After Menōmaru's demonic energy had completely dissipated, Kurokawa Castle fell silent.
The corpses of the moth demons lay scattered inside and outside the castle walls. The golden scale-powder slowly faded into the night wind, turning into gray-white dust.
Yura's comb, however, still had Ruri entangled in her hair-net. The black strands coiled around the purple-haired girl's wrists, arms, and even her waist, suspending her in midair above the castle wall.
Ruri had stopped struggling. Her twin white blades hung limply from her fingertips. The replication patterns that had constantly shifted across the blades had ceased their flow. Her violet pupils stared toward the tenshukaku, toward the spot where Menōmaru had fallen.
Only a patch of golden dust remained, scattering in the wind.
Nothing was left.
Not even his presence.
Three paces away, Hari knelt upon the shattered tiles. Her right leg was still frozen in ice crystal from the knee down by Oikawa. Her red-tasseled spear was braced before her for support. Her blue eyes were half-lidded.
She had seen it too.
Both sisters had seen it… all of it.
The entire process.
"Lord Menōmaru…"
Hari's lips moved. Her voice was nearly inaudible.
Ruri did not respond.
Many things were reflected within her violet pupils, but none of it had anything to do with sorrow. A created being's attachment to its creator was not the same as emotion. It was closer to an instinctive recognition of belonging.
And that belonging, had been severed.
Footsteps came from the stone steps of the tenshukaku.
Gray robes. Six blades. Faint bone markings at the temples. white, flowing hair.
Walking side by side with a miko.
They were a demon, yet they looked more like a divine couple.
Shinji walked to the castle wall. His crimson demon eyes swept over the bound Ruri and the kneeling Hari. Then he stopped before them.
"I'll ask again."
His tone was as calm as before, without the arrogance of a victor.
"Menōmaru is dead. Your control lines are severed. From this moment on, you are free. You may leave. No one will chase you if you do. Or you may stay."
Kikyō, watching this scene, wore an unreadable expression. Yet she offered no objection.
The elder sister, Ruri, looked over.
"…Stay? And do what?"
"I'll give you names. Shrines. Ghost stories. The same as every other demon in the Hyakki Yakō. Osore will make you stronger, stronger than when you followed Menōmaru."
Shinji glanced at her.
"With your strength, you'd at least be commander-class officers here. No less than the great kappa or the kamaitachi."
Silence.
The wind upon the castle wall swept the lingering scale-powder across the faces of the two girls.
Hari lifted her head first. Her blue eyes looked at Shinji. Her lips pressed together for a long moment before she finally spoke.
"…And if we refuse?"
"Then leave. As I said, no one will chase you."
"But you killed Lord Menōmaru. Would you really let us go?"
"He wanted to march south and devour my territory. Of course I killed him. That has nothing to do with you. I only execute the instigator."
Hari's mouth closed again.
Ruri tilted her head within the hair-net. Her violet pupils swept across the surroundings.
The demons of the Hyakki Yakō were scattered throughout the castle.
Large and small. Horned and tailed.
In twos and threes, they were dragging away the remnants of the moth demons and clearing the battlefield. Tanuki Jūsaburō directed a few lesser demons to haul away the spoils.
The great kappa hoisted a moth antenna larger than himself onto his shoulder and headed toward the moat, saying he planned to use it as a club.
The Yuki-onna, Oikawa, stood upon the northern wall. She had withdrawn her ice and was looking at the crystals on Hari's leg, waiting for orders.
Either thaw them.
Or freeze them solid.
These demons seemed… very loose. Completely unlike the moth legion under Menōmaru, controlled by scale-powder and moving with mechanical uniformity.
But they were alive.
They had names. Tempers. Their own complaints and small schemes.
"…Those demons."
Ruri's voice came from within the hair-net, muffled.
"Why do they follow you?"
"Because I've given them a reason worth following."
Shinji answered casually.
"Ghost stories. Shrines. Osore. Names. Everything a demon needs to live, I can provide. Not through control. Not through illusion."
That final sentence made Ruri's violet pupils contract.
The silence stretched for a few more seconds.
Then Hari released her grip first.
The red-tasseled spear slid from her palm and clattered onto the broken tiles with a crisp sound.
"…I have nowhere to go."
The blue-haired girl's voice was very soft.
