[Hope in Ruination] Chapter 12 - Grey Harbour

It was the sound of gunshots that startled Naruto awake in the morning.

Had he been in any other part of the world, he would have immediately become alert and jumped out of the bed, his hand grasping his broadsword.

However, reminding himself that he was in Bilgewater currently, all his worries disappeared. People shooting each other was the norm in a place as lawless as that.

Glancing to his right, Ahri appeared still asleep, her head resting on his chest. But by the constant twitch of her cute fox tails, he could tell that she was on the verge of waking up, too.

Bilegewater was always noisy, but with the gunfight and the clanking sounds of blades grating against each other, it was worse than usual.

As he had predicted, a minute later, the girl’s eyelids fluttered open, and her slit, yellow eyes met his.

“Morning, Ahri,” he said, smiling.

Suddenly feeling shy, Ahri buried her face into his chest.

“Morning,” she mumbled.

Sensing the opportunity to tease her, Naruto grinned.

As if she could read his thoughts, Ahri unexpectedly jumped out of the bed and ran into the bathroom.

His chest shook with laughter. But then, he shivered; without Ahri’s warm body pressed close to his and with her fluffy nine tails no longer covering him, the chill of the morning bit at his skin.

Grinning at the idea he just got, he also got out of bed and headed to the bathroom. A few seconds later, Ahri’s surprised yelp echoed from the bathroom, followed by a splash of water and his amused chuckles.

The sounds that followed made it very clear they wouldn’t be leaving the bathroom for quite a while.

⁂

“This is entirely your fault!” Ahri said, jabbing an accusatory finger into his chest.

Her face was red, and she was glaring at him, her expression a mixture of anger and embarrassment.

“You’re like an angry cat throwing a tantrum,” he said, grinning, before taking a bite out of his chicken wrap.

The hiss-like sound she let out only made him grin wider.

Seeing that he wasn’t paying much attention to her, she suddenly grabbed his wrist and sank her fangs into his chicken wrap, tearing a huge bite out of it.

“Hey! You have your own too!” he said, quickly pulling his food away.

“You deserve to have all your food stolen and worse! If it weren’t for you, we’d be sitting at a table now and having lunch like regular people!”

The reason for their bickering was that, after their romp in the bathroom that morning, when they went down in the tavern to have lunch, they were greeted by a chorus of laughter and wolf-whistles.

Every single one of the people who were having lunch and drinking in the tavern that day had heard clearly what they had been up to.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Was it really my fault? If I recall correctly, it wasn’t me who was shouting at the top of my lungs!”

“And why was I doing that? Because of you! I didn’t ask to-, to do that sort of thing in the morning, when everyone is awake!” she shouted, her face flushing harder by the second.

“What was it that you were shouting?” Naruto asked as if he didn’t hear her accusations.

His voice took on a high pitch as he tried to impersonate her.

“Harder! Yesss! Deeper!”

Several heads suddenly turned their way, and Ahri’s face looked like she was going to combust.

“Breed me! Spit in my mo-”

“How-, How vulgar! I DID NOT SAY THAT!”

His chicken wrap forgotten, Naruto broke into a run, jumping up on the rooftop of a nearby house and sprinting away, laughing.

The nine-tailed fox girl was hot on his tail, her eyes spewing fire, her snarling lips revealing her sharp fangs, and three large orbs of magic rotated ominously around her.

“Stop right there, pervert!” she yelled in fury, mortified with embarrassment.

But, knowing how quick her spirit rush was, Naruto didn’t dare pause his steps for even a second.

They chased each other like that through half of Bilgewater before Ahri finally caught him.

With a final Spirit Rush, she slammed into his back, sending them both tumbling down the rooftops onto the street below.

Though he did his best to protect himself, five minutes later, his arm, neck, and face looked like he had been mauled by a pack of feral beasts, sporting scratches and bite marks all over the place.

Hair ruffled and clothes dusty and dishevelled, Naruto lay spread-eagled in the middle of the street, still laughing as Ahri wrapped her white cloak around herself and left him behind, disappearing into the crowd.

