I pushed my perception out across the expanse of the True Cross Academy town. Finding her was almost too easy; the dark, pulsing energy of the curse mark on her chest stood out like a beacon.
My halo spun, letting the spatial distance fold around me.
Shura was on the outskirts of town, walking away briskly with her head low and her bag slung over her shoulder.
I suddenly appeared, leaning casually against a light pole directly in her path.
"And where do you think you're going young lady?" I asked.
Shura's head snapped towards me, clearly caught off guard that I had tracked her down this quickly.
She scoffed, her hand never leaving her jacket pocket. "None of yer business, brat. I've got some personal errands to run. Grown-up stuff. So get yer ass back to bed."
I pushed off the pole, walking slowly toward her. "Personal errands?" I asked, placing a finger to my chin. "Like going to get eaten by an oversized garden snake, perhaps?"
Her eyes narrowed instantly.
"Back off," she said, her tone turning desperately serious. "You don't understand what this thing is or how long it's controlled my bloodline. This is my burden. I'm not letting you or the others get dragged down with me."
"How amusing," I said, grinning as I stepped right into her personal space before she could blink and effortlessly snatched the heavy bag right off her shoulder.
"We've already talked about this in the bathhouse," I said smoothly, hoisting her bag over my own shoulder and leaning into her face. "Or have you forgotten what I've said about dreams and desires? You're one of mine, so have a little faith, will ya?"
Her face flushed a brilliant red, but beneath the embarrassment, I could sense a massive, undeniable wave of relief wash over her soul. She snatched her bag back from my grip, though she made no move to actually walk away.
"You're a menace, you know that?" she muttered, looking away to hide her flushed cheeks. "Fine. But if that oversized garden snake eats you, I'm not attending your funeral."
A few hours later, we were sitting in a private cabin on the Bullet Train, heading north into the snowy, mountainous terrain of Aomori Prefecture.
Yukio was sitting rigidly across from Shura and I, fully geared up in his Exorcist gear. He was aggressively cleaning his handguns, obsessively checking his holy water grenades, and visibly stressing over the realization of fighting a divine beast.
Meanwhile, I was casually eating my way through three different bento boxes and shamelessly flirting with Shura to keep her spirits up.
"Aye, you gotta relax some, Yuki-boy," I mumbled around a mouthful of karaage chicken. "Why're you so rigid anyway?"
Yukio didn't even look up from his gun barrel. "Rin, I've read up on who we're going to be facing off against."
I raised an eyebrow, picking up a piece of sesame beef. "And?"
"And, he's Hachirotaro of the Sanko Legend," Yukio recited tightly. "A practically immortal, high-level demon with divine power and absolute regeneration abilities. This won't be an easy battle."
"Well, I hope not," I said, tossing the beef into my mouth. "The way you're hyping him up, he better put up a good fight."
"He's right," Shura finally spoke up from the seat next to me after not saying a word for a long time.
"A very long time ago, a kunoichi named Tatsuko made a blood pact with Hachirotaro for power," she explained, her voice soft. "In exchange for a demonic sword and powerful abilities, every one of her descendants was bound to him. They were forced to bear a child for him before they turned thirty... and the moment they turned thirty, they died."
I stopped chewing. "What?! What the fuck kind of stipulation is that?!"
"One that's cursed every descendant of Tatsuko to look exactly like her," she sighed bitterly.
Uh-oh, I don't like where this is going, I thought, taking a sip of my drink.
"What does this have to do with you? And why won't he let you out this contract?" I questioned.
"Because she's my ancestor, Tatsuko Kirigakure, and she was the person he fell for," she said, causing Yukio's and my eyes to widen slowly. "And because we look exactly like her, he's deluded himself into thinking we are her."
"That's awful." Yukio said.
"What a sick bastard," I scoffed, shaking my head. He's got great taste in women, but he's still a sick bastard.
"But, why thirty?" I asked, one brow raised. "That's what I'm still confused about."
"Who knows," she sighed, tracing a finger against the frosted glass of the window. "He didn't want to see her grow old and feeble at all, so he made the curse have an expiration date. So, as her descendant... I'll die once I reach thirty."
"That's in just three or four years," Yukio realized, completely shocked.
I took another bite of rice and shrugged. "So he's basically a glorified loan shark. It shouldn't be a problem. I'll just erase him."
Shura snapped her head toward me. "Don't take him lightly! Even if he's gone, the contract still binds! It's inescapable! Even in his weakened state he's—"
I cut her off, fixing her with a calm but entirely determined look. "Is that what you truly believe, or has your fear of possibly dying blinded you to what I am capable of?"
She went completely silent.
