The Hidan war party was quick to release the mostly female prisoners, who still seemed very frightened of the massive and powerful warriors. Rolwen, however, was doing a very good job of easing their nerves. He talked almost constantly to a woman who seemed to be something of an emotional pillar for the group, interpreting and smoothing out and otherwise just constantly speaking for the intentions of the Hidan in real time.

Meanwhile, a rather nervous looking Levin approached me as I still stood over the bodies of the 4 men I had killed. I was somewhat in the moment at the time. But now, after the fact, it seemed rather strange just how easy it all was.

This was not the first time I had participated in the death of a person in this world, but this is the first time I have taken a life with my own hands. The last raid I went on, I pretty brutally paralyzed a man. It was afterward that he was killed by someone else. Before that, it was the dark elves with the help of Nymph and the other tree spirits of the village. This had all been just me, and I was brutally efficient about it to a point it was more than a little frightening.

“Umm… Asa?”

I heard the voice and snapped out of it. I looked up to see the hesitant look on Levin’s face as he looked at me. He was not alone. There were several of the Hidan children who had come in with him, all of them with huge smiles on their faces as they gave me looks of admiration.

[Wow, Asaren took down this many alone! She wasn’t even fighting with a mount!] A boy, looking to be around 12, said as he looked around at my kills.

[Hey! What did you do to put such a big hole through this guy?]

[It looks like some animal ate right through him, starting with the back.]

[I bet it was some kind of magic!]

These kids didn’t even flinch at all the gore. In fact, they seemed to revel in it. Well, they are definitely children of this world. They’ve been raised to accept and idealize this kind of extreme violence.

It made perfect sense. There was nothing wrong with this. This is as things should be.

The thing that was most disturbing about all of this was how easily my own combat instincts seemed to accept it. I was already almost on the same level as these kids.

Rolwen, the only person between the three former Earth humans in our group who had actually killed before reincarnating, managed to get through this entire encounter without taking a single life. And, all the while, he also managed to make himself extremely useful. He’d conducted himself in an exemplary way throughout this encounter.

Meanwhile, I was an absolute incarnation of death over on my own side of the battlefield. I can still remember how pleased with myself I had been in the moment when I’d taken my first kill of this encounter, and I was reveling in the confused and disjointed reactions of the bandits all around the place.

It was like a whole different side of myself. Looking back, it’s downright scary.

I took a deep breath and did what I could to control my unease with this whole situation, and then I looked Levin in the eye.

“Well Levin, this is what this world is like.” I told him, making a gesture toward the kids happily, almost giddily swarming around the man who’s back had been blown out. “These kids are just a bit younger than you were in your last life. This is how they think around here. They consider this sort of thing commonplace, and they view it as nothing to be concerned over.”

Rather than ‘nothing to be concerned over,’ it was actually more like they actually enjoyed seeing the blood of their enemies like this. There’s no doubt, these Hidan are a rather brutally war-like people. I may have just sold that to Levin as the standard for this world, but there’s absolutely no way this level of desensitization to violence is a world-wide standard.

Levin had been trying to avoid the gory sight of my 2nd victim of the encounter, but my words had prompted him to cast an uneasy gaze toward the children who were admiring my handiwork with smiles and giggles as they merrily  talked about how it looked like the guy was gored by a unicorn’s horn, the term “unicorn” referring to one of the war rhinoceros that had lead this charge.

“I don’t think I could ever be like that.” He said.

I chuckled lightly.

“You underestimate human adaptability. It might or might not be in your nature to be intentionally cruel, but I guarantee you are capable of becoming desensitized to the violence of this world. That is the real reason for gaining experience in combat.” I told him.

I felt like my heart was being constricted as I spoke. It felt like I had to kill a part of myself in order to say the words. But, I’d already seen enough of this world’s brutality to become aware of it. This was the reason for the hard-ass attitude depicted in all those old martial arts movies, depicting the master being so cruel to their students. The cruelty was out of love, one which wished to not see their students dead to the hands of the far more cruel world. For that reason, the master must encourage their apprentice to be a harder person, even if it meant saying stuff you found repugnant yourself.

“You do not know how you will react to death until you see it.” I told him. “And, right now you seem to be rather calm with seeing it all. You are more soft than Rolwen still, but you have not lost it from seeing the death around you. That is good for now.”

Good for him, at least. Levin was still showing hesitation at the thought of killing. Rolwen was the one who managed to find a way through this event without taking a single life. I, on the other hand, had killed 4 without even batting an eye. It was mechanical perfection almost, every move having a purpose, attacking on a level both psychological as much as physical with every action.

It had all felt so natural as I flew from one action to the next. There was not even a moment where I stopped to consider the reality of what I was doing. It was necessary at the time. I had risen to the occasion, and I had killed without hesitation. It was on a level that had earned the admiration of this brutal group of warriors I was living with.

Without a doubt, I had gone a level farther than what I wanted to model for my apprentices.

I was able to snap myself out of my pensive state as I saw Rolwen coming toward us. Time to give them a good debriefing then.

“Rolwen!” I greeted him warmly and waved him over. “That was a good performance. As I covered before this,” I continued on, now addressing both the boys, “the role of the ninja is as a support for the main fighting force. We deal in information, and disruption. Today’s mission held just about every hallmark of what a ninja mission should look like.”

“We got the information on where the main camp was through subterfuge. Once inside the camp, we sent the signal and assessed the situation quickly on where each of our talents could be best directed. Rolwen, you acted excellently, calming the captives and directing the warriors away from actions that would agitate them. Take note on that, Levin. Yes, it may have looked like I did more with the disruptions I caused. However, while Rolwen did not take a single life or cause any damage to the enemy, he contributed just as much to making sure everything ran smoothly. That is also the role of a ninja.”

“A ninja is not an assassin, a stealth specialist, or anything else that Hollywood may have lead you to believe. A spy would be the closest of the glamorized roles you might have been exposed to back on Earth. A ninja specializes in information. As such, the single most important skills a ninja can have are the quick uptake of information on the fly, and the ability to make quick decisions on where their talents can be best directed. In that, this exercise proceeded very smoothly.”

“Heh.” Rolwen gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Well, in this case, I’d say it wasn’t all that much different from what we’d do in the marines. The only thing different was the lack of direction from a higher up and having to just pick and take a role.”

“And you did a good job in that,” I said, and looked back to Levin. “As you just saw, Levin. Killing is not something that is entirely necessary. You do not have to give into the pressure from the direction the Hidan culture is pushing us. You do, however, need to learn to control your living wood weapon first. Having no weapon is not a good idea in the situations we push ourselves into.”

“Yeah.” Rolwen interrupted. “You know what they say. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. What the old man is trying to say here is that she wants to see you grow to protect yourself, and she doesn’t want to see you die.”

Did Rolwen just refer to me as ‘old man’ and use the ‘she’ pronoun for me in the same sentence? While I do get what he was referencing, that was somehow almost painful to hear verbalized.

“Yes, well…” I trailed off and waved the thought away. “Well then, I believe we should start organizing. Rolwen, you have started a rapport with the captives. I would like you to introduce Levin so you can smooth things out while we travel back. I will meet up with Rimir so the guys here don’t freak out."