"Master! There is absolute chaos out here!"
Inoue's frantic voice echoed telepathically inside Yorimitsu's mind.
'I am slightly occupied at the moment...' Yorimitsu snapped back internally.
Up ahead, a massive mass of earth and rock, an entire hillside, came hurtling toward him like a meteor. Tilting his blade at a razor-sharp angle, Yorimitsu unleashed a devastating upward slash. The black flames enveloping his steel erupted, engulfing the mountain and instantly reducing the stone to a drifting cloud of ash.
"But Master, you don't understand! A bizarre, crimson rain is falling across the outer territories! It is twisting ordinary folk into grotesque monsters... it is an absolute hell out here!"
Yorimitsu skidded heavily across the ruined garden, his boots carving deep grooves into the mud. He locked his gaze back onto the smooth, porcelain facade of the Calamity.
"What is your true intention here?" Yorimitsu demanded, his voice cutting through the roar of the storm. "I believed your goal was to resurrect that first human of yours. Why spread this stagnation and turn mindless beasts?"
"Ohhh... so that brief stillness just now was you receiving word from an informant, I presume?" Orochi mused.
With a sharp flick of his wrist, the descending crimson droplets froze in mid-air, instantly hardening into a thousand-strong volley of jagged blood-spears. With a deafening whistle, the crimson needles rained down. Yorimitsu moved like a blur, his heels kicking up wet earth as he darted in a frantic zigzag across the courtyard, the lethal spears impaling the stone tiles mere inches behind his trailing robes.
"But I am bringing her back," Orochi replied smoothly, his featureless mask tilting as he watched the chase. "I have merely gifted them a concentration of the ancient lineage. The rain is forcing them to revert to their true, primal origins. Soon, I too shall shed this shell, reverting to her ultimate form to rule over the children who share my blood."
"Tch... pure madness," Yorimitsu muttered.
Stopping short, he dug his toes into the soil and swung his blade in a sweeping, horizontal arc. A crescent wall of black fire surged outward, meeting the remaining spears and melting them into harmless vapour before they could pierce his guard.
As the smoke cleared, the strategic puzzle pieces finally clicked together in the commander's mind.
'I am beginning to comprehend the nature of his sorcery,' Yorimitsu realised, his breath steady despite the pressure. 'Anything within the immense radius of his Reiryoku can be fundamentally rewritten into whatever form he desires. The blood rain acts as a type of Kekkai.'
But the revelation only brought a deeper chill to his chest. 'But the sheer scale of this is impossible... where could he have gathered a reserve of spiritual energy vast enough to blanket an entire region? Worse yet, his strength is steadily compounding. Even the suppression properties of the seal of Ryuu are beginning to lose their grip.'
Shifting his weight, Yorimitsu lowered his centre of gravity and raised his blackened blade once more, bracing for the next cataclysmic exchange.
"Minamoto Sword Style... Fourth Form."
Yorimitsu drove his soot-blackened blade straight into the fractured earth.
"Oblivion!"
A colossal pillar of roaring black fire violently erupted from the ground, piercing straight through the stagnant clouds to strike the heavens. The flames raged with such ferocious heat and vastness that for a brief, blinding moment, the entire dark province looked as though it had been bathed in the stark light of midday.
But just as quickly as the terrifying inferno had risen, the oppressive spiritual weight of the atmosphere smothered it. The brilliant flames died out in a hiss of ash, and the unyielding crimson rain continued its relentless descent.
"Hufff... huffff..."
Yorimitsu panted heavily, his breath ragged as he leaned slightly on his hilt. 'Tch... my only option left is to keep targeting that mask. If I can shatter the conduit, I am certain the ritual itself will collapse. Though... I cannot be sure if those who have already mutated into beasts will ever revert to their human forms.'
"Hahahahaha! You were entirely too slow, Sun of the North!"
Orochi chuckled mockingly. Floating effortlessly up into the blood-soaked air, his hands locked tightly into a complex spiritual sign.
"And now... the fourth rises."
Beneath the earth, an ancient, rumbling tectonic roar shook the world. The fourth and final shrine burst from the soil. The moment its apex cleared the ground, the entire region convulsed. The massive, celestial iron chains that had been pinning the previous shrines down violently snapped, flinging outward across the landscape like whips, shattering trees and obliterating the remaining architecture into dust.
Da-da... da-da-dum.
The deep, rhythmic pulse thundered.
"Ahhhhh...!"
Far away in the shelter of the village, Ichiyoshi wailed in agonising pain, collapsing onto the wooden floorboards while clutching his chest. His skin flushed a brilliant, burning crimson, and a suffocating heat began to radiate off his body as he violently overheated.
"Oni-san...!" his little sister cried out in terror, scrambling on top of her brother's twitching form and shaking his shoulders desperately.
"Ha?!" Gabimaru spun around, rushing back to Ichiyoshi's side. "What is happening to him?!"
Placing his hands firmly on the boy's chest, Gabimaru instantly recoiled from the heat. 'He is burning up from the inside! What on earth is wrong with his Reiryoku... It's completely relentless!' He watched in absolute horror as the veins along Ichiyoshi's neck and arms bulged out like thick cords, throbbed violently, and relaxed, only to swell up even larger a heartbeat later.
Elsewhere, hidden deep within the dark overhang of a deserted garden pavilion, Shion knelt on the cold stone.
'Hold on...'
Focusing her intent, she manipulated her own shadow, hardening the darkness into razor-sharp, iron-like needles. With absolute precision, she drove the dark stakes straight into Watanabe's flesh, targeting his major spiritual pressure points. With every needle that pierced his skin, the bulging, hyper-activated veins running across his body visibly calmed, the chaotic flow of his energy forced into submission.
"Hufff... huffff..."
Shion panted heavily, wiping cold sweat from her brow as her eyes remained locked on his unmoving form. Dozens of dark shadow needles were now embedded all along Watanabe's limbs and torso, anchoring his unstable core.
'You protected me back there, didn't you...?' she thought, her expression softening for a fraction of a second as she took a slow, grounding breath.
Gently, she readied one final, elongated needle, positioning it directly above his sternum. 'The crown pressure point over the heart is the most volatile. If I apply even a fraction too much of my own Reiryoku while trying to stabilise his flow... the backlash will kill him instantly.' Her heart hammered violently against her ribs as she steeled her nerves and pressed the needle home.
Meanwhile, back at the epicentre of the battlefield, a terrifying phenomenon began to unfold.
All four of the newly risen shrines suddenly groaned, their massive stone foundations fracturing and breaking down entirely. Instead of collapsing to the earth, the colossal debris began to levitate, drifting upward into the blood-soaked sky. The shattered stones swarmed around Orochi's floating silhouette, enveloping his form in a massive, swirling cocoon of rock and stagnant energy.
"Tch... this is rapidly turning into an absolute disaster," Bushido mused far in the distance.
Even while dashing at hyper-speed across the churning river toward the sanctuary territory, the sheer weight of Orochi's expanding Reiryoku pressed down on his shoulders like a mountain.
BOOM!
A deafening sonic crack shattered the air as Bushido finally crossed the perimeter, his heels digging deep into the ruined earth as he skidded to a violent halt directly beside the battered, exhausted Yorimitsu.