The third day. Three days since they had departed from the Imagawa capital. The first two locations had both come up empty. It wasn't as though they'd found nothing at all, but they truly hadn't found their target.
The first site had been a geothermal vent in the mountains of western Suruga. The cavern there still bore traces of smelting: scorched slag, shattered crucible fragments, a discarded pair of iron tongs. But whoever had been there was long gone. Judging by the remnants, at least half a month ago.
The second site was beside an abandoned mine in eastern Tōtōmi. At the bottom of the pit lay a crude forge, mostly dismantled. The residual heat in its hearth had long since gone cold. There were hoofprints on the ground, extending southwestward before vanishing into a stream.
Two fruitless attempts. Shinji was in no hurry. But Imagawa Yoshimoto, on the other hand, had grown somewhat anxious, not for Tōtōsai's sake, but because she had been away from the capital for three days. If she didn't return soon, Suruga's administrative affairs would pile up into a mountain.
Until, the afternoon of the third day. The procession crested one final ridge along the mountain road heading southwest through Tōtōmi. And then they stopped. Everyone stopped. Because before them lay their final destination. The last small volcano.
"Volcano" was perhaps too grand a word. It was more like a rounded hill with its top sheared off. Barely a four hundred metres high. Its slopes were a deep, angry red, its exposed rock faces laced with solidified lava veins like dried-up blood vessels.
From the crater at its summit, thin white smoke drifted upward. Occasionally, an orange-red glow flickered through the gaps in the haze. The air was thick with the smell of molten rock. The ground beneath their feet was faintly warm, the closer they drew, the hotter it became.
For several kilometres around, not a single tree stood. The geothermal heat had baked them all dead. Only ashen-white, withered stumps remained, leaning crookedly this way and that.
Imagawa Yoshimoto pushed aside the curtain and poked half her head out. She studied the smoking hill, her brow furrowing. "This is the place?"
"The last marked location on the map," Shinji confirmed.
He stood at the front of the column, his crimson demon eyes fixed on that volcano.
If Tōtōsai wasn't here, then all three leads would be dead ends. They would have to turn back. After that, Shinji would need to have the tanuki and the Tōno yōkai expand their search radius once more.
He didn't know how much longer he'd have to wait. He had patience. But he did prefer to save time and effort. To settle everything cleanly in one stroke, that was best, the demon warrior thought to himself.
He took a few steps forward. Blood mist spread from beneath his feet, creeping low along the ground toward the volcano, unfurling like a sensory net. Fifty paces. A hundred paces. Two hundred paces. The blood mist touched the rock layer at the volcano's base
And he sensed it. Yōki. A dense, turbid energy seeped through the fissures in the stone. It wasn't malevolent yōki. It wasn't violent yōki. It carried the scent of iron and stone. It held the heat of a furnace fire. It seemed to pulse with the rhythmic cadence of a hammer striking metal. This was yōki actively being used for smithing. Only a yōkai who spent his life in the company of forge-fire would emit such an aura.
The corner of Shinji's mouth lifted. He knew. He had found him. He was about to step closer. He had found him, and now he would make contact. How to approach, Shinji had already thought it through. He was fully prepared.
But in the very next second, before his foot could even land, it was as though the other party had sensed him first.
BOOM.
The volcano erupted. A violent pillar of flame suddenly blasted from the crater, shooting dozens of metres into the sky and blasting away all the surrounding white smoke.
At the same time, a surge of yōki, hidden within that eruption, swelled explosively outward. By Shinji's classification, it was at least above the Seventh Transformation, having already undergone Essence-level change. And its density was exceedingly high.
Its foundation, exceedingly deep. It far surpassed ordinary high-ranking yōkai. This was an "old veteran" who had lived for at least several centuries.
In the face of this volcanic eruption, the ashigaru at the rear of the column panicked. The front-rank spearmen raised their weapons on instinct. The archers in the rear nocked arrows and drew bowstrings. The lead samurai drew his sword and moved to shield the palanquin.