⁂

They reunited half an hour later in front of the Grey Harbour. By then, most of Ahri’s embarrassment had subsided, and Naruto stopped making fun of her too.

Before stepping into the cursed area, he did one last check of his gear, and he also handed her a good number of his exploding tags. Since he had already taught her how to use the tags the previous day, he thought it would be better if both of them had access to them.

It was noon, the sun was shining bright, and the sky was crystal clear, with no clouds in sight, but the Grey Harbour ahead of them was, somehow, covered in dark mist.

With her sharp sense of hearing, Ahri also picked up the distant shrieks and roars made by the creatures lurking in the black mist.

Thankfully, the Grey Harbour was separated from the rest of Bilegwater by a tall and thick fence made of tree trunks sharpened at the tip and a large and strong gate that kept the ghouls and other creatures of the mist away.

A group of armed people was guarding a gate, barring the way for anyone who wished to pass into the Grey Harbour.

All signs of playfulness disappeared from Naruto and Ahri’s eyes at the sight of it.

Seeing as they were not regular people, the two of them didn’t feel the need to argue with the guards to open the gate for them. Ahri levitated herself over the fence, and Naruto walked on it like on the ground, easily climbing over.

The moment that they entered the Grey Harbour, the sun disappeared completely, and the light dimmed as if they were in the middle of the night.



A small fireball appeared in Ahri’s hand, and she willed it to float ahead of them to illuminate the way, serving them as a torch.

“It’s insane to think that people are willingly living next to this place of death and decay,” she murmured as they advanced further into the mist.

The air was thick, humid, hot, and stagnant, and an unpleasant stench, like that of rotten fish, wafted every now and then from somewhere.

The cobblestone streets were wet and slippery, the walls of the buildings were damp and covered in mould, and Naruto and Ahri could sense numerous gazes watching them from the cover of the mist.

His Negative Emotions Sensing couldn’t pinpoint the location of the enemy. Or, better said, there were too many of them. They were surrounded.

“They’re coming,” Naruto whispered, and his large broadsword was engulfed by bright crimson flames.

Ahri didn’t wait for the enemy to make the first move. Although she could not see where they were, three spheres of blue fire, even larger than her head, appeared in front of her, and she threw them in three different directions around her.

Loud wails and screeches echoed in the empty town, a clear proof that her fireballs had hit true, and, a second later, the ground shuddered from the steps of countless creatures rushing towards them.

A ghoul leapt out of the mist, throwing itself at them in a suicidal attack, but Naruto swung his broadsword, cleaving it in half. The fire coating his blade was so strong that the two halves of the corpse were instantly incinerated and turned into ash before they could even hit the ground.

“Let’s go!” he shouted, and the two of them started running together, staying close to each other so they would not accidentally split up and get lost in the black mist.

Preoccupied with the battle, they no longer had the leisure to calmly illuminate their surroundings, but the flickering lights coming from their magical attacks provided them with enough light for them not to stumble about blindly.



Chased by the horde of ghouls and evil spirits, Ahri threw a handful of exploding tags behind them, and, making a one-handed ram seal as Naruto had taught her, she detonated them.

A loud explosion rocked the street, demolishing two buildings and killing at least two dozen creatures, but even more were spawned fom the black mist, replenished their ranks.

Another horde cut their way to the front, but Naruto swung his heavy weapon in a large arc, and a massive blade of fire erupted from him, mowing down all the creatures in its path.

“Leave the front to me!” he shouted. “Just take care of our rear. Don’t let them get close.”

With his Fire chakra coursing through his blade and the Strength of a Hundred technique empowering his physical strength, Naruto was like an unstoppable juggernaut, tearing everything in his path.

Ahri was more than holding her own at his side. Thanks to the massive amount of life force she had drained from him last night, the fox girl was throwing one large fireball after another, each one of them raising mushrooms of fire and smoke when they exploded, obliterating their surroundings.

“They’re endless!” she shouted as she trailed behind Naruto for a few seconds and threw nearly 20 exploding seals at the streets and houses behind them.

