Chapter 162: Kappa, Kamaitachi, and Yuki-onna
Bone spikes pierced the sky like a pale, macabre forest. White, calcified pillars erupted from the cracked mud of the riverbank, dense and staggered in height, pinning a radius of dozens of yards into a terrifying thicket.
Something hung from every single spike.
Kappa, mountain spirits, one-eyed Hitotsume-kozo, and flying Hitoban—forty or fifty miscellaneous yokai hung suspended within the bone forest.
They were not dead.
Kobe Hikaru had spared their lives. Not out of the goodness of his heart, of course. Hikaru harbored no soft-hearted illusions toward those who stood against him, whether they breathed as men or prowled as demons. He simply found wanton slaughter tedious, though he certainly didn't fear it. Sparing them served a pragmatic purpose.
Living yokai bled far more useful information than dead ones. Their raw terror rippled outward through the fluctuations of their demonic aura, broadcasting a clear warning to whatever lurked in the distant shadows: the entity standing on this riverbank was not to be trifled with.
Bankotsu and his two subordinates, however, were already corpses. There was no tactical value in sparing the Band of Seven.
A massive bone spike had skewered Bankotsu's chest from front to back. The charred, ragged edges of the flesh, scorched black by thunder, still hissed with wisps of sickly green smoke. Deep purple veins of demonic aura throbbed frantically beneath the surface of his bronze skin, desperately trying to knit the fatal wound back together. The half-demon vitality granted to him by his cursed blade, Banryu, possessed a stubborn self-healing trait, but it was a pathetic imitation of a true yokai's regeneration.
Blood cascaded from his mouth, chest, and back in equal measure. Even in the exact moment of his death, Bankotsu's calloused hand remained outstretched, grasping at empty air. His beloved greatsword, Banryu, lay half-buried in the mud a mere three steps away. A distance he would never cross.
A few yards away, Jakotsu found himself pinned to the trunk of a withered willow tree. A bone spike had driven cleanly through his right shoulder, anchoring him in place. The Jakotsuto lay discarded at his feet. Its segmented, curved blade twitched feebly in the wet earth, resembling a venomous snake with a shattered spine. Cold sweat plastered Jakotsu's dark hair to his effeminate, pale face. His narrowed eyes, rapidly glossing over with the milky white of death, stared fixedly at Hikaru. His lips trembled, struggling to form a final, mocking word, but only a wet rattle escaped his throat.
Suikotsu died the quietest.
Pinned through both calves, he slumped backward against the bone spike, his eyes half-closed. Even as the life drained from him, his dull, dual-natured face registered little emotion. The fuses of the twin miniature cannons strapped to his back had snapped during the brutal impact, rendering them useless.
The men were broken; their tools were ruined.
Hikaru did not spare them a second glance. His heavy, armored boots squelched in the mud as he approached Banryu. Crouching down, he wrapped his gauntleted hand around the hilt of the massive greatsword.
It was absurdly heavy—easily a hundred times the weight of his katana, Muramasa. The two-meter-long edge shimmered with a sinister, dark red luster in the fading twilight. That crimson glow was not a reflection of the setting sun. It was something vile seeping from the very core of the steel. It was the concentrated demonic aura birthed from the resentment, agony, and fear of a hundred human lives and a thousand slaughtered yokai. Dried, rusted blood caked the broad blade.
A translucent interface materialized in his vision.
[Banryu]
[Quality: Demonic Tool]
[Description: Originally a giant war sword forged from ordinary iron, it was soaked in human and demon blood through the slaughter rituals of 'Hundred-Man Slay'and'Thousand-Demon Slay' by its wielder, Bankotsu. It ascended to a Demonic Tool after absorbing the resentment of the deceased.]
[Current favorability: 0]
Reading the glowing text, the corner of Hikaru's mouth twitched upward beneath his Crimson Oni Mask.
Exactly as he had calculated. His previous gamble had paid off beautifully.
Back when he had butchered four members of the Band of Seven, he had only unlocked his Six Transformations. He hadn't yet mastered the Thunder Transformation, nor possessed the raw speed to chase down the fleeing Bankotsu, Jakotsu, and Suikotsu. Fortunately, he had possessed the foresight to plant his blood mist on them, establishing a remote tether and a minimum range of influence.
Even then, he had recognized Banryu's terrifying potential. An ordinary iron weapon drenched in mass slaughter was teetering on the absolute edge of ascending into a true Demonic Tool. That final push didn't need to come from Hikaru. Bankotsu could do the heavy lifting himself.
It was the perfect strategy: let the prey fatten the prize.
By leaving traces of his blood and demonic aura embedded in their bodies, Hikaru had subtly restricted their actions. If they attempted to slaughter innocent mortals—beings who lacked the potent resentment needed to forge a demonic blade—Hikaru's aura would trigger a violent backflow. The blood mist would force the blood in Bankotsu's veins to flow in reverse.
