Moonlight spread across the riverbank in Suruga. The night breeze drifted gently, yet it could not disperse the lingering remnants of unleashed power and the thick miasma of demonic auras.
Over seventy yōkai lay prostrated in submission. Their silhouettes, of all different sizes, formed a jagged, uneven expanse of shadows between the forest of bone and the drifting blood mist.
The colossal Bone Thunder Shura gradually retracted. The white skeletal frame began to disintegrate from the outermost layer, violet arcs of lightning scattering into fine motes of light. Within a dozen breaths, the six-meter exoskeleton had crumbled entirely away.
Shinji stepped out from within. His gray robes were stained with mud and dust. His white hair hung wild and unkempt. Upon the crimson demon mask, those scarlet demon eyes lowered, sweeping across the kneeling demons at his feet.
Raikiri was still gripped in his right hand. The indigo light had completely faded, the blade restored to its original luster, only a lingering, searing heat from the coiled lightning still clung to its cutting edge. He did not speak immediately.
First, he thrust Raikiri into the mud beside him, the blade sinking deep, the hilt swaying slightly before steadying. Then he sat down. Simply sat cross-legged on the riverbank, surrounded by seventy yōkai. As though resting in his own courtyard.
To his other side lay Banryū, the blade taken from Bankotsu.
He spoke at last. "Rise."
The voice was not loud, but bolstered by his yōki, it covered the entire field.
The Yuki-onna was the first to lift her head. The great kappa hauled itself up from the edge of the crater, its massive body resembling a small, jade-green hill beneath the moonlight. The deep blue fluid in its cranial dish sloshed faintly. The physical manifestation of its yōki, what little remained.
The kamaitachi dropped back to the ground, all four paws touching down. Its weasel-like form was bristling with hackles, its crimson slit-eyes lowered. It didn't dare look at Shinji.
The eighteen Fifth and Sixth Transformation demons at the perimeter also rose one by one. Some missing limbs. Some still bearing the puncture wounds of bone spurs. Some who had been electrocuted into unconsciousness and had only now woken.
They shuffled unevenly together behind the three commanders. Add to that the forty-some lesser demons released from the bone forest. Over seventy in all. All standing. All watching him.
Shinji sat on the ground, looking up at them. As he had spoken before, he had not killed them outright. He had given them two choices. What he intended to do was simple. Absorb them.
The reason was also simple. Not kindness. Not sympathy for their plight as exiles. It was necessity.
His original Twenty-Three Demons, the strongest among them, the tanuki, even relying on osore, was still only at the Third Transformation. Most of the rest hovered around the Second.
In the world of yōkai, such strength could only be called mediocre. Extremely, painfully mediocre. The only reason they had been able to gain a foothold in Suruga and Sagami was the official backing of the Imagawa and Hōjō clans, and Shinji himself acting as their ultimate guarantor.
But he couldn't personally guarantee them forever. He had too many other things to do. Muramasa needed reforging. Tōtōsai needed to be found. The black pearl needed to be conquered. Tessaiga needed to be claimed. He had to keep gathering famed artifacts to grow stronger.
Every single task demanded he travel far and wide, perhaps even leave the Kantō entirely in the future. If every time he left, his rear was torn apart, then he would accomplish nothing. What's more, in the days to come, he would need to lead his own Hyakki Yakō, to march, to go forth, to face external enemies.
He needed more yōkai. Stronger yōkai. To hold the defensive line in his absence. He needed more yōkai to help him gather even more osore.
These three Eighth Transformation commanders from Tōno, plus their eighteen core fighters of the Fifth and Sixth Transformations, they filled that gap perfectly. This was necessity. Not charity.
"…I can allow you to remain in the Kantō."
Shinji spoke. His tone was as flat as one negotiating a business deal.
"The three provinces of Sagami, Musashi, and Suruga, I've already arranged the framework for offerings with the Imagawa and Hōjō clans. You can join as well. Each of you can claim your own territory. Build your own osore. The conditions are the same as for the original Twenty-Three: no harming humans. No committing evil. Leave only your ghost stories behind, and gather osore in peace."
"Those who break these rules, I will personally come to deal with you."
The Yuki-onna stood at the very front, the moonlight reflected in her ice-blue pupils. "What would you have us do, my lord?"
"Live."
Shinji spoke. "Live upon this land. Let the humans remember your names. Your stories. And then, gather osore… for me."
"That will be enough."
With those words, he closed his eyes.
And then, osore unfurled. Not the patchwork collective field the Tōno demons had pieced together from twenty-one sources. This was a true ruler's field, with him at its core.
The yōki surging from within him spread outward along those invisible tethers, first to the dozen-some members of the Twenty-Three behind him, then to the Yuki-onna, the great kappa, and the kamaitachi kneeling before him, and finally to the eighteen core fighters and forty-some lesser demons at the periphery.
One after another. Tethers connected. The force-field fused. Over seventy strands of osore, great and small, converged in that single instant into the collective force-field centered upon Shinji.
And that, without question, was ghost stories. Tales. Do not draw near the water's edge.The wind in the mountains will cut a man to pieces.The lone traveler on a snowy night will never return… These tales were not mere fabrications. They were things that had truly happened, retold, embellished, amplified through generations of human whispers, until at last they precipitated into nourishment that demons could absorb.
