The Tahōtō.
It was a five-story wooden spirit tower, set within a courtyard deep in the mountains west of Musashi Province.
The tower's body was pitch-black, like old timber steeped in ink, and every pillar, every roof-tile end was carved with densely packed Sanskrit script and curse seals.
There were no walls around the tower, no village, not even beasts willing to draw near.
For half a li in every direction not a single blade of grass grew—only cracked yellow earth and jagged shards of stone.
Living things instinctively feared this place.
Because beneath the tower, something was breathing.
Very slowly.
Very heavily.
Like a heartbeat buried deep underground.
Tsubaki alighted before the tower.
The spatial displacement wrought by the curse had consumed most of her spiritual power; her legs were faintly weak, and her white robe and red hakama were spotted with mud and dew.
She paid it no mind.
She lifted her head and gazed at that pitch-black, five-story spirit tower.
Moonlight fell upon the tower's body, and those ancient spell formulas and curse seals glimmered faintly with a dark golden light—the seal was still running.
But it had already loosened.
The moment she had crushed the unsealing sacred sutra back in Kaede Village, the signal had already been transmitted here.
The first layer of the seal had already cracked open.
Tsubaki stepped forward and pressed her palm against the tower door.
The door was cold.
So cold it did not feel like wood—more like touching a block of ice.
"Master."
She murmured softly, "I'm sorry."
There was no true remorse in it, only a ritualistic farewell.
She formed a seal.
Her hands crossed, ten fingers entwining—that hand seal she had practiced countless times, the Tahōtō's unsealing seal, took shape between her fingers.
Crack.
The sound of the second layer of the seal shattering came from within the tower.
Then came the third layer.
The fourth layer.
With each layer that shattered, the tower's body trembled once, and the golden light of those Sanskrit curse seals dimmed a fraction.
By the fourth layer, the tower door split open on its own.
It was not pushed open.
It was pried apart from the inside, by something.
A chaotic aura, as though blended with countless foul odors, surged out through the crack in the door.
Turbid qi, yin qi, yōkai aura.
And also—demon-qi.
Not the kind belonging to Kibutsuji Muzan—a special existence that emerged through disease, human in essence, merely very much like an evil demon.
But a true yōkai-demon.
And one far stronger than a 'new demon' like Kōbe Hikaru—the yōkai aura of an aged demon of at least five hundred years or more.
So thick it made one want to retch.
Tsubaki took a step back—not out of fear, but simply because—she was waiting.
The final layer of the seal still held.
The core seal her master had forged with a lifetime of spiritual power—even with the first four layers all shattered, this last layer could hold for a while yet.
But not for long.
Because what Tsubaki was about to do would utterly dismantle it from within.
She drew something out from within her robes.
Not a talisman, not a ritual implement.
It was a porcelain vial.
What it held was demon blood—and there was still some left, and no small amount at that.
Only this time, after she pulled out the stopper, she did not pour it out again, but shook it, letting the dark red liquid churn at the mouth of the vial, giving off a pungent, bloody stench.
Then, she brought the vial's mouth to her lips.
And drank it down.
One gulp, two gulps.
Until all of it had passed down her throat.
The instant the demon blood went down her throat, her body began to convulse violently.
That gorgeous face contorted with agony, the upturned arc at the corners of her eyes stretched wider still, and her pupils began to shift from their normal deep brown toward dark red.
On the surface of her skin, blood vessels bulged up like snakes, spreading along her neck to her cheeks.
The demon blood charged and rampaged through her body, trying to transform her—a living human being—into a demon.
Under normal circumstances, such a transformation required the blood of the demon progenitor, Kibutsuji Muzan, to be completed.
The blood of an ordinary demon lacked the concentration; it would only poison a person to death.
But Tsubaki was no ordinary person.
She was a shrine maiden; she possessed spiritual power.
And more, she was well-versed in black witchcraft against people.
She had long ago inscribed a spell formula within her own body, using it as a medium to forcibly guide, suppress, and absorb that twisted power.
Not a complete demon transformation.
But rather—a half-demon transformation.
Retaining her human consciousness and her shrine maiden's spiritual power, while gaining a demon's regenerative ability and physical strength.
The cost was that the demon blood would ceaselessly erode her spiritual power, until at last it was all consumed.
But that was a matter for later.
For now—all she needed was power.
Power enough to open the final layer of the seal, power enough to converse with that evil demon beneath the tower.
Even—power enough to devour it!
Tsubaki knelt before the tower door, both hands braced against the ground.
The demon blood's transformation was still continuing.
Her fingernails began to lengthen, extending from their rounded shape into sharp claws, and behind her lips her teeth gave off a fine grinding sound as her canines drew out longer.