It was the exact same principle he had used to cripple Naoe Kanetsugu. For a fragile mortal like Kanetsugu, the technique caused catastrophic internal ruptures. For half-demon enhanced warriors like Bankotsu, it merely caused agonizing discomfort. But men like Bankotsu despised discomfort. Driven by their own bloodlust and Hikaru's invisible leash, they were forced to hunt targets that fought back—wicked men and evil yokai.
, the blood tether acted as a beacon. The moment they stepped back into his territory, Hikaru sensed them.
That was why he had leisurely strolled toward this battlefield, taking his time to casually slaughter rogue demons along the way. He knew Bankotsu's group would be aggressive, but they wouldn't inflict lethal harm on the weaker yokai under his command. They would bruise them, batter them, but not kill them. In a twisted way, this brutal encounter served as an excellent tempering exercise for his own subordinates. The Twenty-three Demons had held the line, surviving the onslaught of a superior foe.
Now, the prey that had slipped away had conveniently delivered themselves right back to his doorstep. And Banryu, fully transformed and ripe with dark power, was finally his.
A highly efficient outcome.
After all, Banryu's base quality far exceeded that of his current Muramasa. The difficulty of fully demonizing it would be significantly lower. It lacked a refined spirit, certainly, but a Demonic Tool was a Demonic Tool. Once he grinded its favorability and conquered its will, it would yield fascinating new abilities.
With a casual flick of his wrist, Hikaru drove Banryu straight down into the mud beside Bankotsu's corpse. The massive blade sank three feet deep, leaving only the hilt and the upper half of the steel exposed. It stood shoulder-to-shoulder with its fallen master. Two silent pillars marking a grave.
He turned his back on the dead.
From the direction of the ruined fishing village, a dozen small yokai timidly poked their heads out from behind the shattered remains of wooden houses. The collective field core humming within Hikaru's chest—the power that connected his domain—flared to life. A dense, suffocating wave of the Power of Fear surged outward, traveling along invisible tethers to his subordinates.
The battered minor yokai bathed in the aura. The jagged claw marks across the Tanuki Spirit's forehead, the deep fractures webbing the Kappa's turtle shell, and the swollen, bruised eye of the Hitotsume-kozo began to knit together under the heavy infusion of Fear. Scabs formed over open gashes, shells fused back into solid plates, and agonizing swelling receded. It was not instantaneous regeneration, but the rapid healing was clearly visible to the naked eye.
Emboldened, the dozen minor yokai crept out from the wreckage and rallied behind Hikaru. The Tanuki Spirit scurried to the very front, its massive, fluffy tail puffed up to twice its normal size, its beady black eyes shining with the sheer adrenaline of surviving a massacre.
"My Lord!" it squeaked.
"Stand properly," Hikaru commanded. His voice, filtered through the demonic mask, was calm but carried the crushing weight of a mountain range. Amplified by his Fear and his suffocating aura, the command demanded absolute obedience.
The ragtag group of yokai instantly snapped to attention, straightening their spines.
The strongest among them, the Tanuki Spirit, had only reached the Third Transformation. The rest lingered at the Second. In the brutal hierarchy of the demon world, they were the absolute bottom feeders—the old, the weak, the helpless. Yet, standing behind Hikaru, bathed in the oppressive might of his fully unleashed Ninth Transformation aura, they were bound together by the field of Fear into a single, cohesive unit.
The collective killing intent they radiated far surpassed the sum of their pathetic individual strengths.
A collective field. The absolute authority of a Sovereign. This was the Night Parade of The Twenty-three Demons. Even with only a dozen present, the sheer momentum they condensed in the dimming light of the Twilight Hour cast a faint, terrifying shadow of the legendary Night Parade of One Hundred Demons.
Had they possessed this level of synchronization earlier, they might have held off Bankotsu entirely, even with the mercenary wielding the power of a Seventh Transformation.
Indeed, the Seventh Transformation. Remodeled by Banryu's corrupting aura, Bankotsu's physical vessel had been elevated to rival a genuine Seventh Transformation yokai. His speed, kinetic force, and reaction time had shattered human limitations.
A mere month ago, an opponent of that caliber would have forced Hikaru into a grueling, half-day war of attrition.
But Hikaru had evolved. He stood at the Ninth Transformation.
By chaining Materialization through the simultaneous detonation of three overloaded transformations, and allowing the Thunder Muscle to seep deep into his marrow, his base speed now matched his previous absolute maximum output. His instantaneous burst speed could rival even the lightning-fast Kidomaru.
Seventh Transformation versus Ninth Transformation. A chasm of two entire stages.
Hikaru hadn't even needed to unleash his full strength to obliterate them. It was an instant kill in the truest sense of the word. From the moment the blood mist rose to the second the bone spikes impaled the trio, less than two seconds had elapsed. Bankotsu hadn't even managed to swing Banryu before his chest was caved in.
This was the terrifying reality of Materialization. It wasn't just a numerical increase in power; it was an absolute, crushing suppression of lower lifeforms.
Hikaru withdrew his gaze, dismissing the trash bleeding out in the bone forest. He shifted his attention to the distant horizon.
To the northwest.