"From the day I was created, I followed Lord Menōmaru. I know nothing but him. If you don't want us, we'll just drift through the wasteland. Eventually cut down by some demon slayer, or starved to death."
She lifted her head.
Within her blue eyes, something belonging to herself, not the template of a created being, finally surfaced.
"So.... please take us in."
Ruri let out a huff within the hair-net.
"Hmph. Hari, you sure agreed fast enough."
"Sister, you want to stay too, don't you?"
"…"
The purple-haired girl turned her face away.
After a long while, she squeezed out a single word from between her teeth.
"…Fine."
Yura's hair-net loosened at that same instant.
Ruri landed from midair, her feet steady upon the broken tiles. She flexed her numb wrists, looking down at the twin white blades in her palms.
Then she sheathed them at her waist.
Oikawa, upon the northern wall, glanced at Shinji. Receiving a slight nod, she swept her fingertips through the air.
The ice crystals upon Hari's leg shattered soundlessly, turning to droplets that seeped into the stone.
The blue-haired girl stood up, retrieved her red-tasseled spear, and tightened the bell ornament at her waist.
"Um… names."
Hari hesitated.
"Ruri and Hari, those were given by Menōmaru. Will you change them?"
"No. A name is a name. Who gave it doesn't matter. What matters is that from today on, those two names will appear in the ghost stories of my Hyakki Yakō."
Shinji turned after speaking.
"Tanuki Jūsaburō—"
"Here!"
The round-faced little demon with the great fluffy tail bounded over from the other end of the wall, his tiny bean-eyes gleaming.
"Take in all the remaining moth demons in the city who are willing to stay. If any refuse and still try to cause trouble, beat them into submission. If they still won't listen after that, throw them to Oikawa to freeze and think it over."
"Got it!"
Tanuki Jūsaburō scampered off, delighted.
Thus, the remnants of the moth legion, along with Ruri and Hari, the two Ninth Transformation commanders, were entirely absorbed into the Hyakki Yakō.
The core of the demonic forces of the six northeastern provinces had been destroyed.
From Musashi to Mutsu, across the vast territory spanning the Kantō and the northeast, there was no longer any demonic force capable of opposing Shinji.
The osore spread from seven provinces to twelve.
The ghost story of the Demon Who Split the Sky spread across the entirety of the eastern lands in a single night.
The Demon God Who Cleaves Thunder.
The Lord of Demon Blades.
The Māra Transformation.
The Hyakki Yakō's Demon God— Nakai Shinji.
He was no longer merely the Lord of Specters of seven provinces.
He was, in practical terms, the foremost demon of the entire eastern realm.
Though still not a complete daiyōkai, he had, without question, already attained power of a magnitude corresponding to one.
Several thousand kms away.
Kyōto.
Deep within the mountains of Tanba Province.
The Tsuchigumo had just finished a battle.
To be precise, it could not even be called a battle.
Six high-ranking demons that had tried to encroach upon his territory were shredded to pieces the instant they touched the spider silk he had spread for several kilometer.
They never even had time to scream.
A primordial daiyōkai of the Thirteenth Transformation or above, dealing with such trash that wasn't even worth his time, was no different from a human stepping on ants.
The Tsuchigumo crouched at the center of the web upon the mountain peak, his eyes narrowed. His twelve-meter-tall frame cast a shadow that covered half the mountain beneath the moonlight.
How boring.
So boring he had nearly fallen asleep.
Even though he was still wounded.
Even though he had, in fact, only recently returned from the Kansai region.
Daiyōkai were few in this era, but they still existed. There were opponents over there worth fighting.
But the tedium after fierce battle also left him deeply weary.
Yet in the next second, he suddenly opened his eyes.
The crimson eyes behind his bone mask simultaneously turned toward the east.
The demonic energy fluctuation transmitted from the eastern lands, the aftershock of the Five Elements unified slash, even from three thousand kms away, it was still as clear as someone striking a bell beside his ear.
"That brat…"
The Tsuchigumo's voice rumbled from between his great mandibles, low and carrying an interest that even he himself found surprising.
"He's gotten stronger again."
He could sense the owner of that demonic energy.
At their last meeting, that demon warrior, even after breaking through, had only barely been able to withstand a casual slap from him.
Now, the quality and density of that demonic energy was no lesser than that of an ordinary, newly ascended daiyōkai.
