It had appeared, yet the yokai aura did not draw near. It halted at a spot roughly three hundred paces from the outer edge of Kaede Village, still as a stone statue.
Once the sensing web of blood mist spread out, Kobe Hikaru gained a clearer read.
It was alone.
A single yokai.
No—that wasn't quite right… beside it there seemed to trail an exceedingly faint, smaller yokai presence, only the aura of that great yokai was so overpowering that it drowned out the little bit of noise at its side entirely.
Still, the other party truly had not entered the range of the barrier.
It had not even made any move to test him.
It simply stood there, as if waiting.
"No hostility."
Kobe Hikaru made his judgment.
If Sesshomaru wanted a fight, he wouldn't wait so quietly. With his strength, the barrier of Kaede Village couldn't hold him back—not unless Kikyo maintained it with everything she had.
But he hadn't forced his way in.
He had only stopped there.
Truly as if waiting for someone inside to come out on their own.
"I'll go take a look."
Kobe Hikaru drew the oni mask over his face. His grey robe shivered against his body, and then crimson armor mantled him, bone spikes ringed him about, savage as an oni, more fearsome still than a god—whether or not the visitor came with hostility, he would prepare for everything.
Kikyo watched him.
Watching the decisive way he placed himself before her like this, she always felt at ease.
Very, very much at ease.
But she still shook her head.
She knew well what class the other was. The density of that yokai aura just now was scarcely beneath the Tsuchigumo that had come before.
"You can't beat him."
Kikyo said it plainly, without softening the blow.
And she was earnest too: "We'll go out together."
"I know I can't beat him."
Kobe Hikaru neither agreed nor denied it. "But if he means to fight, it's the same in here as out there. Better to go and see what he actually wants."
He paused.
"Besides—if it does come to a fight, you cover me from inside the barrier, give me support, and I just pull back. That's all."
He was no match for a great yokai at the moment, but leaning on the geographical advantage he'd built up over this stretch of time, leaning on the full favourability across the whole village, inside and out, a safe retreat was no problem at all.
You could say that even setting aside the Kanto Land favourability, within this region of Kaede Village, Kobe Hikaru was still a genuine land god in his own right.
Kikyo plainly understood this too.
So she was silent only a moment, and then she nodded.
"Then be careful."
"I'll strike the instant you need me."
Few words.
The same as every time.
Yet all the same, it left Kobe Hikaru feeling wholly secure.
Beneath the oni mask the corner of his mouth curved up. He gave a light nod, then turned and sprang, stepping out past the barrier.
The spirit-light of the barrier rippled faintly where he passed, then closed and settled back.
He walked forward along the flagstone road outside the village. The shadow cast by the high torii swept across overhead, autumn wind poured into his cuffs, stirring his pale long hair.
The Jizo Bodhisattva statue at the village mouth fell away behind him.
Three hundred paces. He walked them unhurried.
He wasn't stalling on purpose, only feeling it out—and with every step forward, the presence of that yokai aura grew a layer clearer.
Clearer, until he could feel that weight.
Like walking toward an unseen mountain.
Two hundred paces, one hundred paces.
Fifty paces.
Until, at last, he saw them.
Outside the village, at a bend in the road, two figures stood at the roadside.
One tall, one short.
The tall one had silver-white hair falling to his waist, not a single strand out of hue, glowing with a soft, cold light beneath the chill moon of the autumn night.
His features were beautiful beyond the bounds of the human—a crescent of purple at the center of his brow, two deep crimson stripes on each cheek, golden vertical pupils half-lidded, his gaze falling from above down onto Kobe Hikaru, so cold it held almost no emotion at all.
Over his white kimono he wore armor of the same shade, and draped over his left shoulder was a fluffy white pelt that seemed to be alive, its tip drifting faintly in the wind.
At his waist he bore a plain, understated blade.
That was Sesshomaru.
Exactly as Kobe Hikaru knew him—but with more menace.
After all, through a screen there was none of the pressure a real, living great yokai brought.
The feeling of standing before him—
It truly was like standing before a sheer cliff face.
This feeling was even more suffocating than Tsuchigumo. Tsuchigumo had been wild, flamboyant, so its terror could be sensed. Sesshomaru had none of that, and the so-called strength of the unknown was the greatest pressure of all.
By contrast, the short one was truly beneath notice.
It came up perhaps only to Sesshomaru's knee.
It was a small green-skinned yokai, pointy-mouthed and hollow-cheeked, dressed in a dark brown official's robe, an official's cap on its head, like some court minister—except in its hand it held aloft a strange staff longer than its own body.
Set into the top of the staff was a wooden carving in the shape of two human heads: an old man on the left, a young maiden on the right.
