Shikoku. Cape Muroto.
The sea wind swept past the cliffs, carrying salty, briny moisture, pressing the low pines into rows of crouching arcs.
But the sea wind carried more than salt.
It also carried demonic energy.
Demonic energy surged from two directions, blanketing the heavens and earth. Like two ocean currents of different temperatures colliding beneath the surface, stirring up invisible whirlpools, the osore of all Shikoku was, in this moment, torn in two.
This was, without a doubt, a war between demons and demons.
One side of the war was, naturally, the demon organization that had risen from Shikoku itself, the Eighty-Eight Demon Night Parade under the great tanuki Inugami Gyōbu-Danuki, and the Eight Hundred and Eighty-Eight Tanuki.
The other side, was unmistakably...
The Nurarihyon who had come from the Kantō, cutting a path through all obstacles, subduing all under his command.
Nurarihyon.
Human war was formation against formation, spearpoint against spearpoint.
Demon war was not.
Demon war began with osore.
Osore was the weight of ghost stories told and remembered.
When the common folk of Shikoku spoke of the demons they encountered at night, the name that left their lips was not "tanuki" but "Nurarihyon",
In that moment, the ownership of osore completed its transfer.
Thus, territorial war between demons had no order, no formations, not even unity. Yet, seemingly loose, it contested every inch of ground.
Every officer struck down. Every conflict witnessed.
All of it was a struggle for the "right to be told."
The essence of tonight's battle was precisely this.
Whoever won would take all the osore of Shikoku.
At the highest point of the cape.
Two figures faced each other.
Nine meter apart.
On the western reef's peak,
Gray-brown fur covered a body that, even in humanoid form, stood over 3m tall. Round face. Broad mouth. A pair of tanuki eyes gleaming amber in the moonlight, pupils vertically slit.
He wore a wide, deep brown hitatare, the cuffs embroidered with golden tanuki patterns, patterns naturally congealed from osore upon the fabric, the Hyōi of Osore unique to the great tanuki.
At his waist hung a giant fan shaped like a palm leaf, its surface painted with eighty-eight faces, each writhing faintly in the moonlight.
Behind him, his tail was exaggeratedly vast, spread out, it could cover the roofs of three townhouses.
Inugami Gyōbu-Danuki.
The great tanuki who had coiled beneath Matsuyama Castle for a century.
The commander of Shikoku's Eighty-Eight Demon Night Parade.
For tanuki demons, the size of the tail represented the depth of their demonic energy.
And Inugami Gyōbu-Danuki's tail was astonishingly vast, from a distance, it could nearly block half the sky from view.
The density of his demonic energy far exceeded ordinary demons, by Shinji's classification, absolutely above the Twelfth Transformation.
But such a powerful demon, the enemy he faced was in no way inferior to him.
Opposite him, at the eastern cliff's edge—
A figure with golden hair suspended like a sickle tracing the air, features somewhere between youth and young man.
A pair of golden slit-pupils half-lidded.
The corner of his mouth perpetually held a smile that made one want to punch him but somehow couldn't.
Black kimono, loose and slack, collar wide open.
His name was Nurarihyon.
Grand Commander of the Nura-gumi.
The demon of mirror-flowers and water-moons.
The Nurarihyon.
But unlike when he had first come to Shikoku, at his waist hung a plain, pitch-black tachi without patterns.
At the end of its hilt was tied a fist-sized, gray-white jewel.
The jewel, Fuyōheki.
The jewel Nurarihyon had taken from the body of the daiyōkai Gakusanjin, who had been corrupted by Nue, fist-sized, its surface covered in a layer of gray-white mist, within which rotating patterns could be faintly seen.
This jewel's ability was exceedingly special, it could perfectly conceal the wielder's demonic energy.
No demonic energy leaked.
No aura to trace.
No aura to trace; no perception, no tracking, no prediction.
For most demons, this jewel's use was limited. After all, most demons' fighting styles relied on externalizing demonic energy.
