The last hammer stroke fell.
The pattern in the billet had set — dark red veins winding across the surface of the metal, like blood vessels, like tree roots, running from the cutting edge up to the spine of the blade and gathering at last into the tang.
The rough form of a demon blade.
Yes. And this, too, was still only a rough form.
Something was still missing.
Kobe Hikaru held the iron hammer, crimson demon eyes fixed on the billet on the anvil.
His second talent, Will-Reading, projected the billet's inner state into his perception with perfect clarity—
The concentration of heart-intent was high enough. The purity was fine as well. The cognition and will carried in those full-favourability fragments had been forged flawlessly into the structure of the metal.
What was missing wasn't material.
What was missing was direction.
Taigen Sessai had said it: all methods return to one. Find the single point toward which all six transformations pointed.
Totosai had said it too. Kobe Hikaru's will had not yet taken shape, and what the blade soul fed on from him was only a half-finished thing.
Two different men, standing at two different angles, pointing at the same conclusion.
He had not yet found his own principle.
The first spoke of the truth of Kobe Hikaru's own existence; the second, of the heart-intent with which he swung his yokai aura.
One is housed within. One takes its stand without.
Different in essence.
But arriving at the same place by different roads.
So this blade — could only come this far.
Even so, it was very close. It was already a demon blade infinitely near its complete form, already able to bear his yokai aura perfectly, the Asura Mutation included.
It simply wasn't perfect yet.
If he could take one more step, what came off the anvil would not merely be a demon blade capable of carrying all of Kobe Hikaru — it would be a blade yokai, a thing that could grow stronger of its own will, the way yokai do.
A Tsukumogami. A demon blade princess.
These seven days had not been wasted.
Kobe Hikaru set the hammer down.
The instant the haft left his palm, the faint glow along the hammer's face drew slowly inward, like a beast settling after a full meal.
"In the end it's still one breath short. You hit the goal you set at the start, boy, but it isn't perfect."
Totosai squatted at the edge of the forge, bulging eyes fixed on the billet for a long while, every wrinkle in his face screwed into a knot.
There was regret in his voice.
This truly was what Kobe Hikaru had set out for. All he had wanted was a stronger demon blade that could bear the whole of his power, and the Muramasa lying there now was a complete demon blade in every sense.
But how could Totosai fail to see that this blade could go further still?
He stood, took two strides on his short legs to the side of the anvil, bent low over the surface of the billet — and just as he opened his mouth, the words died on his tongue.
His bulging eyes snapped around to Kobe Hikaru.
He had felt it.
The ground underfoot was shaking.
Not the ordinary tremor of the forge fire, so common in this place. Not the surge of magma inside a small volcano.
It was — yokai aura.
Yokai aura pouring out of Kobe Hikaru's body.
The density of it was climbing at a violent rate.
"Damn it all—"
Totosai backed off three steps on instinct, his stunted frame slamming into the corner of the forge, the hammer nearly slipping out of his hand.
Myoga was faster. The flea had already shot back into the depths of a crack in the rock before Totosai spoke, leaving only two beady eyes showing.
"Lord Totosai! He — he's getting stronger—!"
"I can see that! Shut up!"
Yokai aura seeped from the surface of Kobe Hikaru's skin.
Not an eruption. Not a rampage.
This was absorption.
Every talent unlocked when the iron hammer's favourability hit its maximum of one hundred was now merging into his body according to the system's mechanics.
Hammer Sense. Will-Reading. Self-Kindled Forge Fire.
Three talents flooding in at once.
The first, Hammer Sense, ran along his palms — along the extraordinary arm strength and superb control granted by the Transformation of the Spirit-Chasing Archer — soaked into bone, and became one with it.
The second, Will-Reading, ran along his perception, along the soul-seizing lock-on system of the Transformation of the Spirit-Chasing Archer, poured into his mind and overlapped with the automatic tagging function of his yokai aura membrane.
The third, Self-Kindled Forge Fire—
That talent was the key.
Self-Kindled Forge Fire.
Its effect: the bearer can generate forge-grade yokai fire within his own body, its temperature and purity determined by the strength of his yokai power.
Fire.
Not the corpse-fire of the Firefly-Fire Mutation, which was in essence induced from the evaporating breath of the dead — this was the second elemental force Kobe Hikaru genuinely possessed, the element of his second transformation.
The second element, after Thunder Metamorphosis.
Yokai fire welled up out of his blood vessels.