Motoyasu jolted awake on her straw mat, fumbled her spectacles onto her face, and scrambled behind the palanquin's wheels. Yoshimoto leaned out from the curtain, her fan clenched tight, her expression grim but she remained composed. Her gaze never left Shinji at the very front.
And they all saw it, emerging from the heart of that blazing pillar spewing from the low volcanic crater,
A figure shot out. Very short. Barely over a meter tall. Hunched and stooped. His head took up a full third of his body. Bald head. A face full of wrinkles. A pair of bulging, bulbous eyes spun wildly in the firelight. He wore a coarse tunic, scorched black, and straw sandals on his feet, the soles of which were nearly burned away.
A forging hammer was tucked at his waist. Its head was larger than his own. He was riding an ox. Not an ordinary ox, but a bizarre beast with three eyes, a body of pure black, and hooves that tread upon living flame. It came wobbling unsteadily out of the volcano's mouth. An ox, flying through the sky. An old man, riding on its back.
The instant he burst out, a sharp, piercing shriek tore from the old man's mouth. The others couldn't make it out, but Shinji, through the extended perception of his blood mist and the Soul-Chasing Bow Arm Change, could see it, could read the words shaped by his lips.
They were very clear. "Damn it! I've been found!" The look on his face was one of sheer, utter panic. In his frantic, flustered haste, the old man yanked hard on the ox's horn. The three-eyed fire-ox executed a hairpin turn in midair, its four hooves blasting flames as it accelerated southwestward, trying to flee.
He wanted to run. Not a single attempt at probing. He hadn't even gotten a clear look at who was coming. He just turned tail and bolted.
Shinji watched that rapidly shrinking black dot. His crimson demon eyes narrowed slightly. That was Tōtōsai. Without a doubt. A short, elderly yōkai. Riding an ox. Living inside a volcano. It matched every single piece of known intelligence perfectly.
What he hadn't expected, was that the old man would run so fast. The three-eyed fire-ox's speed was, it seemed, no less than his own Lightning-Sinewed Body at full deployment.
What surprised him even more, was the yōki. The density of the yōki radiating from that small, hunched figure, it was not merely high. It was extraordinarily high. If measured by the scale of transformations, Ninth Transformation. The same as himself.
'So this was the swordsmith who once served Tōga, the great Inu no Taishō?' A mere smith, not even a combatant, yet possessing this level of transformation, this caliber of yōki.
The Lord of the Western Lands, Tōga, he truly was a terrifying existence. One of the few capable of founding an entire demon nation in a world dominated by humanity.
No matter what, now that he'd found him, Shinji would not simply let him flee.
The demon mask coalesced in his hand and settled over his face. Crimson demon eyes flared through its gaps. Crimson armor sheathed his body. Bone spurs bristled around him. He shouted back to the column. "Stay here and wait."
Violet arcs of lightning detonated from beneath his feet, shattering the scorched lava stone underfoot. The gray figure became a streak of violet light, launching in direct pursuit. The purple lightning tore through the white smoke hanging over the volcano.
Shinji's speed, at the instant of full burst, reached its absolute limit. After the Lightning-Sinewed Body had seeped into his very marrow, his base speed already surpassed his former all-out efforts.
Now, at full strength, violet lightning erupted continuously from his soles. Each stride left a brief afterimage of thunder in the air. But that three-eyed fire-ox was by no means slow. The flames beneath its four hooves blasted into four trails of orange-red thrust, like four ignited rockets, dragging long smoke trails as it careened madly southwest.
The short old man on its back huddled between its horns, his bald pate reflecting the orange glow of the volcano, the wrinkles on his face compressed into a tight knot. His bulging eyes were wide to the point of nearly popping out of his skull. He was spewing fire. And not just from his mouth, fire was erupting from his entire body.
