The moth legion moved first.
Dozens of ox-sized moths took to the sky, their wings churning as golden scale-powder poured down like a curtain of rain, weaving a dim, yellow poison haze above Kurokawa Castle. Wherever the powder landed, grass and trees withered and curled. Even the stone bricks showed scorched, web-like patterns upon their surfaces.
Atop the castle walls, Ruri, with her pale purple hair, drew her blades. Two broad white swords, one in each hand, crossed before her chest. Upon the blades flowed demonic patterns utterly different from those of the moth legion, patterns that continuously shifted and writhed, as though living things squirmed across the steel.
She was not a pure moth demon. She was a descendant of the demons who had once followed Menōmaru's father, Gaki no Maru, to this land. Her ability was also entirely different from that of ordinary moths.
Replication.
Any demonic ability she had personally witnessed could be briefly simulated and reproduced through her twin blades. Though the power was far inferior to the original, her advantage lay in variety and unpredictability.
Her demonic energy was also not weak. By Shinji's classification, she possessed the demonic energy equivalent to six Physical Transformations and three Essence Transformations.
A Ninth Transformation, commander-class demon.
Hari stood half a step to her right. Her red-tasseled spear was planted before her. Her blue eyes were half-lidded.
Her ability was even more insidious than that of the ordinary moth demons.
Consciousness Manipulation.
Through eye contact or sound conduction, she could briefly strip a target's perception away, not directly causing harm, but causing the opponent to lose control of their body at a critical instant.
Also Ninth Transformation.
Two combat weapons, personally created and nurtured by Menōmaru through his own demonic power. His most capable subordinates, cultivated over more than a decade within the depths of Mutsu.
However, the gray-robed figure descending from the black clouds did not even glance at the ordinary moths rushing toward him. He did not even draw his blade.
Dozens of moth demons surged toward Shinji's position, and then an ice-blue current swept in from the side.
The Yuki-onna, Oikawa, streaked past on the wind. Her right hand pressed downward.
The temperature plummeted.
A bone-chilling cold of dozens of degrees below zero engulfed the airspace 300 meters above the castle walls in an instant. The wings of the moth demons froze solid. The buzzing of their wings turned to the cracking, snapping sound of breaking ice.
Twelve moths plummeted directly, wings snapping off, crashing among the rubble to thrash and struggle.
Oikawa did not pursue.
The Yuki-onna commander in her plain blue kimono hovered in the air for a single instant. Her ice-blue eyes swept over the castle walls, confirming that the airspace before Shinji had been cleared.
Then she shifted to the flank, to deal with the moth horde attempting to encircle from the ground outside the castle.
Behind her, the snow-demon squad from northern Musashi, seven snow yōkai of the Fourth and Fifth Transformations followed close behind, trailing ribbons of icy mist like a white chain sealing off the northern face of Kurokawa Castle.
At the same moment, on the eastern side of the castle, three silver-white arcs sliced through the air almost simultaneously.
The kamaitachi's speed was pushed to its absolute limit in this mid-range aerial battle. Over twenty moth demons were bisected at the waist. Shredded wings scattered.
The kamaitachi's silver-white silhouette wove through the moth swarm. Every pass took at least three to five, clean and efficient.
They were cut in half before they could even release their scale-powder.
"The west side is mine."
The great kappa's voice came from beneath the castle.
His two-meter, jade-scaled body vaulted directly out of the moat. His mouth opened, and a jet of water wrapped in thick, heavy demonic energy blasted the moth swarm attempting to breach from the low western angle, scattering them in every direction.
Further back, Tanuki Jūsaburō led over thirty mid- and low-tier demons, dispersing from beneath the black clouds.
A Fourth Transformation fire-rat demon spat orbs of flame, igniting the wings of the falling moths and reducing them to ash.
Two Fifth Transformation one-eyed priests swung massive clubs, shattering the frozen moths one by one as they hit the ground.
A little kappa, the weakest of the original Twenty-Three Demons, who had only just completed its Fourth Transformation, clung to a moth wing larger than itself, gnawing furiously, eating and tearing at the same time.
