Mutsu Province. Above Kurokawa Castle.
Shinji confirmed the situation on Kikyō's side and steadied himself.
Before him, Menōmaru's body was still embedded within the shattered tiles of the tenshukaku's roof. His armor was more than half destroyed. His left wing was severed. His abdomen was eroded by the death-poison. His chest was pierced through. His right arm was frozen.
He had lost.
Lost terribly.
But he was not dead.
The vitality of a daiyōkai could not be ended by wounds of this degree. As long as his Phenomenon remained, as long as his essence as a moth had not been destroyed, he could recover.
In fact, from the very moment he had collapsed, his body had already been regenerating. The dark blue corrosion upon his abdomen was being covered and suppressed by the golden scale-powder surging from within his body. The scale-powder was the manifestation of his demonic power. It could temporarily replace damaged tissue and maintain the integrity of his shell.
The piercing wound in his chest was also closing.
Not quickly but it was, indeed, healing.
His lapis compound eyes regained focus, sweeping across the surrounding area from the half-shattered tiles.
The top of the tenshukaku was a complete wreck.
And around the ruins, the demons of the Hyakki Yakō were gathering from every corner of the castle.
The Yuki-onna, Oikawa, descended from the north. Her ice-blue pupils locked onto him.
Behind her, Hari had already been frozen in place.
The kamaitachi's silver-white figure perched upon the eastern wall's ridge.
The great kappa's jade-green scales vaulted over the western wall from the moat.
Tanuki Jūsaburō led over thirty mid- and low-tier demons, blocking the south.
Yura's comb still had Ruri entangled in her hair-net.
And Hari's right leg had been frozen by Oikawa. Her red-tasseled spear was braced against the ground. Her blue eyes were filled with helplessness.
The encirclement was complete.
Menōmaru lay at the center, watching this ring of demons, great and small.
His lapis compound eyes rotated.
Then, he smiled.
It was that arrogance belonging to a daiyōkai, unyielding even on the brink of death.
"You all...." His voice squeezed out from his shattered throat, hoarse yet clear. "....think surrounding me means victory?"
The instant his words fell, control was unleashed.
Menōmaru's scale-powder illusion had had its dome-level, wide-area coverage torn apart by the Five Elements slash. But the scale-powder still lingering within the castle remained.
Those fine golden particles scattered among the rubble, clinging to the stone bricks and floating in the air.
It was enough.
His lapis compound eyes flashed.
Every surviving moth demon within the castle simultaneously ceased their combat with the remaining Hyakki Yakō.
Their eyes all turned the same lapis color as Menōmaru's.
Their consciousness had been seized.
The dense swarm of moth demons converged upon the tenshukaku's peak at terrifying speed, stacking themselves layer upon layer before Menōmaru in a semicircular wall of flesh.
Living shields.
Shinji's Shura Form lowered its raised blade-arm. The five-colored arcs dissipated mid-swing.
The demons of the Hyakki Yakō still in combat also halted their attacks, their opponents had suddenly all fled, abandoning the fight and swarming toward the tenshukaku in a frenzy.
Tanuki Jūsaburō's tiny bean-eyes bulged.
"They're… all being controlled?"
Menōmaru rose from the rubble.
His armor barely held his shell together, but his movements were clearly sluggish. The wounds to his abdomen and chest had merely been plastered over by scale-powder.
He did not choose to continue fighting.
The judgment of a daiyōkai, at this moment, overwhelmed his fury.
The suppression of the Five Elements cycle had caused his recovery speed to plummet off a cliff.
If the battle continued, his wounds would only worsen.
"STOP THEM!"
A single sentence.
The moth demons beat their wings in unison, spreading one final layer of dense poison haze atop the tenshukaku.
Menōmaru turned.
His remaining right wing unfurled, he intended to fly.
He could not fight any longer.
This one… was not an opponent he could defeat.
His feet left the ground.
3 meter
6 meter.
And then, he crashed back down.
The sound of his impact upon the broken tiles was immense, shaking the entire tenshukaku.
True terror finally surfaced within Menōmaru's compound eyes.
He looked up.
The sky... was clear.
The remnants of the scale-powder dome had completely dissipated, revealing the true night sky.
Menōmaru's Phenomenon… was gone.
