The five-colored slash pierced through the dome.
A pillar of light, unified from the Five Elements, shot straight upward from the convergence of the Shura Form's five blades. It tore through the 3000 km canopy of illusion that Menōmaru had woven with his own wings.
Menōmaru did not even have time to react.
A colossal rift spread outward from the very center in every direction. Golden scale-powder burned, froze, and disintegrated along the edges of the fracture. The demonic energy of the Five Elements cycle continued spreading through the cracks, peeling away the canopy that had shrouded three provinces, inch by inch.
Light streamed in.
True sunlight poured through the rift, illuminating the gray, gloomy sky above Kurokawa Castle.
Above the dome, the left side of Menōmaru's two compound eyes had been pierced straight through by that pillar of light. The lapis-colored pupil exploded. Thick, viscous fluid gushed from the eye socket, spreading across a dozen-meters-wide area before splattering across the land for several kms around Kurokawa Castle. Wherever it landed, it corroded countless pits into the earth.
The humming became a shriek.
The entire sky trembled.
It was the scream of a colossal insect struck directly in its vital spot, transmitted through every scale of its wings and powerful enough to shatter the remaining tiles atop Kurokawa Castle's tenshukaku.
"YOU—!"
The voice came from the dome.
It was no longer the calm, buzzing cadence from before. It carried a roaring fury.
And, beneath it, an exceedingly faint trace, one that even Menōmaru himself refused to acknowledge.
Fear.
His illusionary dome had been torn apart from the front.
That layer of Phenomenon-projection, using himself as the sky and scale-powder as the curtain, shrouding three entire provinces, had been blasted apart from within by a domain forged from five blades.
"How is this possible?! Those are merely five blades! A contraption pieced together from five artifacts, how could it tear through MY SKY?!"
Menōmaru could not comprehend it.
His Phenomenon was Illusion.
Covering heaven and earth with his own body.
Within this domain, his perception was everywhere. His control was everywhere.
Even within the memories inherited from his father, facing a daiyōkai of Tōga's caliber, it would have required a tug-of-war lasting a hundred exchanges to break through this dome from the outside.
From the inside, it should have been even harder.
And yet this one, who did not even qualify as a daiyōkai, had directly pierced through it from within with a single slash!
But the answer was, in truth, very simple.
Because of the Five Elements cycle.
Menōmaru's Phenomenon, though vast in coverage, was ultimately only a single attribute, Illusion.
Scale-powder interfered with the five senses. Wings blotted out the sky. Everything was built upon deception.
But the Five Elements cycle could not be deceived.
Fire generates Earth.
Earth generates Metal.
Metal generates Water.
Water generates Wood.
Wood generates Fire.
Once this circuit was activated, it became utterly disconnected from all external conditions.
It did not rely on sight.
It did not rely on hearing.
It did not rely on any sense that could be interfered with by illusion.
It relied solely upon the resonance between the five blades and the Five Viscera, the Five Elements.
Self-cycling.
Self-operating.
Self-generating and self-consuming.
Illusion could not deceive it.
That was why the scale-powder worked against the Hyakki Yakō.
Worked against the kamaitachi.
Worked against Oikawa.
Yet, only against Shinji, it was utterly ineffective.
"Come down."
The crimson demon eyes of the Shura Form gazed down from a height of 60m, staring at the rift in the dome.
What answered him was an even more violent shriek.
The shattered edges of the dome began to contract.
Menōmaru's wings folded toward the center.
A wingspan of hundreds of kms compressed, folded, and condensed at a speed visible to the naked eye. Scale-powder flowed backward from the sky. Golden dust converged into vortices, pouring into that shrinking, colossal form.
From blotting out the sky, to covering a single castle.
From covering a castle, to enveloping a hundred meters.
From a hundred meters, to thirty meters.
And finally,
He stood atop the castle walls opposite Kurokawa Castle's tenshukaku.
Humanoid.
Yet still enormous.
A half-insect form, similar to Sesshōmaru's half-beast state.
He was clad in chitinous armor. His face could almost be called handsome. Two antennae, like whiskers, extended from his temples to his jaw.
