The fusion had failed—at least, it hadn't succeeded in the way Tsubaki had envisioned.
She had underestimated that evil Demon.
She had also made a fatal mistake. She'd believed that Kibutsuji Muzan's demon blood could help her suppress the evil Demon sealed beneath the Tahōtō.
She'd thought it was a genuinely workable plan.
Over the month she'd spent studying that demon blood, she had discovered that the terrifying regenerative power it granted was something she could turn to her own use.
As long as she could maintain her sense of self while wielding it.
She could even still channel spiritual power.
With spiritual power, combined with this force, she should have had a fair measure of certainty—enough to suppress the evil Demon beneath the Tahōtō.
But the truth proved she had overthought it.
With demon blood surging through her body, maintaining complete control was nearly impossible.
At the very least, she couldn't do it.
And the mere power of a 'human-demon' derived from Kibutsuji Muzan—a thing that was not truly a yōkai—was nothing more than cattle waiting for slaughter before the evil Demon beneath the Tahōtō.
That was a yōkai.
A mighty evil Demon sealed for centuries, nearly a thousand years.
And so, here and now.
The instant Tsubaki tried to lock down the Demon's consciousness, she was struck by the backlash—directly, brutally.
BOOM!
A muffled roar exploded from that tangled mass of light and shadow.
Tsubaki's body was hurled backward, crashing into a heap of rubble.
She coughed up a mouthful of blood.
Dark red—not the bright crimson of a living person's blood, but the dim color of blood steeped in demon blood.
"Heh... heh heh..."
Tsubaki struggled to push herself upright, those eyes that had already turned dark red brimming with resentment.
But her attention was quickly seized by something else.
In the ruins before her, black mist churned.
That evil Demon—she had not devoured it.
Instead, it had wrested a portion of the demon blood's power from within her, and combined with its own true power released upon being unsealed, it was now reconstituting its form.
The black mist contracted, compressed, solidified.
An outline began to emerge.
Very tall.
A full nine feet.
Humanoid, but not human.
Its skin was crimson red, like molten lava.
Its limbs were long and slender, and each hand had six fingers, every one of them twice the length of a normal person's, the claws at their tips glinting with black light.
Its head was hairless; on the bare skull, two eye sockets were sunken deep, dark red radiance spilling out from within them.
Its mouth split from left ear to right, upper and lower rows of teeth interlocking, no lips at all—only dark, everted flesh.
It wore no clothing.
On its crimson body, a massive cavity was visible in the chest—the wound left when it had been sealed centuries ago, still unhealed to this day.
Inside the cavity, dark red walls of flesh writhed slowly, as if something were being gestated within.
This was the evil Demon sealed beneath the Tahōtō.
A monstrous, evil Demon that centuries ago had devoured an entire town of several thousand people.
The Crimson Evil Demon!
Kōbe Hikaru watched this scene, yet the expression beneath the oni mask held little surprise.
He even felt a slight urge to laugh.
Devouring the evil Demon beneath the Tahōtō.
In the stories Kōbe Hikaru had read before crossing over, Tsubaki had indeed done something similar—and succeeded. But back then, she'd held the Shikon Jewel in her hands.
The power of the Shikon Jewel was the true key to suppressing all malevolent consciousness.
Without the Shikon Jewel, relying only on a shrine maiden's spiritual power plus a few mouthfuls of demon blood, she'd hoped to devour a centuries-old monstrous Demon?
Dream on.
The human-demons Kibutsuji Muzan created weren't as powerful, nor as useful, as she'd imagined!
Using the blood of one of Muzan's human-demons to fuse with a monstrous Demon—it was like taking a cup of water to put out a wildfire, and the water still smelled of gasoline.
Far from suppressing the enemy, it only served up nourishment to it.
So in this moment, Kōbe Hikaru was not the least bit surprised.
So at this point.
He truly, genuinely, was not startled in the slightest.
Even as he reveled in her misfortune, he only found it terribly troublesome.
Because two kinds of power had merged within this evil Demon.
The yōkai aura of the monstrous Demon, plus the undying regeneration of the human-demon.
It had become a monster of no proper category.
Both a yōkai, and not entirely a yōkai.
It stood at the center of the ruins, its gray-white body appearing especially ghastly under the moonlight, the cavity in its chest seeming to writhe with buds of flesh.
Those two deep-sunken eye sockets rotated slowly, sweeping over everyone present.
Then, it moved.
Not to attack.
But—to inhale.
It opened that mouth split to the roots of its ears and drew a deep, deep breath.
The scent of demon blood lingering in the air—all of it was pulled into its body.
To it, this too was genuinely, purely, nourishment!
Its body began to swell.
Beneath the crimson skin, muscle grew wildly.
Its nine-foot height stretched to a full ten feet within a few breaths, and the writhing of that cavity in its chest accelerated.
On the dark red walls of flesh, new tissue began to grow.
It was absorbing the demon blood, absorbing every power related to 'demon.'
Turning it to its own use.
"This is..."
Momiji's voice trembled.
She had seen the notes in which her master described this evil Demon.
Now, though it had endured centuries of sealing and its condition seemed far diminished from before, it was still terrifying.
Immensely terrifying and powerful.
"We cannot let it keep absorbing."
Kikyō's voice was cold and clear as frost.
She had already drawn her bow.
Three arrows were nocked between her fingers, spiritual power condensing at their tips—not the sealing and purification she'd used earlier against low-level demons, but a pure, maximum-output Sacred Arrow.
Against a monstrous Demon of this caliber, ordinary techniques were useless.
What was needed was absolute destructive force.
