Chapter 37: Slaying the Demon at Midnight, Shattering the Fear in Their Hearts
The night was not awakened by the sun.
It was awakened by fire.
The first to stir was the hunchbacked village chief who had led them here. He hadn't truly slept, his mind churning with thoughts of the two outsiders now staying in his village—especially the miko who called herself Kikyo. He had heard that name before; she was rumored to be the most powerful shrine maiden in the entire region.
The arrival of such a figure always filled him with a volatile mix of hope and dread.
As he tossed and turned, the night sky outside his window suddenly bled red. It was a brilliant, burning crimson, as if someone had overturned a great basin of blood across the heavens.
"A fire?"
The old man scrambled to his feet, throwing on his ragged clothes and pushing open the door. In that instant, a wave of heat carrying a scorched, acrid smell washed over him, singeing the tips of his white beard until they curled.
He raised his cloudy old eyes and looked toward the heart of the village.
It was the direction of the shrine.
That high and mighty shrine, which had been devouring his people just that day, was now burning like a colossal torch against the dark sky. Through the roaring flames, there was no sacred silence, only the sickening pop and sizzle of rendering fat and the guttural screams of a dying beast.
"Is that… our god?"
The men of the village ran out, still pulling up their trousers, while the women shielded their children's eyes.
They all saw it.
Illuminated by the soaring firelight, behind the collapsed torii gate, there was no god clad in feathered robes, no benevolent immortal or Buddha.
There was only a lump of flesh.
A giant toad, its back covered in oozing pustules and grotesque lumps, was rolling and roaring in the mud and flames. It thrashed in the inferno, crushing several of the side halls that had once been used to house the 'sacrifices'. Disgusting, whip-like tongues, charred and rotten, lashed out, smashing the stone lanterns that lined the shrine's perimeter—lanterns the villagers would bow to even when just passing by.
"Is that… a toad?" a woman who had recently lost her son murmured to herself.
Her voice was a mere whisper, yet it exploded in everyone's ears like a thunderclap.
Every month, they had to surrender the last scraps of food from their homes.
They had to send living people into that shrine.
They had knelt on the ground until their foreheads bled, begging it to grant them favorable weather.
All for this thing?
Just to sustain a rotten toad from the gutters?
"Liar…"
The village chief's hands began to shake, his walking stick trembling in time with his rattling bones. He had known it was a demon, but he had imagined a powerful Daiyōkai, an invincible 'god'. But now, the way that thing writhed in the fire made it look as pathetic as a stray dog.
It could feel pain.
It could scream.
It could bleed.
But as that realization dawned, a new fear gripped the village chief. He was afraid of what would happen now that the truth was exposed.
What would the village do?
"It ate my Goro!" someone in the crowd shrieked, the cry ripped raw and bloody from the depths of their throat.
"It's a demon! It's not a god!"
"Kill it!"
The mountain of dread that had been crushing their hearts for months shattered the instant the demon's ugly true form was revealed. In its place erupted a near-insane humiliation and a furious rage, born from three long months of being deceived.
Someone grabbed a hoe.
Someone else picked up a stone.
The villagers, who normally didn't even dare to speak loudly, were now like a pile of ignited tinder. Their eyes were bloodshot, and low, bestial growls rumbled in their throats as they surged toward the shrine like a vengeful tide.
…
Before the burning shrine, the heat was a physical, oppressive force.
Kobe Hikaru stood on a boulder not yet corroded by venom, his Muramasa pointed diagonally at the ground. A single drop of murky demon blood slid slowly down the length of the blade before dripping from its tip.
Opposite him, the giant toad finally caught its breath amidst the sea of fire. It pushed itself upright, its hideous face, a canvas of compound eyes, twisting with murderous intent.
"Mortals… ants…" it rasped, its belly bulging as poisonous gas accumulated within. "How dare you destroy this god's temple!"
"This god will melt you all into bloody water! Not even a fragment of bone will remain!"
Even now, the cloak of divinity it wore had not fully dissipated. That was the authority it had cultivated for three months. It was a power built on dread. The toad firmly believed the villagers were still afraid of it. As long as that fear remained, its yōki would be inexhaustible, and this poisonous swamp covering the ground would be its absolute domain.
"Kikyo." Hikaru ignored the toad's blustering and glanced to his side.
Three steps away, the miko stood in silent readiness. The flames licked at the night sky, outlining her figure with exceptional clarity. Her white kosode was as pure as snow, and her red hakama swayed in the heated wind. She did not look frail; on the contrary, she seemed incredibly powerful, her longbow already drawn taut. The hot wind whipped her hair into a disarray, a few strands clinging to the slender, sweat-slicked column of her neck. Her legs, planted firmly beneath the red fabric, were as steady as a rock, the taut lines of the cloth hinting at the explosive power ready to be unleashed.
