Chapter 3: Night Parade of One Hundred Demons
In this era, Spiritual Power and Yao Qi were two entirely different, opposing forces.
Kobe Hikaru had been transmigrated for three months now. He was no longer the newcomer—or rather, the fresh corpse—who had first awakened in a pile of bodies. He had since gained a fundamental understanding of the world he now inhabited.
Yao Qi, he had learned, was born from the murky energies of heaven and earth, coalescing with the resentment of living beings. It was the very foundation upon which all monsters relied for their existence. This power was cold and steeped in decay, carrying an instinctive, destructive hunger and laced with every conceivable desire. When it circulated within a monster's body, it would inevitably erode reason and amplify base instincts, turning the weak bloodthirsty and driving the strong to madness.
Hikaru himself was a prime example.
When he first rose as an Oni Samurai, his mind had been a storm of murderous urges. He had come dangerously close to gnawing on the corpses that littered the battlefield around him. Fortunately, he was not a truly newborn monster. He was a transmigrator, his consciousness fortified by a complete set of human memories and the strange system that bound him. With a surge of willpower, he had forcibly suppressed that primal instinct and clawed his way back to sanity.
But the influence of that ambient resentment remained. As a corpse, he still possessed a full spectrum of desires, his body driven by the instinctive reactions of his Yao Qi. These urges were no less potent than when he was alive. Though dead, he was like the living—this was the very definition of a monster, a creature both bewitching and strange, yet never truly alive.
Spiritual Power was its complete antithesis.
It was born from the pure faith of humanity, the metaphysical guardian of order. Spiritual Power was clear and bright, imbued with a quality that sought to purify all it touched. Humans who cultivated this power were known by many names—Exorcists, Onmyoji, Monks, or Shrine Maidens—but their essence was the same. The purer a person's belief, the more potent their Spiritual Power became.
They were the natural enemies of all monsters.
Spiritual Power held an inherent, suppressive effect on demonic beings, like boiling water on ice or the scorching sun on shadow. Even a glancing touch would inflict an intense, searing pain, as if a red-hot iron were being dragged across a monster's skin.
This was precisely why, when Hikaru sensed that distant aura of Spiritual Power, his first reaction was not excitement, but sharp vigilance.
"It's here."
He stood atop the hill, his crimson oni mask betraying no emotion. Only his scarlet eyes remained fixed on the far horizon, where a colossal tide of Yao Qi was already close enough to be seen with the naked eye.
A gray-green, murky energy surged across the mountains and plains like a churning, boiling flood, staining the entire night sky a turbid, sickly color. Within that miasma, countless black specks swarmed and writhed. They were moving at a terrifying speed, their collective roars and shrieks tearing through the night.
Those black specks were monsters.
Lesser monsters. Scum, even weaker than the five Blue-skinned Oni he had just dispatched.
Hikaru narrowed his eyes, trying to get a rough count. One, two, three… ten… thirty… fifty…
"Damn it."
He gave up. It was impossible. There were at least three or four hundred of them, packed so densely that from a distance, they resembled a single, massive entity of writhing, gray-green sludge. This was the largest gathering of monsters he had seen since his transmigration. Even the great battle three months ago, the one that had killed him in the first place, hadn't spawned a horde of this magnitude.
'Where in the hell did this Night Parade of One Hundred Demons come from?' he wondered, a prickling sensation crawling over his scalp.
Though they were all small fry individually, enough ants could bring down an elephant. He was under no illusion that he could fight three hundred of them alone. If he were to be caught in that swarm, he would be submerged, his Yao Qi drained, and his body torn to shreds.
But his attention quickly shifted from the horde itself. He realized that the faint aura of Spiritual Power was emanating from the very center of that monstrous tide.
Hikaru's gaze pierced through the layers of demonic shadows, landing on an incongruous figure at the core of the swarm.
It was a person. An old man.
From this distance, even Hikaru could only make out a blurry silhouette. The old man wore a gray-white robe, his back hunched with exhaustion. His left hand seemed to be clutching something, while his right hand waved continuously. With every wave, a small circle of light would explode outwards, repelling the lesser monsters that lunged for him.
Spiritual Power pulsed from his body, a beacon of defiance in the oppressive darkness.
But that light was already weak. Fading. Like a candle flame flickering in a gale, it looked as if it could be extinguished at any moment.
