Months Flying By.

------------(Ichigo's-POV)------------

I took a few more commissions after that and earned a surprisingly large amount of money, though I quickly realised that paper money had little to no value in the supernatural world. Rare materials, information or services were far more valuable. It was the main reason why Africa, even without a strong local supernatural force, was relatively peaceful, because they offered tangible, useable resources. After a few more exterminations in Africa and gathering a small fortune, I headed back to Kyoto. Most of these materials have no use for me, so I will be giving them to Yasaka.

My relationship with Rossweisse had turned for the better. I wouldn't call her a close confidant, but she was a friend. I learned more about her in our conversations to get rid of the awkwardness. I learned that she wasn't just a genius but a damn prodigy. She told me that due to not having an affinity with her own family's magic, she threw herself in her studies. She learned and moved on, she kept doing that until she graduated from college in less than a decade. Then she threw her entire focus on magic. Learned a lot of different styles of magic but was most proficient in elemental magic, all of the elements.

Enough that she had created her own unique magic circle to use her magic with. How? I didn't understand, though she did try to teach me but it went completely over my head. She also told me that summoning spirits was just the largest and most common use of spirit magic and that there were less used, more specialised forms of spirit magic as well. One of them was Runic magic. Something that would require me to learn an entire magical language, so I pushed it aside as a long term... project.

I also told her a bit about myself. First, that I was part Shinigami, which were only weak ghosts in this world, combined with a few other things, including a human. With her help, I did try to experiment with a few things, the main one being the Garganta. The Garganta opened a hole to the dimension in between the world. Back home, it was a featureless, black void. Here, the in between was known as the Dimensional Gap, the colorful and kaleidoscopic trip I had when I first arrived in this world. It was an extremely dangerous place with turbulent and colliding energies that usually destroyed anything that came in contact with it.

When I first opened it, Rossweisse let out a shriek, jumped back and began shouting at me to close it. I did, seeing her violent reaction and asked her why and she told me the full details. I knew a bit about it from Yasaka and Azazel but not much. The main thing was that the two strongest beings in this world lived in there, Great Red and Ophis. I opened one again and this time tried to focus on the other side, creating something similar to teleportation, but I failed. The teleportation magic that people here used created small holes in space and flung themselves through it, that's why it felt like you were being squeezed into a small tube.

What I was trying to do was create an entire door for me to just walk through. Creating it on my side was easy, but forming the other, for example, on another realm, was the hard part. But that was a matter of practice and we moved slowly towards Kyoto because I was practicing it. Due of that it took us three days to enter Japan and another day to reach Kyoto. By now it had been nearly a month and a half since I was last here. This time some random soldier I didn't know the name of welcomed us. Most of them were treating be a bit different, but I put that aside as another example of strangeness. It felt like they were treating me with more respect, like I was one of their superiors.

It wasn't until we reached the palace that I heard a few things and had an idea of why they were treating me differently. Before I left, many of the workers in the palace say me carrying a fainted yet happy looking Yasaka back to the castle. From the whispers and the giggling I could hear, they had already completely accepted me as the soon to be husband of their leader. We were sitting in front of Yasaka soon enough and she greeted me with a smile as always. My lips started to twitch when she greeted me.

"Ichigo, welcome back." She looked at me with watery eyes and her arms open. It was a promise she extracted from me before I left and because I felt sorry for the 'rough' treatment the night before. A promise to greet her with a hug. Rossweisse was looking at all this with a neutral expression but I had this feeling that she radiating negative emotions. I couldn't exactly go back on my promise so I went and gave her a hug, but when I tried to move back, she didn't let go.

"Yasaka-" I looked down at her and she was looked completely oblivious to everything around her. Her eyes were closed as she took deep breaths, while holding me tightly. I...I couldn't push her away. The only thing I could do was start stroking her head between her ears. She almost purred whenever I did that, but she had enough control no to actually do it. Kunou, however, did purr whenever I did that. It was a very cute reaction. We were in that position for a few minutes before she pulled herself away.

"How was your little trip?" She asked me, pulling me to sit next to her. She started asking me about what I did and rumors about me winning against a full powered God of Thunder, completely ignoring Rossweisse who was also sitting in the room. I had this feeling that I shouldn't bring the topic of Rossweisse up, not until she asked to at least, so I started answering her questions, feeling a bit bad about how we were basically ignoring Rossweisse.

After nearly half hour of doing this, Yasaka finally turned towards Rossweisse and said in a slightly mocking voice and a smile.

"Oh, who is this Ichigo? Her presence is so weak I didn't even see her." Rossweisse seemed to slump at that as I answered.