The sensation was nothing like the fusion of the Thunder Horn back then. Thunder Metamorphosis had been completed under the yin-yang reconciliation of Kikyo's spiritual power, with a kiss as the medium — brutal at the outset, but gentle and steady after.
The Fire Mutation was brutal from beginning to end, with not the slightest soothing or tempering.
Centuries of forge fire accumulated in that iron hammer began spreading along his veins the moment it entered him. It did not merely cling to the surface of his blood; it soaked into the blood itself and changed its nature.
Blood Mutation — the mutation of blood that had let him become blood mist, that had given him sense and Bloodlust Berserk Frenzy — underwent a fundamental change under the infusion of yokai fire.
The temperature of his blood rose.
From ordinary warmth to scalding, from scalding to hot enough to melt iron.
The blood mist on his skin turned from dark red to a faintly luminous scarlet, and the air filled with that searing smell that only comes off iron and stone under heat.
Blood and fire, fused.
Just as Thunder Metamorphosis had merged into Bone Mutation to become the Thunder-Sinew Razor-Body — the Fire Mutation merged into the Blood Mutation and became the Blood-Fire Mutation.
Blood is fire. Fire is blood.
His blood was no longer merely blood.
It was a forge fire running through his veins that would never go out.
From this moment on, wherever his firelight fell, everything there lay within his sight as well.
Resonating with the blood, it became Fire-as-Eyes.
The blood, of course, remained.
It could simply be driven forward and set alight at any moment.
Blood Mutation and Blood-Fire Mutation were, in essence, two extensions of a single change.
Like the overlapping of Thunder-Sinew and Razor-Body.
A sharp crack—
Fissures spidered across the stone wall of the cavern.
That was the combined work of the yokai aura and the heat bleeding off his body. Under it, the temperature within ten paces shot up by hundreds of degrees, and even Totosai's forge, in use for less than a month, shuddered under the wave of heat as though it could not bear the load.
"This brat—"
Totosai stared, bulging eyes wide, bracing himself against the forge to keep his feet, terror and excitement tangled together in the folds of his face.
"Damn it all! He breaks through a bottleneck just from forging a sword? Is he a yokai or one of those shrine maidens and spell-slingers on the human side?"
It was a curse, but it also named the crux of the matter.
In this world where humans and yokai lived side by side, sudden enlightenment was, as a rule, the province of humans.
Human exorcists, shrine maidens, onmyoji — in the course of their training, there were moments when they broke through the wall of their own understanding and their power surged.
Because their strength came from the soul, and even more from cognition.
Their spiritual power was fixed by birth. They could not do as yokai did — fight without end, devour their own kind without end, feed without end on human fear, and through it force their own metamorphosis, absorbing more foul aura and gaining more yokai aura.
What progress they made after birth depended far more on how they wielded that spiritual power. The finer and more ingenious the use, the greater the strength.
And cognition determined whether that use was good or poor.
By comparison, a yokai's growth relied entirely on accumulation, on devouring, on time, on the life-and-death tempering of battle.
One step at a time, upward. Shortcuts were genuinely rare — you could almost say there was no path at all.
That held even for a great yokai who had achieved Phenomenalization, and such a one did not sit around having sudden realizations about anything.
It was only that Totosai knew nothing of the favourability system.
All he could do was read the scene in front of him as this oni warrior having tripped some kind of trigger in the middle of forging a blade.
Some trigger that let him break through his bottleneck.
Which, in fairness, wasn't wrong.
And so, here, now.
Kobe Hikaru opened his eyes.
The purple veining in his crimson demon eyes was denser than before, and deep in the pupils floated an extremely faint orange light — the outward mark of the Blood-Fire Mutation.
He raised his right hand.
Turned the palm over.
A ball of flame welled out of his blood vessels and surfaced through the skin of his palm — not the eerie green of demon fire, but an orange blaze underlaid with dark red.
The heat was extreme.
The air above his palm buckled and warped.
He closed his fist and the flame went out.
He opened it again and the flame rekindled.
Summoned and dismissed at will.
"Blood-Fire Mutation," he said quietly.
The words echoed through the silent cavern.
This was no accident. Kobe Hikaru had intended it — he had known from the very beginning that Totosai's iron hammer would bring him surprises enough.
Forging a blade, in a certain sense, meant forging himself as well.
Blood and fire made one.
It showed little on the surface, but there was no doubt of it: he had taken another step forward from where he had been.
And that step would, once again, become a whole new round of transmutation.
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