Kōbe Hikaru was dead.
Literally.
He was also, at the same time, a transmigrator — one who had crossed over from the modern world, a genuine, card-carrying son of the mainland, born with the name Kōbe Hikaru. And he was, without a shadow of a doubt, the unluckiest transmigrator who had ever lived.
He had died on arrival.
Three months ago, his soul had torn free from the mattress of a modern rental apartment without any warning whatsoever. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself lying in a heap of corpses on a battlefield ruin.
Around him: samurai bodies strewn in every direction, severed limbs, rivers of blood.
The air reeked of blood and gunsmoke. In the distance, crows were circling.
He looked down and found that he was still himself — unmistakably his own body — except that at some point, a snapped spear had been driven through his chest.
And then he died.
Not metaphorically. Actually died.
The joy of transmigration never even had time to well up before death's cold grip snuffed it out. In the last instant before his consciousness sank into darkness, Kōbe Hikaru had only one thought —
What kind of garbage deal is this?
Then he woke up again.
He had no idea how long he'd been out. Could have been a few hours. Could have been days. When he finally opened his eyes, his vision was wrong — the whites of his eyes had gone pitch black, his irises a deep, bloody crimson.
The bodies around him had begun to rot. He couldn't smell any of it.
Because he no longer needed to breathe.
His chest didn't rise. His heart didn't beat. The blood in his veins had congealed and gone still.
He had become a walking corpse.
More precisely: a Ghost Warrior.
A monster.
Perhaps because he was a monster now, the thoughts in his head had not faded with his body's death — if anything, they were sharper than before. And the reason he had 'risen from the dead' at all was this: a semi-transparent panel had suddenly materialized in his mind.
A system called [Affection].
Its description was written out plainly and completely.
[The Host may pursue affection with any non-sentient entity within visual or physical range.]
[Affection Rating may be increased through conversation, physical contact, feeding, maintenance, and other means.]
[When Affection reaches certain thresholds, Bond Dialogue and special passive bonuses will be unlocked.]
[When Affection reaches 100, the Host may elect to claim the target's abilities entirely — retaining only baseline bonuses and dialogue functionality thereafter.]
Kōbe Hikaru stared at the panel for a long time.
An Affection System?
Wasn't this the classic cheat ability from harem cultivation novels? Pursue beautiful girls, rack up affection points, rise to the top of the world?
He was about to cheer — and then he noticed a crucial detail in the description.
Non-sentient entities.
What counted as a non-sentient entity?
Rocks? Trees? Buildings?
He could pursue those?
He tried initiating an 'affection pursuit' on a nearby stone.
[Clump of Dirt and Gravel: Unable to pursue. Quality is too low; conditions not met.]
No good.
He tried a broken spear lying beside him.
[Broken Spear: Unable to pursue. Damage level too high; conditions not met.]
Still no good.
His gaze swept across the battlefield and finally landed on a tachi at the hip of a dead samurai not far away.
It was a black tachi, relatively well preserved.
He crawled over and unclipped it from the corpse.
[Eligible pursuit target detected.]
[Katana (Mass-Produced)]
[Quality: Lower-Grade]
[Current Affection: 0 (STRANGER)]
[Unlock Condition: Feed it with fresh blood.]
Seemed like a success.
Kōbe Hikaru studied the prompt on the panel and finally understood the system's operational logic.
It was genuinely an Affection System — but its targets were not people. Not demons. Not anything alive. Only objects — blades, bows, swords, armor, barrier-formations, divine artifacts — and complete, substantive things with a certain depth of history fell within its range of pursuit.
At first glance, it seemed utterly useless.
But when he thought about it carefully, it wasn't unusable.
After all, at the time, he had no idea what kind of world this was. But the fact that he himself had turned into something as bizarre as a 'Ghost Warrior' told him this was almost certainly a world where the extraordinary existed.
Which meant there were almost certainly other monsters and demons out there like him.
And if monsters existed, surely there were also objects of incredible power.
Legendary blades. Divine relics. Mystic treasures.
If he could max out the affection of something like that…
Couldn't he claim the abilities of those divine weapons entirely as his own?
He did, however, quickly discover another problem.
Different objects apparently required different approaches to raise their affection.
This katana in his hand, for instance, required 'feeding with fresh blood.'
In other words: he had to feed the sword blood.
Based on the system's prompts, he extrapolated that some objects might require 'conversation' to raise affection. Some might need 'maintenance.' Some might require 'companionship.' Some might even require… celebrating a birthday?
