Three days.
It took Kōbe Hikaru three full days to cross from the mountains to the other side — several ranges of peaks, end to end.
Not because his legs were slow. The problem was the sheer number of things trying to stop him.
The Shikon Jewel's aura was like a signal tower that never went dark. Every few li of road, it called in a new wave of demons. Big ones, small ones, strong ones and weak ones, lone stragglers and entire packs. Every breed and variety imaginable.
Most had come specifically for the jewel. Some had simply been passing nearby and gotten pulled in by the scent. And a few had heard the dying screams of their kin, rushed over to investigate, and promptly added their own screams to the chorus.
In short: it had been an extraordinarily difficult three days to hold himself together.
Kōbe Hikaru had long since lost count of how many he'd killed. All he knew was this —
[Cursed Blade Muramasa: Current Affection — 72]
Three days. Twenty-two points of affection gained on the weapon. Not a spectacular rate, but admirably consistent.
And now, at this moment —
Right now.
"Almost there."
Kōbe Hikaru stood at the crest of a hill and looked out over the plains stretching below.
The vista that greeted him was vast and open — a complete sensory shift from the endless mountain ridges he'd been crawling through. A canopy of green spread beneath the darkening sky, grasses and treetops swaying in the evening wind. And there, at the far edge of his vision, clustered together along the horizon: dozens of thatched-roof wooden houses, gathered into a settlement that was small by any measure — a handful of families at most — yet unmistakably the kind of human village most common to this era.
Dusk had come. The sun was sinking in the west.
The hour when demons walked.
The village's perimeter was ringed by a wooden stockade fence. Strips of warding talismans hung from the posts, catching the last of the sunlight and giving off a faint, quiet glow.
At the village's center stood a shrine. A red torii gate rose among the sweeping green boughs of an enormous sacred tree, vivid and unmistakable even from this distance.
That was Musashi. The domain the dying old man had named. The destination of the demon-slayer clan chief's last breath.
The place where Kikyō was.
"Finally."
Kōbe Hikaru let out a long, slow breath.
He hadn't rested in three days. A Ghost Warrior's body didn't know fatigue — but demon-qi expenditure was very much real. If he kept burning through it at this rate, he wouldn't need a demon to kill him. He'd hollow himself out from the inside, and a corpse that runs on demon-qi, drained completely dry, would simply drop where it stood. And collapsing in the middle of the wilderness had a rather obvious outcome.
He'd made it, though. He'd held on.
And more importantly: he'd arrived.
He took a few steps down the hillside, gaze sweeping across the plain below.
Then his footsteps stopped.
No. Something was wrong.
Around that village —
There were things.
A great many things.
Kōbe Hikaru's pupils contracted sharply.
[Razor-Eye Mutation] activated. The distant scene snapped into focus — magnified, sharpened, dragged close.
In front of the wooden stockade that ringed the village, a dense mass of silhouettes crouched and swarmed. Grey-green. Dark red. Blue-black. Blue-Skin Fiends, Cyclops Fiends, serpent-body spirits, bird-headed horrors, centipede wraiths — every breed and color of demon, packed together like a tide, surrounding the village on all sides without a single gap.
Viewed from the hilltop, it looked like a writhing, filthy smear of grey-green sludge — churning and alive — with the tiny village swallowed at its center.
Rough estimate —
Three hundred?
No.
Five hundred?
Still no.
"…At least seven or eight hundred."
The corner of Kōbe Hikaru's mouth twitched.
This was worse than the mob that had hunted the old man three days ago. It was almost the sum total of every demon he had encountered on the entire journey here, all assembled in one place.
But that wasn't even the worst part.
The worst part was — they were already attacking.
The demon swarm surged in from all directions, their shrieks and howls shaking the air. Attacks poured down like a storm: bone clubs hammering, claws tearing, venom spraying, waves of raw demon-qi crashing against the barrier in an endless barrage.
And against that overwhelming, all-consuming assault — what held them back was a single light.
A pale, translucent barrier. Hemispherical, encasing the shrine at the village's center and everything within twenty zhang of it.