Hikaru could see the old man's situation was dire. His movements were growing sluggish, the fluctuations of his Spiritual Power were weakening, and his injuries appeared to be getting worse. He was fighting a retreating battle, trying to move in a specific direction, but the surrounding monsters were only growing in number, threatening to swallow him whole.
"Hand it over!" a shrill voice screeched, carried to Hikaru's ears on the night wind.
"Old fool, give us that thing!"
"Everyone from your shitty village who came with you is already dead! What are you still holding on for?"
"Hand it over, and we'll grant you a quick death! A treasure like that isn't for you humans to monopolize!"
"I'm in a good mood today! I might even leave your corpse intact!"
Jeers, threats, and roars echoed from the horde. The monsters seemed utterly fixated on whatever the old man was carrying.
The old man offered no reply, merely gritting his teeth and pressing onward. He seemed to have a clear destination in mind. Hikaru followed his line of retreat and saw a range of rolling mountains. Further beyond, if his sense of direction was correct, lay a human settlement—a small country named Musashi.
Just as he was pondering this, the Muramasa in his hand began to tremble even more violently. The entire blade emitted a low, resonant hum, like a starving beast whimpering with longing.
Hikaru glanced down at his system panel.
[Demon Blade Muramasa: A large number of prey detected.]
[Current Mood: Ecstatic.]
[It has conveyed a strong desire to you: 'I want.']
"Calm down," Hikaru muttered, pressing his hand firmly on the hilt. It felt like he was trying to soothe a rabid dog. "That's three or four hundred of them, not three or four. If we rush in there, we'll both end up dead."
Muramasa ignored his caution, its vibrations intensifying.
[Demon Blade Muramasa expresses that it doesn't care.]
[It thinks: Dying in a pile of prey is also a kind of romance.]
"..."
Hikaru fell silent. 'Is there something wrong with this blade's logic? And what do you mean, "dying"? You're a sword! I'm the one who'd die, you idiot!'
He couldn't be bothered to argue with his weapon. His attention snapped back to the distant battlefield.
The old man's situation was deteriorating rapidly. His Spiritual Power was nearly exhausted; the protective circle of light had shrunk and dimmed. The surrounding monsters sensed this, their attacks growing fiercer, their mockery louder.
"The old thing is dying!"
"Charge! First one to snatch it gets to keep it!"
Hikaru watched the scene unfold, a brief, cold contemplation settling over him. He was weighing a single question.
To strike, or not to strike?
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, while the horde was massive, each monster was individually weak. If he was careful, if he could strike and withdraw quickly, perhaps the danger wasn't as great as it seemed. also, if he used them to feed his blade… even just a tenth of them…
He looked down at the panel again.
[Demon Blade Muramasa: Current Affinity 16]
[Next Stage (30) unlocks: Bond Dialogue (II), Special Ability (I)]
At Affinity 30, he would unlock his first special ability. That was what he needed most right now. Relying solely on the blade's increasing sharpness wasn't enough to secure his place in this monster-infested world. Only by unlocking its true abilities could he pull ahead of the common rabble.
Three or four hundred lesser monsters. A large, filling quantity. It should be more than enough to grind his Affinity to 30. As long as he was careful not to get surrounded, used his mobility to trade space for time… there shouldn't be a problem. And even if there was, with his [Ghost Step], escape was always an option.
And if he set aside profit and considered it from a moral perspective…
Fine, he was a monster. He had no morals to speak of. This was about profit, plain and simple. At most, it was flavored with some lingering, inconvenient remnants of his time as a human.
Besides, the "treasure" those monsters were clamoring about was tempting. In the months since his arrival, he had scavenged battlefields left behind by humans and monsters alike, picking up a few intact items here and there. But he had never found anything that even a monster would consider a treasure. His system was starved for just such things.
And on top of it all, the monsters were just too damn noisy. Their ceaseless clamor was starting to get on his nerves.
Since it had come to this, there was nothing left to hesitate about.
Time to eat.
Hikaru rose to his feet, drawing Muramasa from his waist. The blade gleamed with a cold, hungry light under the moon.
"Since I have to grind for favorability anyway," he said to himself, a wry thought passing through his mind, "saving someone along the way won't hurt."
Yao Qi surged beneath his feet, and in an instant, his figure vanished from the hilltop.
[Ghost Step].
The next moment, he appeared at the foot of the hill, charging headlong into the surging tide of demons.
"Charge!"
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