Anger.
Naraku couldn't remember the last time he'd felt it.
Emotions he'd believed long discarded surfaced now, raw and undeniable.
Betrayal hadn't undone him. Injuries hadn't. Failed plans hadn't. He had engineered composure over decades of scheming, forged a mentality that treated setbacks as data and losses as investments against future gains.
But there was one thing Naraku could never accept.
Someone escaping his control. Someone born from his flesh walking free, living as they pleased.
That was the most twisted part of him. The rotten core.
He didn't want to see goodness. He didn't want proof that kindness existed or that bonds between people could survive his poison. He wanted to witness the ugly and the broken. He wanted to destroy faith, corrupt devotion, and watch noble hearts collapse into bitterness.
Time and again he'd schemed against Inuyasha's group. And aside from the original betrayal between Inuyasha and Kikyo, he'd failed every single time after.
As a director of human tragedy, his record was abysmal.
But over that long stretch of failures, Naraku had cultivated an iron composure. Anger became a foreign concept. He'd faced everything with the calm of a man who'd long since stopped caring about outcomes.
Until now.
Kagura's liberation had broken through.
Naraku himself had never obtained the happiness he yearned for as Onigumo. Kagome had never loved him. Kikyo had never looked his way. Every desire had rotted into obsession, and every obsession into cruelty.
So what right did Kagura have to find freedom?
What right did she have to grasp what he never could?
He wouldn't permit it. Kagura was meant to die in bitterness and resentment. That was the only acceptable ending for a creature born from his flesh.
The toxicity of that thought was beyond measure.
"You again."
"What a pain."
Cu Chulainn regarded the disembodied head that was Naraku and felt the fury simmering beneath that placid surface.
If he recalled correctly, this Naraku was also a Master. But honestly, wasn't a Master having an immortal body a bit unfair?
Against an enemy like this, Cu Chulainn genuinely had no good finisher. If you couldn't kill the man no matter how many times you ran him through, he could literally stand still and let you stab until your arms gave out.
"Hmph!"
"Since Koga sent you here, you can stay."
The rage settled into cold calculation. Naraku's voice dropped to ice.
CRACK!
"Heh. I can't kill you, but you can't catch me either."
Cu Chulainn's spear snapped through a tentacle lunging from the darkness. No panic. No wasted motion.
Naraku was impossible to destroy, but that didn't mean Cu Chulainn was trapped. If he wanted out, this half-formed creature couldn't stop him.
"You don't seem to understand where you are."
Naraku's lips curved. A thin, satisfied smile.
"Hm?"
The mountain walls around Cu Chulainn transformed. Stone became flesh. The cave mouth behind him stretched into a bottomless, pulsing tunnel.
"This is inside my body."
"Once you're in, don't expect to find your way out."
Despite the earlier damage, Naraku had already reformed the majority of his mass. Not at full power, but more than sufficient for this.
"You're telling me this entire mountain is your body?!"
Cu Chulainn's eyebrow twitched. Even his stomach turned.
The floor was moving. Wet, organic, churning beneath his feet. He started hopping from surface to surface.
"Become nourishment. Become part of me."
Naraku's voice echoed from every wall. The head dangling in the air above was the only fixed point in a landscape of living horror.
"This is a real mess."
Cu Chulainn scanned frantically. No exit visible. No landmarks. Just thread-like tendrils extending from every surface and flesh walls squeezing inward, shrinking his room to maneuver by the second.
"A technique that pierces the heart without fail is impressive."
"But unfortunately, it's useless against me."
Naraku evaluated Cu Chulainn's evasive movements with clinical detachment.
He understood the nature of a Noble Phantasm. It was inseparable from the Heroic Spirit. Unlike Kagome's Servant's blade, this technique couldn't be replicated or stolen.
Pity. Turning Gae Bolg against Inuyasha would have been exquisitely convenient.
"Hm?"
"Looks like you ran into trouble too."
Naraku's head rotated toward the orb beside him, pulsing with dark light.
"Tch. I just didn't get the Dragon Ball. But I got the fragment."
The Shikon no Tama's grudging voice emanated from the chipped sphere. Naraku glanced at the jewel, now missing a corner, and understood immediately.
"Koga's Servant?"
"Heh. Devouring him would be a fine option."
The Shikon no Tama's tone turned greedy.
"Hmph."
Naraku knew its intentions and offered no objection.
The Jewel revealed its current form. Gone was the old man. Gone was the berserker. Gone was the woman. What remained was an undifferentiated mass of flesh and tentacles. A mountain of meat and malice.
It extended its tendrils and attacked.
'The fourth form already?'
Naraku noted the transformation silently.
Then the red light blazing from below dragged his attention downward.
"Right then. No more holding back!"
"This place is absolutely REVOLTING!"
"I'm blowing the whole thing away in one shot!"
"We can't see what's happening inside anymore."
"But that should be the interior of Naraku's body."
Totosai studied the scrambled projection and addressed Kagome's group.
"Koga-kun, shouldn't you summon Lancer back?"
Kagome's worry came through clearly. She knew Masters could use Command Spells to forcibly teleport their Servants to safety.
"Mm. Give it another moment."
"He's about to use the other one."
Koga had been planning to recall him. But the yokai energy draining from his own body told a different story. Cu Chulainn was releasing a Noble Phantasm, and the volume of power being siphoned was massive. Far beyond what the heart-piercing version required.
This was the bombardment variant. [Gae Bolg: Soaring Spear that Strikes with Death].
Given Cu Chulainn's situation, trapped inside a recovering Naraku's body, the explosion would pour salt into every wound the spider still carried.
Maybe it would leave Naraku a nice surprise.
"That location looked like Suiga Valley, west of here."
"That's quite far."
"By the time we get there, Naraku will have already fled."
Miroku, Sango, and Shippo pieced together the terrain they'd glimpsed, triangulating the hiding spot.
"We'll have to wait for another chance."
Crimson magical energy flooded the interior, painting the pulsing darkness in red light.
Cu Chulainn dodged a final volley of tentacles and launched himself into the air.
Under the stunned gazes of Naraku and the Shikon no Tama alike, he hurled Gae Bolg with everything he had.
"GAE BOLG!!"
The demonic spear screamed downward, wrapped in cataclysmic force. Every tentacle it touched vaporized. Every wall of flesh it grazed disintegrated.
WHOOSH!!
BOOM!!!
The spear struck Naraku's head with the speed of a thunderbolt. The detonation that followed was absolute. An explosion of red light devoured everything, catching even the Shikon no Tama in its devastating radius.
BOOM!!
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]