A companion pulled it away.
"Kill it first, then eat!"
And the little half-demon fox girl, riding a giant rat the size of a bull, now clearly had a second tail, and even half of a third.
Two and a half tails.
Fifth Transformation.
These demons, half a year ago, had not even crossed the threshold of the Second Transformation.
Now, the weakest among them was Fourth Transformation, the strongest Fifth or Sixth.
Not because they had devoured their own kind.
But because of osore.
Shinji had woven ghost stories for them. Built shrines for them. Given them names.
The humans of seven provinces told these demonic tales from mouth to mouth, though many of the stories were embellished, or even fabricated out of thin air, by Tanuki Jūsaburō.
But as long as they were told enough times, and remembered by enough people, the osore was real.
Osore transformed into demonic energy.
Demonic energy drove transformation.
The weak became strong.
The nameless gained names.
The Hyakki Yakō of Shinji had never walked the path of slaughter and devouring.
It walked the path of ghost stories.
Of monogatari.
Within the channel cleared in the airspace above the castle walls, Shinji's feet landed steadily before the castle gate.
His gray robes swayed gently in the wind.
He looked up.
At the highest point of the castle walls, Ruri and Hari still stood there.
The purple-haired girl held her twin blades. The patterns upon the blades had already shifted into some demonic ability he did not recognize, demonic energy flowed from the edges, weaving into a semi-transparent shield around her.
The blue-haired girl held her red-tasseled spear horizontally before her. Her half-lidded blue eyes locked onto him through the haze of scale-powder.
Both were Ninth Transformation.
In his system, that was the mid-to-late stage of Essence Transformation.
Commander-class demons.
In the Kantō, demons of this level could command and guard entire regions. They were exceedingly rare demonic talents.
Before him, however—
"Do you two have names?"
Shinji stopped before the gate, not advancing further.
Ruri paused.
"Why should we answer you?"
"Because demons with names shouldn't be wasted."
His crimson demon eyes swept over the two of them. The golden ring rotated faintly.
"Were you created? Or did you choose to follow that big moth of your own will? He will die today. But you don't have to. Follow me."
Two demons of no small strength.
Shinji's intentions were obvious without explanation…
His Hyakki Yakō was still far too short on such strength.
A flicker of light passed through Ruri's purple eyes.
The question had touched something.
But she quickly regained her calm, or rather, regained that peculiar blankness unique to created beings.
"We are the two wings of Lord Menōmaru. We have been since our birth."
Hari said nothing.
Her blue eyes stared at Shinji, her lips pressed tight.
Shinji looked at them.
Two seconds.
"What a pity."
Having spoken those two words, he lifted his foot, and stepped past them.
Ruri's pupils contracted violently.
Her twin blades crossed.
Demonic energy surged.
She seemed to switch the replicated demonic ability upon her shield into an attack, then leaped down, horizontal slash.
Two arcs of light drove toward Shinji's flanks from left and right.
Shinji did not look back.
He did not even draw his blade.
"Stop them."
The instant the words fell, a mass of black hair erupted from his waist.
Yura's comb unfolded into humanoid form midair.
Black hair spread outward like vines, weaving into an immense, sky-covering net in an instant.
Ruri's twin blades slashed into the hair-net.
They cut through, but the gaps healed instantly.
The hair strands looped around the blades from either side and coiled around her wrists.
"GET OUT OF MY WAY!"
Ruri struggled.
But the resilience of the hair-net far exceeded her expectations.
A tsukumogami who had completed the Sixth Transformation, her control over the Hair Transformation could rival the root systems of centuries-old trees.
It was not something two simulated blades could easily sever.
Yura's comb only feared fire.
That was a matter of affinity.
Battles between demons had never been determined by magnitude alone, but also by method.
If it were only magnitude, Shinji could never have defeated Sesshōmaru.
He would not even be here.
Crossing tiers was difficult, but not impossible.
"What's the rush? Play with me for a while… I won't let you interfere with our Commander-in-Chief."