"I'm here," she responded, the tip of her arrow as steady as if it were forged to the string.
"If it tries to run later, shoot its legs."
"It won't be able to run," Kikyo stated, her voice calm and utterly confident.
The moment she finished speaking, the toad moved.
"Gua—!"
Its belly contracted violently, and it spat a torrent of dark green venom. The stream shot out like a high-pressure water jet, causing the very stones it touched to smoke and hiss. A direct hit might not pierce Hikaru's ghostly qi armor, but the searing pain would be unavoidable.
But Hikaru didn't dodge.
He smiled.
"Do you hear that?" he asked.
The toad froze for a fraction of a second. The stream of venom, having just begun its deadly arc, suddenly went limp, like a hose being choked at the source. In an instant, its surging yōki felt as if its spine had been ripped out, plummeting off a cliff.
Why?
The compound eyes all over the toad's head darted around in confusion.
Then it heard it.
"Kill!"
"Kill this beast!"
They were human voices. Not cries of terror, not pleas for mercy.
They were battle cries.
Reflected in the firelight, a dense crowd of people surged up the steps below the shrine. A woman who had lost her son and husband walked at the very front, wielding a rusty wood-cutting axe. Not a hint of her usual submissiveness remained on her face, only a ferocious, all-consuming hatred.
"Give me back my Goro!"
A stone flew through the air. It was thrown with surprising accuracy, striking the toad's largest compound eye dead center.
Splat.
Viscous fluid splattered. It didn't hurt. For a demon of this size, the impact was less than an itch.
But the toad panicked.
It felt it. The 'Dread' that had nourished it, that had allowed it to play the tyrant in this wretched village, was gone.
These people were no longer afraid of it.
They wanted to tear its flesh and drink its blood.
"You… you swine!" the toad shrieked, its voice trembling. "Do you want to die?! I am a god! I am your god!"
It tried to manipulate the surrounding poisonous swamp, to command the black mire to swallow the approaching villagers. But the muck, which had once moved as easily as its own limbs, was now as stiff and unresponsive as dried cement.
Without the empowerment of 'Dread', it was just a fifth-transformation giant toad.
That was all.
"It seems your divine reign has come to an end," Hikaru said, pushing off with his toes and leaping into the air like a grey hawk.
[Demon Blade Muramasa: Excitement! It says that although this toad is ugly, without that turtle shell of a shrine, its meat should be quite tender!]
'Then let's cut some off and have a taste.'
He was mid-air. The light of his blade flashed like a ribbon of silk.
The toad tried to dodge, its thick back leg coiling to spring away.
Twang.
A streak of white light arrived first. Kikyo's arrow was faster and more precise than Hikaru's blade. It didn't strike a vital spot; it nailed the tendon at the back of the toad's right knee.
Purifying spiritual power exploded on impact.
The toad let out a miserable howl as its entire right leg disintegrated. Its massive body lost its balance and tipped sideways, crashing heavily to the right. And that was with Kikyo holding back her full strength.
The clumsy movement exposed its neck. It was a neck as thick as a water vat, covered in nauseating folds and pustules.
But in Hikaru's eyes, it was the perfect point of entry.
"Slash."
A forward and reverse Kesa-giri. There were no fancy names for the move; he simply poured every ounce of his strength, his yōki, and his ghostly qi into this single, fluid strike.
The upward swing, followed by the downward cleave.
The forward and the reverse.
Pshhh—
First came the sound of a sharp blade sinking into worn leather, followed immediately by the crisp snap of breaking bone. In that moment, the Demon Blade Muramasa demonstrated its quality as a famed sword—even as a mass-produced model—far exceeding any ordinary blade. Coupled with the 'nourishment' Hikaru had been providing, the blade sliced through the thick-skinned creature as smoothly as if it were cutting tofu.
Black blood sprayed thirty feet into the air, falling like a dark rain amidst the sea of fire.
The massive toad head, its many eyes frozen in an expression of disbelief, rolled into a bonfire.
The headless corpse twitched twice and then collapsed with a thunderous thud, smashing into the dried-up poisonous swamp and shaking the very earth.
Silence.
A deathly silence.
Only the crackling of the flames remained.
The villagers who had charged forward stopped in their tracks, their hands, holding hoes and axes, frozen in mid-air. They stared at the man standing atop the demon's corpse.
Hikaru gave his blade a sharp flick, sending the last of the black blood flying. The firelight danced behind him, casting a long, imposing shadow that stretched all the way across the ruined torii gate.
He wasn't wearing his oni mask. His pale face was splattered with a few drops of black blood, and his crimson eyes glowed with a terrifying light in the night.
That was a demon. A demon even more ferocious than the toad.
Yet at this very moment, in the eyes of these villagers, that grey-robed figure looked more like a god than the 'God' they had been worshipping for three agonizing months.
Those who slay demons… are, by nature, gods.
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