I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

Chapter 693: Intruding Morosuke’s castle

The people of Minato lined both sides of the street, watching in silence so complete it felt almost ritualistic.

No one stepped forward. No one dared interfere. They simply stood there, stiff and wide-eyed, as the sound of a body being dragged over dirt scraped through the air again and again, harsh and ugly, broken only by the occasional murmur that rippled through the crowd.

"It’s Nobusuke..."

"He got beaten by a ronin?"

"No way. Ronin are mad, sure, but not this mad."

"That one is different. Look at him... he’s terrifying."

"His face... doesn’t he look like a half-blood?"

"Shut up, idiot! Do you want to die?"

"He’s still dragging Nobusuke... Has he lost his mind?"

"No... look where he’s going."

At that, more heads turned.

And then the whispers faded.

Because it was true.

Nathan was not wandering aimlessly through Minato, nor fleeing after a reckless act. He was heading in a straight line toward Morosuke’s castle, without the slightest hesitation in his stride or the faintest hint of unease on his face. He walked as though the fortress ahead were not the den of the most feared man in the district, but simply the next door he intended to open.

Behind him, Nobusuke could do little more than groan. His voice had been worn down by pain and panic. One hand clawed weakly at the dirt, fingers digging useless lines into the road, while the other tried again and again to pry Nathan’s grip from his hair. It accomplished nothing. Every few steps his body jolted over stone or packed earth, drawing another broken cry from him.

By the time Nathan reached the castle gate, the silence around him had become oppressive.

The guards at the entrance straightened at once, hands moving to their weapons. There were four of them posted before the great wooden doors, and though they had heard the commotion from the street, none of them yet understood what they were looking at. Their eyes fell first on Nathan, then on the half-naked man crumpled in the dirt at his side.

"What are you doing here?" one of them demanded.

Nathan stopped before the gate.

"I want to see Morosuke," he said.

The guard stared at him as though he had misheard. "What?"

"You heard me."

The man gave a short, incredulous laugh, though it lacked confidence. "You want to see the boss? Who the hell do you think you are?"

He and the others leaned slightly, trying to get a better look at the man weeping on the ground. Nobusuke’s face was filthy, swollen, and twisted with pain. For a moment they did not recognize him.

Nathan’s expression did not change.

"Open the door," he said.

Then he yanked Nobusuke up by the hair and dragged him into clear view.

"I have his brother."

The guards froze.

Their eyes widened all at once.

"N-Nobusuke?!"

Shock tore through them so violently that all four instinctively drew back. One nearly stumbled. Another half raised his spear, then lowered it again as if his own hands no longer knew what to do. The man on the ground, dirty, bruised, stripped nearly bare and shaking in pain, was unmistakably Nobusuke.

For a brief second, no one moved.

Nathan exhaled through his nose.

"So you won’t make this easy," he said.

With a smooth motion, he unsheathed Kyomei.

The black blade slid free with a sound that seemed to pull the temperature down with it. Its dark surface caught the light in a dull, ominous sheen, and though there was no visible aura around it, the weapon carried something the guards felt instantly and deeply. It was not merely sharp steel. It felt wrong in the hand of a man like Nathan, as if the sword itself had an appetite.

All four guards flinched.

By then, it was too late.

Nathan swung.

The movement was swift, almost economical, but the force packed into it was monstrous. The blade cut through the air and the strike did not remain a simple sword swing. It burst outward in a violent black arc, compressed power crashing ahead of him like released thunder.

BADOOOOM!

The castle gate exploded.

The great wooden doors burst inward in a storm of splinters and shattered beams. The impact tore through the guards before they could even cry out properly, hurling them backward into the courtyard like rag dolls. Two were killed instantly, their bodies broken by the sheer force of the blast. The other two slammed across the ground in mangled heaps, bones snapping on impact.

One of them shrieked.

"GYAAAAAH!"

His arm had been torn clean off below the shoulder. Blood sprayed over the ruined stones as he writhed and screamed, clutching uselessly at the stump.

Nobusuke stared, his face draining of what little color remained in it.

What... what was that?

His mind refused to make sense of what he had just seen. A sword had swung, yes — but doors did not explode from a swing. Men were not thrown through the air like leaves because someone cut at empty space. Only one person he knew possessed power terrifying enough to warp reality through sheer strength like that.

His brother.

And yet this was different.

Morosuke’s power was overwhelming in its own way, brutal and crushing, but this black-haired ronin felt colder, stranger, touched by something that made even violence itself seem sharp and disciplined. Nobusuke’s gaze dropped to Kyomei, to the black blade now slick with fresh blood.

A tremor ran through him.

Before he could gather even a fragment of thought, Nathan caught him by the back of the neck and lifted him as though he weighed nothing.

Then he threw him.

Nobusuke’s body shot forward through the ruined gate like a stone from a war machine.

BADAMMM!

He flew in a straight line and smashed into the inner entrance of the castle. Wood shattered around him. Panels burst apart. Fragments rained across the floor as his body crashed through and disappeared inside in a wreck of splintered debris.

For half a breath, there was stunned silence.

Then the castle erupted.

"What happened?!"

"An intruder!"

"Call everyone!"

"Nobusuke-sama has been injured!"

"Kill him!"

Voices collided from every direction. Sandaled feet pounded over stone. Orders were shouted from inside the compound, layered with fear, rage, and confusion. Nathan stepped through the wreckage at an unhurried pace, passing the broken gate as though he were entering a roadside inn rather than storming the residence of Minato’s most feared man.

He had barely crossed into the courtyard when the sound of steel answered him.