The sun had finally drowned beneath the horizon, dragging the last slivers of bruised, dark red light from the sky. The Twilight Hour—the Ouma-toki—was ending. Yet, the demonic aura hanging in the air did not dissipate. Instead, it thickened, growing suffocatingly dense.
Three distinct sources. Three vastly superior, entirely different signatures of demonic aura bled from the depths of the northwestern mountain forest.
The first was damp, freezing, and reeked of fish, carrying the distinct, muddy stench of freshwater rivers. A river-attribute yokai. But the sheer density of the aura dwarfed any common water demon. It carried a crushing, heavy texture, as if centuries of compressed riverbed silt were bearing down on the atmosphere.
The second was razor-sharp and kinetic. The aura fluctuated so rapidly it felt as though invisible blades were violently dicing the air into ribbons. Wind blades, so tightly packed that they shredded the very breeze itself.
The third current was cold. Absolute, pure zero. It wasn't the biting chill of a winter gale; it was a necrotic frost that bypassed the flesh and seeped directly into the marrow, threatening to freeze the blood mid-flow.
Beneath the Crimson Oni Mask, Hikaru's Crimson Demon Eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.
These were undeniably high-level, Materialization-grade yokai. The heavy hitters Tanuki Juzaburo's severed head had warned him about. They had been lurking this entire time. Waiting. They had used Bankotsu's squad as disposable vanguard fodder to exhaust The Twenty-three Demons. They had waited for Hikaru to arrive and reveal his hand, and they had waited for the demonic energy of the Twilight Hour to reach its absolute zenith.
Now, the curtain was rising.
"Come out," Hikaru demanded. His voice was not a shout, yet the oppressive weight of his Ninth Transformation aura carried the words over a hundred paces, echoing across nearly half a mile of desolate terrain. "Those three pieces of trash from the Band of Seven already talked. You've watched the show from the shadows long enough."
Bankotsu hadn't said a damn word, of course. But the audience hiding in the trees didn't know that.
A heavy silence stretched for five mortal breaths. Then, at the dark edge of the treeline, three silhouettes materialized in unison.
Leading the vanguard was a massive Great Kappa, its sheer bulk defying the natural order of its species. This was no palm-sized river pest like the one cowering in Hikaru's ranks. This was a towering, two-meter-tall bipedal behemoth. Dark, overlapping green scales armored every inch of its flesh from its thick neck down to its ankles. The dish-like depression atop its skull didn't hold ordinary water; it brimmed with a viscous, deep blue liquid—pure, hyper-concentrated demonic power. Its arms were trunks of muscle, the translucent webbing between its clawed fingers etched with glowing, complex water runes. A patriarch-level entity of the Tono Kappa clan. A master of Materialization.
To its right, a silver-white afterimage violently flickered through the canopy. It was blindingly fast. So fast that Hikaru had to fully engage his Sharp Eye Transformation just to track its trajectory. Through the blur of motion, he caught sight of a slender, aerodynamic build, wickedly curved scythe-claws, and crimson vertical slits burning with bloodthirsty fanaticism. A Kamaitachi. But unlike the lesser weasel-demon Kikyo had once slain, this beast was massive, radiating a suffocating aura and moving at speeds that defied physics. An elite Kamaitachi of Tono.
The final figure stepped languidly from the dying twilight. A woman.
Her skin was a terrifying, flawless white, so pale that it seemed to emit its own ghostly luminescence in the dark. She wore a form-fitting, dark blue kimono with a high collar that framed her elegant neck and sharp collarbones. The obi sash was tied dangerously low, cinched tight at the narrowest point of her waist, aggressively accentuating the swell of her breasts and the flare of her hips. The dark silk clung to her curves, trailing down to a hem that swept the frosted earth. With every slow, deliberate step, a side slit revealed flashes of snow-white calves.
Her hair, a cascading waterfall of dark blue, reached her ankles. Fine, razor-sharp ice crystals clung to the ends of the strands, catching the faint moonlight and refracting tiny, blinding prisms into the air. Her face was a masterpiece of cold, unfeeling elegance. Sharp, aristocratic features framed lips tinted a frozen, bruised purple. Her eyes were a haunting, pale ice-blue, swirling with a blinding white light deep within the irises. Merely meeting her gaze sent a violent shudder down the spine.
A Yuki-onna. One of the most feared and revered aristocrats of the Tono yokai.
Three Materialization-grade demons. Some radiating power that easily breached the Eighth Transformation or higher. Three commander-level elites from the legendary Tono clan, standing on the blood-soaked soil of Suruga Province as the final embers of the Twilight Hour died out.
Hikaru stood his ground before his macabre forest of bone spikes, the ragged remnants of his minor yokai trembling behind his cloak. The night wind howled, whipping his pale hair wildly around his shoulders. The Crimson Demon Eyes of his mask locked onto the three threats.
The Great Kappa flanked the left.
The Kamaitachi stalked the right.
The Yuki-onna commanded the center.
He adjusted his grip on Muramasa, his voice a low, deadpan drawl. "The Commanders of Tono, I presume."
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