to slay the giant centipede.

The traveler gladly accepted. With the elder's help, after a night-long deadly battle, the monster was defeated.

The traveler took the reward and left, but afterward, the elder couple developed large lumps on their backs from the centipede's poison and died. Grieving her parents' deaths, the daughter threw herself into the spring valley.

Did you think it was a happy ending? Or did you think it was a tragedy?

It doesn't matter. For those living here, it's not just a story.

In our village, there's a family whose duty is to protect the spring valley for generations.

That's me.

When I was thirteen, my father took me down into the underground.

In the completely cold and pitch-black underground, the only sound was water droplets piercing the stone.

When I clung to my father and screamed that I wanted to go back, he told me to be quiet and listen carefully.

Reluctantly straining my ears, I heard a sound like a sash being untied.

Then came the sound of water being slurped by a rough tongue, and the rustling of something thin like the tip of a bamboo broom scraping against the rocky walls.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I saw it.

That long, pure white thing crawling all over the rocky ground.

Monster extermination is never any good.

It's bound to end in something even more terrifying. So who are we supposed to turn to then?