Headpat Murder Harem Hero

To be saved by headpats, one man must kill many.
(I have no clue what this really means, but it sounds on-point.)

 

---

Chapter 1: Regicide

***

Level: 19

Body Count: 977

Kill Count to Next Level: 23

***

A foreigner in a blood-soaked suit-and-tie stood before the Kittari Cat Tribe’s king and his throne, and pointed at his only daughter beside him. Her ears twitched. “I’m patting her head,” the foreigner declared.

The king stood up in indignation! “You may not!” He looked left and right, frothing at the mouth as he called, “Guards! Arrest this man!” but the guards didn’t move, for the man was Jontaro Ponwick, a man of lethal focus, the same man who, one month ago, drove off the rebels at the gates with a confirmed kill count of 212 men-at-arms—the same man who, just last week, subjugated the S-ranked dragon, Helfir, with a pencil! A fucking pencil! What could they, simple men with spears and a bit of metal plate, do against a true professional?

“Cowards!” the king said. “Shaatarii! Arrest the normal guards, and then that man!”

From the shadows of the pillars that lined the sides of the throne room, men in ninja uniforms knocked out the guards with chops to the back of the neck, quickly surrounding Jontaro. He recognized the eyes of one of them. “No hard feelings, Mr. Ponwick,” the man said.

Were this his previous world, Jontaro would’ve judged his situation as tactically unsound. Oh, he could win, but not without taking damage. However, this wasn’t Earth—this was Alaea.

The Shaatarii were smart enough to gang up on him all at once...but not fast enough.

To reach him, it would take one second flat. There were five of them. Jontaro started with the nearest one. He drew out a percussion cap pistol from a portal in mid-air and fired, blowing a golf ball-sized hole in the first man’s chest.

Letting go of that pistol, he drew out two more with both hands, firing at another two in a flood of gray and white smoke on either side of him. He kicked backwards and high, crushing another man’s face inwards with his heel; at the same time, the action of bending his body forwards made an incoming crossbow bolt miss.

He rotated his body, letting the raised foot down. Only then did his first pistol finally hit the floor. Only then did the blood spatters reach the pillars of the throne room. Only then did the bodies even start to fall.

Time resumed its normal flow. The last man’s comrades finally hit the ground, and he found himself one crossbow bolt less, face to face with a gunpowder pistol. The king stood watching. He had trained those Shaatarii since birth, and now, they were just expensive paint for the throne room. Before he could say anything to at least save the last one, Jontaro fired. The smoke obscured the gore inflicted on the Shaatari’s face. The king couldn’t say anything.

Jontaro stood up and fixed his tie. He turned around and took calculated steps over the Shaatarii’s bodies, walking down the red carpet, glaring at the king as he did.

Then his eyes switched over to the Kittari princess. She sat straighter, but she couldn’t help but to raise her shoulders and slightly bow her head down. Her ears, too, were flattened down.

The king couldn’t do anything as Jontaro walked up to her, then circled around to her side. He couldn’t do anything when the killer of hundreds of men lay his hand on his daughter’s head and...started to pat her softly? Wait, did he mean what he was saying literally? W-what’s going on? There was a single tear making its way down Jontaro’s face!

The Kittari princess—Kayshar Kittari had never felt anything like this in her life. This man—Jontaro Ponwick, they called him—he was scary. He killed with efficiency and without remorse, but she could smell his tears from where she sat. That made no sense. They were true tears. Was she not supposed to be a chicken being relaxed before the slaughter? Why—what had happened to him?

Before she knew it, the headpats had stopped, and he was walking down the red carpet, stepping over this gruesome scene he had caused.

She stood up. “Wait!” she said. She didn’t know why—no, she shouldn’t joke around with herself. She knew exactly why she was doing this. Her father looked at her with great bewilderment. “What are you”—

“Take me with you!” she interrupted.

“He killed our Shaatarii!” her father protested.

“And I am a bird in a gilded cage!” she snarled back with a hiss. The king’s heart sank to hear his own blood do that to him. He was so very careful to provide her everything she ever wanted, right? So why? “Why!” he cried out. “I gave you everything!”

“You could not give me freedom!” She threw away her shoes and rushed down the steps of the throne. Before she could approach Jontaro, however, he cocked a pistol.

“You don’t want my life,” he said. His nihilistic voice said much more than his words did.

“Neither do you mine,” Kayshar replied. “I smelled your tears, Mr. Ponwick.”

Jontaro slowly relaxed the hammer into half-cock. He couldn’t very well shoot someone who only meant well. “You’ll be running the rest of your life,” he said.

“Rather than being chained for the rest of my life,” Kayshar said.

“You’ll need to kill people.”

