My Reincarnation as a Chicken

Dhijan Hero Nation, Excelcior’s Chambers

The great hero king mauled over a piece of paper he received some weeks back. The information the paper contained found a way to make him anxious, especially considering he received it simply a day after he sent his own letter to the recipients.

There was a knock, followed by the sound of the doors leading to his room being swung wide open. A pair of girls, clothed in armour came marching. Under normal circumstances, entry into his room without permission was unacceptable, but considering who it was, he paid no mind to it. One of the girls, Veronica, came to a halt at the door whereas the other, Jeanne proceeded to his side and placed a letter on his desk.

He looked up to the woman, and his eyes met hers. She gave him a meaningful look, implying that the letter was something he wanted to take a look at. Quickly, he opened up the letter that bore the seal of the Holy Mexar Empire and glazed through its contents at lightning-fast speed. Even then, he made sure to not miss a single word.

As soon as he was done, he placed the letter down then stood up, grabbing his sword from the side of his desk.

“Veronica, prepare the army. We march for the New Kyoto Empire at dawn.”

Excelcior had been waiting for confirmation from the Holy Mexar Empire for close to a month now, and the letter he just received was an approval from them. They would send aid to meet up with the Dhijan Hero Nation at a convenient spot, and together, form an alliance to overthrow the current threat situating in the New Kyoto Empire – The Dark Church.

Veronica saluted at his commanded, and remained in position.

“What about the matter of the Mana Comet?”, Jeanne followed closely behind him with her hands folded over her waist.

“We’ll simply have the other paladins deal with it. Yvon and Ajax have been summoned to their home countries, but Seiko, Silas and Jasmine should be enough to deal with that.”, He answered brusquely, as he sped out of the room.

Veronica followed immediately afterwards.

“How about sister Neburis and sister Rulis?”, Jeanne inquired, but Excelcior didn’t give an answer to her question. Rather, Veronica spoke up in his stead.

“The fugitives Neburis and Rulis’ whereabouts are still unknown.”

“Ah yes. With Sister Neburis’ control over space, it is possible we may never see either of them again.”, Jeanne exasperated then held her face depressingly. “I do hope both of them are faring well.”

“Their situation is of little relevance now.”, Excelcior stated while marching, his cape flapping behind him.

“Still, Neburis’ unique skill might have come in handy in the fight against this… Hyak… Pandemonium the [Stellar Gazer] spoke off.”, Finding it difficult to pronounce the original world, Jeanne decided to simply mention it in the general language.

“A calamity with the name Pandemonium, huh? Sounds like an absolute blast. All I’m worried about is this mana comet she mentioned.”, Excelcior welcomed the idea of a new calamity. It was simply a new opportunity for him to fight something strong.

The mana comet on the other hand was a much more complex situation. Although he didn’t want to admit it, the truth was that they would need Neburis if they were to handle that entire situation calmly. Unfortunately, they didn’t have Neburis, so it fell to him to find a new solution to it.

“Seiko, Jasmine and Silas are already on their way there. Maybe Hiro too if he’s not too busy doing his own thing like the others.”

As this trio sped down the hallway, an unexpected figure appeared inside Excelcior’s room. This person, wearing a dirty brown robe over surprisingly clean light-armour rummaged through the papers on Excelcior’s desk.

She picked up all the letters she could find and sped through them, trying to get a gist of what was happening without her knowledge.

As soon as she finished reading them, she placed them down then disappeared into thin, leaving absolutely no trace. Almost as if she was never even there.

_________________________

“Eek!?” the girl shrieked as she jumped into the air. Her party members all looked back at her, with one of them actually going towards her to look at her entire body.

“What happened? Did you get hurt?”, Like a concerned parent, he scanned her from head to toe to see if she’d been injured in any way, but she pulled back.

“N-no…”, She replied bashfully.

“Then why did you scream?”

“I just felt some shock, that’s all.”

‘Shock?”

“Yeah, sort of like a lightning bolt.”

The guy backed up then gave an eye signal to his partner.

“Survey the area to the North, I’ll check to the south. If you sense anything, report back to me immediately or take care of it. Daryl, Celica, Nika, watch them."

Leaving that order, both Seiko and Jasmine walked out in opposite directions. What remained was a party of eight; four adventurers and four teenagers. The teenagers all gathered around the girl who screamed to check on her as well, whereas the adventurers maintained a safe distance and kept their eye out for any danger.

“Someone’s a bit jumpy.”, Akari teased with folded arms and a light smile.

“Hehe, sorry. Still, it’s nothing compared to how Seiko’s been acting since we left Dhijan.”, Shiro responded, talking about how Seiko had suddenly gone into an overprotective state since leaving the hero nation.

