Kuro ordered, "Kill them."
Ninjas swung their swords and killed all captured guards. Kuro intends to kill everyone, so there is no need to capture city guards.
The village has 1000 people, along with 20 permanent guards for the city's gate towers; the ninjas killed all those guarding this gate.
There may be a few at other gates, but worrying about them is unnecessary.
"Let's move!" he ordered; now, he must quickly find Jack and kill him before he ran away; he had already ordered other ninjas to look at other gates and send signals if they saw Jack running away.
Kuro is a professional; of course, he won't be fooled by those tactics; before coming here, he confirmed Jack was truly here, ordered his ninjas to keep an eye on all roads leading out of the village, and only then attacked. In fact, he has been around the village for a few days, making preparations.
…
After carefully walking in the fruit farm for a while, the ninjas looked at the more than 400 people who stood there, all ready to fight.
"Damn!" he cursed; a lot of the 400 were women, but even if they can't do much, they can get in the way; this battle is not a guaranteed win.
"Retreat!" without hesitation, Kuro ordered a retreat; he wouldn't engage in any battle where the chance of losing is greater than winning; at least not if he has other options.
…
"They are retreating without even fighting?" Jack was shocked; he thought of the background script he wrote about Kuro. "He is a ruthless, pragmatic man who is only loyal to himself and his village; when he starts something, he will make sure to finish it. He …" Jack recalled.
"Maybe I'm using too little brain power, that's why I'm shocked about it!" he thought.
Right now, the brainpower he is using is no better than that of an ordinary mortal; if he had used more brainpower, he could have predicted this.
Still, they cannot run away this easily; he had already made preparations for this.
…
When Kuro captured the gate, before leaving to look for Jack, he left behind two ninjas to guard the gate; he was always cautious and wouldn't leave such a strategic position unguarded. After all, the gate is where they must pass to retreat in the event of a loss.
But those two ninjas were now on the ground, dead. A woman with red lips in tight black clothes was moving around.
"Almost done!" she thought, looking into the distance.
She could vaguely feel that many people were coming from that direction; with her IQ, it wasn't difficult to know that it was most likely Kuro.
Acting even faster, she quickly finished her task, set up the trigger, and left.
…
Kuro and his ninjas quickly reached the gate, but contrary to expectation, they didn't see the two ninjas there.
"Something happened!" Kuro thought.
Technically, the wall is quite short so that they can jump out with a bit of effort. But that would take at least ten minutes.
After all, the wall is short, but even as a short wall, it was five meters tall; otherwise, it couldn't keep even animals out. Its issue was more because it was thin, rather than short. As a thin wall, it would fall quite easily, thus completely unable to keep out human armies.
Kuro can climb quite easily, but his ninjas, none of whom are nearly as strong as him, cannot. One must not pay much attention to those movies where people easily jump up the walls; in fact, it's quite difficult for even ninjas to climb a 5-meter wall without help like a ladder or something.
Kuro wouldn't leave his ninjas, so he ordered 6 ninjas, "Go up the wall and see what happened to them."
Six ninjas all bowed and left.
…
Two minutes later, they didn't return; no matter how Kuro called them, they wouldn't answer.
Faced with this, Kuro decided rationally, without the involvement of any emotion, "Gather pieces of wood to build a ladder! Quick!"
He has no other choice. At the moment, he has these options.
First, to order even more ninjas to go up and check the situation, which risks their dying again without being able to bring any information.
Second, he goes up to check, which also risks placing himself in grave danger.
Third, he can go up with everyone, but that also risks them all; in this era, bombs already exist, so Kuro is not willing to take that risk.
His time is also quite limited, as Jack is following from behind; because Jack's 'army' is composed of many physically weaker individuals, it takes at least half an hour until they arrive, but when they do, that would be a huge issue for Kuro.
So, the best choice is to ignore the gate altogether.
It must be noted that the gate in this city is designed so that nobody can open it without first having control of the gate tower. The gate tower is a stone building built on top with no window; it can be said that the gates of this city completely outclass the walls. In fact, one other detail Jack changed to lower the difficulty was the gates; they weren't originally this advanced.
But for his plans, he needed better gates, so he improved them.
...
With so many ninjas working together, they managed to build a working ladder in a short time, and soon, one by one, they began climbing it.
Seeing this, Lucy sighed; her plan didn't work as she was expecting Kuro to send more ninjas or climb up himself, but that didn't happen, rendering her bombing operation useless.
Still, she wasn't helpless. Taking out a bow, she aimed directly at Kuro. She had to force them to come up to the gate tower.
....
Kuro could leave the village even without the ladder; as a peak human, he had at least this ability. So, he remained here, waiting for all his ninjas to leave before leaving himself.