Hiding your demonic energy was equivalent to crippling your own martial power.
The previous Gakusanjin had only used it to hide his mountain-like, colossal demon body, disguising himself as a mountain peak in slumber, avoiding the conflicts of the mortal world.
If not for Nue, he might have slept forever.
But for Nurarihyon, this thing was practically tailor-made.
The most fundamental "transformation" of the Nurarihyon, "Mirror-Flower, Water-Moon", was the ability to walk in reality yet float as though between above and below, inside and outside, of water and mirror, sliding between two states.
It allowed enemies to be unable to grasp his true form, like a flower in a mirror, a moon on water: when you can see it, you cannot touch it; when you can touch it, you cannot see it.
And the core of this ability was founded both upon "boundaries" and upon the manipulation of one's own sense of existence.
Now, with the Fuyōheki's blessing, Nurarihyon's concealment ability had reached an outrageous degree.
Even a great tanuki like Inugami Gyōbu-Danuki, who excelled in illusion and approached daiyōkai level, could not catch Nurarihyon's trail in combat.
Added to that, Nurarihyon himself also possessed demonic power approaching daiyōkai level...
This bastard was, without question, a great enemy to Inugami Gyōbu-Danuki!
Even though they had only just concluded a cooperative venture before this.
"How long have you been in Shikoku? Three months? Four?"
Inugami Gyōbu-Danuki spoke first.
His voice was unexpectedly deep, as though squeezed from the depths of a massive chest.
"Four and a half months."
"You're not in a hurry."
"What's the hurry? Shikoku has beautiful scenery, fresh seafood, and demons who are easy to fool- ah, no, easy to get along with."
Inugami Gyōbu-Danuki's tanuki eyes narrowed.
He, of course, knew what had happened in those four and a half months.
The first two months had been a cooperation period, joining forces against Gakusanjin, who had been awakened and corrupted by Nue's power.
After that one awakened, it devoured demons everywhere.
Nearly half of the Eight Hundred and Eighty-Eight pups had been eaten.
It was Nurarihyon who had brought his newly formed Hyakki Yakō, the Nura-gumi, from Settsu to help.
But the following two and a half months, the Nura-gumi's demons had spread silently into every corner of Shikoku, like water seeping into sand.
The Ushi-oni group led by Ushi-oni occupied strongholds in the Tokushima direction.
The tengu group under the Crow Tengu covered the coastline of Tosa.
The Mokugyo Daruma personally floated above abandoned temples everywhere, absorbing local demons.
And that demon called Baboon...
And Nurarihyon himself simply wandered, chatting with old men, drinking with travelers, boasting with boatmen.
And then those people remembered him.
Ghost stories were never only about fear, but also about being told.
"You intended to devour Shikoku from the very beginning."
At this thought, Inugami Gyōbu-Danuki suddenly felt a toothache.
He also realized with a start, he seemed to have let the wolf into the house, opened the door to welcome a thief.
"Correct."
Nurarihyon's candor made his teeth itch even more.
"Joining forces to fight Gakusanjin was sincere, but after that, I must obtain Shikoku's osore. Because I'm going to Kyōto. Without this osore, I don't even have the qualification to stand before that white-faced fox."
"You should be able to sense the situation in the Kantō as well... That one is doing very well. If I go back, I probably won't be able to get a share from him."
"Beyond Shikoku, the dog demons of the Chūgoku region, the former greatest daiyōkai of the Western Lands, the Inu no Taishō Tōga, is dead, but the remaining lot are not to be trifled with. However much their power has contracted, they still occupy several provinces."
"And beyond that, the Bakeneko clan of your own house has taken several other provinces."
"Kyūshū is too far from Kyōto. Not to mention there are daiyōkai there as well."
"So, I could only start with you."
Nowhere to return to.
Nowhere else to go.
So simply take root here.
This was very Nurarihyon.