“Well, you’ve got to understand him. We are in Larm of all places. Any strong beast could just jump out and attack us.”, Daisuke added on.

“True. I guess I have to cut him some slack, huh?”

“I would have said that, but his behaviour has been a little… overbearing since we left.”, Daisuke’s mind went back to the numerous times Seiko had nagged on them. Even someone as patient as him could only deal with so much without accumulating a level of resentment.

“That was kind of random though, huh? The lightning I mean.” Kana started poking Shiro’s cheeks.

“Yeah. Th-that made me re-member something. Stop that already!”, Shiro was trying to push Kana off. The rowdy girl was getting too close and was sniffing her like a wild beast. Aside the weirdness of it all, the freakishly close proximity between the two made Shiro uncomfortable.

“Oh?”, Kana stopped for a moment, curious by what Shiro meant. “What was it?”

“A familiar I had. She’s dead though, so I might be reading too much into this.”

Just then, Karma who had been walking closely behind Shiro looked up. Images of a certain golden chick came to Karma’s mind and for the very first time, Karma started to feel something.

“Eh? One of your familiars died? I thought those guys were practically unkillable.”

“Well, I’m not the average summoner that just calls for help from random spirits. I form contracts with very specific living creatures, which is much better and harder than what most summoners do.”

“Don’t spirits count as living creatures?”, Akari pointed out, so Shiro decided to perform a little bit of a demonstration.

“Spirits are all around us, but they exist in a plane we can’t interact with. Summoners call forth spirits into our plane to help out with somethings, like this.”, She opened her palm and a magic circle formed in it. From it, a little palm sized creature appeared.

“Since this little bugger isn’t from our world, conventional means can’t kill them, although they can be forcefully returned to their world if enough force is used like this.”, Shiro casted a ball of fire which encased the spirit, making it disappear.

“Contracted familiars on the other hand are different, since you can only have a familiar from your own world or plane. They don’t suddenly disappear when they take immense amounts of damage and their power output isn’t limited by any rules governing interdimensional travel. Since Karma is from here, the amount of power she’d be allowed to use vastly differs from the amount of power a dragon summoned from a different plane would be allowed to use. It’s like how tourists are given stricter rules than the actual citizens are back home.”

“Booriing! Tell me more about this familiar. What was it like?”, Kana wasn’t here for a lecture and had more interest in stories.

Shiro, having come to terms with this girl’s nature simply sighed and smiled.

“Hinotori was a golden chick.”

_________________________

I left the clean up to Reiman. He’d been knocked out cold earlier, but nothing too life threatening. I wanted to get an organised report of everything before I made any decisions.

As I said this, most of everyone was asleep and I was the only one awake. I could see a crap load of sleeping hob-goblins as they evolved. That wasn’t a scene I could easily describe.

Besides that, there was the issue of the sky. I’d chosen to ignore this, but it was far too freaky now. For some reason, I could see several figures looking down on us from the sky. A bunch of people shaped clouds were watching me, frowning it seems.

‘W-What the heck?’

<<Those are gods>>

‘Gods?’

<<Or higher beings. They must have been observing the battle before we arrived.>>

‘D-Doesn’t explain why I can see them… I mean, I know most of them don’t like me now, but still.’

[Grimm: Oh boss, you’re back? That’s great!]

[Me: Is that so? I wish I could’ve slept more.]

[Grimm: Haha, same here.]

[Me: What’s that supposed to mean?]

[Grimm: Oh, uh, I got sent on a mission and was about to report back to Reiman, but I guess I should just give it to you right here]

Honestly, since I wasn’t up to date on what was happening, I felt like the right move to make here was to actually give the information to Reiman, but I was kind of interested.

[Me: Sure.]

[Grimm: Alright, so…]

Grimm had been sent on a mission to investigate the appearance of Sundane soldiers in the North. The Sundane Kingdom was a relatively small kingdom that sat in between Keimen and the Winter Zone, making it a relatively cold place. Back to the point, during his investigation, he found out that it actually wasn’t the Sundane kingdom up there. Rather, the ‘Sub-Circle’ – an underground organisation that I faced off already – was busily trying to get access to resources from Larm.

I wasn’t sure when it happened, but if I had to estimate it was about a few days after Goliath died. Somehow, that information spread to all the kingdoms in this continent and they all signed an agreement that no one was to touch Larm yet.

Of course, there were some people greedy enough to actually want to do this first, but fear of having entire nations after them made most kingdoms and organisations wait. Of course, one organisation was fearless enough to pull a stupid plan like this out of their ass.

The ‘Sub-Circle’ wanted to get as much ore as possible from the North to be ahead of their competitors, but how could they, one of the biggest crime organisations, move without others finding out about their plans? The answer was simple. They wouldn’t.