That was the true essence of osore. Not simple terror. Not the emotion of fear itself. Osore was story. The stories humans told in trembling voices as they huddled around campfires in the dark. Stories about the unknowable.
Every yōkai was a story. Every strand of osore was the weight of how many times that story had been told, how many people remembered it, how many nights it had kept a person from walking alone.
And what they called the Hyakki Yakō, was not a hundred demons marching in a line down a road. It was a hundred ghost stories woven into a single monogatari. A living, walking monogatari, endlessly being written. And in this moment, Shinji was the protagonist of that monogatari. Its core.
Yes. Unlike the three Tōno commanders, whose osore centered upon their tribes, Shinji's osore was anchored directly upon the most fundamental essence of story itself.
This could no longer be described as mere commandership. This should be called a true Hyakki Yakō. A Lord of a Hundred Ghost Stories. This—this was the true essence of the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons.
He opened his eyes. The violet veins within his crimson demon pupils flickered in the moonlight. The osore within him swelled explosively, with over seventy ghost stories flowing into him, the density of his force-field had multiplied several times over.
He did not hoard it. Though this amplified osore was by no means weak, for a Ninth Transformation being like himself, it still amounted to little. So he kept only a portion, as a "reserve", and redirected the rest, pushing it back outward along the force-field in a great reverse tide.
First to the Twenty-Three. The tanuki's body shuddered violently. Its fluffy tail swelled a full size in a single breath. Its tiny bean-like eyes flew wide. Yōki spilled from its body, and its concentration rocketed from the Third Transformation straight to the Fourth.
The Fourth Transformation. From a little messenger tanuki that could only run errands, it had become a mid-tier yōkai.
The kappa's shell, those spiderwebbed cracks, fused and regenerated under the infusion of osore, its surface now gleaming with a faint green light. That was the Third Transformation.
The one-eyed novice monk, its lone eye, swollen to a slit, subsided. When it reopened, a ring of dark crimson had appeared within its pupil. The Third Transformation as well.
The other lesser demons rose from the Second to the Third, from the First-and-a-Half to the Second. Even the weakest among them had at least touched the threshold of the Second Transformation. The Twenty-Three Demons, reborn. Though this strength was built entirely upon osore, if the flow of osore were cut, they would revert to their original forms. Osore was not a foundation. It was a stimulant. A catalyst.
True strength required time and battle to settle. But here and now, this power was real. Tangible. Enough.
The tanuki was the first to react. Its great fluffy tail swept behind it as the yōki of the Fourth Transformation steamed from its body. It scrambled before Shinji and threw itself to the ground with a heavy thud, its round little body actually denting the mud beneath it.
"Master—!"
Its voice was thick with tears, and carried a confidence it had never known before.
The kappa. The one-eyed monk. The half-demon little fox. One by one, the members of the Twenty-Three knelt.
The yōkai of Tōno watched this scene. They felt the power of osore surging through their own bodies, the very osore Shinji had portioned out to them. Silence lingered for a moment.
Then the Yuki-onna moved again. Not merely the forced prostration of the defeated, as before, but a genuine obeisance, rising from within. The great kappa followed, pressing itself flat a second time. The kamaitachi lowered its head. The eighteen core fighters. The forty-some lesser demons.
Across the riverbank, nearly a hundred yōkai prostrated themselves in unison.
Blood mist drifted among them, the dark crimson haze stained an even deeper shade by the last lingering rays of the vanished twilight. The sun had fully set.
Only moonlight remained between heaven and earth. Moonlight fell upon the nearly hundred prostrate demons. Upon the gray-robed figure seated cross-legged at their center. Upon the gaps in that crimson demon mask.
And beyond the riverbank, at the bend of the main road, a night-traveling merchant led his recovered packhorse, picking his way cautiously along the roadside.
He had meant to skirt around this stretch of riverbank entirely. But the moment he rounded the bend, he stopped. The horse stopped too.
In the moonlight, across the riverbank, countless figures lay pressed to the earth. Large and small. Every shape imaginable. Some almost human. Some unmistakably not. Some that defied any description at all. And every single one of them faced the same direction. Toward the figure seated at their center. The one wearing the crimson demon mask.
The merchant's mouth fell open. No sound came out. He stood there, frozen, for a long, long time. Then he turned, yanked the horse's reins, and fled. He ran all the way back to the nearest village.
That night, in the village inn, he told a story. He spoke of a moonlit riverbank. Of nearly a hundred demons bowing their heads. Of the figure who sat among them, the one wearing the demon mask.
The people in the tavern listened in utter silence. Then someone asked: Was it a demon… or a god?
The merchant shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "But every last one of those monsters… was kneeling."
In the days that followed, the story was told again and again. From Suruga it spread to Sagami. From Sagami to Musashi. With every retelling, the details grew richer.
The fear, denser. The awe, heavier. Osore and faith, both swelling in tandem.
In later ages, they would record that night under a single name,
Hyaku Monogatari. The Night of One Hundred Tales.