"Mai-dono... what should we do with him?"
Mishin no Bukowari called out, his voice tense as he gestured toward Watanabe's broken, unmoving form on the ground. "He is one of Minamoto's. You saw the sheer, monstrous strength he displayed earlier... should we finish him off right now so save ourselves from future trouble?"
"Mmm... I see what you mean, but what are you so afraid of?" Mai drawled, scoffing as he walked forward with slow, arrogant strides, entirely unbothered. "The peasant looks half-dead to me already. I am certain that if we simply leave him be, he will succumb to his wounds on his own."
Tap.Tap.Tap.
"Ha?! Rain...?" Mai muttered, pausing in his tracks as a heavy droplet splashed against his cheek.
"No... look at that colour and iron smell..." Byakuya sharply interrupted, his eyes widening in sudden realisation. "It's clearly blood!"
Reacting with quick instincts, Byakuya instantly flared his Reiryoku, creating a tight, shimmering spiritual barrier over his body. The descending crimson droplets hissed as they struck his aura, sliding harmlessly down to the earth.
Mai reacted a heartbeat later, snapping his own spiritual shield into place. But the warning had come too late for some of the vanguard. While the stronger warriors managed to protect themselves, there were many low-ranking nobles and soldiers who were simply too slow, or whose internal Reiryoku manipulation was too unrefined to manifest a barrier in time. Within seconds, the torrential downpour drenched them to the bone.
"Ahhhhhhh!"
Agonised, curdling screams instantly pierced through the steady roar of the crimson storm.
Right before the eyes of their horrified comrades, the soldiers who had been exposed to the rain began to undergo violent, grotesque physical distortions. Some of their bodies bloated and puffed up to monstrous, asymmetrical proportions, their armour snapping off as their muscles tore through the metal.
Others thinned out into gaunt, skeletal husks, their fingernails sharpening into obsidian talons as their hair rapidly grew long, wild, and coarse. Their eyes dissolved into ink-like darkness, and their tongues elongated, dripping with thick saliva.
"What... is happening to them?!" Bukowari yelled, his weapon trembling in his grip as his eyes darted frantically across the perimeter, watching the group completely fracture into a den of newborn monsters.
"Mmmmm, this is getting out of hand..." the shadowy figure muttered under his breath. Darting fluidly across the courtyard, he used the shadows to slip effortlessly beneath the deep overhang of a tilted tiled roof, completely isolating himself from the sky.
"Get out of the rain! Fall back into the structures!" Mai roared as he dashed toward the nearest shelter.
The elite inner circle scattered instantly, leaping across the slick stones to find cover. But the lesser-skilled warriors were entirely caught in the open, their horrific physical transformations continuing to twist and mutate their screaming forms under the unyielding crimson deluge.
"KKKrrrrrrch..."
A chorus of guttural, inhuman screeches filled the night air, completely drowning out the sound of the storm as the newly transformed entities completed their descent into madness.
"What... what happened to them, Mai-dono?! What should we do?!" the young girl from the Ikozuma clan cried out. Her starry-eyed devotion had completely vanished, replaced by sheer terror. Tears welled in her eyes as her hands shook uncontrollably against her silk robes.
"Myaa...?!" she called out in a desperate, breaking voice, spotting her closest friend among the writhing bodies.
Myaa's body had completely warped; her skin was deathly pale, and her fingers had elongated into skeletal talons. Before Mai could even formulate a tactical order, the transformed soldiers launched themselves forward with predatory ferocity.
The gaunt, thin girl with the long hands and wild, dark hair let out an ear-piercing shriek that violently tore through the courtyard, blowing the roofs straight off the nearby houses and exposing the nobles who had gone into hiding.
Swifff
Mai didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second. Flaring his Reiryoku, he leapt high through the air, his glowing blade carving a clean, silver arc through the heavy rain. With a single, fluid motion, he sliced Myaa's mutated head clean off her shoulders mid-lunge.
"MYAA!"
The Ikozuma girl screamed at the top of her lungs, her heart completely shattering as she watched her friend's severed head bounce across the wet stone. "What did you do...?! Why did you do that?!" she shrieked, her voice cracking with raw grief and horror as she stumbled blindly toward Mai.
"What…" Mai turned, shrugging his shoulders "You saw it yourself she attacked us first," he spoke coldly, flicking a spray of corrupted blood off his steel. His eyes were entirely detached as he stared down at her. "From the looks of it, she was transformed into a feral Yokai by some mysterious Onmyōdō."
"Then why did you have to kill her?! We could have restrained her and purif—"
Before she could even finish her desperate plea, Mai sharply cut her off.
"She was already turned to the enemy's side the moment she failed to block the rain from hitting her," Mai spoke, his voice ice-cold as he looked down at her. "I have absolutely no need for weaklings by my side. I have told you this before. If you continue with this pathetic tantrum, you will face the same fate as her."
Without waiting for her reply, Mai leapt high into the air, his blade blazing with a fierce, destructive aura.
The courtyard descended into absolute chaos as each warrior engaged the thrashing, mutated Yokai, the ringing of steel clashing against hardened bone echoing through the crimson downpour.
"What is this...?"
Ikozuma no Ariko froze in place. She clutched her chest tightly, her fingers digging into the wet silk of her robes as she watched Mai orchestrate the slaughter. Her heart thundered violently against her ribs, and her chest tightened until she could barely breathe.
"That person... he isn't human," she murmured, her voice hollow as she watched Mai casually slice through the torso of another screaming creature.
'I can't believe him... I gave him everything. I gave him my innocence... but just now, it was as if he didn't even recognise me as a person.' The realisation crushed her soul, and her legs gave out. She fell to the damp earth, her breath rising in ragged, panicked gasps as the battle raged around her.
'Tch... the Ikozuma clan truly bred an absolute failure this time,' Byakuya thought to himself.
Flaring his aura, he vaulted gracefully into the air, narrowly evading a devastating thrust from a mutated soldier that shattered the stone tiles where he had been standing.
'To think the rumours circulating were actually true... Ariko really gave herself to Mai,' Byakuya murmured, landing seamlessly back on the ground. Without looking, he ruthlessly thrust his blade backwards, driving the steel straight through the torso of a bloated, charging Yokai. 'Did the foolish girl not understand what type of man Mai is? The moment a person becomes boring to him, they are discarded. It doesn't matter who you are,'