Closing the chat, I started moving toward the hall while still using my radar. I could use my nanites or even the Yautja mask, but the whole point of this trip was to train my physical abilities and my tk. That's not to say I haven't been training my nanites, but it's been on the backburner compared to the other things.

Anyways, as we approached the keep that held the hall, I began to get feedback on my radar. It looked like they were doing a ritual of some sort. Unfortunately, I hadn't developed my radar enough to get a super clear picture, just a rough sketch. But it looked like they were dancing around a statue while they were naked. If that's not a ritual then I don't know what is.

Seeing as I was going in from the front of the castle, the keep's front door was right in front of me. Thankfully for me, the door was slightly ajar so I was able to see inside, and I saw them dancing just like my tk said. But I was also able to see that in front of the statue of Baphomet was a woman impaled on the biggest penis I had ever seen.

'Jesus, that's a big rod. I'm kind of jealous.' I thought while taking a closer look at the bandits dancing.

The Count said the bandits were participating in cannibalism and rituals. I could definitely see a ritual but I couldn't spot any cannibalism. But looking around the hall it was clear that there was a feast going on evident by the food on the plates.

'That could be human flesh, I can't really tell.'

The bandits suddenly stopped dancing before what looked to be the leader, evident by the goat head he was wearing, came up to the woman on the rod. Then he started chanting out loud before the rest of them followed. After a minute or so of chanting, he took out a knife and was about to plunge it into the woman's heart.

THWACK

An arrow had pierced the leader's head before he fell to the ground. Then chaos. All the bandits were looking around for the person responsible for their leader's death in a frenzy. They were picking up anything they could for weapons to attack while some of the more clear-headed ones began to go for their equipment. Seeing them go nuts was the signal for us to begin the attack.

I rushed in from the front door with my axe in hand. Seeing someone barge in the bandits began to rush me, clearly in a frenzy. Deciding to deal with them the fastest way possible, I swung my axe horizontally, cutting down six of them in one go. The rest of them, seeing that, got a little clear-headed as they ran to get their equipment.

Unfortunately for them, they were hit by arrows right in their throats. Looking up to a window, I saw Amelia saluting me. With my focus back on the hall, I could see that Uzui and Guts were both taking care of their own group of bandits. Not wanting to be outdone by them, I rushed headfirst into the biggest clump before spinning around taking out a dozen.

With that one spin pretty much taking out a majority of them, I decided to leave the rest of them alive.

"Leave the rest alive." I told the group who stopped right before they were about to take out the rest.

"Why?" asked Amelia from the window.

"I'm sure the Count will appreciate us leaving them alive to tell him how they took over the castle. Maybe he'll throw in some extra coin. Also, we need to see if any of the original residents are alive anymore." I explained.

"Fine, they couldn't even put up a fight anyways." said Uzui, disappointed at the lack of a fight.

"Alright round up the survivors so we can ask the questions all at the same time." I said to the Uzui and Guts.

After rounding them up, we got a headcount of 15 survivors. Whether they were original residents of the castle or bandits remained to be seen.

"Listen up. We were hired to take back this castle from bandits by the Count. He also wanted to know how you lot managed to take a castle. So, how did you do it?" I asked them.

"I c-can answer that." said a young man.

"Okay."

"The day they took over the castle, the men had confiscated some alcohol from a caravan so they decided to throw a feast. I think it was poisoned or something because they all fell asleep and that's when the bandits stormed the castle."

"Interesting. High-level tactics for a bandit group though. But what's the deal with the pagan rituals and sacrifices?"

"The leader was a pagan and the bandits followed his words after being convinced."

"Why do you know all this?" I asked the young man, with some suspicion.

"I'm a stable boy so they left me alone as long as I joined them. I didn't want to die." he said before breaking down in tears.

"Does anyone else have a different explanation?" I asked, with no response.

"Okay then. Let's bring a carriage so we can take them with us to the Cou-" was all I was able to say before my intuition went off like a light. I jumped backward while swinging my axe towards the danger.