Inside the barrier: clear air, clean sky.
Outside the barrier: the stench of demon-qi, thick enough to taste.
Two worlds separated by a membrane of light. Not even close to the same space.
"Is that… a barrier?"
Kōbe Hikaru stared at the curtain of light, inwardly shaken.
Three months ago, the demon-slayer clan chief had displayed something similar — a membrane of spiritual power wrapped around his own body for protection. But that film of light had covered a single person at most, and it hadn't been able to hold for long before it collapsed.
This barrier covered a range of twenty zhang. It enclosed the entire shrine and dozens of villagers within its dome.
And under the frenzied assault of seven or eight hundred demons, it hadn't budged. Not so much as a tremor.
Shhk——!
A sharp streak of white light shot out from inside the barrier.
A demon-breaking arrow — the purifying weapon shrine maidens were known for, saturated with spiritual power tuned specifically to annihilate demonic energy, capable of cleansing any corruption it touched. It punched straight through the barrier's surface without the slightest resistance and struck a Blue-Skin Fiend in the act of clawing its way up the barrier's outer shell.
The fiend screamed. It turned to ash.
The barrier appeared to be one-directional. It blocked everything coming in from outside, but placed no obstacle on anything going out.
A second arrow flew. A third. A fourth. Each one released in rapid succession, each one screaming through the air and striking at least one demon dead-on. Every demon hit died on the spot — not merely cut down, but detonated from the inside out, completely annihilated.
Bowstring. Arrow. Impact. Erasure.
One smooth, seamless sequence, repeated without pause.
In the span of thirty seconds, more than twenty demons had fallen to those arrows.
Kōbe Hikaru's gaze cut through the layered mass of demon silhouettes and found the center of the barrier.
The stone steps leading up to the shrine.
A figure stood there.
White kosode. Red hakama. Black hair falling like a river in the dark.
Her hands were pressed together, eyes half-closed, lips moving in the soft, continuous rhythm of an incantation. Pale white spiritual power poured off her in an unbroken stream, feeding the barrier that held the entire village.
At her right side rested a bow and a quiver of arrows.
Every few seconds, she would open her eyes. One hand would reach for the bow. An arrow would fly.
She didn't even need to fully open her eyes. Her spiritual power sense alone was enough to pinpoint every demon in the horde, without exception.
Kōbe Hikaru didn't need to think about it. He recognized her instantly.
Kikyō.
And beneath her bowstring, within the gaze of those serene, half-open eyes — the demons that screamed and roared and threw themselves at the barrier with everything they had were nothing more than moths.
Moths throwing themselves at a flame.
"So this is the strongest shrine maiden of the Warring States era…"
Kōbe Hikaru murmured.
The demon-slayer clan chief had been, until now, the most powerful human practitioner of spiritual power he had ever seen in person. That man had been capable of generating a barrier from his own body alone — among human onmyōji and sorcerers, that already placed him in the upper tier. Ordinary practitioners needed ritual altars, ceremonies, and in many cases the assistance of shikigami just to deploy any kind of barrier at all.
But even so — compared to Kikyō, the difference was between a firefly and the full moon.
One person. A barrier covering twenty zhang. The entire village — elders, children, every last soul — sheltered inside.
And at the same time, a continuous stream of purifying arrows pouring outward in counterattack.
Offense and defense, simultaneously, without compromise.
The degree of power was simply absurd.
And yet — he also understood something else clearly. The shrine maiden standing before him was, in all likelihood, not yet at her peak. Not the Kikyō he remembered at her absolute strongest. She could still grow.
She could become even more than this.
But even so —
Seven or eight hundred demons.
Even if most of them were rabble, sheer numbers had a way of overcoming anything. Enough ants could kill an elephant.
And furthermore —
Kōbe Hikaru's gaze swept across the demon horde and caught, near the front lines, a handful of silhouettes that were visibly, unmistakably different from the rest.
Those were not small fry.
Those were the real threat.
But he had no time to study those particular presences in detail.
Because he had something more pressing to attend to first.
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