His six compound eyes had shrunk to two, yet they remained lapis-colored. Within his irises, countless minute facets refracted the light like a shattered kaleidoscope.
A pair of folded wings remained upon his back, spanning roughly a jō. Though greatly diminished in this half-humanoid state, they still oozed exceedingly dense demonic energy from their veins.
In his right hand, he held a longsword.
The blade was emerald green throughout. Its material was neither metal nor bone—it resembled solidified moth scales. Its semi-translucent edge refracted an eerie rainbow.
This was the weapon Gaki no Maru had brought from the continent.
A demon blade.
Inherited by Menōmaru.
In the original story, this very sword could even temporarily suppress Tessaiga.
"Demon God Nakai Shinji."
Menōmaru spoke.
His voice in humanoid form no longer buzzed. It had become deep and sharp, like wind scraping across glass.
"You have indeed surprised me. But do you believe tearing open my sky means victory?"
His wings shuddered once.
Golden scale-powder once again diffused from his wing veins.
But this time, it did not scatter across the heavens.
Instead, it rotated close to the surface of his body, forming a flowing golden membrane.
The concentration of his demonic energy climbed at a furious rate.
Compressing a sky-covering Phenomenon back into humanoid form meant he could no longer perfectly manifest the entirety of his demonic power.
But it had its own advantage.
All the power that had previously been scattered across hundreds of kms was now concentrated within this single shell.
Density soared.
Mass soared.
The previous dome had been vast but thin.
This humanoid form was narrow but thick.
The same total volume of demonic energy, released from a single point, the efficiency of its output could only be greater.
"COME!"
The emerald longsword slashed horizontally.
A golden arc erupted from the blade's edge, a slash of demonic energy compressed to the absolute extreme.
Barely 90cm wide.
Yet it cleaved the air before it into a perfect vacuum.
The arc crashed against the lower-left arm of the Shura Form.
But Banryū had already been raised to block.
Immovable Earth.
The city wall beneath their feet was pulverized into dust by the force of the collision. The Shura Form's skeletal frame hummed with the impact.
But Banryū itself did not budge an inch.
"Tough enough."
Menōmaru's second strike followed immediately.
His speed was faster than humanoid Sesshōmaru, even surpassing the half-beast young daiyōkai of the Western Lands.
The emerald longsword transformed into a continuous afterimage of rainbow light, cutting into the gaps of the Shura Form's skeletal frame from multiple angles simultaneously.
Unlike Sesshōmaru, who had relied on sheer physical dominance, this was technique inherited from centuries of battle memory.
Even if Menōmaru had never personally practiced it, it was still superior to Sesshōmaru's swordsmanship, that greenhouse heir who had not once faced a true opponent of his own level in four hundred years.
This was the swordsmanship of the previous-generation daiyōkai, Gaki no Maru, honed as he crossed the sea with the armies of the steppe empire.
The entirety of his accumulated experience had been left behind at the moment he was slain by Tōga.
And all of it,
Had been inherited by his son.
Amidst this, the five-armed Shura of Shinji operated at full capacity.
Onikiri's blood-fire blazed.
Dark crimson light crashed against the rainbow afterimages, sending sparks that scorched black marks into the city walls.
Yomi-giri's Metal-element killing aura condensed along its edge, colliding head-on with the third strike of the emerald longsword.
The shriek of metal pierced the night sky.
Raikiri's violet-white lightning, released through Divine Aura Emission, wrapped around its blade and split the trajectory of the fourth strike.
But the remaining three strikes arrived simultaneously.
Suijin-kiri swept horizontally.
Dark blue death-energy and dark green living poison intertwined into an arc, dragging the fifth and sixth strikes into its flow.
Two rainbow afterimages disintegrated beneath the dual erosion of dead water and living poison.
The seventh strike landed upon Tessaiga, which had proactively thrust itself out from Shinji's waist.
The golden fang-blade caught it head-on.
And then,
Devoured it.
Tessaiga's devouring instinct activated the instant it touched the demonic energy of the emerald longsword.
A faint rainbow aura surfaced along its cutting edge.
Those were fragments of demonic energy, stripped directly from Menōmaru's attack.
Seven strikes.
