Chapter 75: Drawing Thunder to Earth, Felling the White Wolf
Even with all his preparations, the moment the battle truly began, the chasm between them was starkly apparent.
A violent explosion of purple light erupted.
In an instant, the roof of the castle keep disintegrated into dust and splinters. Hikaru's figure was sent hurtling backward like a broken doll, smashing into the mountain of rubble below. Most of his bone armor had been shattered, his chest was a scorched, blackened ruin, and the flesh beneath was a mangled mess.
The battle had raged for a quarter of an hour.
A few more charred scars now marred what remained of Hikaru's bone armor. A few more shallow gashes bled freely on the Thunder Beast's hide.
But the gap between them was, undeniably, widening.
Hikaru stood up, his body trembling as he leaned on his swords for support. A trickle of blood escaped the corner of his mouth. The damage wasn't merely external.
There were internal injuries, too.
The Thunder Beast's attacks weren't limited to physical force; with every clash, a torrent of lightning would surge up his blades and into his body. His bone armor could nullify most of it, but a fraction always seeped through. That stray lightning now rampaged through his system, scorching his meridians from the inside out.
His [Bloodthirsty Immortality] was working desperately, trying to mend the damage, but its pace couldn't possibly keep up with the rate of injury.
"Hahaha!" the Thunder Beast's laughter boomed, each syllable a crack of thunder. "Is that it? Is that the extent of your power?"
"I thought you were supposed to be strong. Turns out you're nothing more than this!"
It was right.
The gulf between a Qualitative Transformation and a Physical Transformation was not something that could be bridged by mere skill or tactics. The Thunder Beast hadn't just completed a Qualitative Transformation; it had also undergone an Elemental one—Thunder Transformation.
This so-called Thunder Transformation was the complete integration of the power of lightning into one's very being. Every strand of its fur was a conduit for electricity, every breath was accompanied by a dance of electric arcs, and every attack carried the absolute power of destruction. It could even dissolve its form and become lightning itself. In essence, it was lightning.
An embodiment of the storm.
This wasn't a simple accumulation of attributes. It was a metamorphosis of its fundamental nature.
While Hikaru's Six Transformations had integrated the Bone Soul, pushing him to—and perhaps even beyond—the absolute limits of a normal Physical Transformation, it was still just that. A physical change. The difference between them was one of quality versus quantity, like the chasm separating an ant from a colossal elephant. No matter how many ants you gathered, they could never hope to challenge the sheer, unchangeable might of the giant.
A Qualitative Transformation, however, could rewrite the most fundamental structures of life. And within that realm, the presence of an elemental change created an even more impossible difference.
"Accept your fate," the Thunder Beast growled, stalking toward him step by step. Its four powerful limbs carried it forward, its pale fur bristling amidst the crackling aura of lightning. "Those bones and that blood mist of yours are interesting tricks, I'll grant you that."
"But in the face of true power, they are utterly futile."
It spoke with absolute confidence, its voice dripping with arrogance. It believed it had already seen through all of Hikaru's trump cards. The blood mist was merely a sensory tool, possessing no offensive capability. The bone spikes, while annoying, could be shattered by the dozen with a single bolt of lightning. This Oni Samurai's combat style was certainly varied, but every one of his methods fell well within its ability to counter.
"Come," the Thunder Beast commanded, its bloody maw gaping open. "Let me devour you and absorb your demonic power. Perhaps it will even allow me to advance to the next stage."
Hikaru offered no reply. He remained standing amidst the ruins, his dual blades propped against the ground for support. His bone armor was more than half-shattered, and deep cracks spiderwebbed across his Oni mask.
He looked utterly wretched.
But his eyes remained unnervingly calm.
"Are you sure?" he asked, his voice quiet but clear.
"Sure of what?" the Thunder Beast sneered.
"Sure that you've seen through all my trump cards?"
A sudden, chilling laugh escaped Hikaru's lips. Framed by the cracks in his demonic mask, the smile was exceptionally eerie.
The Thunder Beast's expression stiffened. A flicker of instinct, a primal sense of wrongness, pricked at its senses.
But it was too late.
Boom!
It lunged again, its giant claw wreathed in roaring thunder, aimed directly for Hikaru's head.
Hikaru didn't dodge.
He even let go of his twin blades, letting them fall to the rubble.
He allowed the massive claw to slam him into the ground.
Crack—
The last of his bone armor shattered completely. Lightning surged from the beast's claw, pouring into his body like a tidal wave.
"Die!" the Thunder Beast roared.
Its claw pressed down with immense force, intending to grind Hikaru into nothing more than a bloody pulp.
