My Reincarnation as a Chicken

Chapter 320 Outsiders

“Hey, Seiko. What are we doing out here, again?”, Jasmine, who’d grown bored of sitting on a tree branch, inquired.

“We need to survey the area as well as gather some food.”, Seiko was looking at some berries growing in a shrub.

“Huh? Isn’t that what those other guys are doing? The food thing, I mean.”

Seiko glared at Jasmine for her lack of tact in this situation. He gestured with his eyes for her to look around, but she didn’t get it.

“What are you trying to say?”

“For someone with exceptional senses, you are really terrible at this.”

“Hm?”, Frustrated, Jasmine cocked her head, trying to make sense of Seiko’s exceptionally vague words.

“Shut up and just watch then.”, Instantly, Seiko spun around and fired a barrage of shots at the trees. The bullets connected, breaking the trees and kicking up some dust.

“Eh?”, Jasmine was shocked by the sight of the fallen trees changing size and form to reveal that they were, in fact, wolves. “The tree transformed into wolves!”

“Treants. They’ve been following us for some days now, and it was making me uneasy. Fortunately, I was right that they were only monitoring the stronger members of the group.”, Seiko said, walking over to inspect the bodies. He crouched to make sure that his gun really did kill them.

“Some days? Seriously? That’s scary. Creepy monsters.”, Jasmine stuck her tongue out from atop the tree branch in a childish manner.

“How didn’t you notice them?”, After confirming their deaths, he stood up to glare at Jasmine.

“Um, I guess my brain filters out things it doesn’t consider a threat to me. Teehee.”, She smacked her head and stuck out her tongue, trying to act cutesy to get Seiko to forgive her.

He ignored her, then started to walk back to camp.

“Whatever. Let’s get back before anything bad happens.”

“Yeah, you’re right. The kids probably can’t handle those weirdos that showed up.”, Jasmine jumped down from the tree, to march playfully behind Seiko.

“Weirdos?”

“Yeah. Some men in black robes just appeared and are fighting them. Kana, Akari and Daisuke are fighting them at the moment.”, She listlessly responded.

Seiko grabbed her by the shoulder and brought her face closer to his.

“What the hell are you talking abou-!?”, Before Seiko could finish his sentence, the sound of massive trees falling entered his ears. In the distance, he could see sparks of blue lightning and hear metal clashing against metal—definitely not a common sight in Larm.

“Let’s get back!”, He ran full speed towards the group, taking out his 4-ban, a lengthy sniper rifle, then aiming it in the direction where the kids were. Looking through the scope, he determined the mana signatures of those present and was able to separate friend from foe.

‘How the hell did she know about this before me?’, Having such thoughts, Seiko fired off a red-hot steel bullet at one of the enemy mana signatures, aiming directly for the head. By the last second, the enemy managed to deflect his bullet.

“Huh!? They deflected my 4-ban!?”, Seiko, genuinely shocked and impressed, couldn’t help but shout. He looked at the gun, as it was one that was impossible to deflect, then growled when he saw the barrel. “Wrong barrel… This is 4-ban mk.1. Did I leave the mk.2 back in the kingdom? Crap.”

“What the hell are you shouting? Why’re you wasting time?”, Jasmine grabbed Seiko by the arm, then took out a gem. She instantly shattered this gem, and a flash of rainbow colours entered Seiko’s eyes, causing him to blink rapidly.

When he properly opened his eyes again, he was now standing before a battle scene.

Akari was trading swords with someone dressed in all black, Kana was getting thrown about by another person in black, whereas Daisuke was busily running about, carrying Shiro’s body on his back, and narrowly avoiding being cut down by the various monsters that were attacking him, as well as the man controlling them.

“You might feel a little nauseous, so join the fight when you get over it.”, Jasmine rapidly said, before jumping in to help Kana by slicing at her attacker’s wrist, forcing the person to let go of her hair.