Theoretically speaking, as a daiyōkai, as long as Menōmaru's Phenomenon still existed, he would not easily die. He could only be sealed.
And a "Phenomenon," even more so, would not easily fade away.
But now, that theory seemed to have been shattered.
"You only just realized?"
Shinji looked at the great moth that had crashed back down. His expression was blank, the demon mask icy cold.
"Your Phenomenon, in the end, is not your own. It is merely inherited from your father. And since it is not your own, if you can use it, then why… can I not cut it?"
Amidst this, the five blades upon Shinji's body trembled as though in resonance.
Upon those five blades, there also unmistakably lingered… demonic energy belonging to Menōmaru.
That slash just now had not merely cut down Menōmaru's demon body, it had also crushed his Phenomenon!
In the final analysis, Menōmaru's Phenomenon was never his own.
One could call it innate, but in truth, his daiyōkai status was inherited.
It was entirely different from a perfect bloodline existence like Sesshōmaru, who had been born a daiyōkai.
A bloodline had an origin, but in the end, it returned to oneself.
Whether Tōga existed or not, Sesshōmaru was still a daiyōkai.
But Menōmaru, if Gaki no Maru were still alive, he would never have become a daiyōkai.
Therefore, his Phenomenon was an external object.
Therefore, Shinji could cut it with the Five Elements!
As long as he used the Five Elements cycle to strip it away, it could be done.
"When did you…"
Menōmaru trembled with terror.
But it was already too late.
He looked at the Shura Form above the tenshukaku.
Then at the hundred demons surrounding him.
No path of retreat.
"It's over."
The voice came from the core of the Shura Form.
Shinji took the final step.
The Five Elements domain pressed forward with him.
The moth demons serving as a shield of flesh before Menōmaru all froze the instant the domain's five-colored light-patterns touched them.
The Five Elements cycle's suppression of lower-tier demons was absolute.
Their demonic energy was stripped and converted within the domain.
Their wings frosted and froze.
Five-colored light-patterns surfaced across their bodies.
There was no need to cut them down, the domain itself suppressed them.
The wall of flesh collapsed.
Menōmaru was exposed beneath the five-colored light.
His compound eyes rotated one final time, settling upon Shinji's crimson demon gaze.
He wanted to say something.
There was no time.
Onikiri slashed down from the front.
The full force of Extreme Will poured into the blade.
Dark crimson blood-fire wrapped around its edge, cleaving through Menōmaru's chitinous armor from his left shoulder to his right hip.
The blade cut his body.
The Will extinguished his spirit.
Menōmaru's humanoid form shattered at the convergence of blade-light.
His chitinous armor disintegrated into golden dust.
The lapis light of his compound eyes went dark.
His antennae drooped.
The daiyōkai's body tumbled from the tenshukaku's peak.
It crashed into the ground inside the castle walls, sending up a spray of debris and dust.
It did not move again.
Because it was over.
Menōmaru was dead.
The daiyōkai's corpse shattered into golden dust upon the ground inside Kurokawa Castle, scattering with the night wind.
No complete remains were left behind.
The Five Elements domain had begun converting the corpse the instant it came into contact, stripping away and digesting the residual demonic energy.
Upon Tessaiga's cutting edge, even denser rainbow patterns surfaced.
The System panel silently flickered.
[Tessaiga: Affection 23 → 27]
The Shura Form did not immediately retract.
The 60 meters Bone Thunder colossus stood above Kurokawa Castle's tenshukaku.
Five arms encircled.
Five-colored light flowed ceaselessly through its skeletal frame.
That light illuminated the entirety of Kurokawa Castle.
It illuminated the plains for several kms beyond the walls.
It illuminated the horizon line seen by every soldier of the northeastern coalition still marching south, from Mutsu to Dewa, from Shimotsuke to Kōzuke, as they lifted their heads.
The sky had split.
The third time the sky had been split.
The Five Elements unified slash, even as it killed Menōmaru, had sent its aftershock piercing through the clouds overhead.
The rift stretched outward from directly above Kurokawa Castle in every direction, spanning hundreds of kms.
Moonlight poured through the rift, ten times brighter than any ordinary moonlit night.
The shape of that rift, was like the scar of a blade, slashed across half the sky of Mutsu Province.