“I have plenty of people I want to kill.”

“What do you mean!” The king was so shocked to hear this, he ignored the fact that there was a killing machine in the room, and marched right up to his daughter—only for blood to fountain from his mouth.

“Everything you thought to mean well,” Kayshar said, twisting the knife driven up his rib cage and into his heart, “has always hurt me. Every man you’ve ‘introduced’ to me at night, every one of my commoner friends you’ve executed in the name of preserving my ‘nobility,’ has caused me nothing but pain and contempt. You see nothing but what you want to see. May these memories burn with this palace.”

The king’s words only came out as a pained gurgle. Whatever was supposed to come out, never did. She shoved the knife in further and pushed her ‘father’ away. Still, he refused to die. All he did was bleed standing. “Kings die standing,” he’d always believed. All of this—every political move, even those involving his daughter—was for the continued glory and song of the Kittari.

Jontaro walked up to him, keeping ten feet away, and shot him in the head. He collapsed in a shower of sparks and smoke, dead before he hit the floor, just as he wished.

Kayshar gasped. She’d just killed her father and sent the tribe into a death spiral. Soon, rival tribes and nations will tear them apart and enslave the remnants—or if the generals will unite, then the Kittari will rise from the coming war stronger than ever.

None of that concerned her anymore. She looked to Jontaro. He said nothing. She took slow steps, as if careful not to spook a frightened cat, coming within arm’s reach of him. She took his hand and raised it over her head, laying it on her hair. There it is again, she thought, that warmth.

Jontaro hesitated. He had always been a one-man army doing one-man jobs. He had come to this kingdom to do one such odd job, taking out the heads of a rebellion, and he’d done just that. For his accomplishment, the king had offered him anything reasonable and within his power to provide. It’s just...he had almost forgotten how it felt to touch something without killing it, and that was when he saw Kayshar.

Ten seconds. Ten seconds of headpats. That was all he wanted. Now, a whole kingdom would burn because of one man’s fuck-up. He looked down at the catgirl, the catgirl whose hands were warm in the blood of her own father. There were others she wanted to kill, she’d said. He could train her, but would that be helping her? The road of revenge was never-ending. Killing enemies only made more enemies. This, he knew intimately—but would he actively assist someone in taking on the same misery?

No, he shouldn’t trick himself. People like him and her lived in constant misery. Run from it, hide from it, it will always find them. The difference between this world and the last, he realized, was in whether misery should be lived alone, or together with someone who understands. This world, too, rewarded power with more power. It was just a matter of time before all of misery could be solved with overwhelming firepower.

Shouts and the clashing of swords resonated from the hallway behind the door. “Rebels,” Kayshar said.

“How do you know?”

“It’s part of the plan. The lower levels must be ablaze.” She sighed. “Had you remained on father’s side, you may as well have gunned down the flames. Well, it’s too late, now. We will burn together with the castle.”

Jontaro took her hand and pulled her away, towards the window. “What are you,” she tried to complain, but he broke the window, kicking out the iron grills with it. He fired a flare out the window, discarding the flare gun and pulling up Kayshar in a princess carry. “Wait”—

He jumped out the window, into the flaming night. Already, several sections of the castle were ablaze, and rebels and loyalists below fought for dead leaders. Kayshar screamed during the fall, but far before they even hit the ground, a shadow swooped in. The force and change in direction took the air from Kayshar’s lungs. Jontaro let her down, and she found herself saddled over something scaly.

It was Helfir, but no one told her.

“Yet another spectacular performance, My Ponwick!” a woman’s voice reverberated in their minds, causing Kayshar to search for the voice in bewilderment. “I see you’ve picked up a pet. Are you going to do to her what you can’t do to me? Oh, you cheater!”

“What’s your name?” Jontaro asked, completely ignoring the ridiculous woman’s remarks.

“Kayshar Ki”—she paused—“Kayshar. Just Kayshar.”

“Is it a common name?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re Sharky, now.” It was just her name’s syllables flipped, but it should do. He couldn’t have a princess running around with her real name, after all.

“What?” Sharky launched into a tirade of complaints about such a childish way of referring to someone of her position. This, unbeknownst to neither Sharky nor Helfir, loosened something in Jontaro. Had he not already known of how magic worked in this world, he would’ve thought it was some sort of spell—because Sharky’s reaction tempted him...to smile.

Jontaro was a simple man of lethal concentration and sheer-fucking-will. If there was an end to this barefoot path of glass shards, he would bleed in measured amounts to find it.

Leaving the deserts of the doomed Kittari Cat Tribe behind, their next destination: Helfir’s Hoard.

***

Level: 19

Body Count: 982

Kill Count to Next Level: 18

***

 

---