Two blades met in midair.
Sparks erupted.
One was a mass-produced replica of the legendary Muramasa. The other looked like corroded scrap — and yet the result was damning: Kōbe Hikaru, the one holding Muramasa, was thrown back three full steps, his hands going numb to the bone.
The gap in raw power was enormous.
The Hannya-Mask Ghost Warrior's six Changes were not for show. Each Change represented a qualitative leap in a demon's base attributes — and at least two of this creature's Changes had clearly been invested in pure strength enhancement. That was the only explanation. Kōbe Hikaru possessed the Bowman's Mutation, which had already doubled the force in his upper limbs — and even he couldn't stop it.
When two demons of the same class fought, even a single Change's difference translated to a chasm in real combat.
"Is that all you've got?"
The Hannya-Mask Ghost Warrior's voice came from behind the mask, dripping with contempt. "And here I thought you were bold, crawling in among us. You really have no idea how to die properly."
It swung again.
This stroke was faster than the last. Heavier.
Kōbe Hikaru barely caught it. The impact nearly wrenched both arms out of their sockets.
His body launched backward, heels dragging furrows in the earth for several meters before he managed to arrest his momentum and force himself upright.
The Hannya-Mask Ghost Warrior gave a cold laugh — and vanished.
Fast.
Not speed alone. This was explosive propulsion — leg muscles detonating in a single instant. This thing's legs had clearly taken a Change too.
Kōbe Hikaru's pupils contracted. The Razor-Eye Mutation — earned from a fully-bonded dagger — fired to full capacity, clawing at the afterimages hanging in the air.
Left!
He raised Muramasa on instinct.
But in the next instant —
The Hannya-Mask Ghost Warrior's swinging arm made a sharp, wet crack in midair. The wrist joint dislocated — then, in plain sight, stretched. Surged.
An arm that had been perfectly normal in length had extended by three full feet out of nowhere.
Cartilage elongation.
That sudden extension put the attack range far beyond anything Kōbe Hikaru had anticipated. The long blade looped around Muramasa's guard line like a striking viper and drove hard into his ribs.
"Damn it—"
He bit down and activated Spearman's Core Mutation. His upper body folded backward at an angle no human spine could ever achieve.
Extreme. Fluid. Bending like a drawn lance.
Shhkk——
The rusted blade raked across his chest armor. The corroded plating — already cracked and broken — began to smoke the instant it contacted the blade's miasma, sizzling like flesh doused in acid, rapidly rotting and softening.
Pain drove through him like a spike.
Kōbe Hikaru rolled to the side in an ugly scramble and dropped to one knee.
A scorched black wound now marked his chest.
[Cursed Blade Muramasa: Mood shifted to 'TERRIFIED.' It conveys a message: 'That rusted blade is poisonous — it'll make me go dull. I refuse to touch that thing!']
"Shut up. I don't want to touch it either."
Kōbe Hikaru spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. Demon blood — not the red of a human's, but a murky grey-black.
He ran a rapid inventory of what he'd learned from these last few exchanges.
At least two Changes in the arms. Strength off the charts.
One Change in the legs. Speed that left afterimages.
A poison-miasma Change from body to blood — corrosive on contact.
A bone-extension Change — attack range completely unpredictable.
And those eyes. Ash-grey irises that occasionally flashed with a cold inner light. Clearly another Change.
Six Changes.
A near-perfect counter to his five.
And what made it worse — Kikyō couldn't spare him a hand right now.
From the direction of the barrier, three consecutive explosions rolled across the night air.
The One-Horned Oni's spiked club, the Giant Python's toxic mist, the Three-Eyed Crow's demon-light — all three striking simultaneously. The barrier had cracked again.
Kikyō was pouring everything she had into the repair.
Her spiritual reserves were still deep — but her stamina was draining at an accelerating rate. Maintaining the barrier. Firing purifying arrows into the demon swarm. Covering Kōbe Hikaru. Three simultaneous operations — already at her limit. With three elite demons now hammering the barrier in coordinated assault on top of everything else, she had nothing left to spare on this front.
Kōbe Hikaru knew that.
So he didn't wait for her support.
At least not in this fight. He had only himself.
"Interesting."