She did not detonate them right away.

“Take more seals from my pouch if you need,” he told her as he jumped into the air and slammed his sword down.

The street ruptured, and a deep gorge was formed across the town square, making all the creatures caught in it howl in agony. The ghouls were obliterated by the force of the strike, and the evil spirits were incinerated by the wave of fire following the swing.

They started running again, and Ahri kept throwing Exploding Seals behind them without detonating them.

After taking another forty steps, she made a one-handed ram seal, finally activating all the exploding tags she had thrown until then.

The entirety of Grey Harbour was rocked by the massive explosion. Dozens of houses blew up, and a powerful shockwave momentarily pushed even the mystical black mist away, allowing the rays of sunlight to touch the cursed land.

“You must’ve taken out hundreds of them,” he said in praise when he looked back at the destruction they left behind.

It was a heavy enough blow that the horde of mistwalkers momentarily pulled back, ceasing their attack.

Unfortunately, even though the district was still burning, the black mist soon rolled over the previously cleared space, covering the Grey Harbour in complete darkness once again.

“Ahri?”

“Yes?” the fox girl asked while turning to look at him.

“I don’t want to be a downer, but I don’t think a group of regular people would have any chance of surviving in this place, be they pirates or not.”

She paused for a few moments.

“Let’s keep searching. It would be a shame to leave without looking around properly.”

“Alright.”

Ahri made another fireball to illuminate the way for them, and the blond walked by her side, sword in hand.

Half an hour passed as they moved in silence, their senses stretched out to react at the first sign of danger. There were no further attacks from mistwalkers in the meantime.

“I have an idea. Instead of avoiding the mist creatures, let’s seek them out. If there are any living people around, they’re bound to fight the creatures to stay alive.”

She did not have any better ideas, so she followed his lead, allowing him to walk ahead, guided by his Negative Emotions Sensing.

Minutes later, they discovered an enormous agglomeration of mistwalkers. Ghouls, evil spirits, and even monstrous creatures of the sea were huddled together surrounding Grey Harbour’s tallest building.

The creatures' bodies were almost invisible in the darkness of the black mist, but their glowing eyea shone like a swarm of giant fireflies.

“What the hell?” Naruto murmured.

Ahri was also startled to see that, despite their numbers, the mistwalkers did not dare get closer than fifteen meters from the building.

They were roaring and clawing at the ground, but they were too afraid to take a step forward.

“I guess we’ve found your pirates,” he said.

“Someone must’ve cast a powerful spell to keep them away,” Ahri said in a pondering tone. “If they have a magician of that calibre on their side, we better be careful.”

He nodded at her warning, and the two of them glanced at each other once before bursting forth.

The mistwalkers roared when they took note of them, but stabbing his broadsword in front of him like a spear, Naruto pierced through their ranks like a hot knife through butter, butchering everything in his way.

Ahri ran behind him, sticking close to him, and fired streams and balls of foxfire at anyone who tried to attack their rear.

The ruckus they caused alerted the occupants of the house, and one of them cracked open the door, only his head coming out to check the situation.

“Shit, bounty hunters!” he shouted to the rest of his mates before slamming the door shut again.

No sooner than he said that, the people inside the house opened the blinders covering the windows, and the barrels of their guns lit up as they opened fire, shooting at Naruto and Ahri.

A bullet grazed Naruto’s ear, almost nicking him, and he cursed under his breath.

“Ahri, fly!” he warned her, and the fox girl didn’t ask any questions, instantly taking to the air.

All of a sudden, he stomped his foot powerfully, and the ground cracked like a spiderweb in a radius of 20 meters around him before exploding.

Enormous boulders shot up in the air from his monstrous physical strength, killing all the creatures who happened to be nearby, and he let out a shout as she smashed the flat of his broadsword into the boulders as though he were wielding a club.

The chunks of earth shattered, and cries of pain and screams of fear came from the house as it got pelted with countless smaller rocks.