Shatter it before it could keep swelling.
Then, before the fragments could recombine, shatter it again and again, until its power was exhausted.
The string sang.
Three arrows loosed at once.
White light tore across the night sky, striking straight for three points on the evil Demon—its skull, the cavity in its chest, and its knee joint—three vital points that had to be hit simultaneously to weaken its mobility to the greatest degree.
They struck home.
White light burst.
The gray-white body was pierced by all three arrows at once—the skull shattered, the chest cavity blasted into an even larger hole by spiritual power, the left knee blown clean off at the root.
The Demon's upper body toppled backward, shredded flesh spraying.
But—
It did not fall.
At the severed knee, new bone and muscle regrew in the blink of an eye.
The shattered skull completed its reconstruction before the fragments of flesh even hit the ground, that mouth split to the ears cracking open once more.
The residual spiritual power in the chest cavity was swallowed up by the dark red walls of flesh, assimilated before its purification could even complete.
The purifying effect of the spiritual power had only worked halfway.
The yōkai aura portion was purified; that demonic yōkai power born of the world's foul miasma was indeed weakened, suppressed, and dispersed under the spiritual power of the Sacred Arrow.
But the regeneration did not stop.
That twisted life force from Muzan's blood was utterly unaffected by spiritual power, wildly filling in the void where the yōkai aura had been purified, growing the destroyed tissue right back.
Spiritual power shattered its yōkai aura.
The human-demon's regeneration patched it back together.
Then the yōkai aura reconstituted, coating the regenerated flesh.
An endless loop.
"Just as I thought." Kikyō's brow furrowed slightly.
She had seen it.
The spiritual power was not entirely without effect—it truly did consume this Demon's yōkai aura; every arrow could weaken its yōkai portion.
But that regenerative force would patch the flesh back, and as long as the flesh remained, the yōkai aura would reconstitute.
To truly kill it, ordinary means were already impossible.
Whether spiritual power's purification, or anything else.
Because human and yōkai complemented each other, forming a cycle.
But now was not the time for thinking.
Because the evil Demon had already moved.
The towering ten-foot crimson body took a step forward, and the ground cracked beneath its feet.
Six-fingered claws swept horizontally.
The speed was not fast—far slower, at least, than Kibōmaru.
But the power was astonishing, and the sheer pressure it exerted even approached that of Kibōmaru, that Shinra evil Demon who had honed his speed to perfection.
The gust raised by that single claw swept away all the rubble around it, like an invisible wall bearing down.
Yet, in that very instant.
Kōbe Hikaru had already blocked in front.
In wordless, instinctive coordination, Muramasa left its sheath, bone spikes burst through the armor of his left arm, crossing to block.
CLANG!
Metal shrieked against metal, bone collided with claw.
Kōbe Hikaru's body slid back three steps, the ground beneath his feet plowed into two furrows.
"Heavy."
He spat out the single word.
This Demon's pure strength was no less than Kibōmaru's, and though its speed was far inferior, every blow was like being struck by a small mountain.
But—
The [Thunder-Sinew Razor-Body] was set in motion.
Purple arcs of lightning erupted from Kōbe Hikaru's entire body, conducting along the bone spikes to that gray-white claw.
Zzzt—!
Thunder exploded across the Demon's arm.
The crimson evil Demon's skin was scorched by the arcs, muscle fibers rupturing.
Effective.
Thunder was physical destruction, not spiritual power.
Though the regeneration still proceeded, its speed had visibly slowed—the sustained searing of the thunder was interfering with the process of regeneration.
"Kikyō!"
The string sang. Fire.
The fourth arrow.
This arrow did not aim for the Demon's body.
Instead it flew toward the ground.
The moment the arrow struck earth, spiritual power exploded, transforming into a barrier with a radius of fifty feet—a pale blue net of light rose up from the ground, coiling around the evil Demon's legs.
Spiritual power could not kill it, but it could hold it back.
Even if only for a few seconds.
Kōbe Hikaru seized those few seconds.
[Bone Soul Transformation] at full power.
White bone spikes surged wildly from the earth beneath its feet, piercing through the evil Demon's calves, thighs, waist and abdomen, nailing it in place.
The bone spikes were constantly forced out and snapped by its regenerative force, but new bone spikes immediately bored up from deeper within to replace them.
Kikyō's barrier binding worked in tandem with Kōbe Hikaru's bone-spike fixation.
One locked down its movement from the outside, the other pinned its body from within.
Two entirely different methods achieved a perfect coordinated effect at the very same moment.
The evil Demon let out an enraged shriek.
It struggled, it tore, that mouth split to the ears spewing out murky black mist.
But it was pressed in place.
For now.
"Physical damage works on it."
Kōbe Hikaru analyzed swiftly in the gaps of battle. "Spiritual power can only weaken its yōkai aura layer, but it can't hold down the regeneration."
"We need to find another way." Kikyō's voice came from behind him.
She had nocked another arrow, but did not loose it right away.
She only watched that Demon with those jet-black eyes.
"Its regeneration doesn't come from yōkai power."
Kikyō said, "It's what you spoke of before—the blood originating from that so-called progenitor of demons."
Kōbe Hikaru gripped Muramasa tightly.
He had read the original work thoroughly, so of course he understood Kibutsuji Muzan's curse.
And that curse's only weakness—
He raised his head, looking toward the eastern horizon.
Darkness.
Thick layers of cloud obscured everything.
But at the edge of those clouds, there was a faint, almost invisible trace of gray-white.
That was—the first glimmer before dawn.
In less than an hour.
The sun would rise.
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