That night, Kikyō went to sleep very early. It was the earliest Shinji had ever seen her turn in since the day he had met her. Unfurling the Earth Barrier across three provinces, covering hundreds of kilometers, using her own body as the nexus to drive the faith of two provinces, even for Kikyō, the toll had been anything but ordinary.
And on top of that, she had not closed her eyes for an entire night. A miko's strength had never been rooted in her physical body. Though Kikyō's constitution, nourished by her reiryoku over the years, could already be considered formidable, it was only formidable by human standards. She could never compare to a yōkai like Shinji.
Shinji stood at the entrance of the main hall, listening to the even breathing from within. He watched for a long moment, but did not enter. Instead, he turned and walked toward the adjacent shrine hall, the one that now bore the plaque of Kishin Mikoto-no-Mitama.
This was the new shrine hall that Hōjō Ujiyasu had dispatched people to construct in Kaede's Village after submitting her petition to Kyōto. A wooden structure. Not large. At the center of the offering table sat a bowl of clear water, an ever-burning lamp, and a small bronze mirror. Simple to the point of being almost unworthy of a true god. But for Shinji, it was enough.
He sat cross-legged before the offering table. His crimson demon eyes fell upon the bowl of water. Yōki seeped from his fingertips and gently touched the water's surface.
The moment the ripples spread, the clear water in the bowl grew turbid. It was not dirt. It was the reflection of impure energy. And then, one after another, blurred images surfaced upon the water.
Round, bean-like eyes. A fluffy tail. The tanuki spirit. A Fourth Transformation lesser yōkai, yet possessing wisdom and rationality far beyond ordinary demons. The chief administrator of all yōkai under Shinji's command.
Jade-green scales. A dish-shaped depression atop its head, brimming with deep blue yōki. The great kappa of Tōno. An Eighth Transformation commander-class yōkai, stationed at Shimizu Port in Suruga.
Silver-white fur. Crimson slit-pupils. The kamaitachi of Tōno. Eighth Transformation. The mountainous region of western Sagami.
Ice-blue pupils. White hair cascading to her ankles. The Yuki-onna of Tōno. Eighth Transformation. Northern Musashi. And many more.
The one-eyed novice monk. The kappa offspring. The various lesser demons that had been absorbed from all over. All of them had grown stronger compared to before. They had gained one or two additional transformations. Their total number now exceeded a hundred. Scattered across the three provinces of Suruga, Musashi, and Sagami. Gathering osore. Spreading ghost stories.
The tanuki's projection was the first to leap out, its bean-like eyes rolling frantically. "Master! You're finally back!"
"Report."
"Everything's going splendidly! Over in Suruga, the shrines Lady Imagawa built for us have all been fully repaired. The incense is burning strong! Every night, the great kappa senior at Shimizu Port makes a circuit around the river. The fishermen are scared out of their wits, but the fish hauls have actually increased, because no one dares sneak out to poach at midnight anymore, hahaha!"
"And Sagami?"
"Senior Kamaitachi in the western mountains cleared out a few nests of bandits along the way. Lady Hōjō Ujiyasu even sent a batch of offerings over as thanks. Though Senior Kamaitachi said the offerings didn't taste nearly as good as the ones here in Musashi."
Shinji nodded. The tanuki's intelligence network might be rough, but it contained all the necessary information. The state of Musashi was the most unique. This was where Kaede's Village lay. It was also the core region of the Kishin Mikoto-no-Mitama divine certification.
During the time Naoe Kanetsugu had been confined Within a radius of about 19.7 km from the village, she had been responsible for coordinating Musashi's internal affairs, liaising with the Hōjō clan, pacifying the local populace, and maintaining order.
Though forced into the role, it had to be said: the previous Uesugi Kenshin's adjutant general was undeniably capable. With Musashi's people stabilized, the offerings naturally became more consistent. And what those offerings brought,
Shinji closed his eyes and felt the two streams of power converging upon him from all directions. One was heavy. Viscous. Carrying the scent of fear. Osore. The ghost stories of his Hyakki Yakō had circulated through the three provinces for months. From Suruga to Musashi to Sagami, the tale of Hyaku Monogatari had been passed from mouth to mouth by traveling merchants, woodcutters, and fishermen.
With every retelling, the fear grew a little denser. The awe, a little heavier. Nearly a hundred yōkai, each holding a territory. Each one a story. Every story, growing. And as the very core of these hundred ghost stories, the osore Shinji reaped was, naturally, the greatest of all.