What he didn't expect was that he would be targeted.
Suddenly, he felt a sense of danger, as if his life were in danger; without thinking for another moment, he dodged to the left; an arrow narrowly missed him!
"Enemy attack!" he shouted. The ninjas put everything down and gathered around him, all looking at the gate tower with vigilance.
At the same time, the few ninja bowmen he brought out their bows, ready to shoot.
"Let's slowly move away!" Kuro ordered. They must move out of the reach of this tower. Kuro had no intention of sending ninjas up; he could tell that whoever was up there wanted them to go up.
Carefully, with ninja archers aiming at the tower, ninjas took the ladder and moved completely out of the tower's reach, then began climbing the ladder again.
Secretly observing this from a hidden spot in the gate tower, Lucy sighed and admired Kuro; he didn't give her a single opening; now, she couldn't shoot any arrows again. Maybe if it were Mike, he could have shot even from here, but Lucy was not skilled in archery.
...
Unfortunately for Kuro, Jack arrived faster than expected.
"Attack them!" Jack, who arrived with 'elite' citizen soldiers all equipped with swords, ordered.
At the same time, Mike took out his bow and started shooting.
Seeing this, Kuro immediately split his ninjas; one group was responsible for defending against Jack, and the other group ran away; this way, at least most ninjas could escape.
Even he himself began fighting, killing one villager with each swing.
But after killing three villagers, Kuro felt severe danger and dodged to the right; unfortunately, unlike before, the arrow also slightly tilted right and directly hit his left shoulder. It was an arrow from Mike.
As an arrow shot by a peak human skilled in archery, Kuro, who was focusing on fighting villagers, could not dodge in time; he managed to dodge Lucy because she wasn't that good with bows.
"AHH!" he gritted his teeth and began running away as fast as possible; now, his life was in danger so that he wouldn't care about his ninjas anymore; he even used the ninjas' bodies as shields to avoid more arrow shots.
Unfortunately for him, Mike was better than he imagined; another shot came and grazed his neck; the arrow was so precise that it bounced off the wall to hit him; if it weren't Kuro, who still managed to dodge at the last moment, his artery would have already been cut.
"Who is that man? He is so amazing," Kuro was absolutely shocked; he actually didn't have any info about that archer; it was as if he appeared out of thin air.
Now, being injured on his neck and left shoulder, Kuro started feeling danger to his life; these wounds were bleeding, and if he didn't quickly treat them, he would be in danger.
Jack and Mike were quickly cutting down the ninjas even as he thought.
"All come back!" he shouted, ordering the ninjas on the other side to return.
"That archer is too skilled; he would shoot me if I tried to climb the wall; the only way is first to defeat the villager swordsmen, then the ninjas can keep the archer busy and give me time to run away."
Unfortunately for Kuro, no one replied from the other side.
…
Lucy smiled with her blood-red lips as she walked among more than ten corpses; she killed them all using poison darts, one by one.
The other 20 or so ran away when they could not find who was attacking.
…
"What is going on?" Seeing no one replied, Kuro began to panic truly.
Without any more hesitation, he took out a flare gun and shot it in the air; with this, all nearby ninjas would gather.
"Aaaaaaa!" Kuro was shot in his right hand as he shot the flare gun.
Now, with his left shoulder and right hand injured, it's very unlikely he can fight against Jack.
With his legs still uninjured, Kuro began running; around here was full of trees, which was perfect for avoiding arrows.
"AAAAAAAAAAA," he screamed as he was shot in his left leg; the arrow bounced from a tree and hit him in the leg; because it was bounced, it didn't penetrate deep, but it was still extremely painful.
Gritting his teeth and ignoring the injury, Kuro ran away, using trees to avoid arrows.
On the way, another arrow hit him directly in the groin area, probably making him resemble his subordinate ninja more; even though it was beyond painful, he ignored everything and ran away.
…
Jack smiled when he looked at the corpses of many ninjas on the ground. "Complete success," he said.
Of course, there were even more villagers dead, but who cares about them?
"Mike, this time, we intentionally let Kuro run away. We must make use of this and expose Kampaku!" Jack said.
Mike nodded; as a peak archer, the only way to defeat him is to fight him one-on-one; if someone tries dodging his arrows, even other peak humans can only die.
Let alone the fact that Kuro was only physically as strong as peak humans; his skill was far from peak humans, as evidenced by the fact that he lost to Jack in a one-on-one battle.
Just now, Mike could have killed Kuro very easily; he intentionally only grazed him on the neck and intentionally only hit him in the groin; all of those shots could have been fatal.
Without a doubt, he is the best archer in this entire world.