Very Nurarihyon.
The so-called Nurarihyon was, by nature, a demon that slipped into another's house while the master was unaware, and turned guest into host.
And compared to other places, though Shikoku did not have Mount Hakurei pressing down upon it like the Kantō once did, as a "great island," isolated and alone, its number of daiyōkai was truly fewer.
More suitable for "development."
To this, Inugami Gyōbu-Danuki was silent for several seconds.
Then, he suddenly let out a scoff.
"Then have you considered, that I also want to go to Kyōto?"
"This old tanuki also wants to be the Lord of the Chimimōryō who rules all demons under heaven!"
Going to Kyōto.
Any demon with "ambition" in this world could not fail to think of it.
Kyōto was the core of this island, and never only for humans, but for demons as well.
There converged the most core human prestige and dragon veins of the entire realm, and also the most osore and impurity.
Even the most grudges.
Both positive and negative, yang and yin, all converged there.
That was why Hagoromo Gitsune coiled in Kyōto.
Therefore, the demons of Kyōto had always been the most numerous and strongest under heaven.
The Nue of ages past, the Hagoromo Gitsune of today, each could be called an apex.
Personal strength was secondary; their factions were even more terrifyingly vast.
Even Tōga, the Lord of the Western Lands in his day, had been unable to break into Kyōto, he had only reached the Kinai region and managed to contend with it.
But this, in turn, only intensified the ambitions of the demons under heaven...
All who had spirit, ambition, talent, would yearn, would crave, to take Kyōto for themselves!
"If you want Shikoku's osore, if you want to go to Kyōto—fine."
"Come and take it yourself! Come and snatch it!"
The great tanuki's words fell.
The sea wind paused for an instant.
Then two Twelfth Transformation demons moved simultaneously.
Inugami Gyōbu-Danuki vanished.
In the truest sense of the word, vanished.
The tall, imposing great tanuki, along with the reef beneath his feet, the moon-shadow behind him, the scent of him in the surrounding air, all of it was erased in the same instant.
Like being wiped from the world by an eraser.
Tanuki were demons exceedingly skilled in deception, and Inugami Gyōbu-Danuki, as the great tanuki among tanuki demons, had brought his art of deception to the level of the sublime.
His deceptions, combined with the aid and manifestation of the osore brought by his native land, could even achieve something that did not act upon the target's senses, but altered the world's own cognition of him.
Nearly "Phenomenon."
Even heaven and earth were deceived, how much more so a single demon?
This was also why they needed osore.
The osore of a nation could allow them to approach or even match a daiyōkai...
Though they could not achieve what Shinji could, slaying a lower-tier daiyōkai in battle through the Hyōi and Hatsu of osore alone, they still needed osore to strengthen their own demonic energy.
But this was also enough.
Enough to let him contend with a daiyōkai!
But Nurarihyon had also vanished.
In the four-plus months he had spent in Shikoku, he had also quietly rooted his existence here, gaining no small amount of osore, not much less than the tanuki's.
And his disappearance was entirely different.
He was still there, his aura, his body heat, his shadow.
But a gaze passing over his position would naturally slide away, like water flowing over a smooth stone surface.
Attention, upon contact with him, was silently deflected.
Even the thought of "trying to notice him" could not take form.
Mirror-Flower, Water-Moon, the fundamental transformation of the Nurarihyon clan.
Walking in reality, yet like a flower in a mirror, a moon on water, visible, untouchable.
Combined with the Fuyōheki's perfect concealment of demonic energy, even Inugami Gyōbu-Danuki's heaven-deceiving art could not catch him.
Two "nonexistent" demons, searching for each other within 10m.
And locked in standoff.
The first to enter Kyōto becomes king, but on the road to Kyōto, the first thing to be crossed was the land of Shikoku beneath their feet.
Tonight at Cape Muroto, was only the beginning.
At the same time, on the other side, Shinji and Kikyō were also "training."