From the very beginning, Kōbe Hikaru knew he was no match for Kibōmaru.
A six-mutation pitted against an ancient oni who had drawn infinitely close to Gasification—no matter how many abilities he fused together, it was still an ant trying to shake a great tree.
So he had never intended to fight head-on.
He chose another path.
A path that set out from the main castle of the Imagawa clan, passed through the castle of the Hōjō clan, and ran through the mountain forests of the north and the villages of the east.
On that path, he slew the Thunder Beast, slew Gakimaru, slew the Dokukō, slew the Nekomata.
The blood of four Qualitative-Transformation-tier yōkai stained this land red.
But more important still—
his blood-mist, too, had spread across this entire land.
Every place he passed left behind the traces of his bone and his blood.
Those traces seeped into the soil, melded into the mountain stone, and forged a connection with this earth—a touching of it, a taking from it.
Touching, and taking up—these were the keys to his conquest.
From start to finish, he had never been merely slaying yōkai and exorcising demons.
More than that, he had been attempting to conquer this very land.
Just as he had conquered the blade Muramasa, conquered the Shikon Jewel, conquered the Hiraikotsu.
The land, too, was a kind of object.
It had no consciousness, no soul.
But it had memory.
It remembered who had spilled fresh blood upon it, who had left footprints upon it.
It remembered who had slain the demons that coiled upon it, who had purified the foul miasma drifting in the air above it.
So when Kōbe Hikaru walked through all four directions and cut away every trace of yōkai-haze.
This land began to take notice of him.
[Land of Kantō: favourability +1]
[Current favourability: 1 (Recognition)]
The number looked very small.
But the meaning it carried was incomparably immense.
"The power of the earth..."
Kibōmaru murmured the words under his breath, his voice full of astonishment.
It was as though he had only just understood why this oni warrior before him—no more than a six-mutation—had dared to strike out alone.
Why he had dared, after slaying the four vanguards, to rush straight back without a moment's pause.
He was not reckless.
He had been prepared all along.
Prepared a gambit that took the whole land of Kantō as its chessboard.
"From the very beginning... you were plotting this?"
Kibōmaru's voice was strained.
Kōbe Hikaru's voice came out from beneath the crimson oni mask, yet it sounded utterly matter-of-fact: "Just a convenient afterthought."
"Slaying yōkai and exorcising demons was my purpose to begin with."
"As for whether this land would stand on my side..."
He lifted his head, his crimson eyes staring straight at Kibōmaru.
"That was merely an incidental gain."
He naturally could not have known that Kibōmaru's very purpose had been to send those four yōkai to their deaths.
And yet, having learned of the Kyoto yōkai who stood behind those four, having learned of the existence of the yōkai before him—Kibōmaru—Kōbe Hikaru naturally could not have come wholly unprepared.
And this was his preparation.
The way out he had left for himself!
Kibōmaru's expression had darkened to the utmost.
He did not believe it.
Did not believe a minor yōkai could possess such means.
Did not believe an oni warrior only a few months into the world could possess such ability.
But the fact lay before his eyes.
The land beneath his feet was rejecting him.
The air around him was growing heavy.
That grudge-qi blanketing the entire region—the grudge-qi that should have been his to wield, congealed from the deaths of the four vanguards—was being slowly dispelled by some more majestic power.
"Impossible..."
His voice took on a note of agitation: "How could the likes of you possibly stand against my domain!"
He raised that faint-blue longsword, his yōkai aura surging violently.
"Reality Marble · Rashōmon!"
Black mist erupted from all around him, forming into the spectral images of gate after gate.
This was the true manifestation of his domain, the yōkai power known as a Reality Marble.
Outlined after the Rashōmon gate of old Kyoto, of Heian-kyō, what it manifested was an absolute domain centered upon high-speed slashes and founded upon the Speed Mutation.
Within this domain, his speed could stack without limit, until not even time itself could keep pace with his blade.
In a certain sense, in the domain of speed, Kibōmaru had truly reached a level that not even an ordinary great yōkai could attain.
Bladework · Cherry Blossom!
As the words fell, he vanished.
The next instant, countless blade-flashes slashed at Kōbe Hikaru from all directions at once.
Those blade-flashes were swift as cherry petals blown down by the wind, dense as snow filling the whole sky.
This, strikingly, was an extreme speed surpassing his earlier one, a speed Kibōmaru could display only by relying on the Reality Marble—surpassing wind, surpassing sound, able even to chase the thunder; most yōkai could likely not hold out for so much as an instant.
Even high-tier yōkai of six mutations, or of seven or eight and above, would be cut to pieces.
But—
Swish— Swish— Swish— Swish—
Metal rang against metal, sparks flying in every direction.
Kōbe Hikaru's Muramasa blocked those blade-flashes.
Not all of them, only a portion.
The rest of the blade-flashes struck his bone armor, struck his blood-mist shield.
The bone armor shattered, the blood-mist scattered.
But he did not fall.
Because the land beneath his feet was holding him up.
Kibōmaru's expression finally changed.
He saw it.
The bone armor he had shattered, the blood-mist he had broken apart, were reforming at a speed visible to the naked eye.
It was not Kōbe Hikaru's own power.
It was this land replenishing him.
The bone and blood that had seeped into the soil, the traces of yōkai aura left among the mountain stones, were flowing back into Kōbe Hikaru's body in an unbroken stream.
"In that case..."
Kibōmaru's voice turned cold and sinister.
He raised his blade once more.
"Then I'll cut down the land along with you!"
"Bladework · Plum Tree!"