All the moth demons stopped.
Having lost Menōmaru's control, the moth demons whose consciousnesses had been seized regained their autonomy in the same instant.
Then they plunged into a chaos even deeper than when they had been controlled.
Some plummeted to the ground on the spot.
Others fled in terror, wings beating frantically.
More of them simply hovered motionless in midair, their compound eyes reflecting the outline of that five-armed Shura.
They did not dare move.
Even their breathing grew shallow.
The demons of the Hyakki Yakō also ceased their pursuit, for there was no need to chase.
Moth demons without a master were merely scattered soldiers without leadership.
They had lost all threat as a legion.
Tanuki Jūsaburō crouched upon the ridgeline of the city wall.
His great, fluffy tail stood perfectly erect.
His tiny bean-like eyes stared at the rift in the sky.
His mouth opened, then closed.
Closed, then opened.
In the end, only a single sentence emerged.
"The Master has split the sky again…"
His voice could not conceal its pride nor its equally unconcealed familiarity.
It was, after all, the third time.
Within the Shura Form, Shinji's crimson demon eyes swept across the distance from the height of the tenshukaku.
This time, however, he was not looking toward Kaguya.
The palace hidden deep within Mount Fuji had already fallen silent.
Seeing that the situation was unfavorable, Kaguya had retreated back into the depths.
And Kikyō was already safe.
That was enough to set his mind at ease.
That said, what Shinji truly cared about now was no longer Kaguya.
His gaze pierced through the night sky, split open above Kurokawa Castle.
Through the unbroken mountain ranges of Mutsu.
Through the snowfields of Dewa.
He was looking north.
Further north, toward the northern sea.
That desolate land, even more remote than the six provinces of the northeast.
Illusion-Breaking and Underworld Sight activated simultaneously.
Within his vision, a gray-blue radiance, invisible to ordinary eyes, surfaced upon the distant horizon.
It was not the aura of the underworld.
It was, living, slumbering, exceedingly ancient demonic energy.
The fluctuation transmitted from the direction of the northern sea was exceedingly faint, like the lingering warmth of a hot spring seeping from the deepest depths of the earth.
So weak that ordinary demons could never perceive it.
But Shinji perceived it.
Because he knew what it was.
As a transmigrator he knew very well that upon this land, besides the known daiyōkai, there was another existence.
Kirinmaru.
The daiyōkai who had once ruled the eastern lands, one who had truly stood shoulder to shoulder with Tōga.
One of the Four Sacred Beasts.
Of the Kirin race.
A true daiyōkai who had come from the continent.
An ancient existence who commanded thunder and fragments of time.
Centuries ago, Tōga ruled the west, and Kirinmaru ruled the east.
Two great Demon Kings, standing in equilibrium, maintaining a balance that lasted hundreds of years.
Until Tōga fell in battle.
And Kirinmaru subsequently sank into slumber.
He had not awakened since.
But his presence remained.
Deep within the northern sea.
That slumbering demonic energy fluctuation, though so faint it was nearly nonexistent, was still heavy enough to make the Shura Form's skeletal frame tremble faintly.
That level of weight, was of the same lineage as the residual demonic energy within Tōga's bones.
The same tier.
Perhaps even stronger than the residual demonic energy of Tōga, approaching the degree of his full prime while alive.
"So the one who awakened Menōmaru, was not Kirinmaru himself."
Shinji murmured to himself.
Kirinmaru was still asleep.
That fluctuation was far too stable.
There was no sign of awakening whatsoever.
But, at the outer perimeter of where Kirinmaru slumbered, there was another demonic energy.
Active.
Awake.
More concealed than Menōmaru's residual scale-powder.
And more dangerous.
The attribute of that presence was exceedingly similar to Kirinmaru's.
A bloodline of the same origin.
"It's Zero… Kirinmaru's elder sister."
During the long ages of Kirinmaru's slumber, it was she who governed the demonic forces of the eastern lands in his stead.
To awaken Menōmaru, to send the moth legion south to throw the Kantō into chaos, such a scheme was indeed something she was capable of.
The objective was very likely to exhaust the Kantō's strength, to clear the path for her younger brother's awakening.
But Menōmaru had been killed.
The chess piece was gone.
"However, it doesn't matter for now."
