In the days that followed, Kobe Hikaru didn't sit idle.
Truth be told, he couldn't afford to.
The four viscera turned within him — fire rising, water falling, metal settling, wood unfurling — but the cycle leaked at the gap where earth should have been. Without earth, the five elements could never close the circle, and the Asura Mutation's internal circulation would always carry a flaw, never reaching perfect quality, never able to return fully to himself.
Fortunately, the medium he needed was already close at hand.
Banryu.
The massive war-blade Bankotsu had left behind — a yokai weapon only newly born.
Kobe Hikaru hauled it out from the corner.
The blade was heavy. Murderously heavy.
Back before it had become a yokai weapon, it had taken three grown, powerful men just to lift it — truly heavier than a thousand jun. Now, laden with grudge-rancor, yokai power, and dread, it was far beyond what any ordinary human, or even most yokai, could hope to wield.
The blade was also massive.
Its length nearly matched his own height, its edge almost two fingers thick, the whole thing pale white from end to end, the cutting edge blunt and heavy. It clearly wasn't meant for slicing like a normal sword — it was meant for smashing.
A pure crystallization of violence.
Through Bankotsu's Hundred-Man Slaughter and Thousand-Demon Slaying — a bloody road that ran from Kanto all the way to the northeast — the ordinary steel blade had gradually mutated under the soak of yokai aura, until it emerged as a yokai weapon newly come into the world.
For Kobe Hikaru, it was unmistakably the best possible medium for earth.
Because it dealt harm through sheer weight, it echoed the heaviness of earth.
And because its very birth had come from absorbing and transmuting all manner of turbid qi and grudge-rancor.
Transmutation and absorption — that, too, belonged to earth.
Even so, though it was already a yokai weapon, Kobe Hikaru gave it a full restoration — one might even call it a complete Recasting. He cleansed the blade from soul to substance, just as he had once reforged Onikiri, turning it from the inside out into a new demon blade belonging to him and him alone, without altering the essence of its power.
The status panel had already sprung up.
[Great Sword: Banryu]
[Quality: Yokai Weapon]
[Description: Originally an ordinary steel war-blade, forged through the ritual slaughter of a hundred men and a thousand yokai, soaked in human and yokai blood, and elevated to a yokai weapon after absorbing the grudge-rancor and dread of the dead.]
[Current Favourability: 0 (Unnoticed)]
Blunt and to the point.
Kobe Hikaru pressed his palm to it and poured a stream of yokai aura in.
Hummm—
The blade shuddered violently, so hard it nearly flew from his grip.
Words scrolled across the panel.
[Banryu: Weakling. Get lost.]
A textbook brute.
But that suited Kobe Hikaru's taste just fine — the simpler the thing, the faster it went down.
No coaxing needed. No heart-to-heart required.
All he had to do was keep pouring in yokai power, show enough strength, and let it acknowledge him as master. Then take it into battle.
After all, he was no weakling.
Banryu wanted exactly one thing — power.
And that, he had in abundance.
So.
The yokai aura of the Asura Mutation surged through his palm and into the blade.
It was the combined output of a nine-mutation yokai plus the amplification from the Asura Mutation's three-viscera projection — a density of overwhelming yokai power that, in sheer quantity, came close to the turbid qi an ordinary yokai would carry after twelve metamorphoses.
At that.
Banryu's trembling faltered for an instant.
Then it went still.
It submitted.
A reckless brute — and all the more a warrior who bowed only to raw strength.
[Banryu: Favourability +1]
[Current Favourability: 1 (Noticed)]
Compared to Banryu's crude bluntness, though, the other item was far more troublesome.
Black Pearl.
Forged by Hosenki, once sealed within Inuyasha's right eye socket — a key to the underworld, a coordinate leading to Toga's grave, and thus to Tessaiga.
Sesshomaru had used it once to gain entry, failed to draw Tessaiga out, decided it was useless, and tossed it to Kobe Hikaru.
