Shinji did not return directly to Kaede's Village. Instead, he turned eastward, traveling along the ridgeline of Tōtōmi Province. He had decided to make a full circuit around the Kantō before heading back to Musashi, back to Kaede's Village.
He had two objectives. The first, naturally, was to condense his Sword Will. What couldn't be forged through hammering iron had to be found through the blade itself.
He needed to truly learn the sword. Not the brute-force, mass-driven obliteration of before. Not simply relying on the superhuman control of the Soul-Chasing BowArm Transformation to swing fast, precise, and ruthless and call it done.
He needed to start from technique. From the most fundamental level, from the sword systems painstakingly built by humans with blood and sweat, created to compensate for their lack of strength through skill, to understand what a single blade could truly do. Only then would he have the right to touch the Sword Will that lay beyond.
The second was to search for traces of the Demon Slayer Corps and the Nichirin Blades. The direction Tōtōsai had given was far too vague, some mountain north of the Kantō. The range was barely better than nothing. But with the cloth token, at least he could prove his origins upon meeting them. And by asking along the way, he would eventually pick up a trail.
He sent another message through osore to Kaede's Village, telling Kikyō he would be traveling for a while longer. The reply came quickly. Brief. Cool and clear. "Be careful." "Come back soon."
And then—"I miss you too." The second line was much softer than the first, as though the volume had been deliberately lowered during transmission.
When Shinji received it, he smiled, feeling deeply at ease. Even though he could sense, even see, what was happening in Kaede's Village at any moment, could see Kikyō's daily life, and Kikyō could always feel his gaze upon her, though separated by two hundred kilometer yet living as though side by side… he still cherished this feeling of having someone waiting behind him.
Then he set out.
In the days that followed, he scarcely paused. From Tōtōmi northward, into Mino. Through Hida. Passing through the northern reaches of Shinano Province, controlled by the Takeda. Reaching Kōzuke. Then Shimotsuke.
Finally turning south, back toward Musashi. A full circle. A detour of over hundred kilometers. This was the route he had chosen for himself. Along this road, he would challenge every dojo he passed.
Any dojo, school, or private training hall he encountered along the way, as long as it bore a sign advertising swordsmanship instruction, he would enter. No yōki. No bone spurs. No blood mist. No thunder. And certainly no Ninth Transformation Shura Form born of reforging and overflow.
Only Muramasa at his waist. And a bamboo hat and straw rain cape he'd picked up from some nobleman's estate along the way.
After the Blood-Fire Transformation had forged the Shura Heart, his appearance had undergone further change. His pale skin was no longer the grayish pallor of a corpse, but the white of someone alive who simply hadn't seen sunlight in a long time. His features were sharp and well-defined.
He looked like a young, unkempt wandering swordsman of sixteenth or seventeenth, his bearing dark and cold. The whites of his eyes were still black. His pupils were still crimson.
But as long as one didn't look too closely, with the bamboo hat on, or in the dim indoor light, it could pass as some rare eye condition. He could now set foot in human settlements.
The first dojo was in a castle town along the river in Tōtōmi. The master was an old samurai in his fifties. His art was the tachi technique of the Tenshin Shōden style. Tenshin Shōden, also known as Katori Shintō-ryū.
Founded over a century ago during the late Kamakura shogunate, its core philosophy was the Trinity of Heaven, Earth, and Man. The three fundamental stances, jōdan (high), chūdan (middle), and gedan (low), corresponded to Heaven, Earth, and Man.
From these, all offensive and defensive variations were derived. To put it plainly, it dismantled every technique of the tachi into combinations of three basic movements: a downward slash from above, a horizontal cut across the middle, and an upward sweep from below. Simple. Solid. No flourishes. Yet clean, sharp, and formidable.
But, three moves. It took Shinji three moves to beat the old samurai to the ground. No suspense. And he did it using the opponent's own techniques. In the span of those three exchanges, he had already memorized the flow of force, the footwork coordination, and the weight transfers of the entire system.
The kiriotoshi technique the old samurai had spent thirty years honing, Shinji dismantled it in three strokes. Yes. This was his method of "learning." Not humbly apprenticing himself to a master. But tempering himself through battle. Fighting his way forward.
For a yōkai who possessed the Soul-Chasing BowArm Transformation, the Keen-Eye Transformation, and hand strength, eyesight, and control far beyond the ordinary, this was the most correct method. Everything could be perfectly replicated.
He kept walking.
The second dojo was in Mino Province. A young samurai who claimed the "Kage-ryū" style presided there. His swordsmanship was eerie, full of feints.
The so-called Kage-ryū was exactly that. It had been founded decades ago by a master swordsman named Aisu Ikōsai and was considered, alongside Shintō-ryū and Nen-ryū, one of the three great source-streams of swordsmanship. Its core philosophy was go no sen, the initiative of reaction.
