Naobito sat slouched in his chair, dragging a snot-smeared finger across the papers on his desk like a toddler finger-painting, Yami watched him do it twice before speaking.
"So what did you want to show me?"
Yami rubbed his forehead. 'Can I really survive around people like this?'
But his irritation cooled as he studied the old man more carefully. 'Right now… he's probably one of the strongest alive. I haven't heard a single word about Yuki, with that speed of his, he outclasses every sorcerer in this generation.'
'And he sits there wiping snot on paperwork.'
Naobito yawned wide enough to crack his jaw. "Get on with it. I've got things to do."
Yami's brow twitched. "That so? What things?"
"Drinking." Naobito scratched his chin. "And if you keep testing me, beating a child."
A short laugh escaped Yami before he could stop it. "Alright, alright."
Then the air changed, every muscle in Yami's body locked tight.
Naobito was on his feet before he realized he'd moved, his hands were already raised, his honed instincts screaming threat.
'What the hell? zhat focus alone made my body read him as an enemy.'
Then he actually looked at Yami, and his eyes went wide.
Yami's pupils had narrowed into vertical slits, one eye had darkened, ringed with coarse fur creeping across the skin around it. His fingernails had stretched and curved into black claws.
Merged Soul: Divine Dogs but twisted into something new.
"That merged soul thing you mentioned before, huh?" Naobito relaxed his stance, just slightly. "Looks like you can hold it longer now."
Yami shook his head. "That's just one part. I didn't come here for something that small."
'Pioneering a new technique inside the strongest cursed technique… is small?'
Naobito couldn't help it. He laughed outloud from the gut like he'd just heard the funniest thing all year.
"Look at my eyes," Yami said, pointing to the slits, his hand trembled from excitement. "Can you see them?"
Naobito's laughter faded, he nodded slowly. "What about them?"
"Use cursed energy whenever you want to hit something," Yami said. "That's all."
Naobito shrugged and reached for the bottle of booze on his desk.
His fingers never touched it.
Yami's hand was already there, as if he'd known the target before Naobito himself did.
Naobito's eyes blew wide. 'What?'
But Yami couldn't react either. His body had locked mid-motion, one second of forced stillness.
The instant it released, Yami's voice cracked through the room.
"You idiot! I said use cursed energy not Projection Sorcery!"
Naobito didn't answer, he was staring at Yami's hand on the bottle, still processing.
'He matched my speed,how?'
Yami caught the look on the old man's face and his irritation melted into a grin.
"Oh, that?" He pulled his hand back, flexing his clawed fingers. "I wasn't sure it'd work against a cursed technique like yours but it seems like as long as cursed energy is involved, it triggers."
He tapped the fur-ringed skin beneath his slitted eye.
"I took cursed energy sensing and wove it into the merged soul state but before that!"
He gestured at himself. " I made a binding vow. I locked the physical transformation in place, meaning whenever I use it I transform, in exchange, the power output jumps."
Naobito's brow climbed. "You're telling me you can use that merged soul form without turning into a dog?"
Yami's eye twitched at the phrasing, but he nodded. "Yeah."
'Kenjaku's stitches gave me the idea,' he thought, smirk deepening.
"But I didn't stop there." Yami's voice picked up pace. "I targeted the predator aspect of Divine Dogs. It came with heightened tracking, a sort of kill-or-be-killed instinct. That's exactly why your body jerked into a fighting stance the second I activated it, decades of combat experience screaming at you that something in this room wanted to eat you."
"Then I went further." Yami pointed at his eyes again, the vertical slits, glowing faintly with cursed energy.
"Your clan's Flowing Red Scale documents gave me the blueprint, reading it I realized how blood manipulation raises physical ability, I did the same thing but with my retinas, layered cursed energy directly over the optic nerve, amplifying processing speed, sharpening perception down to the microscopic level."
He held up a clawed finger.
"I call it the Predator Eye. It picks up even the smallest flicker of cursed energy and the predator instinct attacks it before my conscious mind even registers the threat. That's how I reached the bottle before you did. I didn't react to your cursed energy. My body hunted it."
Naobito's palm slammed the desk.