Katanas were drawn one after another, their ringing notes overlapping in a sharp metallic chorus. Men poured in from the corridors, barracks, and side buildings, rushing toward the disturbance until the open space filled around him.

Nathan stopped.

By then, nearly thirty men had encircled him.

Some held swords. Others carried spears. A few had bows slung behind them, though none seemed eager to be the first to test them. Their formation tightened slowly, uneasily, each of them trying to hide the fact that they had seen the destroyed gate, the dead guards, and the black blade in Nathan’s hand.

One of them stepped forward enough to shout, though his voice was edged with tension.

"You’re dead, ronin!"

Nathan said nothing.

He only stood there amid the wreckage, Kyomei loose at his side, while splintered wood and dust settled around his feet.

And somehow, in that moment, surrounded by thirty armed men inside Morosuke’s own castle, he looked less like prey than the one thing all of them should have feared letting through the gate.

"Bring me Morosuke," Nathan said coldly. "I only want to speak. If you wish to live, leave now."

For a heartbeat, the courtyard held still.

Then the men surrounding him burst into laughter.

It came loud and ugly, the kind of laughter men used when they outnumbered someone and mistook numbers for safety. A few grinned openly. Others pointed their blades toward him with renewed confidence, as though the sheer absurdity of his warning had erased the destruction at the gate.

"You’ve got no idea where you are, ronin!"

"This is Morosuke’s palace!"

"You’re dead!"

"You’ll regret this, half-blood!"

The insult was thrown with the easy contempt of men who believed they still controlled what happened next. Yet none of them lowered their guard. Their feet shifted across the blood-splashed stone. Hands tightened around hilts and shafts. Weapons rose, angled toward Nathan from every side, waiting for the moment one man’s courage would drag the rest along with him.

Then came a brief, breathless silence.

And the charge began.

With a roar, they rushed him from all directions.

Nathan moved.

His body blurred so suddenly that the eye could barely follow it. One instant he stood in the center of the tightening ring, and the next he had slipped past the first attacker and appeared behind him. Before the man could even begin to turn, Nathan’s blade came down.

SPATTER!

The body split cleanly in two.

For the smallest instant, the man remained upright, his expression still half-formed in confusion, before both halves peeled apart and crashed to the ground on either side of him. Blood fountained across the courtyard in a violent red spray.

Silence dropped over the nearest men.

Only for an instant.

Nathan did not give them time to process the horror. He was already moving again.

Kyomei flashed through the air with lethal precision. It did not swing wildly, nor did Nathan waste a motion. Every cut was direct. Efficient. Terrible. He stepped into the crowd like a storm given human shape, and wherever the black blade passed, bodies came apart.

An arm spun away trailing blood.

A chest opened to the bone.

A head was severed so fast it seemed to hang in place before tumbling free.

Another man stumbled forward in two uneven pieces, his insides spilling onto the stones before he collapsed.

The courtyard erupted into screaming.

Men who had charged with confidence now shouted in panic, stumbling into one another, trying to strike from the sides and rear in desperate bursts. Some lunged from blind angles, hoping sheer chaos would catch Nathan off guard. But his reactions were monstrous. He twisted past a spear thrust by a breath, stepped under a descending katana, then answered each failed attack with immediate death.

One man tried to slash his back.

Nathan shifted half a step and opened the attacker from shoulder to hip.

Another rushed from the left.

Nathan caught the motion without even looking fully at him and drove Kyomei through his throat.

A third came screaming from behind them both, only to lose his legs beneath the knee in a single horizontal cut. He hit the ground shrieking, hands clawing uselessly at the blood pumping out beneath him.

The slaughter accelerated.

Blood sprayed across the paving stones, over shattered wood, over the scattered remains of the gate. It splashed Nathan’s sandals, staining them dark with each step. His black kimono drank in red until the lower folds were streaked and soaked. Warm droplets struck his face and clung there, but his expression never changed.

He looked as cold as winter steel.

Ten bodies fell.

Then fifteen.

Then twenty.

One by one they collapsed around him, their courage broken long before their bodies gave out. The lucky ones died quickly. The unlucky remained on the ground, missing limbs, clutching open wounds, shrieking until their voices cracked into wet, animal sounds.

What had been the front courtyard of a powerful man’s estate had become a butcher’s floor.

"Monster!" one of the last men cried.

He rushed Nathan with a desperate overhead swing, his voice breaking as badly as his nerve.

Nathan did not even turn fully around.

Kyomei flicked once.

The man’s arm came off at the elbow.

For a split second he stared at the space where his limb had been, as if his mind could not accept the loss. Then his mouth opened—

Nathan’s second swing took his head before the scream could escape.

The body dropped where it stood.

At last, Nathan turned.

Ahead of him stood the final survivor in the courtyard, frozen in place, sword shaking so violently it rattled in his hands. His face had gone white. His whole body trembled from head to foot. Around him lay his comrades in pieces, spread across the blood-slick stones in heaps and fragments that no longer resembled men.

Nathan looked at him.

That was enough.

The soldier let out a ragged scream, turned, and ran for the interior of the castle.

Nathan watched him go for one quiet moment.

Then he gave Kyomei a light swing to the side, snapping the dark, murky blood from the blade in a thin arc across the ground. The steel settled clean in his hand again, though the scent of slaughter still clung to it.

Without haste, Nathan started after the fleeing man.

He crossed the ruined courtyard at a slow, measured pace, stepping between corpses and through spreading pools of red as though none of it were worth a second glance. Behind him, the cries of the dying thinned into whimpers. Ahead, the castle interior waited in tense, rising panic.

And with every unhurried step he took inside, it became clear to anyone still breathing that Nathan had not come to threaten Morosuke’s house.

He had come to tear his way straight to its heart.