Shinji withdrew his distant gaze.
The threat from the northern sea did exist.
But the distance was far too great.
And that daiyōkai called Zero had shown no signs of personally taking action.
What needed to be handled now, was Mutsu.
The Shura Form's five arms withdrew from their northward-pointing stance.
The five-colored light was drawn inward.
The entire Kurokawa Castle, indeed, the entirety of Mutsu Province, was enveloped by the demonic energy of this 60 meter colossus.
The remaining moth demons, beneath the Shura Form's gaze, either plummeted or fled in disarray.
The three thousand northeastern coalition soldiers on the southern battlefield, having lost Menōmaru's control, immediately fell into chaos.
The puppet lines to Date Terumune snapped.
His gaunt body collapsed directly onto the floor of the great hall, losing all ability to move.
The controller was dead.
The puppet naturally became useless.
The human armies at the front, without the support of the daiyōkai's moths, without the unifying commands of the Date clan head, two thousand kms away at the northern border of Musashi, the three thousand rabble completely collapsed before Uesugi Kenshin's crescent-wheel formation and Hōjō Ujiyasu's spear formations.
In less than half an hour—rout.
Complete, total rout.
The threat from Mutsu Province was, at last, quelled.
The Shura Form slowly retracted.
The Bone Thunder colossus compressed, drew inward, and finally merged back into the body of the young warrior of sixteen or seventeen.
He stood upon the ridge of the tenshukaku.
His gray robes swayed gently in the night wind.
The five blades returned to their places.
The moonlight from the split sky poured down from above, illuminating his pale face.
The golden ring around his crimson demon eyes was especially distinct within the moonlight.
In the distance.
Beyond the castle.
Kikyō, who had just arrived, lowered her bow.
The lingering tremor of the bowstring subsided at her fingertips.
Her reiryoku dispersed from between her fingers.
She lifted her head and glanced at the outline of the five-armed Shura above the tenshukaku.
Five-colored light flowed across the surface of the Bone Thunder colossus, framed by the true stars of the night sky.
The corner of her mouth twitched.
An exceedingly faint curve.
Then she slung her longbow back over her shoulder and walked toward the castle gate.
Her steps were unhurried.
The hem of her hakama swayed lightly in the night wind.
Walking toward him, neither fast nor slow.
Just as she did after every battle.
At the other end of the tenshukaku, untouched by the fighting, behind a side door locked from within, Date Masamune pressed her forehead against the window frame.
Her short golden hair hung down, veiling half her face.
She had watched everything.
From the descent of the Hyakki Yakō to the five blades splitting the sky.
From the collapse of the moth swarm to the fall of her father's puppet.
From the towering majesty of the Shura to the single slash that split half of Mutsu's sky.
Everything.
Without missing a single detail.
Beneath her eyepatch, the burning sensation had already receded.
What replaced it, was a strange warmth.
As though something within that covered pupil was quietly awakening, though not yet fully open.
"So strong…" she murmured.
Within her amber left eye, the flecks of golden light spun faster than ever before.
The girl's lips pressed together, then parted.
Then she let out a grin utterly unfitting for her ten years of age.
Arrogant.
Wild.
"SO STRONG—!"
She repeated it.
Her voice was much louder than before.
The bronze bell chimed.
Date Masamune braced one hand on the windowsill and leaned half her body out.
Her short golden hair flew wildly in the night wind.
She stared at that gray-robed figure standing upon the ridge of the tenshukaku.
Moonlight poured down through the split sky, falling upon that person's profile.
Pale skin.
A cold, severe bearing.
Crimson demon eyes like two embers smoldering in the dark.
That person had killed her true father, the daiyōkai.
That person had split the sky over Mutsu with a single slash.
That person carried six blades, commanded a thousand demons, and at his side stood a miko said to wield the strongest reiryoku in legend.
He was stronger than her father.
Stronger than any existence she had ever seen.
The girl's left eye nearly burned.
It was not fear.
It was not submission.
It was... worship.
Pure, unadulterated worship.
The worship belonging to a ten-year-old child.
"I want to become an existence like that…"
Masamune's voice was exceedingly soft, so soft she could barely hear it herself.
But the seed within her heart had already taken root.
The bronze bell chimed once more.