The wilderness.
A cave.
The woman who called herself Kumo-Oni, Spider Demon, rose unsteadily to her feet.
The wound on her left leg had healed. But not the way a normal injury healed. New muscle had grown directly from the severed ends, and the skin there was smooth, as if it had never been wounded at all.
The gash that had run from her left shoulder to her right ribs was gone too. Not even a scar remained.
She looked down at her hands. Her nails had lengthened, sharp as claws. Her skin had grown pale, pale to the point of translucence, the bluish-purple veins beneath faintly visible.
And her pupils had changed. No longer human round pupils. They were slitted now, crimson, vertical slits. Identical to the great lady who had bestowed that blood upon her.
Yes… though it all felt like a haze, Kumo-Oni remembered that woman with perfect clarity. The one who had appeared so inexplicably in the desolate wilderness. And the single drop of blood she had given her after hearing her words.
That drop of blood had snatched her from the brink of death and turned her into what she was now. A form no longer human. And yet, she had never felt so… good.
But she wasn't looking at her own eyes. She was looking at something else.
From the moment she had become a demon, her senses had changed. She could see things far, far away. Ten times farther than any human. A hundred times.
She cast her gaze toward the east, past mountains, past plains, past countless villages, and there, in a place impossibly distant, she saw something.
A jewel. The same jewel she had glimpsed in her dream.
And beside that jewel… a unique demonic aura. Pale. Cold. Threaded with the scent of thunder and bone.
Exactly the same as the vision she'd seen when she was teetering on the edge of death. It was real. That person truly existed.
Kumo-Oni's mouth split wide, stretching grotesquely toward her ears, a grin that belonged only to a demon. But her eyes held something else. Not the hollow, ravenous emptiness of a common demon.
There was something inside them. Something burning. Something twisted. An obsession so fervent it bordered on worship.
"Found you," she whispered. "I've found you."
"But… what a shame. It's not time to see you yet."
After all…
"Awake, are we?"
From outside the cave came the cold, detached voice of Kibutsuji Muzan, still in her female form.
Three more days passed.
Life for Shinji remained much the same. Yet compared to before, a few new seasonings had been added to the mix.
For instance…
"…Hey," came Naoe Kanetsugu's voice one night from her pillar.
"What?"
"You're a yōkai. And there you sit, coaxing and sweet-talking a sword, a comb, and a dragon scale… Don't you find this scene just a little unsettling?"
Shinji turned his head to look at her. Naoe Kanetsugu leaned against her pillar, stray strands of hair plastered to her cheeks, her expression the vacant numbness of someone who'd been forced to watch a theatrical performance for far, far too long.
But
"You've been tied to a pillar watching this for ten days straight. Don't you find your scene even more unsettling?"
Naoe Kanetsugu shut her mouth. The corner of her eye twitched violently.
On the third day, however, Muramasa's awakening progress ground to a halt.
Completely. Utterly. Stuck.
Sunlight filtered through the trees in dappled, shifting shadows. Shinji sat beneath the pines in the shrine's rear garden, Muramasa laid across his knees. The dark crimson force of osore poured from his fingertips into the blade.
The blade was trembling. But this was not the tremor of satisfaction, the greedy, gulping vibration from before. This was something more like a cry of pain. If he had to describe it, the demon blade now felt like an overstuffed stomach, still being force-fed.
A hairline crack, fine as a strand of silk, appeared along the spine of the sword.
Shinji's hand stopped at once. The System panel flickered into view.
[Demon Blade · Muramasa: Awakening Progress — 47%]
[Warning: The blade material has reached its load-bearing limit. The current sword body is forged from mundane iron. Although its quality has been greatly enhanced through yōki saturation and max-Affection fusion, its essence remains that of a human-smelted artifact. The infusion of Osore is tearing apart the blade's internal steel structure from within. Continued infusion will result in irreversible collapse.]
[Recommendation: Replace or reforge the blade. A special material capable of withstanding the awakening of a demon artifact is required.]
Shinji stared at that crack. It was so fine it was nearly invisible, but he could feel it, the sword's half-formed soul struggling inside.