A stronger technique, stronger yōkai power, faster blade-flashes came sweeping in.
This time it was aimed not only at Kōbe Hikaru, but at the land beneath his feet.
The blade's edge cut into the soil, carving out deep gully after deep gully.
"Bladework · Void!"
His speed surged again.
The blade-flashes were so fast that even the air was rent apart, forming patches of vacuum.
Wherever those vacuum zones passed, all matter was annihilated.
Grass and trees turned to fine powder, mountain stones turned to flying ash, and even the land beneath Kōbe Hikaru's feet was collapsing.
"You think this lets you stand against me?"
Kibōmaru's voice seemed to issue from the nine nether-depths.
"This move of mine is tenfold the earlier Bladework · Cherry Blossom!"
"Before this speed, all your land's recognition, all the earth's support—"
"is nothing but futility!"
Kōbe Hikaru was knocked back ten paces.
His bone armor shattered once more, blood gushing from the wounds—this, after all, was Kibōmaru's twelfth mutation, speed transformed to its very extreme.
But Kōbe Hikaru did not fall.
He merely lifted his head, watching that figure dancing wildly through the void.
And then—
he smiled.
"You're right."
he said.
"The recognition of this land alone truly cannot stop you."
"But——"
He raised his left hand.
The purple light within the Thunder Horn surged.
At the same time, his right hand drew the reverse scale and the Nekomata's claw from his robes.
Three kinds of yōkai power poured at once into the land beneath his feet: "I'm not merely making this land recognize me."
"I'm making it——"
"become my weapon!"
BOOM——!
Thunder burst forth from the ground.
Not descending from the heavens.
But surging skyward from deep beneath the earth.
Poison mist spread out from the soil, turning into a dark-purple ocean.
Undead spirits drilled up out of the earth, their numbers ten times, a hundred times greater than before.
They were all yōkai that had perished upon this land, the monsters Kōbe Hikaru had slain all along his way.
Their corpses were buried in the soil, their grudges not yet dispersed.
But now, those corpses and those grudges were all mobilized by this land that had recognized Kōbe Hikaru.
Turned into his soldiers.
Turned into his blades.
Kibōmaru's speed finally slowed.
Not because he had grown weaker.
But because there was simply too much to dodge.
Thunder, poison mist, undead corpses, and those bone spikes that kept drilling up endlessly from below.
Those bone spikes had not grown out of Kōbe Hikaru.
Rather, it was the land itself that, guided by Kōbe Hikaru's yōkai power, had grown them from the yōkai bones buried deep underground.
The entire battlefield was attacking him.
The entire earth had made itself his enemy.
"Curse it!"
Kibōmaru roared in fury, his blade-flashes growing even more frenzied.
"Bladework · Boundless!"
It was his strongest technique.
Its speed was who-knew-how-many times that of Bladework · Void.
The blade-flashes became countless afterimages, cutting every obstruction into nothingness.
The thunder was cut apart.
The poison mist was cut asunder.
The undead corpses were cut to fine powder.
Even the bone spikes drilling up from below were cut into fragments.
But——
those fragments reformed once again.
Once, twice, ten times, a hundred times.
So long as this land still recognized Kōbe Hikaru, so long as Kōbe Hikaru still stood upon this land.
Those attacks would never cease.
A single point of favourability, to an ordinary person, was no more than sparing a stranger one extra glance.
Yet to the earth itself, this one glance already carried the weight of a thousand, of ten thousand years!
Kibōmaru finally realized that he could not kill Kōbe Hikaru.
Not because Kōbe Hikaru was stronger than him.
But because, upon this land, Kōbe Hikaru might die, yet he would never be defeated.
"Damn it——"
Kibōmaru's speed finally slowed.
The drain was too great.
Bladework · Boundless required an utterly terrifying amount of yōkai power to sustain; even an ancient oni like him, close to great-yōkai rank, could not maintain it for long.
And Kōbe Hikaru?
He stood there, his bone armor shattering and regenerating, again and again, his blood gushing out and being absorbed by the land, again and again, then fed back to him in turn.
He expended almost nothing at all.
Though the gap between them was still vast, though their raw strength was still worlds apart.
Yet,
so long as he stood here, Kibōmaru could by no means harm him.
Still less could he cross past the obstacle he posed!
"Now——"
Another voice came from the distance.
It was Kikyō.
The shrine maiden in white robe and red hakama had, at some unnoticed moment, already drawn her longbow, dazzling white light gathering at the arrow's tip.
She had been waiting all along for this chance.
Waiting for the chance when Kibōmaru's speed would slow.
Waiting for the chance when her arrow could strike true.
"My turn!"
No need to spell it out, no need for many words—the coordination between Kikyō and Kōbe Hikaru had long surpassed any understanding that words could convey.
The next instant.
The Sacred Arrow turned into a streak of white rainbow, shooting straight for Kibōmaru's chest.
In this instant.
Kibōmaru wanted to dodge.
But his speed was no longer enough.
More importantly, at almost the same moment, Kōbe Hikaru's bone spikes drilled up from beneath him, pinning his legs fast.
"Damn it!"
Kibōmaru swung his blade to sever those bone spikes.
But that was precisely the single instant in which he had been delayed.
BOOM!
The Sacred Arrow struck his left shoulder.
White light exploded, spiritual power surged wildly; even dragged along by his extreme speed, Kibōmaru's entire left arm was still grazed by that arrow, and then blasted into charred cinders.
He let out a blood-curdling scream.
This, too, was the first time in several hundred years.
That someone,
had gravely wounded him.
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