Whatever spell was keeping the mistwalkers away from the house did not stop physical objects from reaching it.

Despite the barrage of rocks he had launched at the house, the pirates didn’t stop their assault, firing bullets at Naruto and Ahri as quickly as they could.

Luckily, their flintlock guns took time to reload.
By the time they started reloading to fire a fourth salvo, Naruto and Ahri had pierced through the horde of mistwalkers surrounding the house and stepped into the safe area that the monsters couldn’t reach.

The blond didn’t even ask for them to open the door. He smashed his foot into the door like a thug, blasting apart not just the door but half of the wall too.

The moment they walked in, Naruto and Ahri found themselves facing nearly 50 barrels pointed at them. There weren’t 50 pirates, but quite a few of them wielded two pistols.

Acting as if he didn’t even notice the numerous guns aiming at him, the crimson fire surrounding his blade exploded in intensity as he stepped in front of them.

“Are you the Jagged Hooks?” he asked.

“Didn’t think that bounty hunters would have the nerve to come down here. Did Sarah Fortune send you after us?” the man who looked like their leader said.

With shoulder-length hair with streaks of grey running through it, a full beard with a long moustache, wearing a long, green coat and blue shirt underneath, and having a long, curved sword strapped at his waist and wielding two twin pistols in his hands, the man looked like an experienced and dangerous pirate, a bona fide sea wolf.

“We aren’t bounty hunters,” Ahri spoke up. “We came here to ask some questions.”

“You came to Grey Harbour and fought through endless hordes of mistwalkers just to ask some questions? Don’t play with us, little girl,” the leader of the pirates scoffed.

He turned his eyes towards the rough, one-armed man, wearing a long grey cloak with a mask covering his face and wielding a large broadsword that looked so heavy that even two men working together would struggle to lift it.

“I know a killer when I see one. That man, beside you, did not come here to ask questions.”

Ahri glanced at Naruto and felt like she couldn’t blame the pirate for his misunderstanding. The blond did look like the type of individual that even pirates would like to avoid. The massive sword being covered in crimson flames didn’t help his case either.

Left with no choice, Ahri’s amber eyes glowed and turned a magenta colour as she glanced back at the leader, casting her Charm.

But, to her stupor, for the first time in her life, her magic failed.

The pirate leader sensed that she had tried to do something to him, and he barked at his men:

“Kill them!”

Ahri’s nine tails unfurled and rose to protect her vitals from the bullets, but there was no need for that. Naruto flickered in front of her, shielding her smaller body with his.

Loud gunshots cracked in the room, and sounds of bullets scraping against metal were heard as Naruto used the wide flat of his broadsword to block them.

“No fucking way!” a pirate cursed, in disbelief at the fact that Naruto had single-handedly parried all their bullets.

Nine balls of fire suddenly appeared from Naruto’s back, and Ahri’s amber eyes glowed with her magic power as she threw those flaming spheres at the pirates.

Over fifteen pirates died brutally, and the others screamed in horror at watching their comrades being burnt alive.

“Wait! Wait!” the pirate leader yelled at the top of his lungs.

The woman who seemed like a frail and pretty maiden before looked like a terrifying demon in his eyes now.

“You said you have questions! Just ask! We’ll tell you what you want to know!” the pirate leader spoke quickly, fearing that the next time she attacked, all of them would end up killed.

Naruto, who had been about to lunge in their midst, stayed his hand, and Ahri also extinguished most of her orbs of magic, leaving only three of them to orbit around her, as if to not let them forget what would happen the moment they tried to pull any tricks.

“I’m looking for a sunstone. It is an ancient Vesani artefact. Don’t even try to lie to me. I know for sure that one of you has it. A black market merchant told me that a member of the Jagged Hooks bought it off him.”

The pirate leader shot a furtive glance at the man behind her and gulped when he saw his massive, flame-covered broadsword raised in the air threateningly.

“We don’t have it.”

When Ahri looked like she was going to fire her magic at him, he shouted in a voice tinged with desperation:

“I swear we don’t have it! Gangplank took it with him to the Shadow Isles!”