Beneath that scorched-black tunic, dark crimson yōki seeped out from the gaps in his skin like molten lava, congealing into a thin shell of flame that wrapped his entire form in flowing fire. The fire-ox was spewing fire as well.
All three of its eyes shot out orange-red beams of light. These weren't attacks, they were simply illumination. It was blazing a path for itself. Wherever those beams swept, the air itself warped visibly from the heat.
The escape posture of this single yōkai and his ox was all-out, desperate, not a shred of unnecessary hesitation.
Shinji, however, was faster. He flanked them directly, violet arcs of lightning carving an arc through the sky as he cut off the fire-ox's southwestern escape route.
He opened his mouth. "Tōtōsai!" His voice, wrapped in yōki, boomed outward, exploding through the air.
The old man's reaction, was even faster. The three-eyed fire-ox banked hard to the left, its four hooves instantly shifting the direction of their flame jets. The entire ox carved a nearly right-angled turn in midair and bolted due south. Without so much as a backward glance.
"I didn't come to fight—!" Shinji surged forward. Blood mist spread from his body, trying to entangle the fire-ox's hind legs. The moment the mist touched the edge of the flames, it was vaporized into white steam by the sheer heat.
The old man's voice came from up ahead, shrill, panicked, interspersed with coughing. "Save your lies! The last one who said he didn't come to fight smashed my forge to pieces! The one before that said he just wanted to chat and nearly twisted my head off!"
He was probably talking about Sesshōmaru or some other formidable yōkai.
Shinji could actually understand this knee-jerk reaction. Tōtōsai was Tōga's personal swordsmith. After Tōga's death, the number of yōkai, even daiyōkai, who coveted his skill was beyond counting. Anyone who could find him was bound to be strong. He'd been chased too many times. Flight had become pure instinct.
"I have something I need you to help me reforge—!"
"No forging! This old man has sealed his forge! I won't do it for anyone!"
"I can offer payment—!"
"Don't want it! This old man lacks for nothing!"
"Just listen to what I have to say—!"
"Not listening!"
The fire-ox veered again, this time charging due east. Its speed increased rather than dropped. The old man yanked that massive forging hammer from his waist, its head larger than his own, and swung it violently behind him.
The yōki condensed on the hammer's head coalesced into a fist-sized ball of fire, blasting toward Shinji. The fireball's temperature was exceedingly high, but its destructive power was limited. It was purely a distraction. Like an octopus squirting ink as it fled.
Shinji sidestepped, evading the fireball, violet lightning once more detonating beneath his feet. Thus they continued, for nearly half a koku. Circling endlessly in place.
The old man's fire-ox was no slower than he was, and its directional shifts were extraordinarily nimble. Its aerial maneuverability far surpassed that of any ordinary flying yōkai.
Every time he blocked its path, it immediately changed direction, never flying straight. He could keep up, but he couldn't catch him. And what's more, Shinji knew that even if he did seize him, holding him would be difficult. The other party was also a Ninth Transformation yōkai.
Though as a smith, he was certainly no fighter, the density and depth of his yōki were undeniable. If it came down to pure yōki suppression, the old man's struggles would be troublesome enough.
If that was the case… then he wouldn't be polite.
Shinji halted in midair. The violet lightning retracted. A forest of bone erupted from both sides of his spine. White bone spurs wove into a skeletal frame. Thunder burst from the gaps in the bones, filling in as muscle. Blood mist condensed into a translucent skin.
A six-meter-tall Bone Thunder Shura materialized against the sky above the volcano. The Shura Form. The colossal humanoid figure rose before the orange-red backdrop of the volcano, its violet radiance illuminating everything for hundreds of paces around.
From Imagawa Yoshimoto's distant column came the startled cries of the ashigaru, and then Motoyasu's shout, she was seeing such a thing for the very first time.
Tōtōsai looked back. Finally, he looked back. His bulging, protruding eyes swelled to the size of bronze bells the moment they saw that six-meter-tall Bone Thunder Shura.