"This is Rossweisse, a Valkyrie from Asgard. She has her reasons for following me, but she's also a friend." I answered with a shrug. Yasaka narrowed her eyes at that.

"Reasons you say?" Before I could say anything, Rossweisse spoke up.

"Ichigo, may I have a moment with Yasaka-sama? Preferably alone." I looked at them both before leaving the room.

------------(Yasaka's-POV)------------

I was having a simple day, with nothing interesting happening. There were a few rumors of some trouble in the town now owned by the devils. But that was no longer my concern, not fully at least. As long as they followed the contract, I would have no problems with them. Though we still had a few spies in that place, but they hadn't said all that much.

'Probably those heiresses trying to complete their peerage.' I thought to myself, rolling my eyes. Why those devils didn't have tests and an extreme screening process before they gave their young those life changing evil pieces, I didn't know, most likely due to noble politics and whatnot.

I was just focusing on my work when two new presences entered the palace. One of them was familiar but the other was completely new. A minute later, Ichigo entered the room with a woman. A young and beautiful one at that. Was he already looking for other woman outside? I quickly banished that thought and greeted him with a smile and open arms. I managed to squeeze out a promise from him when he was feeling bad after our completely one sided spar.

I turned his focus towards me and asked him about this and that but mostly about the rumor I had heard about him beating Thor at full power. After half an hour of this, I finally turned my focus towards the woman and asked Ichigo about her. Before I could go all that far, she asked to talk to me alone and soon she was the only one with me in the room. She opened her mouth first.

"Yasaka-sama, it's not what it looks like." She said. I raised my eyebrow at that and motioned her to continue. She did with a sigh. She introduced herself, told me a bit about herself and also the reason why she was following my Ichigo. It was a sad little tale, a bit funny too. I couldn't hold back my smile even as I was feeling a bit sympathetic. Women were treated like that, as pawns to throw away if they lost their usefulness. There were only a handful of strong women in this world. There were none in the top ten and even in the top hundred, there were only a handful, me being one of them.

"You can stay here as a guest and follow your orders if Ichigo wasn't against it." I told her while shaking my head.

"But I also want you to help my daughter with her magic studies." She nodded her head at that. It seems she was already expecting something like that.

"Let's call Ichigo back in." I said to her as she nodded.

------------(Ichigo's-POV)------------

I was outside for about ten minutes or so and in that time, the two inside the room had somehow already become friends.

"He is quite dense, you know. Worrying about little things and not being honest. I had to go up and kiss him for him to understand that I also wanted to see where this would lead to." Yasaka said, shaking her head. She was talking about me like I wasn't there. Rossweisse was also nodding along.

"I could see some of that. After his fight with Thor-sama, many of the women in Asgard were making goggly eyes at him and he didn't even notice them. Though that only increased his popularity in some circles." Rossweisse said back with a thoughtful nod. Okay, I knew I was dense, that reality became clear to me while I was reflecting in the void, but when the hell were women making eyes at me? I didn't even notice any other woman in Asgard besides Rossweisse.

"You both seem to have become good friends all of a sudden." I asked them.

"Oh well, it was just a small misunderstanding." Yasaka answered, waving her hand at me. She got up and told us follow her. We had some food and talked about this and that. With Kunou showing up, Rossweisse also asked her about what magic she wanted to learn and what she had already learned.

------------(Break)------------

The next few weeks flew by with me doing little besides hunting a few strays. I had fallen into a routine of sorts. I would wake up, spend some time with Yasaka and Kunou and eat breakfast with them. After that I would have a spar with Kurodo and the other guards. I implemented the training plan Yasaka had for Kunou, about slowly increasing the spiritual pressure to help them get used to an overwhelming enemy. After that, I would stroll around Kyoto for a while, not really talking to anyone, just feeling the bustling city around me.

After that, I would start moving around the human world. Keeping an ear out for any strange happenings and check them out if I heard any. If it was a stray, I would kill it, otherwise just keep moving around. While going about all that, I also tried to practice with my lowered powers. It was more easy to control it when I was at the lowest... setting, basically. Far more easy to concentrate it and fire needle thin blasts of cero with extreme penetrating power and accuracy. It was my least flashy move and what I started using to kill strays.

I did meet a few exorcists, low to mid level devils and other bounty hunters but they all ignored me when I said I was a new bounty hunter. It didn't matter to me but one of them was kind enough to point out that I could take some proof of the kill and get a reward from the local supernatural authority. Hearing that, I remembered that I had to create a name for myself so I started to actively look for bounties while trying not to show off too much. That took almost half of my days and I did start to gain some fame, as someone who had not failed a single bounty I set my eyes on.