One did not strike first. One waited for the opponent to reveal an opening, then counterattacked across the shortest possible distance. Its sword paths were treacherous and ever-changing, excelling in feints, false movements, and misdirection of the gaze to provoke the enemy into striking first.
Its practicality in real combat was exceedingly high. And yet, Shinji still only used two moves. Even faster. And still, he used the opponent's own techniques.
The third. The fourth. The fifth… In the span of half a month, he challenged seventeen dojos. Not a single defeat. And without exception, within a handful of moves, he absorbed his opponents' techniques.
From simplicity to complexity, Shinji's sword, which had once relied solely on brute force and overwhelming mass, underwent a massive transformation. More variation. More techniques.
Though he still had no complete comprehension of Sword Will, Shinji was in no hurry. As a yōkai, he learned with terrifying speed. In just half a month, he had progressed as much as an ordinary swordsman would in ten or even decades. He was not anxious. There was no need to be.
And in the midst of all this, he even had spare attention to… exterminate yōkai. And slay demons. Throughout the Kantō, demons ran rampant.
Though his Hyakki Yakō already covered three provinces, beyond them stretched vast territories. Border regions. Remote mountain valleys. Deep forests and hidden river gorges. They were still teeming with feral yōkai and wandering demons beyond any faction's control.
Those he encountered along the way, he either purged, or absorbed into his Hyakki Yakō. The Twenty-Three Demons of Musashi. The Twenty-One of the Tōno remnant. Even including the minor yōkai beneath the Tōno commanders, it was still far from a hundred demons. Such a number was naturally insufficient.
And then there were those which were not yōkai at all. The ones connected to the Demon Slayer Corps, and to Kibutsuji Muzan. Though these oni were few, through Shinji's deliberate searching, he encountered them.
The immortal demons created by Kibutsuji Muzan, neither yōkai nor demon, but humans mutated by a special blood infection. They possessed nearly limitless regenerative ability. Their only weakness was sunlight.
He encountered one. It lurked in a cellar, never emerging by day, crawling out at night to devour passing travelers. Ordinary samurai could not kill it. Even hacked to pieces, it would reassemble itself. But Shinji could. The Blood-Fire Transformation. The yōkai-fire flowing through his veins was channeled into the blade.
Muramasa's cutting edge blazed with dark crimson light. Though it was not sunlight, in truth, sufficient temperature combined with sustained incineration was enough to disrupt the demon's regeneration, and the effect was even better than his bone spurs.
Coupled with the lock-on of the Soul-Chasing BowArm, he delivered a single slash that shattered into dozens of simultaneous cuts, reducing the demon to ash-like particles.
In such a state, unless Kibutsuji Muzan himself descended, no amount of regeneration could save it. Numbers had overwhelmed the mechanic. The demon collapsed into ash amid its howls. It wasn't as clean and decisive as the sunlight power of the Nichirin Blades from his memories.
But it was enough. The demons of this merged world had always been like this. They did not fear ordinary injury, but they feared supernatural extremes of heat.
Against any existence that wielded such power, they would retreat. Yet those who possessed such power were either high-ranking spellcasters, onmyōji, or shamans or high-ranking yōkai, commanders among demons. Their numbers were not large. It was simply that Shinji happened to be among them.
After that, he encountered four more. Each one was dealt with in the same manner.
Blood-Fire slew the demons.
Throughout this process, Muramasa's sword-soul grew ever more active. Every time a demon was cut down, the dark crimson light along its edge blazed a shade brighter than before.
The blade was still feeding. Still devouring the scattered fragments of will that overflowed in battle. Still waiting for that final piece of the puzzle.
And when there was no battle to fight, Shinji was hardly idle. He hadn't brought Banryū with him, he'd left it with the Hyakki Yakō, ordering them to take it back to Kaede's Village.
But Yura's comb still hung at his waist. The venomous dragon's reverse scale still clung against his chest. Shinji spoke to them as he walked.
Yura, the comb of the inverse hair, had been in a foul mood lately. The Affection of the venomous dragon's reverse scale had already climbed to eighty.
Though Yura couldn't perceive the Affection values, she could plainly sense the growing intimacy of that dead object's inner spirit toward Shinji. The comb rattled furiously against his waist, the noise startling birds from the nearby trees.
But, Yura's own Affection had stalled almost completely after reaching eighty-eight. Shinji had no leads for the moment. He couldn't give her what she wanted. And he wasn't in a rush.
He simply maintained their daily rhythm. The venomous dragon's reverse scale, on the other hand, was far quieter. Its miasma drifted faint and elusive around his chest. Every time he infused it with yōki, the deep green patterns on the scale's surface would glow, and toxic mist would seep from its edges, forming a thin barrier of poison half a shaku from his skin.