"That's insane! Even the slightest miscalibration in reinforcement density would rupture your eyelids from the inside out! The tissue is too thin—"
"Old man." Yami's grin stretched wide, baring teeth that looked just a little too sharp.
"Did you forget? I'm a dog right now. Dogs have a nictitating membrane, a third eyelid. It shields the eyeball and distributes pressure evenly across the surface." He tapped below his eye where, faintly, a translucent film flickered. "Canine physiology isn't just cosmetic in this form. I use it."
Naobito went quiet.
His gaze trcked from Yami's claws to his fur-lined ey, the binding vow feeding power into the transformation. The cursed energy sensing threaded through predator instinct. The reinforcement technique borrowed from an entirely different clan's records.
'It all connects,' he thought. 'Like a full circle,'
His mouth curled upward despite himself. "Ten Shadows truly is extraordinary."
Then he stopped. 'No.'
'Yami is extraordinary.' Though He didn't say it out loud.
Yami's grin faded. He blinked, as though a thought had surfaced from somewhere he'd pushed it down, and his posture loosened.
"Anyway." His tone shifted to more quiet, "There's something else. I wanted to talk to you about a clan member."
*****
The restaurant was quiet, across a low table, two figures sat with tea neither had touched.
The young man had a face that didn't belong to him with handsome jet black hair and excellent features, the faint line of stitches running across his forehead caught the overhead light whenever he tilted his head looking relaxed.
Across from him, Uraume sat rigid, white hair streaked with red, monk's robes pressed against the table and fingers laced tight on the table.
"So." Her eyes stayed fixed on him. "Did you get what you wanted?"
"Mukari" nodded once, the motion almost lazy. "I did and I can say with certainty, this Six Eyes is going to be a problem."
With a pause, he continued casually, as though mentioning the weather:
"I've already arranged for the Geto Suguru boy to befriend her. That should handle it in time."
Uraume's teeth pressed together. "If she's that dangerous, why not just take her body? You can't kill a Six Eyes, so she's a wild card you can't control. That's unacceptable."
"Mukari" laughed dry sound, like he'd heard something naive.
"Six Eyes. Tengen. Star Plasma Vessel." He raised a finger for each. "They're bound by fate. Threaded together. If I become the Six Eyes, I fall under Tengen's gravitational pull, subservience, obligation, some cosmic leash I can't predict." He waved his hand dismissively.
"Fate has a nasty habit of correcting itself. I'd rather not test it."
Uraume clicked her tongue, she hated that his reasoning was sound.
"Fine." She shifted her weight, moving on. "What about the Ten Shadows kid? Is he a problem?"
"Mukari" shrugged. "I don't know."
Uraume's finger struck the table hard enough to rattle the teacups. "What do you mean you don't know? You infiltrated the entire clan to use that monkey and gather information on ten shadows and you don't know?"
"Mukari" didn't flinch, if anything, his expression brightened, the way it always did when he got to explain something.
"Ten Shadows is different." He leaned back, eyes drifting toward the ceiling. "Most cursed techniques scale with cursed energy output, refinement, application. You can measure growth. Limitless, for instance, you watch the user's energy reserves, their control, their domain development. It's quantifiable."
e brought his gaze back to Uraume.
"Ten Shadows doesn't work that way. It follows a simple, holistic progression, tame the shikigami, master them, move to the next. Strength is measured by how many and how well. Cursed energy volume matters far less. And all I saw from that five-year-old was the starter pack." He spread his hands.
"Two dogs. That's it. I can't extrapolate genius from a baseline everyone starts with."
'Here he goes,' Uraume thought, jaw tightening. 'Yapping.'
"Mukari" tapped the table twice and Uraume blinked, realizing her attention had drifted.
"Stay with me. Don't float off."
She bit back a retort, his tapping slowed, and something shifted in his tone, it became quiet and surprisingly considerate.
"Though I will say this, the Ten Shadows heir is interesting."
Uraume looked up in confusion.
"His acting was horrifying for a child that age and the plan he improvised on the spot at the banquet?" A faint smile crossed "Mukari's" stitched face.
"Clever, genuinely clever. Full of gaps, of course but the instinct behind it was real."
He'd known from the moment it happened.
Uraume, who had no idea what he was talking about, simply nodded.