To this, Shinji still did not hoard it entirely. The vast majority of the osore was fed back and distributed to the hundred demons under his command. This was the reason they had been able to collectively ascend by an entire transformation level in just a few short months.
And opposite to osore, the other stream of power was utterly different. Solemn. Pure. Lofty. Shin. Faith. Faith power. Originating from the hundred thousand subjects of Musashi and Sagami Provinces.
Ever since Hōjō Ujiyasu had formally submitted her petition to Kyōto, elevating the shrine of Kaede's Village to the central seat of Shintō for both provinces, ever since the faith of two provinces had converged here through the shrine's barrier network, Shinji had gained this additional harvest.
He was both the Lord of Yōkai and the officially recognized deity of two provinces. Faith and osore were, in their very essence, two faces of a single coin. Osore sank downward. Faith rose upward. The former was the nourishment of yōkai. The latter was a power that even gods and buddhas drew upon.
And now, Shinji held both.
Only, he could not directly wield the power of faith. That power was solemn and heavy, suppressing all things supernatural, including himself. In his essence, he was still a yōkai. Supernatural among the supernatural. To directly invoke faith-power would be the equivalent of turning a blade upon himself.
Even ordinary humans could not wield this weight. This was precisely why even Uesugi Kenshin required shinki, divine vessels, to channel the power condensed from faith.
Whether a descended god or an incarnation of Bishamonten, a vessel was always needed. But Uesugi Kenshin's method had also given Shinji a line of thought. She could use a vessel to bear it. Then Shinji, naturally, could do the same. Or rather, he had been doing so all along.
His demon eyes lowered. The demon warrior, both god and demon, extended his hand. Yōki seeped from his fingertips and spread outward… toward Suruga. Along the web of osore. Along the invisible tethers connecting the hundred demons. His intent crossed hundreds of kilometres and touched the famed blade enshrined within the Imagawa capital's shrine hall.
Raikiri. Sōza Samonji. The blade he had once used to cut down the thunder-beast. The demi-divine artifact he had remotely summoned on the night of Hyaku Monogatari, using the thunder of faith to cleave apart the osore force-field of the three Tōno clans in a single stroke.
After its accumulated power had been completely exhausted in that battle, it had been returned to its shrine to continue receiving offerings. Nearly a month had passed since then. The faith of Suruga's people had soaked into it day and night. The blade was slowly recovering. And, more than that, it was undergoing metamorphosis.
In this moment, Shinji drew a single thread of the faith-power converging upon the shrine of Kaede's Village and sent it across the void, directly into Raikiri.
Accelerating its metamorphosis. Hum— In the shrine hall of the Imagawa capital, hundreds of kilometers away, the famed blade upon the offering table emitted an exceedingly faint resonant ring. A thin layer of indigo luster surfaced along its blade. The System panel flickered.
[Raikiri · Sōza Samonji: Affection +3]
[Current Affection: 31]
[First Talent Unlocked: Divine Aura Emission — When wielding this blade, faith-power can be guided and converted into divine-buddha aura, which can be released across distances.]
Thirty-one. It had finally crossed the threshold of thirty. And this talent, his line of thought was, indeed, correct.
The corner of Shinji's mouth lifted slightly. Though it couldn't compare to the brute-force method of Uesugi Kenshin, who could directly bestow names upon the dead and create divine artifacts, it won out in sheer flexibility. And he didn't have to worry about backlash against himself.
One had to understand, existences of yōkai who occupied divine positions were something Shinji had encountered before, like that toad from the stone village. Yet they only dared to siphon osore, never to touch faith. Precisely because using faith, that power which suppressed all things, would suppress themselves along with it.
He, however, no longer had that concern. Borrowing a divine artifact was truly the correct approach. If his memory served him correctly, in the original story, there was a yōkai who had stolen the position of a water god.
By wielding the divine artifact that had belonged to the true water god, it had suppressed the yōki of Tessaiga, so much so that the fang-blade forged by a daiyōkai could barely manifest its power.
As he was thinking this, two distinctly different vibrations came from his waist once more. Onikiri hummed, transmitting its intent. 'Master…' On the right, Yomi-giri also quivered faintly. Two blades. One already a perfect demon artifact. The other an ordinary demon artifact.
Both at max Affection. Both possessed spirit. Onikiri's situation was slightly more pronounced, since it had a sword-soul, it was simply feeling that its master was feeding another blade again, and was asserting its own presence.
Yomi-giri, on the other hand, felt that its master was paying more attention to a blade that wasn't even at his side than to itself, and was profoundly jealous.