Kobe Hikaru knew that was the Staff of Two Heads, a yokai weapon that could command flame, fashioned from the skulls of fire-breathing yokai.
This yokai was named Jaken.
Kobe Hikaru knew him too—from the original work.
He was Sesshomaru's attendant, lackey, errand-runner, punching bag, and mouthpiece all in one.
And at this moment, the little yokai had already noticed the grey-robed figure approaching from the direction of the barrier. One second his green face was full of fawning toward Sesshomaru, and the next it was piled high with a haughty, swaggering expression.
He raised the Staff of Two Heads and jabbed it at Kobe Hikaru.
"Oi! You there—are you that so-called Demon God of these parts?"
His voice was shrill and grating, like the hinge of a rusted iron gate.
"Hurry up and pay your respects! This is the legitimate eldest son of the Dog Yokai Clan of the Western Lands, the great Lord Sesshomaru! To gaze upon Lord Sesshomaru's true face is a blessing you've earned across eight lifetimes—"
Before he finished.
Kobe Hikaru walked past him.
Walked straight past.
Without so much as a glance.
From beginning to end his eyes fell in only one direction—
Sesshomaru.
"—bless—blessing… Oi! Did you hear me talking to you?!"
Only after Kobe Hikaru had passed did the rest of Jaken's words stumble out. He was so furious he hopped in place, the Staff of Two Heads rapping against the ground with a thudding beat.
But no one paid him any mind.
Kobe Hikaru stopped three paces from Sesshomaru.
The scarlet oni mask and the golden vertical pupils met in the air.
Silence for three seconds, one breath.
Sesshomaru did not move, did not so much as lift an eyelid.
The golden vertical pupils merely lowered flatly, as if regarding something not especially important that had nonetheless stirred a little interest.
"So you're that oni warrior."
He spoke.
His voice was low and even, unhurried, every word carrying an inborn arrogance—the instinctive looking-down of one who had never once placed another on equal footing with himself.
That condescension made Kobe Hikaru uncomfortable.
But Kobe Hikaru had always been a realist—a Demon. The other's strength surpassed his own, so naturally he had the right to look down on him.
All he had to do was make himself stronger.
"Mm."
He answered.
Sesshomaru went on, "You can summon the dead."
This time Kobe Hikaru did not answer at once. Beneath the oni mask, the scarlet Demon pupils contracted slightly.
Those who knew of his power to summon the dead were not few, but not many either.
Kikyo knew, Momiji and Botan knew, the retainers under the late Uesugi Kenshin knew, those who had seen it in the battle of the Tahoto knew.
And—Tsuchigumo.
In the fight against Tsuchigumo, though he hadn't summoned the dead, he'd used the soul-anchoring ability of the Spirit-Chasing Bowman's Mutation.
With Tsuchigumo's discernment, seeing through the essence of that ability wouldn't have been hard.
And judging by the direction Sesshomaru had come from, the one who'd told him should be Tsuchigumo.
It seemed they had crossed paths.
He considered a moment, then answered:
"Depends… depends on the case."
"The longer a remnant soul has dispersed, the harder it is to call back. Those fully dispersed can't be summoned at all."
The power to summon the dead wasn't common in this world, but with its limitations, it was nothing so remarkable.
Certain top-tier great onmyoji and grand sorcerers among humans could achieve a similar effect.
Only, each field had its own specialty. What humans could do, yokai might not manage in turn—after all, setting aside cheat-cases like Kobe Hikaru, even a normal yokai's evolution, even a great yokai's, carried a degree of randomness. They couldn't choose it themselves.
And yokai who happened to evolve abilities tied to the dead were absolutely rare indeed.
Sesshomaru's gaze rested on him, lingering a while.
Those golden vertical pupils held at last a slight change—not interest, and not hostility either, just an exceedingly hidden emotion, pressed down at the very bottom.
Kobe Hikaru couldn't tell what it was, and had no interest in trying.
"I want you to summon one of the dead."
Sesshomaru said, "In return, I can do one thing for you."
A trade, back and forth—quite fair.
So this really is Sesshomaru, Kobe Hikaru thought—holding to that constant condescension toward all the weak, yet precisely because he looked down on everyone, in his eyes all things were equal and just, interchangeable.
He thought it over again, and did not refuse.
If he could get a great yokai like Sesshomaru—one with both strength and a faction behind him—to do something for him, even just one thing, that wasn't bad at all.
But what dead soul could be worth such trouble for Sesshomaru to come find him?
That much he still had to ask.
"Summon who?"
"The half-yokai of the Western Provinces, Inuyasha."
The air froze for an instant.
Sesshomaru's voice held no rise or fall, as if he were speaking of something with no bearing on himself at all.
Kobe Hikaru stood where he was, but beneath the scarlet oni mask his face went blank.
Inuyasha.
Dead?
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