A pitch-black bead no bigger than a fingernail, its surface smooth and faintly cool, shimmering with the thinnest trace of iridescence.
The panel showed its favourability at 9.
Since Sesshomaru had thrown it to him, it had barely risen.
Because this thing's temperament was the exact opposite of Banryu's.
[Black Pearl states: Crude strength is not required. Kindly show proper courtesy.]
Aristocratic, through and through.
Every response carried a reserved distance, like the daughter of some great house seated behind a curtain — offering visitors a small bow, but never a single extra word.
Pour in yokai power? Rejected.
Offer the power of dread? Refused.
Speak to it directly? It answered with only two words — how rude.
It took Kobe Hikaru three days to learn its temperament.
Black Pearl wanted 'respect.'
It didn't ask to be used — it wanted to be placed somewhere important, treated with due ceremony.
Once it felt 'valued,' its favourability would inch upward.
That explained why its favourability had climbed so slowly before... carrying it along through wind and rain on the road, how could that ever raise it quickly?
So now he had set the Black Pearl upon the altar, beside the bronze mirror, and every day as he passed, he gave it a small nod.
As one would greet a guest.
Three days later.
[Black Pearl: Favourability +1, Current Favourability: 10.]
Slow.
But rising.
This thing couldn't be rushed.
After all, this treasure could open a rift into the underworld — if he managed to fully win it over, the boost to Kobe Hikaru would surely be immense.
Perhaps, through it, he could achieve a further transformation of his eyes.
The ability to see through illusion and truth.
Perhaps even reach the boundary between life and death.
Before that, in all likelihood, he could also use it, as planned, to obtain Tessaiga.
Beyond these two items that still needed fresh cultivation and had to be carried on his person, Kobe Hikaru's hands were also full of a stack of both new and old possessions.
Onikiri needed no explanation — this blade had already become yokai, had gained self-awareness, and there was no chance Kobe Hikaru would ever set it aside.
Beyond that, there was the Nekomata's Claw and Dokukō's Reverse Scale.
These items had already reached maximum favourability and could rise no further; their power had already merged into Kobe Hikaru himself. But the objects themselves still existed, their base spiritual nature still intact.
Carrying them on his body served no purpose anymore, yet leaving them to gather dust would be a waste all the same.
So Kobe Hikaru enshrined them all in the temple of 'Demon God, Mitama-no-Mikoto.'
His temple — that hall with the hanging plaque, the bronze mirror, the clear water, the eternal flame.
The faith of the people of both nations gathered here day and night through the Shrine barrier network, and the eerie tales of dread spread outward from this very core.
The point where faith and dread converged — that was the spot on this land where yokai aura and spiritual qi pooled thickest and in the most perfect harmony.
Placing an object here was like burying a seed in the richest soil.
Faith to soak it, dread to nourish it.
Given enough time, even an ordinary object might metamorphose.
Kobe Hikaru set the Nekomata's Claw on the left side of the altar.
Dokukō's Reverse Scale, he placed on the right.
Once everything was arranged, Kobe Hikaru looked over what he still carried on his person and fell into thought.
The panel scrolled with a dense list of favourability values.
Onikiri — maximum favourability.
Yomikiri — maximum favourability.
Banryu — favourability 1, heavy as a mountain.
Three blades, and each, it seemed, could correspond to a different viscus and element.
Onikiri belonged to fire — forged from gathered blood and flame.
Yomikiri belonged to metal — drawn from the breath of his lungs.
Banryu belonged to earth — metamorphosed from the slaughter of a hundred men and a thousand yokai.
When manifesting the Asura Mutation, these three yokai weapons could no doubt all be projected and amplified in sync.
And using them as outlets, he could push the five-element yokai aura output of his Asura viscera to its highest possible ceiling.
In theory, he could even build a circulation loop outside his own body.
He might even manage — without reaching the thirteenth mutation — to display a domain-level ability close to that of a Phenomenalized great yokai, something like Kidomaru's.