Her white shrine maiden's blouse stretched taut over the swelling flesh at her shoulders and back, the body beneath the cloth being remolded by the demon blood—not the inhuman mutation of a yōkai transformation, but the distortion of a human bloodline.
But her eyes were still lucid.
Within those dark red pupils, reason still remained.
Even the spiritual power that had once been sealed away by Kikyō, in that instant of swelling, broke free of its bindings!
"What do you want?"
A voice came from within the tower.
Low, hoarse, dried out from centuries of slumber.
Like stone grinding against stone.
Tsubaki lifted her head and looked toward the split tower door. In the dark crevice that met her gaze, two points of dark red light flickered.
Those were eyes.
"I want your power."
Tsubaki said, her voice grown raspy from the demon blood's erosion, "In exchange, I'll let you out."
Those two points of red light were silent for a moment.
Then, they laughed.
That laughter came from within the tower, shaking the broken stones on the ground until they jumped.
"A shrine maiden wants to strike a bargain with a demon."
"Interesting."
"Do you know what you're doing?"
"I know."
Tsubaki rose to her feet; the demon blood's transformation had already stabilized.
Her countenance was still that gorgeous face, but her pupils had turned dark red, her canines protruded slightly past her lips, and her fingernails were sharp as claws.
The shrine maiden's garb of white robe and red hakama wrapped around a body half-human, half-demon.
Discordant. Twisted.
Yet instead it held a strange, uncanny allure.
Tsubaki's voice turned cold. "I want your power."
"Your abilities, your yōkai aura, the demonic power you've accumulated over centuries—all of it, fused into my body."
"And your consciousness will be suppressed, sealed, and obliterated by my spiritual power."
"In other words—"
She raised her hand, that hand already turned to sharp talons, and pointed toward the depths of the tower door: "I'm going to eat you."
The red light within the tower flickered once.
The laughter stopped.
After a moment of silence, that voice sounded again: "You think you can hold me down?"
"Try it and we'll find out."
Tsubaki pressed her hand against the tower door.
The final layer of the seal.
Her spiritual power—twisted, chaotic, yet still mighty spiritual power warped by the demon blood—poured into the seal's core.
This was not a simple unsealing, but something far more thorough—a crushing.
With the twin impact of demonic power and a shrine maiden's spiritual power, striking the seal from both within and without at once.
BOOM—!
The tower's body burst apart.
The pitch-black timber exploded in all directions; the golden light of the Sanskrit curse seals flashed one final time in the air, then went out entirely.
Darkness surged forth from the base of the tower.
And close behind it—that is to say, that evil demon sealed away for centuries rose up from the ruins.
When Momiji and Botan arrived, this was the scene that met their eyes.
The Tahōtō had collapsed.
The place where they had grown up since childhood, the spirit tower their master had guarded with his whole life, had become a ground strewn with broken wood and rubble.
And at the center of the ruins, Tsubaki stood.
All around her, black demon-qi and white spiritual power were entangled together, like two snakes biting and tearing at each other.
Her body was absorbing that evil demon's power.
The demon's form gradually crumbled before her, dissolving into a dark red mist that she swallowed into her body, gulp by gulp.
That gorgeous face contorted, dark red radiance flickering in and out of view.
"S-Senior sister..."
Botan's voice broke.
Momiji did not speak.
She merely stood there, watching that collapsed spirit tower.
Watching the lifelong labor of their master turned to nothing.
Her eye sockets were flushed red, but there were no tears—only fury.
"Momiji, Botan."
Kikyō's voice came from behind them.
The shrine maiden in white robe and red hakama held a longbow, standing behind the two young shrine maidens, her pitch-black yet clear and lovely eyes gazing at that twisting mass of light and darkness ahead.
"Fall back."
There was no tone of negotiation in it, merely a simple utterance—it was a command!
Momiji and Botan took half a step back.
Because of Kikyō's overwhelming presence.
And also because—they knew that the battle to come was not one they were of a level to take part in.
Kōbe Hikaru alighted at Kikyō's side.
The lingering echoes of thunder still coiled about him, purple arcs of electricity leaping between his sleeves.
He looked at Tsubaki ahead, the one devouring the evil demon.
The Nekomata's Claw in his arms was trembling violently.
[Nekomata's Claw: favourability +8]
[Current favourability: 80 (Symbiosis)]
[It is excited. It has caught the scent of an extremely rich aura of death—that evil demon devoured the lives of an entire town centuries ago, and the death-qi amassed within it is so thick that it drives the Claw into a frenzy.]
Kōbe Hikaru pressed down on the claw in his arms.
"Don't be hasty."
He murmured softly, "It's not yet time for you to take the field."
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