Its Affection climbed steadily. Eighty-one. Eighty-three. Eighty-five. Its direction was different from Yura's. The scale didn't want passion. It wanted saturation. The venomous dragon was cunning by nature. Cold-blooded. Yet it also possessed an intensely territorial instinct.
Once it grew accustomed to something, it could never go back. Though it was a strange comparison, the principle held. What it needed was a long, sustained, gradual permeation, like a river slowly eroding a stone wall. This was something Shinji excelled at. He had patience to spare.
Half a month. Shinji finally set foot in the land of Shinano, the domain of the Takeda clan. The territory of the Tiger of Kai, who stood equal in fame to Uesugi Kenshin.
In this span, he had challenged seventeen dojos. Slain five demons. Countless feral yōkai.
Yura's Affection: eighty-eight. The reverse scale's Affection: eighty-seven. The crack upon Muramasa's blade still remained, but the dark crimson light seeping from its edges was more than twice as dense as half a month ago. The sword-soul swelled. It waited. And Shinji waited too. For that moment when everything would fall into place like water flowing into a channel.
....
"The number of demons has been decreasing rapidly of late."
Kyōto. Though it was broad daylight, the innermost depths of a certain courtyard, so deep it nearly touched the underworld, lay dark as the dead of night.
A cold, rasping voice spoke. Kibutsuji Muzan, clad in a resplendent kimono, opened her crimson demon eyes and gazed at the figure across from her.
It was another pale face. But unlike the dissolute, wild female bandit she had first encountered, this figure was now dressed in an elegant, subdued kimono, her black hair hanging loose.
She bore the air of an aristocratic young noble. Yes, a young lord. Not a lady. This was unmistakably the same female bandit who had been turned into a demon by Muzan at the brink of death. Kumo-Oni. The Spider Demon.
As it turned out, Kibutsuji Muzan's choice had been correct. This one was a sublime vessel for demonification. Her heart carried a seething malice toward the entire world.
Her obsession was terrifying. Her adaptability, astonishing. Her cunning, beyond measure. Though barely a month had passed since her transformation, she had already devoured many. And every one of them had been a daughter of Kyōto's noble houses.
She had orchestrated a series of "accidents," yet not a single soul had detected anything amiss. Devour humans. Grow stronger. That was the path of survival for a demon.
And Kumo-Oni, without question, had grown exceedingly strong. So strong that she could almost be called the most powerful demon under Muzan's command. No other came close. She had also become the only demon to have earned Muzan's deep trust, the one permitted to remain at her side.
Now, hearing Muzan's words, Kumo-Oni's expression remained unchanged. Her pale, handsome face merely curved into a calm smile. "Ah… it seems, my lord, that your plan must be accelerated."
It was a plan Kibutsuji Muzan had already conceived before transforming Kumo-Oni into a demon. And over this stretch of time, under Kumo-Oni's counsel, it had been refined into concrete action.
"By orchestrating a chain of 'blood feuds,' we shall create human vessels filled with hatred and murderous obsession toward the entire world. Then we shall transform them into demons, granting them blood far richer than that of ordinary demons. Their number… shall be around twelve. They shall bear the name of the Twelve Demon Moons. Divided into the Upper and Lower Ranks." Kumo-Oni recited it from memory.
This was, indeed, the plan Muzan had undertaken at Kumo-Oni's urging. To create twelve powerful demons, beings capable of rivaling commander-class high-ranking yōkai.
Only then would she dare to make another move against Shinji. Against Kikyō. Against the Shikon no Tama. Kikyō, who wielded the power to borrow the sun, she had to be eliminated. And the Shikon no Tama, Muzan was deeply curious to see whether it could help her overcome the sunlight.
But before Kumo-Oni could finish "No." Muzan suddenly shook her head. A smile curved her feminine lips. "Eleven."
Kumo-Oni blinked, startled. Then she heard the "woman" across from her continue. "Once this is done… you shall become the First of the Twelve Demon Moons."
Before Kumo-Oni could even respond, Muzan rose to her feet. Her face and form were shrouded in deep shadow. "Go. I await your… good news."
Watching the form of her lord vanish in an instant, leaving behind only a trace scent of blood in the air, Kumo-Oni came back to herself. Her pale face suddenly broke into a soft laugh.
"First of the Twelve Demon Moons, is it…? What a pity, Lord Muzan. That is not all I desire. Nor will I permit you the chance to strike at Lord Nakai… Lord Nakai, and the Shikon no Tama, they shall belong only to me." She tilted her head. "Don't you agree, Lady Tamayo?"
The woman, the demon, turned her gaze toward the shadows on the other side. From within, another woman let out a cold hmph, carrying unmistakable disdain and contempt. Kumo-Oni only laughed all the more happily, doubling over without a shred of decorum.