"Sh-Shura—?!" His tone changed, but his movements didn't stop. They grew even faster. The three-eyed fire-ox's hoof-flames seemed to reach their limit, orange-red shifting to blue-white. Its speed exploded.
The Shura Form's right arm swept horizontally. The colossal bone arm carved an arc through the sky, wreathed in violet lightning, blocking the fire-ox's path. Soul-Chasing BowArm. Strike certain! An interception. Like swatting a frantic fly. The fire-ox slammed into the side of the bone arm.
BOOM.
The impact force was immense, but the Shura Form's skeletal frame didn't budge.
Ninth Transformation versus Ninth Transformation. The framework was the same. The contents were utterly different.
As stated before, Shinji's Ninth Transformation was the chain-reaction Essence Shift caused when three overloaded transformations burst their dams simultaneously.
It was the composite product of the Soul-Chasing BowArm, Lightning-Sinewed Body, and Bone-Essence Transformations, all stacked together.
Amplified through the Shura Form's projection, his actual output was equivalent to twice that of a normal being at the same transformation tier.
Tōtōsai's Ninth Transformation, on the other hand, was clearly the accumulated yōki foundation of centuries of smithing. Profound and steady but all of it was skewed entirely toward the forge.
His combat ability, propped up by centuries of accumulation, might not fall short of other yōkai at his level, but that was about it. Like a blacksmith who had trained his arm strength for hundreds of years. His strength was indeed immense. But put him in a fight against a warrior with pure technique and no small amount of power of his own, and things were unlikely to end well.
He was blocked. The fire-ox rebounded off the side of the bone arm, tumbling twice in midair. The old man was nearly thrown from the ox's back. His hammer flew from his hand, spun dozens of times through the air, and embedded itself in the lava field below.
But Tōtōsai was, after all, an old yōkai who had lived for centuries. The instant he was knocked away, his reaction wasn't to counterattack. It wasn't to defend. It was to use that impact force.
The fire-ox, even as it was sent spinning, rapidly adjusted its direction. Its four hooves reignited their flames, and riding the inertia of the deflection, it bolted due north. The exact opposite direction from which the Shura Form had come.
The old man sprawled across the ox's back and hollered at the top of his lungs. "We're blown! Scram!"
Shinji stood within the Shura Form, his crimson demon eyes tracking that ever-shrinking black dot. The corner of his mouth twitched.
The Shura Form's energy consumption was immense. It wasn't suited for long-distance pursuit. He'd known that ever since the battle with the Tsuchigumo.
The exoskeleton's maintenance time was limited. It was more than sufficient for intercepting and suppressing, but using it to chase someone down was inefficient. But he hadn't planned to use the Shura Form to pursue anyway.
In truth, he had suspected from the very beginning how Tōtōsai might react upon encountering him. And from the very beginning, he hadn't intended to rely solely on himself.
This was enough. He had already driven Tōtōsai straight toward the path he had traveled on his way here. Yes. This had been his true objective all along.
The Shura Form retracted. The bone frame collapsed. The lightning dispersed. Shinji dropped from a height of six meters back to the ground. His soles touched down on the scorching lava stone.
He raised his eyes. Gazing into the distance, toward the direction of Imagawa Yoshimoto's column. Forty ashigaru. Six mounted samurai. Eight palanquin bearers. One palanquin.
And, every stone he had spoken to along this road. Every hollowed old cedar he had touched. Every map he had folded and refolded. That had not been madness. That had not been some affliction. That had been raising Affection.
Every stone. Every withered tree. Every object, over these three days of travel, while no one was paying attention, he had touched them one by one. Infused them. Communed with them. Their Affection levels weren't high. Most were only 1 to 5. A few that he'd paid special attention to had reached 10. But it was enough. He didn't need them to be high. He only needed them… to listen to him.
"Come. Lend me your aid, all of you!"