Kōbe Hikaru wasn't sure, but he had a nagging feeling that pursuing legendary divine artifacts was not going to be as simple as feeding a sword.
But all of that was a problem for later.
At that moment, he had nothing. The only thing that mattered was surviving, and getting out of there.
Nothing more.
…
The night wind in the forest gradually stilled.
Kōbe Hikaru walked out of the treeline, Muramasa in hand — the sword now fully fed.
This was no longer the same blade he had started with, of course. That first katana had been an ordinary one. Over his three months in this world, it had long since been used up entirely — affection maxed out, its abilities claimed as his own, and its fate, like all such weapons, was to be destroyed. Not because of any merging process; it was simply that common materials couldn't withstand repeated combat. The abilities transferred to him, but the physical blade wore away to nothing.
Kōbe Hikaru still kept the shards hidden away, but it was obvious they could no longer be used.
This blade in his hand now was a later spoil of war.
And at this moment —
Having finished feeding this mass-produced Muramasa — which likewise demanded 'blood as sustenance' — he didn't linger where he stood.
Those five Blue-Skin Fiends had only been fringe members of some demon outfit. The real core of the group was surely still holed up somewhere in the mountains.
With his current strength, going to poke that hornet's nest would not be wise.
He passed through a bamboo grove and came out onto a low hill.
The vantage point was open and clear. He could see the rolling mountain range stretching into the distance, and below it, the ruined village at the mountain's foot.
He sat down on a flat green stone and laid Muramasa across his knees.
Moonlight spilled down. The blade shimmered with a cold, ghostly luminescence.
"You ate five Blue-Skin Fiends tonight. You should be in a better mood."
Kōbe Hikaru spoke to the sword the way someone might coax a picky child into eating their vegetables.
"I know you'd rather have a Demon Suppressor, but those are a nightmare to deal with. If I get counter-killed, that's not going to be fun for either of us. We'll grind levels first, and once we're strong enough, we'll talk."
[Cursed Blade Muramasa: Mood — 'CALM.' Current Affection: 15.]
The panel didn't budge. The sword was apparently not buying his reasoning.
Kōbe Hikaru let out a sigh and reached into the cloth pouch at his hip, pulling out a small strip of oiled cloth.
It was a maintenance rag he'd scavenged from the battlefield — rough around the edges, but serviceable.
He dabbed a little oil onto it and began wiping down the blade with careful, deliberate strokes.
"Look how well I treat you — dinner first, then a spa treatment. Name one other sword that gets this kind of service."
[Cursed Blade Muramasa: Finds the maintenance 'COMFORTABLE.']
[Affection +1.]
[Current Affection: 16.]
The corner of Kōbe Hikaru's mouth curled upward.
Only one point, but even mosquito legs were meat.
He kept wiping, kept talking — a steady stream of idle chatter that he justified to himself as the system's prescribed 'communication.' Weapons couldn't speak, but the system could read their 'mood.' As long as he kept up the interaction, affection would inch its way up.
"Once your affection hits thirty, we unlock your first special ability. Then we can take on stronger demons and get better blood to drink. Virtuous cycle. You understand what I'm saying?"
He was still talking when his hands went still.
He raised his head. His crimson pupils contracted — barely, but sharply.
On the horizon far ahead, an enormous wave of demon-qi was closing in fast.
The aura itself wasn't especially powerful — any single unit of it, pulled out alone, would rank below even the Blue-Skin Fiend that had led tonight's group.
But the problem was —
There were far, far too many of them.
A dense, all-consuming swarm of it, blotting out the sky — like a plague of locusts on the move, turning the entire expanse of night air a murky, churning grey-green.
And threaded through that roiling mass of demon-qi was a single, wholly different strand of energy.
Bright. Searing. Carrying something that tasted almost sacred.
Human spiritual power.
Hmmm——
The Muramasa in his hand began to tremble. The grain pattern along the dark blade pulsed with a faint shimmer of violet light.
[Cursed Blade Muramasa: Large quantities of prey detected. Mood shifted to 'EXCITED.']
[It conveys a message: 'Want to eat.']
Kōbe Hikaru stared at the oncoming tide of demon-qi and felt his mouth twitch.
"I know you want to eat. But that depends on whether we can actually win."
He rose to his feet, Muramasa gripped in hand.
"Let's see what we're dealing with first."
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