"Krrr... krrr... krrr..."
The bone-chilling clicking sound returned as the creature tilted her head, staring intently at Gabimaru.
"You actually managed to intercept my strike, huh?" A grotesque smile stretched across her distorted face. Suddenly, the trapped hair-needles began to bubble violently, and the fluid mass of the shield began to sizzle and melt.
"Mmm… the needles are corrosive," Gabimaru noted calmly as a thick, black vapour rose from the dissolving liquid.
"Sing and come ablaze!" the creature shrieked. She took a deep, rattling breath and unleashed a torrent of white-hot fire directly from her jaws.
Yet, Gabimaru didn't shift a single inch from where he stood. He simply raised his left hand, opening his palm toward the oncoming inferno. The massive blast of fire blustered directly into his hand, being forcefully sucked and compressed into his palm until it vanished completely.
"Ha?!" Watanabe stood frozen, utterly bewildered by the display.
Before the monster could recover, Gabimaru lunged forward. Closing the distance in a flash, he slammed his hand tightly around the creature's neck and drove it violently down into the floorboards. The impact rattled the entire room. The Yōkai thrashed, her hair whipping forward in a desperate counterattack, but Gabimaru's pool of blood surged upward once more, instantly catching the prickly strands.
In a fluid blur, the rising crimson mass shifted shape, morphing into a nest of writhing serpents. The blood-snakes coiled tightly around the thrashing monster, binding her limbs and constricting with crushing force.
'Kill it and take its blood... kill it... kill it...'
A chorus of raspy, overlapping voices suddenly began ringing through the interior of Gabimaru's mind, hammering against his consciousness.
He stood perfectly still over the trapped beast, his gaze blank as he stared down at the creature. The Yōkai continued to rattle and thrash beneath him, but none of her fiery or corrosive attacks could breach the crushing grip of the crimson serpents.
"Mmm… is it just me, or has Gabimaru gotten terrifyingly stronger lately?" Watanabe muttered, his eyes wide as he watched the one-sided execution unfold.
"Yeah," Yorimitsu responded, his gaze never drifting from the battlefield. "The creature itself is fundamentally weak. It seems her greatest asset was simply lulling targets into a vulnerable state of absolute relaxation to kill them effortlessly. But that isn't to say Gabimaru hasn't grown significantly stronger."
Yorimitsu paused, his eyes locking onto his teammate's rigid back.
'Hmm… why is he hesitating to deliver the final blow? Did he also figure out the anomaly hidden within this creature?' Yorimitsu wondered internally. But before he could pursue the thought any further, his reflections were sharply cut short.
"How tragic..." Gabimaru whispered, his voice dropping into a hollow, sombre drone.
"Huh?" Watanabe blinked.
"Please… help me," a weak, entirely human voice groaned from beneath the crushing weight of the blood serpents.
Right before their eyes, the monster's distended, elongated features began to collapse back inward. Her frame shrank, her terrifying aura vanished, and her face reverted completely to that of the frail, helpless elderly innkeeper they had met at the door. Her spiritual signature shifted entirely back to that of an ordinary mortal.
"Kill me… please, just kill me…" the old woman wept, milky tears streaming down her deeply wrinkled cheeks. "I thought... I truly thought it was all just a horrific nightmare. But it was actually me, wasn't it...? I was the one who killed them. My beautiful grandchildren... I devoured them with my own hands, didn't I?!" The old woman wailed, her chest heaving with agonising grief.
"What on earth is this?!" Watanabe gasped, his eyes bulging out in sheer horror. He took a frantic step forward, his voice rising in panic. "I thought she was a monster! What the hell is actually going on here?!"
"Krrr... krrr... krrr..."
Suddenly, a sickening crunch echoed through the room. The elderly woman's face violently warped and split directly down the centre.
The left half remained her weeping, grief-stricken human self, while the right half instantly morphed back into the jagged, red-eyed visage of the demon.
"Oh, don't lie to them, you wretched old bag," the demonic side of her jaw hissed, its voice overlapping with a sinister, dual resonance that mocked her sorrow. "You know you absolutely loved it, too. Don't tell me you forgot how sweet their little bones tasted when they snapped between our teeth!"
"Without me, you would have died long ago! You owe m—"
The creature's grating voice was cut sharply short as the remaining half of the corpse suddenly erupted into a brilliant burst of roaring blue flames. Within seconds, both the human flesh and the demonic entity were reduced to fine ash.
"Let us leave this place," Yorimitsu commanded, turning on his heel and walking out of the room without looking back.
Gabimaru followed silently, releasing his Jutsu as the crimson serpents liquefied and drained away. He stared down at his remaining real arm. It was trembling uncontrollably.
'It's those voices again…' The thought swirled violently inside his mind, heavy and toxic. 'I've been hearing them ever since our last mission. What the hell is happening to me? If Taisho hadn't intervened and burned it away, what would I have done? She was human... right?'
The agonising thoughts continued to spiral, threatening to drown his focus entirely, until a firm, warm hand gently pressed against his back, breaking the trance.
"You did well out there."
"Huh?" Gabimaru turned his head, finding Watanabe looking back at him with a weary, reassuring smile.
Gabimaru quickly cast his gaze back toward the floorboards, unable to meet his eyes.
"You did the absolute best you could, given the circumstances we were thrown into," Watanabe continued softly, keeping pace beside him. "I'm certain that Yorimitsu-san finishing her off wasn't because he thought you were weak. He just decided to shoulder the burden of that execution himself."
Gabimaru didn't offer a reply, but the tense rigidity in his shoulders eased slightly as they walked.
As they moved deeper through the corridors, the illusion that had maintained the seemingly perfect, pristine estate finally collapsed entirely. The beautiful sliding panels rotted into warped, water-stained parchment before their eyes. The sturdy walls cracked away to reveal peeling wood, and the air grew thick and heavy, reeking of damp mildew and rancid, stagnated decay.
Yorimitsu led the way at the front of the line until he reached the threshold of a specific room. He stopped dead in his tracks.
When the rest of the group rounded the corner behind him, before they could see the absolute horror that was packed tightly into the space were hundreds of mutilated human bodies. Some had been violently dismembered by jagged claws, while others had been entirely ground down into unrecognisable mince. It was a massive, makeshift larder.
Before the stomach-churning sight could fracture the squad's morale any further, the entire room erupted into the same blistering blue flames. Turning his back on the burning crypt, Yorimitsu calmly stepped out into the open courtyard.