After coming back, I trained with Kunou, doing the same with her as I did with the guards. Rossweisse also came with her, saying that she could observe me and complete her job as well. Though she also joined the training when she realised how helpful it could be. Rossweisse and Kunou had become good friends. According to Kunou, Rossweisse was not as boring as her other teacher, so she liked her. Yasaka would also show up whenever she had some free time.

With my days fully packed like that, I didn't even realize how much time had passed. When I finally bothered to check, nearly two months had passed. I really didn't feel the passage of time. By this time, the name Ichigo Kurosaki was at least known to the local supernatural world in Japan. Soon I started to get personal commissions from outside the country as well. It seemed like there was no end to small incidents.

The next two months or so were even more packed as I finally learned to control Garganta enough to create stable pathways from one place to another. That led to me taking more of those commissions that came from outside the country. The device that Azazel gave me proved its usefulness here. The ability to understand and talk in any language was a huge boon. I still couldn't read or write in any other language besides Japanese and some English, but nonetheless, it was amazing.

Nearly half of these outside commissions came from Grigori and I was pretty sure that Azazel was telling them to do it, because why would they give so much attention to a newbie otherwise? I realized that he probably has a bigger goal in helping me so much but as long as it didn't put the ones I came to love and like in trouble, I don't mind so much. Though the next time we meet, I'm going to have to beat a few answers out of him, especially why the hell he wanted me to remain neutral so much.

The other half came from many different people, most of them smaller factions that wanted this or that problem gone. I even got a few protection or escorting requests, though I denied all of them for now. I didn't know much about the ones requesting but they looked shady to say the least. I mean come on! With words like 'Protecting the daughter of the world Strongest or Richest man', without even telling the name of the man or the daughter, and it was always a daughter, it was clearly a scam of some sort.

Though there was also a request to kill a Nun from Italy, a Nun! Someone wanted me to kill a Nun! I was a bit shocked at that because they had also attached a photo of a petite blonde girl barely looking to be in her mid teens. The girl looked so damn innocent and naive that I had to go find the one who had send me that request and give him a good beating. Afterwards I forgot about that and moved on to the next request I wanted to fulfill. Another extermination. This time it was a group of madmen who had somehow gotten their hands on a strange book and were committing all sorts of crimes, chief amongst them being the murder of children.

Murder of children always got me worked up and there were a lot of freaks that did that. They were hiding somewhere in Thailand and I had to find them, kill them if I couldn't capture them, but my main task was to destroy the book. It took nearly a week to find them even with the help of Rossweisse and the local people.

When we found them, they were in the middle of another ritual. There were about 8 of them and also a few children in different cages and an alter where a young girl was already lying dead. I got so angry that I lost my mind for a moment. I didn't care about the children still watching and blasted the legs off of every single one of the fuckers. After they were down and screaming, I summoned the Hell Gate and personally dragged every single one of them and threw them inside.

I watched with not a little amount of glee as the Kushanada crushed them and a chain appeared on their reforming bodies. I didn't know how long they will suffer in there for, but it better be a long fucking time! By the time I was done and calm enough, Rossweisse had already moved the remaining children outside with the help of the locals and was coming towards me with a book.

"Ichigo, this is the only book I found inside here." She said, handing me a green colored book. I looked at it for a while before throwing it inside the closing gate of hell and vaporising it with a cero. The gate closed and vanished. I looked towards the locals and called their leader.

"I don't need the reward. I will pick one of the things I wanted and the remaining you can use it to help those children." I said with a scowl. The one thing I wanted was a feather of some creature. I think it was a unicorn but I don't remember. According to Rossweisse, it would help me perform the ritual for the Wind spirits and see if one of them answers me. Taking the feather, I went back to Kyoto with Rossweisse. I needed Yasaka after that fucked up shit. My scowl didn't leave my face even after talking to Yasaka.

I realized that it didn't sit well with me. The fact that I could have done more. I'm not being idealistic, I know I can't save everyone but I can be a bit more proactive and save a few more. I could do that because I knew how strong I was. I think I've grieved enough. I can't remain like this, trying to be low-key while also trying to gain fame. It wasn't like me. I was always the sort that ran towards trouble. Going against my own nature will be end up being more troublesome in the future. I knew I had the power to help and I wanted to help, so why was I not doing it?

I was running away, saying stuff like 'I am selfish' that 'I only protect those I love', maybe I was like that at some point but I grew up. I understood that with so much power, not doing anything can also have detrimental effects on me and those around me. Enough of this scuttling around and trying to be smart when I'm clearly not made for that. I can leave the thinking to those who can actually do it and go back to what I do best, fight.