A few hours later...
"Now that was close..."
Yasutaka broke into a cold sweat at the memory, walking through the streets of Edo after descending from the Sky Tree.
It was terrifying, really. A Nue-type Monster had appeared out of nowhere, hurling sickles and hammers unlike anything he'd ever seen, and the whole party had very nearly been wiped out.
(Thank the gods Mani-hime had been there...)
As for the Dan Lizards themselves, Yasutaka and Mōha had cut down plenty of those before. It had been practiced, simple work for the two of them.
(They'd only fought three at once because Mani-hime and the others were there. Honestly, the plan had been to take them down one at a time.)
There was no need to recklessly fight them all together, after all. Normally the two of them handled one Dan Lizard between them.
By rights it should have been a fairly easy job. And yet, here they were.
"Still, I'm grateful we managed to bag this one too," Mōha said.
He pointed at the face of the mysterious mikan monster he'd cut down and now carried on his back.
Slay or discover a Yokai never seen before, and you'd earn a bonus reward, which meant their purses would be a little fatter for it.
As they talked, Mani-hime asked.
"Where are we going next?"
"To the Kabukimono Registration Ground, right next to the Northern Magistrate's Office. That's where all the Kabukimono go to register their kills."
And with that, Yasutaka headed for the Kabukimono Registration Ground beside the Magistrate's Office.
The registration ground began with the Inspection Ground, little more than an area fenced off with a simple wooden barrier.
In short, it was where the head inspection took place, and the heads of all manner of Yokai were lined up on display: the enormous head of a dog, the head of a fish, and even, among them, a face carved from bark.
Yasutaka made his way to the reception counter of the Inspection Ground.
"Hey, Taka. You out hunting too?"
The voice belonged to a bespectacled swordsman of the Croc-Dragon-folk, his scales catching the light.
He stood a touch shorter than average, but he cut a dashing, well-aged figure all the same, and he wore his kimono with real style.
His rimless spectacles were etched with a carp motif, quite the fashionable touch.
His hair was an odd shade, verdigris green on the outside, but when the wind caught it, a hidden layer of amber-orange peeked out from underneath. He wore it swept up in a bang to the left.
Yasutaka gave the dashing, bespectacled swordsman a light greeting.
"Shinnosuke, long time no see."
His name was Motomura Shinnosuke, a fellow Kabukimono.
"You here for a head inspection too, Shinnosuke?"
"Yeah. Took this one down over at Kyokujitsurō."
With that, Shinnosuke plopped down the head of an old hag, a thing the size of a grown man's waist.
Like a Dan Lizard, she had a second face on the back of her skull, and both faces bore a great diamond set into the forehead.
"Kongō Baba?! Isn't she supposed to be the crazy-strong one that lives at the top of Kyokujitsurō?!"
"Damn right! Managed to take one down!"
"Amazing!"
Yasutaka marveled at Shinnosuke's catch.
"This is amazing......"
Mōha let out a sigh of his own, awed all over again.
"To think you actually took down a Kongō Baba, when everyone says they're nearly impossible to beat......"
With nothing left to do but sigh at their senior's tremendous feat, the two of them could only listen as Shinnosuke asked.
"And you two? How'd it go?"
"Shinnosuke...... you're totally asking that on purpose, aren't you?"
"Hahaha!"
"You only ever ask when you already know you've won!"
"Hahaha! Caught me, huh! Well, what's the harm!"
Yasutaka showed him the Dan Lizard and mikan heads he'd brought.
The Dan Lizard drew little reaction, Shinnosuke was well used to those, but at the sight of the new mikan-type Yokai, he couldn't help but frown.
"There's been a lot of these lately......"
"...A lot of them?"
"Yeah......"
Shinnosuke pointed at one of the displayed Yokai heads, or rather, at one of the large flowers among them.
"That flower there's been named Renge Fuyō, but it's a Yokai that only showed up recently."
"That's......"
It seemed new Yokai were appearing more and more these days.
Shinnosuke's frown deepened slightly as he spoke.
"Those heads on display at the Inspection Ground aren't just for show, they're there to warn you. There's proper accounts of how each fight went written up next to them, so make sure you check them. Do that, and you're a lot less likely to run into some nasty surprise attack out of nowhere."
"Sorry 'bout that."
"I'll be more careful."
Both Yasutaka and Mōha, chastened, reflected on having neglected such checks.
"Well, I'm off then."
"See ya."
"Take care."
With that, the group parted ways with Shinnosuke.
Yasutaka's group reached the counter, and he laid out the Dan Lizard and the mysterious mikan monster for inspection.
"Take a look, old man."
"Right you are."
The old man examined the heads with a magnifying glass.
After a cursory look, he gave each head a shake, checking whether there was anything solid inside.
There were always a few who tried to pass off fakes, so he was a stickler about this part.
Even as he inspected them, he held out a hand, demanding something.
"Well? Hand over your seal, would you."
"Oh, right, almost forgot."
Yasutaka pulled a fair-sized iron seal from inside his robe, the same one he'd shown at the checkpoint.
It served as a form of identification, registered with the Magistrate's Office.
The old man took the seal, fitted it with a simple attachment, and set it into the fire kiln.
In essence, it was a branding iron. He would mark the harvested heads with it, and they'd be processed later.
This system kept unregistered Kabukimono from running around claiming bounties on their own.
Incidentally, the checkpoint at the base of the Sky Tree also stamped your seal on the way out, so that if something happened to you, they'd know whether you'd gone missing.
It took a while for the seal to heat up, so the old man struck up conversation while they waited.
"Say, you've got yourself quite the looker with you today. How'd you sweet-talk her?"
"It's less that I sweet-talked her, more that... she was just kind of already there......"
Hearing this, Mani-hime, who had been standing behind him, stepped forward.
"My master is in your care."
"Whoa! You're married?! Didn't you say you were single?"
"No, that's not it at all! Mani-hime, don't go making things more complicated!"
"Indeed! My master is the young lady, and this old fool is but her servant!"
"You too, old hag, quit complicating things!"
Yasutaka fretted, the two of them muddying the waters without any sense of the mood.