Shinji patted Onikiri's sheath and stroked Yomi-giri's hilt. "Alright, alright. Settle down." A brief soothing. The two blades quieted. Shinji handled it with practiced ease, like a seasoned veteran of countless romantic entanglements.
But he also noticed, something else at his waist was, completely out of character, utterly silent. Yura's comb. That comb hung from his sash, motionless. No vibrating. No trembling. No rattling. From the moment he had returned until now, a full half day, Yura's comb had not uttered a single word. This was wrong. Given that comb's temperament, after he'd been gone for an entire month, Yura should have been bristling with fury.
It should have been rattling so hard his sash would come loose. It should have been so overcome with jealousy that a flood of complaints would have filled the System panel. But it hadn't. It was unnervingly quiet. Shinji untied the comb from his sash and placed it in his palm.
"What's wrong?" No response. "Are you angry?" Still no response. "You don't think I've forgotten you, do you?" A single flicker of reaction. An exceedingly faint tremor, lasting less than an instant before stopping.
The System panel flickered a line.
[Sakasagami no Yura: She doesn't want to speak.]
[Current Affection: 94]
[Note: She's sulking. But this time, it's not jealousy. She saw how the venomous dragon reverse scale's ability merged into you. She saw the silent understanding between you and the iron hammer. She feels… she isn't good enough.]
The night deepened. The bright moonlight slanted into the shrine hall. Upon the clean wooden floor, Shinji sat cross-legged, looking at the comb in his palm, and at those words on the panel.
She feels she isn't good enough.
Yura's comb. A yōkai born from a comb. At the very beginning, she had been nothing more than a tsukumogami who gained power by devouring her master's hair. After being subdued by him, she had followed him all the way to this point.
From negative numbers to thirty. To fifty. To ninety-four. Her Affection had started far later than most artifacts, yet it had chased the tightest. She had clamored. Raged. Been jealous. Been tsundere. But she had never once said something like she wasn't good enough.
Yura's comb had been stuck at ninety-four Affection for a long time now. It wasn't that he had given too little. It was that her own heart hadn't yet crossed that final barrier. Competition alone could no longer provoke her.
What she needed was something deeper. A deeper affirmation. And for this, Shinji had, in truth, long been prepared.
He drew something from within his robes. A necklace. To be precise, a chain strung with seven stones. The stones were small, each about the size of a fingernail. Smooth and round. Their surfaces had been polished to a fine luster. But their colors were all different.
They came from different places. All of them had been casually collected during his month-long journey. Each one had been carefully selected, meticulously polished, and cultivated by him. Though each only held a few points of Affection, barely worth mentioning, every single one carried the memory of that place.
Over the course of his travels, he had drawn the finest threads of bone from his Bone-Essence Transformation and threaded the seven stones together, polishing them into a chain. The bone-thread was resilient. The stones were smooth and round. Dangling from his fingers, they chimed with a crisp, clear sound.
"For you." Shinji laid the necklace beside the comb. In his palm, a silent comb, and a stone necklace that chimed softly. The comb trembled once.
The System panel flickered. [Sakasagami no Yura: …What is this?]
"Over this past month, every time I reached a new place, I would pick up a stone." Shinji spoke. "At first, I didn't pick them specifically for you. It was just habit. Wherever I went, I'd greet the things by the roadside. Build a bit of rapport along the way. But later, as I kept picking them up, I started thinking of you. Because these stones are like you. At first, everyone thinks they're unremarkable. Just broken stones on the side of the road. But after I've touched them, they become different."
The comb's trembling changed. It shifted from that tentative, testing quiver into something deeper. A longer, more sustained vibration. The words on the panel flickered.
[Sakasagami no Yura: Affection 94]
It didn't rise. But the trembling didn't stop. She was listening. Digesting. Wrestling with herself.
Shinji slipped the necklace around the handle of the comb. The seven stones caught perfectly, hanging down between the teeth, chiming softly.
"Yura," he spoke her name. "You don't need to compare yourself to anyone. You've been with me for no short time. You've helped me in no small way. And you are already an irreplaceable existence." Thus spoke Nakai Shinji, the supreme charmer of yōkai artifacts.
At this, the comb shuddered violently once. Then fell still. But that stillness was utterly different from the silence before. Before, it had been sulking. Now, she was holding back. Holding back from letting herself be happy. That was how a tsundere to the marrow of her bones behaved.
The System panel flickered one final line.
[Sakasagami no Yura: Hmph.]
[Current Affection: 95]
It had loosened. That barrier had cracked. As expected, it had worked. Shinji looked at those words, deeply satisfied. He couldn't help but chuckle to himself, truly, he was a genius. Of course, his words had also been from the heart.