Though still one final step short.
But that step, seemed to be drawing near.
"Interesting."
The bone mask remained unchanged.
Yet the crimson eyes curved faintly.
That was the Tsuchigumo's way of smiling.
"The promise still stands. Once you've walked that final step, I'll come beat you up again."
Beneath Kyōto.
In an even deeper place.
Within the palace of the Nine-Tailed Fox, the candlelight flickered dimly.
Hagoromo Gitsune reclined behind a silk screen. Her nine tails lay spread languidly over the velvet cushions behind her, each as thick as a man's waist.
Her face was breathtakingly beautiful. Her golden slit-pupils gleamed with a bewitching light in the candlelight.
One pale hand rested upon her slightly swollen belly.
The child within, Nue, stirred.
Hagoromo Gitsune's golden slit-pupils narrowed faintly.
"The climate of the eastern lands has changed…" she murmured.
The Nue within her womb also seemed to sense that tremor transmitted from thousands kms away. Its fetal movements were more frequent than usual.
"It is not your fault, my child… You have not yet truly been born. The power you can project is limited. It is only natural that you could not stop them…"
"The true problem lies with that demon called the Demon Who Split the Sky—and that Nurarihyon in the west."
"Of course, those dog demons, even without that Tōga, remain troublesome."
"And that iron bird in the Land of Fire. And the bat swarm on the western islands… Hehehe."
Her finger traced a slow circle upon her abdomen.
"These creatures… are becoming more and more of an eyesore."
As the capital that both the ruler of all under heaven and every demon of the Chimimōryō sought to seize, Kyōto itself was destined to face battle from all four directions.
The opponents that Hagoromo Gitsune, or rather, Nue would have to face in order to return had never been merely a newly risen Lord of the East.
However—
'This may not be a bad thing for us, Mother.'
Nue's voice suddenly sounded beside Hagoromo Gitsune's ear.
Hazy.
Immature.
Hagoromo Gitsune's movements paused.
Then she suddenly smiled.
Yes.
"Perhaps.... not a bad thing at all."
Originally, with Mount Hakurei in the east, though demons were suppressed, indirectly, it also prevented the emergence of any great demon that could threaten them.
Now, Mount Hakurei had vanished.
A new great demon had appeared.
If he could replace Mount Hakurei and hold that region in check, then it could, indeed, be considered an indirect benefit.
As for the threat that great demon might also pose to them…
Setting aside the fact that he was not yet even a daiyōkai, even if he became one, his years were far too few.
Daiyōkai who had achieved Phenomenon placed far greater importance on the "duration of existence" than ordinary demons.
A great demon of one or two thousand years was different from one who had only just ascended.
Once Nue was born, all of this would cease to matter.
"Soon."
"Very soon."
The Kansai region.
Shikoku.
By the sea.
Nurarihyon sat upon a reef. His golden hair flew in the sea breeze. His golden slit-pupils stared toward the northeastern horizon.
Behind him, the cold, stern figure of the demon Ushi-oni lay coiled upon the sand.
The monk-like Mokugyo Daruma floated in midair, palms pressed together in prayer.
The Crow Tengu of Mount Takao stood upon one leg atop a ship's mast, black wings half-spread.
And there was a tall figure in human form, wearing a baboon mask.
The core combat strength of the first-generation Nura-gumi, all present.
In Nurarihyon's hand was a piece of freshly received intelligence, news that Menōmaru of Mutsu had been slain, the moth legion annihilated, and all demonic forces of the eastern lands brought under the Hyakki Yakō.
After reading it, he crumpled the paper and tossed it into the sea.
"The first to enter Kyōto becomes king—"
His golden slit-pupils narrowed, revealing that signature smile of the Nurarihyon clan, half-mocking, half-serious.
"He went off to fight a whole circuit in the east first. But that's fine."
Nurarihyon rose from the reef. His golden hair spilled over his shoulders. Demonic energy of the Sixth Transformation and above flowed around him.
"This way, whether it's him or me, when we enter Kyōto, we can give it everything we have. No more worries behind us."
During this period, Nurarihyon, too, had been sweeping his rear.
Both of them were only one step from daiyōkai.
The difference was that Nurarihyon had reached his current level long ago, while Shinji, had only begun his rise a mere year ago.