"If that contract seems inescapable, then I'll just erase it to the point of nonexistence," I stated with utter assurance.
She looked at me, searching for any trace of doubt in my eyes. But she found only an unbothered confidence that forced the terror she had carried for twenty-six years to finally crack. She simply nodded, leaning her head back against the seat, finally allowing herself a sliver of hope.
We arrived in Aomori as the sun began to set, casting long, chilling shadows over the dense, snow-covered forest. We immediately made our way toward Towada Shrine.
As we moved closer to the shrine's grounds, the environment turned incredibly hostile. The biting wind howled through the trees, whipping thick flurries of snow into our faces—which melted instantly upon contact with me. The paths were heavily snowed over, and the atmosphere was eerily, unnaturally quiet.
Not a single bird or insect could be heard.
As we ascended the ancient, snow-packed stone steps to the main shrine area, Shura stiffened. Her eyes darted nervously between the trees, a clear sign that we had entered the snake's territory.
The snow soon began to shift around us. Hundreds of snakes slithered out from beneath the powder, hissing as they coiled around the frozen stone steps.
Standing at the peak of the staircase was Hachirotaro.
He was in his humanoid form, but there was nothing human about him. His skin was a strange gradient, shifting from a pale, porcelain complexion down into a pitch-black darkness at the ends of his limbs. He possessed long, demonic, claw-like fingernails that scraped against the stone. Scattered haphazardly across his face was a highly unusual arrangement of multiple, blue, slitted eyes. His hair was short but flowing, slicked back and styled in a stark, two-toned gradient that was eerily identical to the coloring of Shura's hair.
He didn't even acknowledge Yukio or me. His multiple eyes locked entirely onto Shura.
"Tatsuko," he hissed, his voice echoing with a sickening, possessive warmth. "You shouldn't have tried to breach our pact, my sweet. It is time. Pay your debt and bear us a child."
Shura clenched her fists. "I'm not Tatsuko! I'm my own person! Let me go!"
Hachirotaro wasn't having any of it. He dismissed her words as if they were a child's tantrum. Then, his blue eyes finally shifted, landing on me.
"You reek of unfamiliar divinity, boy," Hachirotaro sneered, his eyes narrowing in absolute, territorial offense as he sensed my energy. "You dared to lay your hands on our Tatsuko's soul? You tried to tamper with our mark? I will freeze the marrow in your bones for such insolence."
Before anyone could blink, Hachirotaro's multiple eyes glowed with a sickly blue light, unleashing his hypnotic ability. A paralyzing wave of demonic energy washed over the steps.
Yukio instantly froze in place, completely immobilized, his finger stuck tight against the trigger of his gun. Beside him, Shura's eyes glazed over. The panic left her face, replaced by a terrifying blankness as she was forced to take a slow, mindless step up the stairs toward the demon.
I just stood there, completely unaffected.
I flared my power. Blue-white flames erupted from my hair, and my four-colored halo manifested above my head, spinning rapidly and melting the snow around me.
The celestial pressure crashed down on the courtyard like a physical weight. Hachirotaro physically recoiled, his multiple eyes widening in primal hostility and fear as the overwhelming feeling of my divinity slammed into him.
In a flash of blue light, I crossed the distance and kicked Hachirotaro square in the chest with a flame-enhanced strike, sending him rocketing backward through the air and crashing violently through the forest area.
The impact instantly broke Yukio and Shura out of their hypnosis. Yukio gasped for air, nearly dropping his weapon, while Shura stumbled backward into the snow.
Hachirotaro recovered quickly. He crawled out of the shattered timber, furious at being made to feel so small. He raised his arm, the gradient flesh shifting and hardening until it formed a massive, curved blade.
"You are no Exorcist," Hachirotaro spat, his divine aura flaring as the temperature dropped even further. "But you will bleed like one!"
"Well, well, well. Look who has some fight in them!" I grinned wildly, clapping my hands together. "It would've been too easy if I just got rid of you with a snap of my fingers. You need a proper mental readjustment."
As I pulled my hands apart, the Kurikara manifested directly out of thin air into my grip, the blade already engulfed with blue-white flames.
Hachirotaro lunged, as did I. We clashed in the center of the snowy clearing, our blades meeting with a deafening screech of steel and bone. The resulting shockwave blew the snow and trees completely backward, forcing Yukio and Shura to shield their faces.
"Rin!" Yukio yelled over the roaring wind, struggling to keep his footing, while Shura instinctively reached for the hilt of her blade.
Hachirotaro jumped into the air, twisting his body into a violent blur. "Spiral Serpent Fang!!" he said, coming down like a drill, creating a massive vortex of razor-sharp slashes aimed directly at my head.