Not a single one leaked through.
This was not merely technique.
It was also the manifestation of the Soul-Chasing BowArm Transformation.
Certain-Hit.
Used for interception, it was equally effective.
Menōmaru's lapis compound eyes contracted.
"Six blades. Five attributes. Are you a demon or an armory?"
Shinji did not answer.
Because he was doing something else.
Upon the Shura Form's skeletal frame, the cycling speed of the five-colored light patterns was accelerating.
Because the battle itself was catalyzing it.
With every block, every collision, a small portion of Menōmaru's demonic energy was devoured by Tessaiga and fed into the cycle.
The surplus energy was digested, transformed, and re-output by the Five Elements.
The domain was expanding.
From 9m around the Shura Form.
To 15m.
To 30m.
The five-colored light patterns began spreading outward along the city walls, covering the ground around the tenshukaku.
Menōmaru felt the change beneath his feet.
The air was growing heavier.
His movement speed within this region was noticeably decreasing.
The Five Elements domain's repulsion of external demonic energy was taking effect.
This was—
Osore.
Menōmaru's pupils constricted.
He, of course, knew what osore was.
Demons could survive on fear.
Osore was the weight of ghost stories, stories remembered by however many people.
But he did not care.
His power came from bloodline.
From his father's legacy.
From the innate demonic energy of a daiyōkai.
To him, osore was merely a petty trick used by weak demons to cling to survival.
That was why he could so casually offer it as a bargaining chip.
Could so casually bestow it.
Yet before his eyes,
"You don't care."
Shinji's voice emerged from deep within the Shura Form's frame.
"That is why you will lose."
The Five Elements cycle reached its critical point in that instant.
Onikiri's dark crimson.
Yomi-giri's ghostly violet.
Banryū's pale white.
Raikiri's violet-white.
Suijin-kiri's dark blue.
All five colors erupted from their respective blades simultaneously.
No longer mere light patterns,
But substantialized currents of demonic energy.
The five currents converged outside the Shura Form's body, weaving together into a complete, spherical domain.
Diameter: 1500m.
It covered the entire tenshukaku, the surrounding city walls, and even half the castle town.
Within the domain, the texture of the air underwent a fundamental transformation.
It was no longer the air of the mortal world.
It was a heteromorphic space, utterly saturated with the demonic energy of the Five Elements.
Menōmaru stood within the domain.
He could feel it.
His demonic energy was being suppressed.
With every breath, the domain stripped a thin layer of demonic power from his body, feeding it into the Five Elements cycle to be converted and consumed.
He was being eaten by the domain.
"This is—"
The Shura Form's five arms rose simultaneously.
The five blades pointed toward Menōmaru.
Osore was bestowed upon his form.
But from the very beginning, Shinji had never used osore to directly strengthen himself.
He had merely used it as a "technique."
As a means of Hyōi and Hatsu.
That, naturally, came from the setting of Nurarihyon no Mago, the ways demons employed osore, materializing legends into techniques.
Ghost stories were told.
Remembered.
Converged into osore.
But their essence was still the stuff of legends and tales.
To attach this to oneself, to transform it into a vessel, was to manifest abilities corresponding to those legends.
Then, through the demon's own will, to condense it into a concrete technique.
That was Hatsu.
Shinji now bore the osore of a million souls across seven provinces.
The ghost story of the Demon Who Split the Sky had spread from Mino to Owari.
From Musashi across Sagami.
And the way he chose to materialize this osore—
Was the Five Elements cycle domain forged by these five blades.
Osore no Hyōi—the Demon Who Split the Sky.
The Lord Who Cleaves Thunder.
The King of Demon Blades.
Osore no Hatsu—Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth.
Hyōi and Hatsu.
This was the core essence by which demons transformed the weight of legend into true combat power.
Using one's own demonic energy as the foundation, all legends were engraved upon the body.
The weight of legend was borne within the demon's frame, absorbed in a single act, and permanently solidified into "technique."
And then...
Released!
Yes.
Unlike using osore to strengthen oneself, converting rumor into technique would not be lost when the osore receded.
Because the essence of osore was, in truth, "information."
Information was not energy.