Just as Jasmine said that, he could feel his breakfast jumping up from his stomach, into his mouth, and onto the floor. He crumpled to his knees to let out all the puke while the fight was ongoing.

‘W-What the hell? Teleportation? Jasmine has teleportation? No. That’s not important now.’, He looked back up at Daisuke, who was currently being swarmed by a group of Electra wolves that were smaller in size, but possessed enough speed to blitz him and cause some confusion, whereas their master was taking out his whip.

Immediately, he looked through his bag for his 3-ban, but couldn’t find it.

‘D-did I leave it in Dhijan?’, He clicked his tongue, frustrated that his forgetfulness was biting him in the ass at the moment.

Rather, he took out his 1-ban from his waist. A silver revolver gun. He pointed it at the one using the whip and aimed for his head, but before his bullet could reach there, the person fighting Akari jumped before the bullet to split it in half.

“Bold of you to worry about someone else in front of me.”, Akari jumped in swiftly and cut a gaping wound in the enemy swordman’s chest, but he wasn’t done there. He quickly turned around as if performing a dance, and released a barrage of slices, cutting open flesh wounds anywhere possible on the enemy swordsman, causing them to drop their weapon.

From behind, Seiko heard footsteps, forcing him to turn around, ready to fire his gun at the perp.

“Hey! Hey! Don’t shoot. We’re on your side.”, It was Marcus and his group. They’d just arrived, but were already in battle mode.

Celica fired three arrows at the beast tamer, forcing him to jump back to avoid them.

“Throw her here!”, Daryl shouted at Daisuke. The latter complied without complaint, throwing the unconscious Shiro with as much care as possible.

Mid-air, however, she’d been caught by someone in a black robe. Akari’s eyes widened when she realised that it had been the very person she had just cut down. When she looked down, the body faded into clouds.

“6, 7! I’ve got the girl. Let’s retreat for now.”

“Over my dead body!” With a growl, Kana bolted towards the assailant in a streak of blue, and threw a powerful side kick.

“4!”, the now-identified 7 shouted in warning. 4 narrowly avoided the kick by throwing Shiro above the trees and swinging down below the branch like some type of monkey.

He recovered immediately, grabbing Kana’s leg and flying her off into the distance without care. He then jumped to the sky, but that was a terrible mistake.

“Gotcha.”, Celica’s bow had already been aimed at Shiro in anticipation of 4’s catch. Same could be said for Seiko, and both of them fired their shots the moment Kana was countered.

4, upon realising that their attack could actually make contact if he went on, immediately fired off a blast of wind to repel him back towards the ground, leaving Shiro Tatsumaki up for the bullets.

At this point in time, the safety of Shiro Tatsumaki was the least of the Dark Church’s concerns. All they needed was the [Divine].

“Shiro!”

No one there could have done anything. The fastest person present had no interest in saving her life. None of the Kazoku were fast enough to catch up to Shiro before she got hit. Seiko could possibly shoot Celica’s arrow before it hit, but there was no catching up to his own bullet. Jasmine, who had a little teleportation trick, couldn’t even help here, as there were strict conditions required to activate such a thing.

As of this moment, Shiro Tatsumaki’s fate, truly was left up in the air for the gods to decide.

And truly, God did decide what to do next.

Not a single person dared to blink while looking up in the sky, but Shiro suddenly disappeared into thin air.

‘Wha-!?’, Before Seiko could formulate any thoughts in his head, a dreadful sensation ran through his entire body. The hairs on his skin stood on their ends, and he shivered a bit. He wasn’t the only one.

Every single person here experienced the exact same thing, as their eyes slowly traced down to the thing causing this feeling.

Six massive wings of black, white, purple and golden opened up to reveal Shiro in the hands of someone. The person was gigantic. So much so that she made Seiko, who was the tallest person present, appear average in height.

They were clothed in a beautiful gown that looked far too casual for any formal meeting, but still radiated a certain elegance. The being had golden hair with dark purple tips on its end. Some horns protruded from her head and her vermillion red eyes glowed faintly as she looked at the girl in her arms.