Yura's voice came from behind the hair-net.
Her ink-black slit-pupils were half-lidded, her face wearing the smugness of one who, after being suppressed by Kikyō for far too long, was finally able to frolic to her heart's content.
The original Yura's comb was merely a standard Sixth Transformation tsukumogami, phantasmal form, phantasmal sound, phantasmal voice, phantasmal body…
But over this period, especially the period during which she had been continuously suppressed by Kikyō, she had, in truth, been growing stronger.
Through osore, she had touched upon the Seventh Transformation.
Approaching the condensation of a true, physical body.
From illusion into reality, gradually solidifying.
Against two female demons, she could not win.
But she could hold them for a time.
And…
she was not alone.
At the same moment, Hari's blue eyes focused.
Consciousness Manipulation activated.
An invisible wave of mental force shot from her pupils, aimed at the gray figure who had already descended from the rooftop and was walking toward the tenshukaku gate.
The wave touched the back of Shinji's head.
Then dissipated.
Completely ineffective.
Warding Wall of the Sealed Evil, the Second Talent of the Tahōtō Miko Prayer Beads.
The mental-interference isolation barrier within three paces of his body, activated automatically without any additional movement from Shinji.
Hari's face paled for an instant.
Immediately after, an ice-blue current swept in from the side once more.
Oikawa.
The Yuki-onna commander, having dealt with the moth swarm to the north, had doubled back.
She appeared to Hari's left.
Her ice-blue eyes regarded the blue-haired girl with perfect calm.
"The Master said 'a pity.' But he did not say to let you go."
Hari raised her spear to meet her.
The red-tasseled spear clashed against pillars of ice, spraying shattered frost and sparks.
The battle upon the castle walls had split into two fronts.
Yura's comb entangled Ruri.
The Yuki-onna, Oikawa, intercepted Hari.
And Shinji, had already pushed open the gates of the tenshukaku within the castle.
Stone step by stone step, he ascended.
With each step, the wooden boards beneath his feet creaked and groaned, as though the entire building was moaning beneath the oppressive weight of his demonic energy.
The presence of the Five Elements seeped from the many blades upon his body, spreading along the stairway's banisters.
Dark crimson flame patterns.
Ghostly violet metallic light.
Pale white earthen aura.
And the faintly humming aura of thunder-wood.
Five colors intertwined, winding upward.
They enveloped the entire tenshukaku.
The second floor.
The third floor.
The highest floor.
The lamps in the corridor had all been extinguished.
The sliding doors of the great hall were wide open.
Within, there was only one person.
Date Terumune sat at the head.
The military map before him had been overturned, the small flags scattered across the floor.
In the darkness, his lapis-colored pupils emitted a light that did not belong to humanity.
Those eyes stared at the gray-robed figure walking in.
Watching.
"The Demon God of the Kantō… Nakai Shinji…"
The voice squeezed from Terumune's throat.
But its cadence was no longer human.
Hoarse.
Deep.
The tail of every word dragged with a buzzing resonance.
"You've come faster than I expected."
At the same moment.
On the other side of the great hall.
Behind a side door locked from within.
Date Masamune pressed one hand against the windowsill.
Her short golden hair whipped wildly in the demonic wind.
Beneath her eyepatch, the burning sensation in her right eye had reached an unprecedented intensity.
Through the gap in the window, she saw the five-colored patterns of light winding up the outer walls of the tenshukaku.
She saw that gray figure ascending step by step to the very top.
She saw all the moth demons, her father's "loyal servants", being intercepted, shot down, frozen, and slain by demons of every shape and kind.
Not a single one could approach that man.
Her left eye was stretched wide.
Deep within those amber pupils, the spinning flecks of golden light accelerated.
"So that's how it is—"
The girl bit her lower lip.
The bronze bell chimed once.
"So in this world, there truly are demons who can rival Father."
It also seemed she had long since realized, her true father had never been that controlled, walking corpse.
But rather the one behind him.
The true daiyōkai!