All they had to do was maintain a façade of them being busy with other things, like sending special packages all the way to a ‘secret kingdom’. Rumours would fly that these packages were ship-loads of teleportation rings that are difficult to acquire and some ‘random adventurers’ while passing the Demise Mountains happened to see a group of soldiers in armour unique to the Sundane Nation marching to Larm.

Considering Sundane’s location, them using teleportation rings to March on the North of Larm without being sighted or suspected by anyone made the most sense and was hardly a refutable claim. However, having covered up their tracks, the ‘Sub-Circle’ still didn’t have a way to protect their men from the tyrants.

Or so one would think, but they already had a deal with both the North and East, brokered by Krull’s son, Karon.

He had heard about their cloning projects and was interested in it. So in exchange for the North and East allowing them to freely mine as much as they wanted, the Sub-Circle simply had to help Karon through their clone technology. Grimm wasn’t sure what Karon wanted to clone, since this was as much as they were willing to tell him, feeling a bit wary of him.

I could make a guess that he wanted to clone more War Ogres without even having to confirm this from him. Even if they ended up losing most of their soldiers, as long as they got access to cloned war ogres, they would eventually have the ultimate army.

You had to admit that Karon was unusually smart for Krull’s kid. Then again, when I thought more about it, Kara was also really smart, having made something of herself even after Krull did everything possible to weaken her. I didn’t know much about Kiara, but from Krull’s memories she was in charge of diplomatic matters with other nations.

When you had these kinds of really impressive kids, you would start to wonder just what the heck Krull was on. He’d never made a single really smart decision in his life, but his kids had super bright futures with their intelligence alone, not to mention their battle capabilities which were already above the average.

Back to the point, their plan was risky, but smart. Then again, an organisation wouldn’t have risen to this level of influence if they didn’t take any risks. I’d originally have immediately teleported to their location to stop their plans and send a threat to them, but I had other plans.

Specifically, the guild both Reiman and I had been building in Keimen in secret. It should have been ready for launch by now.

Oh? You want to know how come a guild I haven’t personally worked on or showed any progress off is fully functional in a month or two? The answer’s simple actually.

You see, making a venture requires a lot of thinking. Logistics, money, human resources and the legality of that venture. Due to the fact that I wasn’t a human, I couldn’t legally own a business in Keimen and neither could I easily acquire the human resources or figure out simple architecture. Even with Reiman’s help, none of these things were possible. Maybe, with Grimm’s aid, all of these things could be done, but I honestly didn’t want to have to go through the trouble of actually having to figure these things out.

Rather, I came up with the super brilliant plan of simply not making this guild!

That’s right, my super ultra-master plan was to make a non-existent guild. Aren’t I a genius?

I took inspiration from my experience with the Sikari Guild. No one could be faulted for believing that they didn’t exist. They were so secretive and illusive that proof of their existence was fickle, but that made their name quite popular and gave it a sense of great importance.

Using that kind of logic, I realised I could easily make a guild off of notoriety itself. There didn’t have to be a guild building, or guild members or a legal contract. The guild’s name simply had to exist for the guild itself to be a reality.

Reiman had the shadow soldiers, shadow rats and some goblins take care of adventurer requests from guilds in secret, and leave no proof that they were there. However, there’d always have to be a single ‘witness’ of some kind to spread rumours of them dealing with it.

How was this a protective measure against humans?

Well, this guild of ours simply had no alignments in particular. This was supposed to be a rule for guilds in general, but it was obvious that there were unspoken alignments. For instance, the Adventurer’s Guild in Keimen didn’t particularly like demi-humans and the adventurers were always forced as tools of war should the time come.

In times like these where war could break out at any moment, it wouldn’t be shocking that an adventurer wouldn’t want to participate, however since it was their only source of income, they had no choice but to participate in these wars.

If a guild with absolutely no alignments were to come up, of course most of those adventurers would run to it. The plan was to take away a major fighting force of the humans, which was the adventurers. Considering the sort of missions they take; it was no overstatement to say the average adventurer was stronger than the average soldier.

Launching the guild meant we’d be taking in members. However, the only problem was that the only people willing to join us were the weaker adventurers. The stronger ones who didn’t really mind fighting in a war didn’t care about or guild’s existence. I needed a better incentive for them.

However, we now had a solution to that problem!

‘I didn’t think we’d ever make use of this guy again.’

I looked at the blob of flesh that remained stationary at the furthest corner of the prison cell.

“Rise and shine, McAllister.”

<A/N: I said I’d focus more on the human side of things over 50+ chapters ago, and I’m only now keeping to that promise… whoopsie. Even as I say this, I know I’m somehow going to deviate in this arc and keep the humans out for a little bit. Meh. Have a good day and thanks for reading!>