The Hannya-Mask Ghost Warrior raised the rusted tachi. Thick demon-qi erupted from the blade in a rolling surge.
"I haven't met one of my own kind in a long time."
"Let's see how hard your bones actually are."
It charged.
Kōbe Hikaru moved to meet it.
Not because he believed he could win.
Because he had no way to retreat.
If he fell back, the Hannya-Mask Ghost Warrior would turn its attention to the barrier. Four elite demons assaulting it simultaneously — the barrier would not hold. He had to keep this one pinned here. Even fifteen minutes would be enough. Buy Kikyō time.
Clang——!
The two blades collided again. Kōbe Hikaru staggered back five steps, grey-black blood spilling from the corner of his mouth.
But he held his footing. He raised Muramasa again.
The Hannya-Mask Ghost Warrior pressed forward, rusted tachi sweeping horizontal.
Kōbe Hikaru didn't try to block — he knew absorbing the impact head-on would drain him faster.
[Phantom Step].
His silhouette vanished. He reappeared at the enemy's right-rear. The blade drove forward — aimed at the small of its back.
"Parlor tricks."
The Hannya-Mask Ghost Warrior didn't even turn its head. Its left hand swung backward. The arm elongated, whipping out like a flail, lashing directly at Kōbe Hikaru's face.
Kōbe Hikaru snapped his head back. Spearman's Core Mutation folded his upper body into another impossible angle, the strike passing inches from his chin.
His own thrust landed wide.
Both combatants disengaged. A standoff, reset.
Kōbe Hikaru was breathing — a reflex his Ghost Warrior body technically didn't require, but the rapid expenditure of demon-qi had pushed it out of him anyway.
In that brief lull, he used the blood-mist drifting across the battlefield and began studying every detail of the Hannya-Mask Ghost Warrior with deliberate, methodical focus.
[Resonance with Blood] was still active.
Every droplet scattered on the ground, drifting in the air — each one was his eye. The Hannya-Mask Ghost Warrior's breathing rhythm — or rather, the ebb and flow of its demon-qi, which followed a similar pattern — every muscle contraction, every shift in its center of gravity, fed into him from every angle simultaneously.
Its left knee carried an old injury.
The movement there was marginally stiffer than everywhere else. Not obvious — nearly impossible to catch without observing from multiple angles at once through the blood-mist.
But Kōbe Hikaru had caught it.
This, too, was natural. Ghost Warriors were born from the obsessions of powerful human warriors — their spirits clinging to armor or a corpse, refusing to pass on. And most of them carried the wounds of their deaths. The wounds that had killed them in life.
Kōbe Hikaru's eyes narrowed.
There's an opening.
But knowing the weak point wasn't enough. With his current strength, even knowing exactly where to strike, landing a killing blow in a single hit was a tall order. This creature had completed all six Changes of Physical Transformation — it hadn't broken through to Essence Transformation yet, but it stood at the absolute pinnacle of its current stage. Its defense was no joke.
He needed an opportunity.
One opportunity sufficient to break the deadlock.
And that opportunity —
Hmmm——
The Shikon Jewel at his chest suddenly trembled.
[Shikon Jewel — Naohi conveys a message: 'She's almost free.']
Naohi was actually warning him?
And — Kikyō?
The thought struck him like a spark. Kōbe Hikaru's gaze shot past the Hannya-Mask Ghost Warrior's shoulder in a rapid sweep toward the barrier.
The three elite demons — the One-Horned Oni, the Giant Python, the Three-Eyed Crow — were still hammering away at it.
But the fractures in the barrier had been fully repaired.
Kikyō stood on the stone steps. Her left hand maintained the barrier's seal. Her right hand —
Had closed around her bow.
She was waiting.
Waiting for the right moment. Waiting for Kōbe Hikaru to create that moment.
"Understood."
Kōbe Hikaru drew in a long, slow breath — or rather, his demon-qi did.
He knew exactly what to do now.
He didn't need to win this fight alone. He only needed to create an opening. Expose the Hannya-Mask Ghost Warrior's weak point — expose it to a shrine maiden who was moments away from having a hand free, and ensure she could strike true even while managing everything else at once.
Then —
He'd open the wound. She'd purify what remained.
One clean sequence.
That was enough.
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