Strengthening oneself was, in essence, using the cognition of countless people to deceive the world.
Once that cognition was lost, it was like the tide receding, revealing the bottom exactly as it had always been.
But information was information.
It could be engraved.
It could be remembered.
It was memory and message.
For Shinji, this was also better suited to him than the one-time use of directly enhancing his own demonic energy.
It was the equivalent of borrowing the conviction of countless souls to forge a "domain" for himself.
In this way, returning all that power to himself—
That was what he sought.
Of course, Menōmaru's thinking was not wrong either.
Most daiyōkai thought this way.
They possessed sufficient demonic energy of their own and had no need of osore.
They had lived through long ages and already possessed techniques better suited to themselves.
They had no need of rumor to engrave techniques upon them.
It was simply that Shinji had risen in far too short a time, and therefore needed to do so.
But having done it,
It truly…
Made him stronger.
Thus,
The Shura Form's five arms slashed simultaneously.
Five-colored arcs converged upon Menōmaru's position from five directions.
The power of Fire, Metal, Earth, Wood, and Water, the Five Elements in mutual generation and mutual overcoming, formed a collision at the convergence point that was even more controllable than Furukami.
It was…
The orderly disintegration of the Five Elements themselves.
Menōmaru raised his sword to block.
But the emerald longsword met the Fire-element Onikiri.
The instant blade clashed against blade, the Metal-element Yomi-giri cut in from the side.
The ghostly violet killing aura froze his right arm solid.
The Earth-element Banryū drove upward from below.
The immovable weight of the mountain pressed down upon his knees.
The Wood-element Raikiri slashed downward.
Violet-white lightning pierced through the root of the folded left wing upon his back.
The Water-element Suijin-kiri arrived last.
Dark blue death-energy, wrapped in dark green living poison, seeped through the gaps in his abdominal armor.
Five strikes arrived simultaneously.
Still, not a single one missed.
Not a single one failed.
Menōmaru's body was torn apart at the convergence point of the Five Elements.
His armor shattered.
Scale-powder burst outward.
The emerald longsword flew from his hand,
And snapped in two!
The left wing was severed at the root by Raikiri, tumbling from the city wall along with half of his shoulder armor.
His abdomen was invaded by Suijin-kiri's death-poison.
Dark blue corrosion patterns surfaced across the chitinous surface, spreading inward.
His chest was pierced through by Onikiri's blood-fire.
Dark crimson flames erupted from his back.
His legs were nailed to the city wall by Banryū's Earth-element force.
The stone bricks cracked and caved inward.
His right arm was frozen into a semi-transparent crystalline state by Yomi-giri's Metal-element aura.
A single touch would shatter it.
The Five Elements arrived as one.
Five wounds erupted simultaneously.
Menōmaru's humanoid body toppled backward, crashing onto the already-shattered tiles of the tenshukaku and sending up a spray of debris and scale-powder.
His lapis compound eyes flew wide.
Within them was reflected that 60-meter-tall, five-armed Shura.
Five-colored light flowed ceaselessly across the surface of the Bone Thunder colossus.
"How… can this be…"
He could not comprehend it.
He was a daiyōkai.
He had inherited all of his father Gaki no Maru's demonic power and centuries of battle memory.
His illusion covered three provinces.
His humanoid form, after compression, possessed a density sufficient to match the full-force strike of any daiyōkai of his own level.
And his opponent....
Was not even a daiyōkai.
One step short.
Still one step short.
Yet that one-step gap…
Had been filled by five blades.
By the Five Elements cycle.
By the Hyōi and Hatsu of osore.
"What… ARE you…?"
Shinji's Shura Form slowly descended from the sky.
Its five arms encircled Menōmaru.
The blade-light had not yet faded.
The crimson demon eyes stared down at the shattered, broken humanoid moth upon the city wall.
He did not answer the question.
He simply pointed Tessaiga, drawn last from his waist, straight ahead.
Upon the golden fang-blade's cutting edge, the fragments of Menōmaru's demonic energy devoured moments before were being digested.
Growing.
Tessaiga had grown a little stronger through battle once more.
The System panel silently flickered.
[Tessaiga: Affection 20 → 23]