“Don’t lie to me!” Ahri shouted at him and grabbed him by the hem of his coat, her sharp claws almost tearing apart the cloth.

Despite her slender and delicate appearance, Ahri lifted him with one hand as if he were a stray cat, not a taller and much heavier man.

“He’s speaking the truth, Ahri,” Naruto told her.

His Negative Emotions Sensing did not detect any lies from him.

Ahri let go of the man, and he stumbled back, but she turned to Naruto, seemingly not wanting to believe his words.

“How can this be? That’s the very centre of the black mist! He couldn’t have gone there! It’d be no different from suicide for a mere pirate.”

Seeing the fox girl turning her back to him, the pirate leader’s eyes flashed with ferocity, and he drew out his sword, intent on cutting her down when she least expected it.

But Naruto’s senses detected his killing intent straight away. The pirate had yet to even draw out his sword when the blond threw a kick at his chest, hurling him back violently.

The man smashed into the wall at the end of the room with a loud thud and slid down bonelessly.

Faced with certain death, the still-surviving pirates ran out of the house, scurrying away like rats through open windows and the broken wall, abandoning their leader to escape with their lives.

The head of the pirates coughed a mouthful of blood as he tried to sit up, but he could not muster the strength to do so. Naruto’s kick had shattered half of his ribs, and the slam against the wall had injured his spine. He could no longer feel his legs.

His bloodied lips curled into an ugly grin as he pulled a peculiar-looking stone amulet from his neck and said menacingly:

“If this is the end for me, I’m not going down empty-handed. I’m taking you bastards to the grave with me.”

Laughing, he smashed the stone amulet against the wooden floor as hard as he could, and the trinket shattered.

“See you in hell,” the pirate said, grinning.

A moment later, a terrifying shriek and a chorus of roars pierced the silence of the abandoned town.

The spell that had been keeping away the horde of mistwalkers until then had been broken.

⁂

Not long after Naruto and Ahri infiltrated the Grey Harbour, two people approached the gates.

Had he been there to see them, he would have recognised them right away.

One of them was a very tall and incredibly muscular man with a bald head and a huge moustache. He was the one whom they had found floating on the ocean unconscious.

As for the other, it was a woman, not any shorter or less muscular than he. The dark skin, the tribal tattoos, and the golden, spherical skull-shaped idol she was carrying on her shoulder made her unmistakable. She was Illaoi, the Truth-Bearer, the woman who had started the big bar fight a day ago.

“The area is sealed off! Get away from the gates!” shouted the guards in warning.

As someone who was used to always getting her way, Illaoi didn’t listen.

“I am a Priestess of the Kraken. I go where I please, without anyone’s permission!”

“I don’t care who you are!” the guard barked back. “This gate is the only thing that’s stopping the mist creatures from getting through. Now get lost!”

“Maybe we should try another approach?” Illaoi’s companion suggested.

The priestess shook her head.

“We don’t have time for this.”

Turning her attention back to the guard, her idol started glowing with her divine power, and she said in a steely voice:

“Open the gate, or I will tear it down! I will not ask a third time!"

The guards glanced at each other before shrugging their shoulders.

“Fine, lady. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s your funeral.”

The gates opened with ear-grating sounds, and Illaoi and her companion passed through.

“There, a more direct approach,” Illaoi said, a mixture of pride and amusement in her voice.

“. . . Not quite what I expected,” Braum laughed. “But effective.”

They barely took a few steps when a horde of five ghouls lunged at them from the mist.

“Braum, watch out!” Illaoi said, and three tentacles of water erupted from her idol, whipping half of the ghouls away.

Braum let out a shout, and he grabbed the door-sized shield off his back, slamming into the nearest creature.

The creature let out a choked cry of pain as Braum’s shield bash pulverised its insides, killing it on the spot.

Twirling around with a display of agility and dexterity unexpected from a man his size, Braum hit a second ghoul with the edge of his shield. He had struck it so hard that the ghoul’s head exploded in a mist of ash and dirty blood.