Though they had started as enemies, over this stretch of time, Yura's comb had indeed helped him greatly. And she truly could be called "irreplaceable." Shinji had always been sentimental. And he had always been "generous with his affections."
"Now then, let's press on. Keep up the effort!" With the bottleneck broken, the progress that followed was, naturally, swift.
[Sakasagami no Yura: Affection +5]
[Current Affection: 100 (Returned to One)]
[All Talents Unlocked — Hair-Binding (Unlocked), Hair-Morph (New): Freely control and extend hair growth. Hair can be used as independent limbs for attack, binding, and defense. Hair strength scales with the amount of yōki infused. All talents available for fusion into the self.]
Full. One hundred. Shinji looked down at the comb against his chest.
The light of Yura's comb seeped from between its teeth. It was not the dark green glow of poison, nor the dark crimson light of fire, but a soft, gentle radiance, close to emerald green, carrying the scent of wind and growth.
That light spread along his chest, seeping through his blood vessels and into his body. Where did it go? It went to his hair. His long, white hair underwent a transformation in that moment.
From the very roots of each strand, an exceedingly faint luster began to emanate. Before, that pale white, though smooth and flowing, had always held a trace of withered lifelessness. Now, it seemed as though vitality had returned. The strands gleamed with a bright, supple sheen. That luster spread downward along the strands, like vines unfurling in growth.
This was the Hair Transformation. The ability to freely control and extend hair. The moment this ability fused into his body, a chain reaction ignited with his existing transformations. But it wasn't a single, isolated fusion into any one transformation.
It was a comprehensive integration into every part of Shinji's body. What was called "hair" was by no means limited to the head alone. The body had a million pores. Countless fine hairs, some large, some small. The integration of the Hair Transformation affected all of them, holistically. It fused into his four limbs. It fused into his torso. It fused into his waist and core. Thus, strength now reached the very tips of his extremities.
Power could be exerted from every single microscopic strand of hair. It fused into the Blood Transformation, because blood was the root from which hair grew. Thus, blood, too, could now surge with eruptive force. This was a transformation of the whole.\
It fused into his sixfold physical framework and was completed. If before, one part of strength yielded only one part of effect, then now, with the Hair Transformation, one part of Shinji's strength could yield three parts, or even more, of effect.
And its elemental nature, belonged to Wind. It resonated with the Thunder Transformation that Shinji had long since mastered. Both were transformations of growth and extension.
Among the Five Elements, Wood governed growth. Wind belonged to Wood. Thunder also connected to Wood. Thus, Wind and Thunder clashed and intertwined. All things sprouted and flourished. This was Wood. Wood, was the Liver.
Shinji felt a stirring beneath the right side of his abdomen. The Shura Form's projection was operating autonomously within his body. He didn't need to actively unfurl the six-meter colossus. The internal circulation generated by the resonance of the three existing viscera, upon sensing the fusion of a new Five Elements attribute, automatically began to construct the fourth organ.
Heart-Fire dwelled in the chest. Kidney-Water dwelled at the waist. Lung-Metal dwelled on both sides. Now, Liver-Wood dwelled at the right flank. An emerald green light coalesced at the position of his right ribs, forming a nucleus entwined with the patterns of wind and thunder.
That nucleus was irregular in shape, like a seed on the verge of sprouting. Its surface was etched with the markings of lightning and the spirals of wind. Deep within it, something was growing. Unfurling. Extending outward. The Shura Liver, was forged.
Four viscera were now complete. Heart-Fire. Kidney-Water. Lung-Metal. Liver-Wood. Only one remained. The Spleen. The missing piece. What was missing, was Earth.
Shinji opened his eyes. The four viscera within him had formed a nearly closed loop of circulation. Fire generated Earth. Earth generated Metal. Metal generated Water. Water generated Wood. Wood generated Fire. But one link in the chain was missing. Fire sought to generate Earth, yet there was no Earth to receive it.
The cycle was broken at this point. One final step was missing. With that final step, the Shura Form would achieve a true Five Elements internal circulation and no longer need to rely on the main body for energy. But that was a matter for another day.
Before that, the Yura's comb necklace hanging at his waist chimed once. The System panel flickered its final line.
[Sakasagami no Yura: …Thank you.]
No pretense. No tsundere. Just two words.
Shinji reached out and tied the comb back at his waist. The necklace dangling from the comb's handle swayed twice with a soft chime, then fell still.
He stroked the back of the comb. "You're welcome."