In more ways than one, her beauty was far too ethereal for any of them to even believe she originated from this world. This was definitely a higher being and you couldn’t convince any of them otherwise.

However, this image of a godly existence was ruined by the crass words that came out of her mouth next.

“What the hell are humans doing in Larm!?”

****

<<Alert! Four treants have suddenly died>>

‘Eh?’

<<They were the ones assigned to monitor the humans in Larm. They were shot dead>>

‘Hm? The strong humans? That means they’ve got a strong archer on their team. We need to handle this before it escalates.’

‘‘‘Master!’’’, The captains all looked up at me, having received the same report that I did. Clearly, they were ready to rush to the problem to resolve it as quickly as possible.

‘There’s no need. I’ll handle it. The ceremony will continue.’, I ordered, and none of them argued. I half-expected at least one of them to say something, but they confidently grinned as their face muscles relaxed.

‘Akira. Take over my body for a while. I’ll be back.’

‘Huh? All of a sudden? Sure, but…’

‘Thanks!’ Not waiting to hear what he said, I created a clone and jumped out of my body so fast that practically no one would have seen me moving.

Finally, I was free to do as I pleased, and the universe, being so generous, chose to bless me with a fight. Could anything get better than this?

Well, yes. Many, many things could be better than this.

In the sky above the scene of the crime, I was met with a very odd sight. Quite a number of people were looking into the sky. More specifically, they were looking at an unconscious person, falling from the sky who was at gunpoint.

What made this scene particularly shocking and unpleasant for me was the identity of the unconscious person. With a red face and silver hair, Shiro Tatsumaki, my previous short-term “master”, was on the verge of taking a bullet to the head, resulting in death. Even if that didn’t do it, the poison she was battling was definitely going to kill her.

I looked at the others and saw some other familiar faces. The newbie hero party I befriended some time ago was there, although some members were absent. The new faces belonged to three people wearing black robes and two others who had the class [Paladin].

Not that I wanted to hurry up and get back to the ceremony, but I grew tired of watching them in delayed time, so I jumped down quickly to get Shiro out of the way. I landed on the ground, with Shiro in my arms, then glared at the others.

I appeared in the midst of the people, separating them. They all looked at me in awe, and I couldn’t blame them. After all, I modified my body to look bigger. I gave myself a little bit of height and tried to make it look like I was way older. In my later twenties, at the very least.

“What the hell are humans doing in Larm?”, I wouldn’t have hesitated to kill either side, were it not for the presence of the group of humans I knew.

“[Divine]!”, The group in black immediately bowed before me, declaring something.

I looked at them, confused.

“Get out of our way.”, Meanwhile, in the other group, a guy with silver hair pointed his gun at my face. His name was Seiko, and from scanning him, it was apparent he was a paladin. The Paladin of Steel, to be precise. To his side was a girl named Jasmine, also another paladin. And curiously, she was…

‘Interesting.’, Now wasn’t the time for this, though I was starting to wonder why, all of a sudden, I was seeing more and more of these guys.

“I’d drop that gun if I were you.”, I threatened, but the guy didn’t budge an inch. Rather, he pulled the trigger, right in my face. His gun barely made a sound as the projectile came barreling towards my face.

‘Ah. We’ve got a really violent bastard here, huh?’

Unfortunately for him, his bullet didn’t make it past my elemental barrier. I stared right into his face and tried to intimidate him a little bit using some of my devil skills. That was also cancelled out by his class, [Paladin], which, for some reason, gave him resistance to some mental tricks.

“I won’t say it a third time. Drop the gun. Now.”, Not even allowing him to think, I had tentacle shadows appear an inch away from both parties’ chins, ready to impale them in an instant.

Their next move would decide if they got to live or die, paladin or not.

<A/N: I contemplated on whether to add the outside perspective on Hinotori to this chapter for a while. Eventually, i decided to do so just because I find it funny seeing a god-like being cursing like your average Joe.