By the time he turned around, Illaoi had already finished killing the other three.

The men guarding the gates inside the tower gulped when they witnessed their strength, inwardly thanking the Bearded Lady that they hadn’t angered the priestess and the shield-bearer and had allowed them to pass.

“It seems that Sarah Fortune was speaking the truth,” Illaoi said gravely. “The mist walkers are stirring again in Grey Harbour. . . Our search did not take long.”

The two started walking ahead. The dreary scenery made Braum’s skin crawl.

“I see where this place gets its name from. . .”

“This place stagnates,” Illaoi said with a frown. “I can feel the spirits here. They are festering. I will allow no such thing. We will return motion to this place. The Light of the Bearded Lady will show us the way!”

Declaring those words self-righteously, she walked ahead, her idol in hand.

“Yes, of course,” Braum agreed readily. “Bearded Lady! Motion!”

But as he rushed to catch up from behind, he could not help muttering under his breath:

‘What have you gotten yourself into now, Braum?’

They did not walk long before they stumbled upon another anomaly.

Most of Grey Harbour was damp, hot, and stifling, but the place in front of them was boiling. The streets were charred and cracked, and the houses were in ruins and burning, like after an explosion.

“There was a battle here. A fierce one. And the traces are fresh,” Braum remarked.

“Indeed. Someone may still be out there, fighting.”

The two of them quickened their steps as they followed the road, and the scenery of destruction only got worse.

No other creatures of the mist had attacked them after that, but they were not surprised. They realised that whoever had passed through before them had annihilated everything in their path. The burning houses and ruptured streets were proof of their power.

Ilaoi and Braum also reached the devastating town square, but those were the last traces of battle.

“Do you think they had survived?” Braum asked.

“This destruction was not caused by the mistwalkers. They do not possess such abilities. I believe the people that came here before us are still alive,” Ilaoi said. “Someone with such great power could not have fallen to mere spirits and ghouls.”

The two of them lingered in the town square for a short while, inspecting the place.

They were ready to leave and continue their investigation, seeking the source of the corruption in the Grey Harbour, when a terrible chorus of roars and inhuman shrieks reached their ears.

Braum and Illaoi looked at each other momentarily startled before their faces hardened.

Not needing to verbalise it, the two of them instantly started running towards the direction of the roars.

As the roars and screeches of the mistwalkers grew louder, so did the temperature, too.
The normally damp, humid air of the Grey Harbour turned dry, and Braum and Illaoi felt a scorching gale of wind hitting them in the face, almost taking their breath away.

Finally arriving at the site of battle, their eyes fell on two people.

A one-armed blond man with a 2-meter-long broadsword, cleaving through ghouls and ghosts with his flaming sword, blades of fire erupting from each one of his swings.

Behind him was a female vastaya, a gumiho. Her white nine tails were burning with blue fire, and so were the tips of her fox ears and the ends of her long black hair. Fire and magic danced around her body, and rivers of blue fire burst from her clawed hands, killing dozens of mistwalkers with every spell.

They stood back-to-back, protecting each other’s blind spot, as they fought against the immeasurable horde.

Thousands upon thousands of mistwalkers surrounded them, each one of the savage, mindless creatures lunging at them in suicidal assaults, trying to bite and claw at them even in the moment of their deaths.

“We have to help them!” Illaoi shouted, but Braum burst into action before she even finished her words.

His massive body appeared to defy gravity as he launched himself in the air with a mighty leap.

He crash-landed into the middle of the horde and slammed his heavy shield down with all his power. The ground shattered under his brute strength, and more than five mistwalkers were obliterated.

But that was nothing compared to what followed next: sharp, enormous spikes of ice burst from the impact of his shield against the ground, skewering dozens of monsters at once.

Not one to be left behind, Ilaoi’s golden idol glowed with an aqua light, and a massive torrent of water burst from the skull’s gaping mouth, like a tsunami.

The enormous wave of water mowed everything in its way, and the divine power contained in it burned and exorcised all the mistwalkers it touched.