Chapter 46: One Sword Style
"Ryūjin no ken o kurae."
It was Genji's ultimate line—the dragon blade's call. Kouya and Gabriel had been duo-queuing Overwatch the past few nights, and Genji was his main.
One sword in hand—dominion over all.
Advance, and he could slice through the heart of ten thousand foes with a single flash of steel. Retreat, and he vanished like mist under moonlight. He was speed, precision, and death personified.
Gabriel loved watching him play, munching chips and chanting between bites:
"Big bro, carry me! Carry me!~"
So when he saw the demon's blade mirrored Genji's, the thought was instant: make it real. Kouya gripped the sword and whispered the line again.
"Ryūjin no ken o kurae."
The sword responded.
Violent air currents spiraled around the blade, twisting into a vortex that tore the dust from the ground. Sparks leapt like fireflies as faint threads of light coiled upward, merging into the shimmering outline of a dragon. It wasn't merely an aura—it was alive, breathing, watching.
And in that instant, everything changed.
The world held its breath.
No, not silence. Deathly stillness.
Even the night seemed afraid to move. The song of crickets, the hum of frogs, the whisper of the wind—gone. The air grew thick, viscous, charged with the scent of ozone and blood. The heavens dimmed as if the moon itself turned its face away from what was about to happen.
The red-haired demon felt it instantly. His heart contracted painfully, every instinct shrieking. The pressure behind him was no longer that of a man. It was the aura of a calamity.
"That power… what is he!?"
He didn't hesitate. He ran.
Each step cracked the courtyard stones beneath his feet, every muscle straining, every breath a gasp of panic. The ground quaked as he sprinted across the shrine like a beast fleeing a god. But no matter how fast he ran, the fear only deepened. His lungs burned, his heart hammered, and still it grew—an unstoppable, smothering dread.
It was the feeling of standing before an endless flood. The kind that devoured mountains, cities, souls.
Then came the sound.
A roar—not of a man, not of a beast, but something beyond comprehension. Majestic. Terrifying. Holy.
The red demon twisted around, and his blood ran cold.
A translucent dragon of pure light tore through the sky, its body hundreds of meters long, its every movement trailing silver fire. Its eyes burned with golden fury, and its scales shimmered like the reflection of stars on black water. It descended with the weight of divine judgment, the air splitting under its might.
It didn't move fast. It didn't need to. It was inevitability given form.
"Damn it! DAMN IT!!"
The demon screamed. He could feel death pressing on him like the edge of a blade.
He stopped running and gathered his power, roaring so loud the ground fractured. From his open mouth poured a torrent of souls—hundreds of wailing wraiths clad in spectral armor, their faces twisted in agony. They rushed forward, forming a wall of vengeful soldiers that filled the courtyard with screams.
At the same time, his body expanded, muscles twisting like molten steel, veins bulging under skin that glowed crimson. He towered nearly three meters tall, a demon forged from rage itself. Raising a fist the size of a boulder, he struck upward, roaring defiance.
It was useless.
The dragon struck.
The wraiths were vaporized instantly, vanishing like mist before sunlight. His mighty punch collided with the dragon's snout—and shattered. The force tore through his arm, his chest, his soul.
A single, clean sound followed—sharp and soft, like paper being sliced.
The demon's roar stopped. His face froze in horror, eyes wide, mouth open but silent. The light in his pupils faded.
A soft night breeze swept across the courtyard.
And then, slowly, his body began to turn to dust. Ash drifted from his skin like burned paper. The wind carried him away grain by grain until there was nothing left but emptiness.
"Target defeated." Kouya's tone was flat as he lowered the sword.
He slid the blade back into its scabbard. A faint metallic click echoed through the air.
Once the dragon blade was drawn, the result was already decided.
"So amazing, meow~!" Rina's voice broke the silence, soft and syrupy. Her golden eyes sparkled like lanterns.
Kouya turned, brow twitching, to see her grinning wide, her tail wagging happily behind her like a metronome. "Let's go save Onee-sama, meow!" she said, grabbing his sleeve.
"…That 'meow' thing again," Kouya muttered, sighing. "You don't have to say that every time."
"Because I'm a catgirl, meow~," Rina said innocently, tapping her cheek with a finger. A faint blush colored her face. "And the catgirls in manga always talk like that, meow!"
"That's not a catgirl, that's a traumatized heroine from that damn H-manga you read!"
Rina only giggled, curling her fingers into paws beside her face in a beckoning pose. "If Master likes it, I can do that pose too~ meow!"
Kouya nearly coughed up blood. "You're actually quoting it! Word for word! That's not cute, that's—no, forget it! You'd break if I even tried that!"
Rina tilted her head. "But Onee-sama said learning should be serious, meow~."
"Serious my ass!" Kouya barked, pinching his nose. "That's not education—that's degeneracy! You should've flushed that filth down the toilet and buried it in the Mariana Trench!"
Rina just stuck out her tongue playfully. "Too late, meow~."
…
Meanwhile.
In the shrine's rear courtyard, tension hung thick as mist.
"How much longer can you last, little Ruri? Let me guess—three minutes? No, maybe five?" The woman's voice was honeyed and mocking, her movements graceful as she circled Chiba Ruri like a cat stalking a wounded bird.
Ruri's breathing was heavy, her fingers twitching as she struggled to maintain control over her spirits. The ground around her was scorched from the clash of energies.
The woman's smirk faltered. Her expression changed sharply as she turned her head. A streak of black mist came whistling from the night sky, slamming into the ground and merging with her shadow.
"It's Seikyū—she's seriously injured!" she said in shock.
"What?" The man beside her frowned deeply. "That young man did it?"
The catgirl was only a support-type spirit. There was no way she could harm Seikyū so severely.
"What kind of shikigami does he use?" he asked.
"None." The woman's eyes narrowed. "According to Seikyū's report, he didn't summon anything. He just hit her. Once. And that was enough."
The man's calm cracked for the first time. "Impossible. Even the strongest onmyouji rely on spirits. Physically, they're no more than humans."
"Unless…" she murmured. "He's fused with something."
Before the man could reply, a sharp crack split the air.
Both turned. The man raised his hand—and in his palm lay the jade pendant that bound the red demon.
Or rather, what was left of it.
The once-glowing talisman was dull now, a single fracture running across its heart. The light within flickered once, then died. The crack widened, spreading like veins of ice, until the entire pendant shattered in his hand with a sound like breaking bone.
The woman gasped. "That's… the soul vessel. The demon's anchor!"
She knew its story. Centuries ago, a warrior of demonic blood had gone mad with slaughter, dying in defiance as his blood soaked the pendant. From that death was born a spirit of vengeance—the red demon.
And now, it was gone.
Not sealed.
Not banished.
Dead.
The silence was total. Even the shikigami clashing nearby stopped, turning instinctively toward the faint echo of that destruction.
"What do we do?" the woman whispered, voice trembling despite herself.
The man's jaw tightened. "We've already invested too much. If we retreat now, everything we've planned collapses. We finish this."
"Capture Ruri before he arrives. Once she's ours, his strength won't matter."
"Understood." Her eyes hardened, all playfulness gone.
Ruri's control faltered. Two more enemy spirits entered the fray, turning the fight from two-on-two into a crushing two-on-four. Her spiritual light flickered, her breath ragged.
A mantis-like warrior shikigami lunged, its twin blades flashing cold under the moon.
"You've lost," the woman sneered.
But her words died in her throat.
Because the night itself split apart.
A dragon—massive, blinding, divine—roared across the heavens, swallowing the darkness whole.
"Ryūjin no ken o kurae!!!"