But in the next second, its movement stopped. Not by choice.
It was forced to stop.
"What?"
The Thunder Beast lowered its head, confusion warring with fury in its eyes.
And then it saw them.
Wrapped around its four limbs, having appeared without its notice, were countless dense, black threads. They were impossibly thin, so fine they were almost invisible to the naked eye. They had been hidden within the swirling blood mist, concealed amongst the fields of bone spikes, woven into every corner of the battlefield.
Like a spider's web.
Or perhaps…
Hair.
"This is…" The Thunder Beast's pupils contracted into pinpricks.
This was the hair of Yura of the Hair! The demoness Hikaru had captured!
"Did you really think…" Hikaru's voice, strained but steady, echoed from beneath its claw, "…I was stalling for so long for no reason?"
A violent shudder ran through the Thunder Beast's body. It tried to break free, to tear itself loose, but the hairs seemed to have grown into its very flesh. The more it struggled, the tighter they constricted.
Even more terrifying, however, was what the hairs were doing.
They were absorbing its lightning.
Sizzle… sizzle…
Purple arcs of electricity flowed along the black threads, all guided in a single direction.
Underground.
The hairs were acting like conductive wires, siphoning the endless storm of lightning from within the Thunder Beast's body and channeling it deep into the earth.
"Impossible!" the Thunder Beast roared in disbelief. "How could Yura of the Hair's threads withstand my lightning!"
"Under normal circumstances, they certainly couldn't," Hikaru said, crawling out from under the now-powerless claw. He calmly picked up his dual blades from the ground. "But what if their only purpose is conduction?"
His gaze fell upon the black threads binding the beast. "Hair, stained with my blood mist, becomes exceptionally moist. It becomes conductive."
"Her hair was never meant to bind you," he explained. "It was meant to give your lightning an escape route. A path that leads straight into the ground."
The principle of elemental counters—as a transmigrator, how could Hikaru not understand something so fundamental?
The Thunder Beast finally understood why its strength had vanished. Its lightning was the source of its power, the very core of its being. For a demon that had completed both a Qualitative and Elemental Transformation, this was a simple truth. But now, that lightning was being continuously drawn away, grounded and neutralized.
Its power, and by extension its life force, was being siphoned away. It was like a pool with a steady inlet but a massive, wide-open drain. The water level was dropping. Its power was fading.
"You!" The Thunder Beast struggled frantically, its body erupting with an even more violent storm of lightning as it tried to burn through the damned hairs.
But the threads seemed to be protected by something unseen. No matter how intense the electrical discharge, the energy simply flowed along them instead of incinerating them.
It was the blood mist.
The mist permeating the air had formed a thin, conductive film on the surface of each strand of hair—a film that also acted as a protective layer. It prevented the lightning from scorching the hair directly while perfectly fulfilling its function as a conduit.
The Thunder Beast's voice trembled. "How… You're clearly not that strong…"
"I'm not," Hikaru agreed, walking slowly toward it, his dual blades hanging loosely at his sides. "I just needed to wait. Wait for you to lower your guard. Wait for you to believe you had already won. Wait for you… to show a flaw."
He stopped directly in front of the Thunder Beast. The once-arrogant behemoth was now trussed up in countless black threads, completely unable to move. The lightning within its body continued to drain away, its power growing weaker by the second.
"How is this possible…" the Thunder Beast muttered in a daze. "How could Yura of the Hair help you… Isn't she your captive…?"
"Who said a captive can't cooperate?" a muffled voice chirped from within Hikaru's robes. "I just really don't like those bastards from Kyoto! Making you suffer makes me very happy!"
It was the voice of Yura of the Hair. The small red comb was vibrating in Hikaru's embrace, the tiny eyes on its skull-like handle flashing with triumphant glee.
The Thunder Beast was stunned into silence. It wanted to say something more, to curse them, to beg.
But Hikaru was done giving it chances.
His twin blades rose high. Under the pale moonlight, Muramasa and Sōza Samonji gleamed with a cold, lethal light.
"Remember this name," Hikaru said, his voice flat as he repeated his earlier words. "Kobe Hikaru… and Yura of the Hair."
"It is the name of the one who kills you."
"And the name of the ghost who slays you."
The words fell.
The blades fell.
Two swords, one black and one silver, crossed in a single, fluid motion, slashing across the throat of the Thunder Beast.
A fountain of fresh blood sprayed into the night air.
The giant white wolf collapsed into a growing pool of its own lifeblood. The violent purple light that had defined it flickered, dimmed, and finally dissipated from its body, like a lamp being extinguished.
This was the art of drawing thunder down into the earth, and with it, felling the great white wolf.
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