But for now, Kobe Hikaru had only three of the five elements.
Three blades clearly couldn't correspond to the true, complete five elements.
Five viscera matched five elements.
Five elements, in turn, should match five weapons.
He needed... five instruments.
Five demon blades, to correspond to the five elements, projected through the Asura Mutation, pushing the power of the five elements and five viscera to their absolute peak.
He was still short two matching demon blades — no, wait, that wasn't right. Just one.
Raikiri belonged to wood, and could match a 'wood blade' — it was still undergoing metamorphosis now, but if it completed its transformation into a full divine artifact, it would certainly serve.
By that count, he was missing only one — a water-element blade.
A new line of thought surfaced.
A new plan took shape alongside it.
He decided—
Once his five viscera had fully formed, he would use the material in his hands to forge a fifth demon blade.
By then, the Ten Mutations would be complete, and the Eleventh Transformation's Three Souls would follow close behind.
After that, the Twelve Mutations — fused into one — and he would be alive again.
What he'd possess then might not be merely the perfect quality of the Twelve Mutations, but combat power drawing infinitely close to, even rivaling, that of an ordinary great yokai.
From Demon to Devil, from death to life.
The path really couldn't be any clearer.
It just needed time.
And more exploration, more research.
In the meantime.
Sakasagami no Yura, the comb at maximum favourability, hung at his waist, the necklace of seven strung stones jingling softly.
Ever since her manifested form had been scared back by Kikyo's spiritual power, she'd been behaving herself much better.
Every so often she gave a little shudder and spat out a line or two.
[Sakasagami no Yura: I am NOT scared of her.]
Kobe Hikaru ignored her.
He reached out again and drew the last item from the hidden compartment in the altar.
The Tahoto Shrine Maiden's Prayer Beads.
Tsubaki's relic.
Kikyo had purified the lingering grudge-rancor clinging to it back then, and it had sat unused ever since.
It was a string of dark brown wooden prayer beads, their grain worn hazy by sun and moon, though at the core of every single bead there still lingered the faintest trace — of a curse.
Tsubaki had been an exorcist, and a shrine maiden as well.
But the path she walked at the end diverged completely from Kikyo's.
Kikyo purified with spiritual power — protected, warded off evil.
Tsubaki cursed with sorcery — controlled, bound.
Two paths, two faces of the same coin.
And these prayer beads had been the core ritual implement of Tsubaki's spellcasting in life.
The panel flashed up information.
[Tahoto Shrine Maiden's Prayer Beads]
[Quality: Yokai Weapon]
[Assessment: This once belonged to a shrine maiden of immense talent who walked a crooked path — but a ritual implement itself holds no good or evil; it simply records faithfully the traces of its owner's spiritual power across a lifetime. Though Tsubaki's spiritual power has long since scattered, the accumulated depth and lingering thoughts the shrine maiden left within the beads still remain. If you can awaken it, it will become a fine tool of cursing.]
[Current Favourability: 0]
A curse.
Unlike purification, which specializes against demonic fiends, this was a power belonging to the shrine maiden's dark side — one built specifically to deal with humans.
Kobe Hikaru wound the prayer beads around his left wrist.
Yokai aura seeped into the first bead.
Hummm.
A faint tremor, like something that had slept a very long time turning over in its sleep.
[Tahoto Shrine Maiden's Prayer Beads: Favourability +1. Current Favourability: 1.]
Another beginning.
He withdrew his hand and stepped out of the temple.
The moonlight was lovely tonight.
The scent of Kikyo's spiritual power drifted over from the direction of the main hall, even and settled.
She slept as soundly as ever — deeply, peacefully.
Because Kobe Hikaru was here.
He stood on the veranda for a moment.
His crimson demon eyes caught the moonlight, the faintest curve touching the corner of his mouth.
Then, carefully, he pushed open the door and stepped inside, looking at Kikyo sound asleep, and found himself, despite everything, beginning to look forward to what came next.
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