Oh, he's incredibly fast, I noted, my eyes tracking the flurry of strikes.
I parried most of the slashes, but a few minor cuts slipped past my guard—a testament to his combat abilities. I noticed that the strikes also tried to numb or slow down my reflexes, causing a frostbite effect, but my flames overpowered the effects and my flesh healed instantly, completely unbothered by the damage.
Watching from the treeline, Yukio's eyes widened in disbelief at the sheer, impossible speed of my regeneration.
I slipped under Hachirotaro's guard and countered, driving a quick slash across his abdomen before pivoting and completely severing his bladed arm.
Hachirotaro let out a hiss of pain as the intense heat of my flames burned his flesh, but his divine regeneration kicked in instantly. The deep gash on his stomach knit itself together, and a brand-new arm violently sprouted from his forearm in a matter of seconds.
And that legendary regen they were so worried about ain't half bad either, I thought internally, spinning my sword. It's fast, and almost as good as mine. No wonder Shura saw him as an immovable obstacle. But as that old saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Let's see just where the limits of his regen extend to.
Hachirotaro created space between us by sending massive waves of frozen, spiked icicles tearing through the ground at me, then he slammed his hands onto the snowy ground. The earth erupted as he summoned a massive swarm of snakes, combining them together until they formed two towering, giant serpents.
The beasts lunged at me, forcing me to take to the sky. I flew above one of them and brought my blade down, cutting through its thick scales and bisecting it in half, bringing an end to it.
Or so I thought.
It regenerated instantly, buying Hachirotaro the time he needed to attack my blind spots. I dodged and parried the relentless assault from all sides until I caught Hachirotaro overextending on a thrust. I grabbed his arm, spun him in a circle, and threw him violently across the clearing.
Before he could recover, I pointed my palm at one of the giant snakes.
DIVINE ERASURE.
A massive blast of divine blue-white flames shot out of my hands and completely engulfed the beast.
The snake shrieked as its regeneration failed to save it. My flames bypassed its divine healing, burning its cells before they could restructure themselves. In seconds, the massive creature was reduced to a pile of ash that scattered into the winter wind.
Hachirotaro froze, an expression of absolute horror dawning across his multiple eyes.
Quickly realizing he was completely outmatched in a war of attrition, Hachirotaro recalled the remaining snake into his body. He tapped into more of his divine ice powers, forcing the temperature to plummet to absolute zero as his humanoid form began to violently expand, shifting into his true, gigantic, multi-headed Hydra form.
I expelled out more heat from my body to stabilize the environment's temperature from freezing over, and readied myself to end the fight.
"Well, well. Lord Lucifer was right. You truly have evolved, Mr. Okumura."
A familiar, mocking voice echoed across the quiet mountain.
I looked up. Hovering just above the tree line, previously cloaked from sight, was an Illuminati stealth ship. Standing on the open loading ramp, looking down at me, was Saburota Todo.
He looked even healthier than the last time I saw him, appearing as though he were in his early twenties and radiating a sickly, incredibly potent demonic aura.
"Consider this a thank you," Todo boasted, spreading his arms. "Thanks to the unprecedented power you gave me, I've gained the utmost favor from Lord Lucifer. We were actually coming here to capture Hachirotaro. We wanted to experiment on the effects of his healing combined with the synthesized blood we have to see what new mutations would occur. But it seems you got to him first."
"Leave," I said, my voice echoing with divine authority, "or die."
Todo smiled widely. "Oh, I'll oblige. But not before dropping off a gift from Lord Lucifer."
Todo stepped back into the ship. As he did, a relatively small, contained demon was pushed out of the bay doors. It fell toward the snow below.
As it descended, Todo clicked a remote in his hand. A mechanical device strapped to the falling demon's back hissed, violently injecting it with a massive, concentrated dose of Todo's synthesized, mutated blood.
The reaction was instantaneous.
Mid-air, the small demon let out an agonizing, ear-piercing shriek. Its body began to violently rupture and expand, mutating uncontrollably. By the time it was halfway to the ground, it had grown into a massive, heavily armored Chimera-class behemoth, pulsing with thick, glowing blue veins.
Down below, Yukio instantly raised his handguns, aiming one at the falling monstrosity and the other at the expanding serpent, while Shura stood with her blade fully unsheathed, her eyes locking on the Hydra's shifting mass.
"Stay back!" I commanded them, my voice slicing through the chaotic wind.
Below me, a colossal, immortal Hydra was roaring in the snow, ready to tear me apart. Above me, a massive, artificially mutated behemoth was falling directly toward my head.
I hovered between the two juggernauts, the heat from my body flaring outward as my halo spun rapidly.