SPLECH

"Ahh! You bug! You dare cut the great me. I'll kill you all." said the creature that now stood where the stable boy was. And it was ugly. The once stable boy was now an ugly amalgamation of flesh with the barely recognizable shape of a horse standing on two feet, almost like a minotaur.

"Dibs!" said Uzui.

"Hey that's not fair, I've been wanting to fight an apostle too." I said to him.

"I would like to fight him as well." said Guts.

"I called dibs first, you guys are going to have to wait for your own."

"If I had known we were calling dibs, I would've called it before you did." I countered.

"But you didn't. So he's mine."

"Fine, fine. But I call dibs on the next one. Sorry Guts." I said with a smile as I backed away.

"Tch, fine."

"Haha! Finally. Hey, horse creature, I hope you give me a good fight. I've been itching to fight one of you freaks." said Uzui while pointing at the apostle with his two nichirin blades.

"Bugs! All of you are bugs in front of real power! You have no idea the sacrifices I had to give to become strong, and bugs like you believe yourself to be on the same level as I? HAHAHA! I'll crush your bones and eat you all!" he said before rushing Uzui.

"Try to keep up." said Uzui before taking in a deep breath.

"Second Form: Crescendo." he said before rushing towards the apostle with blades outstretched to the sides as he went in between his legs before jumping up into a spin, cutting his back on the way up.

"AUGH!" yelled the apostle unable to follow Uzui's first move.

"First Form: Roar." he said before slamming down his swords on the apostle's shoulder blades at an angle for the swords to meet in the middle as they cut down. Unfortunately, the blades didn't have enough force to go all the way through, so Uzui had to pull them out while jumping backward as he dodged the apostle's flailing arms.

"Come on, don't tell me I waited all this time for nothing. You're barely even putting up a fight." said Uzui a little angry.

"AUGH!" he yelled again, before abruptly lunging at me, trying to at least kill one of us.

Right before he lunged, my intuition had gone off, making me realize that he was going to try some last-ditch effort, so I was ready. As he lunged at me, I quickly jumped up to dodge before I spun and brought down my axe across his neck.

SPLECH

"Sorry, Uzui." I said after landing back on the ground.

"Forget it, he was weak anyways. At least I stretched my muscles a little, but still." he said disappointed.

"Damn apostle, killed all the survivors too." I said looking around the area, the other survivors were now dead, killed when the stable boy transformed and rampaged.

"Make sure it's dead." said Ciri.

"I'll do it." said Uzui before coating his blades in hamon and stabbing the head. Right as he stabbed it, the apostle began to shrivel before turning into dust.

"Makes sense that hamon would be effective against apostles." I said.

"Indeed, another time yet again proving its effectiveness." said Ciri.

"Now that you're mentioning it, why haven't you trained in hamon or nen?" asked Yoruichi to us.

"For the hamon front, I've been training in the breathing technique so I wanted to focus on that first and for the nen front, I thought it wouldn't work." I said.

"Why?" asked Guts.

"Well the power system comes from a different world and humans in that world have bodies attuned to nen. Since I'm not from that world, I just assumed it wouldn't work. It would be like a normal human trying to use magic, if they're not attuned to it they can't. We should still try it to confirm, but we can do that after we go back to the Count." I said.

"Can we just let Ciri teleport us? I don't feel like riding all the way back." said Amelia.

"I'd be happy too, but we should wait until tomorrow before we do. It'd be suspicious for us to get back so fast." she said.

"Okay then, I guess we can test the nen right now." I said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AN

Uzui's breathing style only has three known forms, so I made up the second one, think Levi as he spins. Originally, this was just going to be bandits/pagans, but I decided it would be a good time to introduce an apostle.

As for the nen, I'm leaning toward them not being able to use it. My reasoning is what I said above but let me know what you guys think. If I stick with them not being able to use it, they would all eventually buy something from the shop called [Universal Body] where they're able to train in any energy technique without worrying about clashes or things like that. It wouldn't give them supreme talent or anything, it would just let them use them with the proper training and/or guidance. So, unless they receive that energy system as a reward or buy it, without [Universal Body] they wouldn't be able to train other energy systems for example nen.