In this world, all things possessed spirit. But for a spirit to move, to think, to have consciousness, it needed a soul. The animating tamashii. Every yōkai that came into being required one. Tsukumogami were no different.
Yet this sword-soul, still incomplete, was already in distress. It was thrashing, as though trapped inside a shell far too small, trying to stretch, but unable to break free.
Like a dragon shoved into a snakeskin. The skin was about to split. And the dragon was about to suffocate. Like a serpent trying to swallow an elephant, the end result, if this continued, was all too clear.
"The material isn't enough," he murmured.
Muramasa's original body was a famed blade forged by human hands, a mass-produced piece, perhaps, but of no low quality. In the mortal world, it was already a razor-sharp weapon. But at the level of yōkai, especially when tasked with bearing an awakening sword-soul, ordinary steel was little better than paper.
And the osore Shinji was pouring into it now was the precipitate of the hearts of over a hundred thousand souls across three provinces. For a force of that magnitude, what was needed wasn't better steel.
It was material of an equivalent grade. Preferably something forged from the bones, fangs, or carapace of a yōkai, objects that naturally carried high concentrations of demonic power.
Shinji slid Muramasa back into its sheath, his fingers gently stroking the scabbard. The blade emitted a faint, plaintive hum from within, like a stifled whimper.
[Muramasa expresses that it does not wish to be replaced. It wants to continue following you. It merely needs a better body.]
"I'm not replacing you," Shinji said, patting the sheath. "I'm just giving you a new shell."
The hum quieted. But that faint, residual vibration persisted.
Reforging. He needed materials. And he needed a smith capable of working materials of that caliber. An ordinary human could never accomplish such a task.
Simply melting down a demon artifact required abilities far beyond the common man. And such artifacts often contained the lingering, terrifying grudges of the slain yōkai they'd been made from.
Only a truly powerful spiritualist could do it. Or a powerful yōkai. And in this world, the number of beings capable of such a feat
A name surfaced in Shinji's mind. A name he'd known long before he ever set foot in this world.
Tōtōsai.
The personal smith of Tōga, the Inu no Taishō, the great dog-demon lord who had once ruled the western lands and was hailed as the mightiest yōkai under heaven.
Tōtōsai was said to be a yōkai who lived solely for the forge, dwelling in seclusion within a volcanic cave. Eccentric in temperament. Explosive in temper. But his smithing skill was peerless across the realm.
Given the right materials, the blades he forged could perfectly bear the yōki of a daiyōkai. He had even used Tōga's own fangs to craft the ultimate demon blade, capable of slaying a hundred yōkai in a single swing, a sword nearly equal to any divine artifact.
That blade was named Tessaiga.
Shinji remembered. After Tōga's death, the sword had been inherited by his second son, Inuyasha. Not given directly, the key to the passageway where Tessaiga was kept had been sealed within Inuyasha's own body.
Hidden in a place his right eye could see. Later, Inuyasha had successfully unsealed it and claimed Tessaiga. That was the very opening of the original story Shinji knew. From there, Inuyasha had relied on that blade to carve his path, defeating many great yōkai along the way.
And for having forged such a peerless demon sword,
Tōtōsai was, without question, the greatest demon-bladesmith of this era. There was no other.
If anyone could help reforge Muramasa's body, Tōtōsai was the perfect candidate. Beyond that, if Shinji also wanted Tessaiga for himself… then now truly was the optimal moment to seek Tōtōsai out.
Find Tōtōsai, and he would surely find Inuyasha. And with the Affection System in his possession, he couldn't possibly have no designs on Tessaiga. The only reason he hadn't made a move before was that his strength had been insufficient.
At the Sixth Transformation, even though his true power was no less than that of a typical Seventh Transformation yōkai, facing Inuyasha, who carried the bloodline power of a daiyōkai, he still hadn't been confident of victory. So he'd held back.
Now, with the Ninth Transformation achieved, things were different. But if it didn't work out, he could still abandon the idea in time.
The real question was, where was Tōtōsai?
In the original storyline, Tōtōsai's secluded forge was in an extremely remote location. Even Sesshōmaru, the eldest son of Tōga himself, a young daiyōkai of the western lands, had to expend considerable effort to find him. And in this merged world, Tōtōsai's whereabouts were even more impossible to pin down.
Fortunately, he was no longer alone.
He had subordinates. He had an intelligence network he could rely on.
"Tanuki Jūsaburō," Shinji called lowly.
That was the name of the chief tanuki among his Twenty-Three Demons.
After all, wasn't the whole purpose of building a faction precisely for moments like this?
As his words fell, a mist of blood-red vapor spread before Shinji, and a round, chubby face materialized within it. Bead-sized eyes. A great, fluffy tail. The tanuki's true body was currently dozing inside a shrine somewhere in Suruga.
Jolted awake by the summons carried through their osore link, it had scrambled frantically to its water basin.
"M-Master! What are your orders!"
"I need you to find someone."
"Yes! Who?"
"Tōtōsai."
"Tō… tōsai?" The tanuki tilted its head, its feline face scrunching up with the effort of deep thought.
Shinji continued. "A yōkai smith. Said to live in seclusion within a volcano. He forged blades for the great daiyōkai of the western lands."
"The great daiyōkai of the west… you mean the Inu no Taishō? Tōga, sir?"
Shinji nodded.
The tanuki's expression shifted, excitement and nervousness mingled together. "Tōga! The mightiest yōkai of the western lands! Even though he's dead now… every demon worth its salt knows that name! When I was little, my father told me stories, he said Tōga had three peerless demon swords unmatched under heaven. Two of them are known across the world. One is called Tessaiga, the other Tenseiga—!"
"Then you know. The one who forged those two blades for Tōga, that's the smith I'm looking for. Tōtōsai." Shinji cut off the tanuki's rambling. "How far has your intelligence network spread across Suruga, Musashi, and Sagami?"
"Suruga's pretty much covered! The Twenty-Three are scattered all over, and we've made contact with the local lesser yōkai. We're catching most of the rumors from the towns and villages! Sagami, though… that's just getting started. Still a bit rough there…"
"That's enough. Start from Suruga and expand westward. Mobilize every lesser yōkai you can reach. Your priority is gathering any information on Tōtōsai, his location above all. Yōkai settlements near volcanoes are to be prioritized."
Mount Fuji lay within Suruga's borders, the largest active volcano in all the land. It was indeed the most likely place to start.
"Yes, sir!" The tanuki puffed out its round little body, its tiny bean eyes brimming with fervor.
"Rest assured, Master! I may be useless in a fight, but when it comes to running messages, spreading word, and sniffing out information, there's no one better in all the Twenty-Three!"
"Then get to it."
"At your command!"
The projection on the water's surface dispersed. Shinji withdrew his yōki and leaned back against the trunk of the old pine. His fingers drifted unconsciously to the Muramasa at his hip.
The blade still radiated a faint heat but it was no longer the eager, exhilarated warmth from before. Now it felt stifled. Smothered. A restless, pent-up heat.
"Wait a little longer," he murmured. "I'll find you a proper body."
Muramasa hummed softly. A faint sound. Like a sigh. Or an answer.
Kikyō approached from the direction of the main hall. White uwagi, crimson hakama, her longbow slung across her back. Her damp, jet-black hair told him she had just bathed.
The morning light fell upon the white fabric at her shoulder, tracing the delicate line of her silhouette. Her crimson hakama cinched snug at the waist, and below, her legs were long and straight.
She walked beneath the old pine and glanced down at the blade in his hand.
"Cracked?"
"It can't bear any more. It needs to be reforged."
"What material will you use?"
"Demon bone. That part won't be hard. What matters more is finding a smith."
Kikyō asked no further questions. She sat down beside him, resting her bow across her knees.
The tail of her white hair ribbon draped over her shoulder, swaying gently in the breeze. Then, quietly, she shifted just a little closer, her shoulder brushing against his arm. Leaning into him.
At the same moment.
The border of Musashi Province.
A figure stood among the mountain ridges, white hair flowing like a silken waterfall, features so fine and coldly beautiful he could only be called an aristocratic young lord.
He paused there, lifting his gaze. He could feel the churning yōki that filled this province. But unlike the turbid, foul, grudge-ridden demonic auras he was accustomed to, here, there was only yōki. No grudge.
"So it's here, is it?"