Chapter 100: A Single Rider Through a Thousand
The twilight was torn asunder by a flash of lightning.
A violent arc of purple electricity exploded through the air, colliding with a katana that radiated a divine, golden light.
Metal screamed against metal.
Kakizaki Kageie held her tachi horizontally before her, the blade shimmering with a faint golden luminescence. The power of the so-called divine artifact flowed along its length, managing to catch Kobe Hikaru's descending slash.
But that was all. She had caught it, but she had not truly blocked it.
The instant the blades met, an irresistible force surged through her weapon. A bone-jarring impact drove her arms down, and the webbing of her thumb split open, blood welling instantly. That single blow sent her skidding back a dozen yards.
Her iron boots carved two deep furrows in the muddy ground. The shockwave lifted the skirt of her silver armor before letting it fall, and her legs, clad in long boots, braced desperately to keep her from being thrown onto her back.
In stark contrast, Hikaru merely tilted his head.
As his blade had come down, he'd clearly felt his Yao Qi being peeled away by that golden light. It was a strange, abrasive sensation. Had he been an ordinary demon below the Materialization realm, even one who had undergone six transformations, he would have likely been suppressed by that power, rendered utterly strengthless.
But the problem was—he was no ordinary demon.
Though he was nominally at the level of Six Transformations, the sheer density of his Yao Qi was already approaching that of an eight-transformation demon, and his physical strength was even greater. The golden light had managed to scrape away a thin outer layer of his power, but the flesh beneath, the bone beneath that, and the demonic energy that had fused with lightning until it was almost solid—none of it had been moved in the slightest.
"Your blade is quite interesting," Hikaru's voice drifted from beneath his ghost mask.
It was flat. Utterly devoid of emotion. He sounded less like a warrior addressing an enemy who had just withstood his attack and more like an appraiser examining an object of mild curiosity.
Kakizaki Kageie's pupils contracted. Her intuition, honed on a hundred battlefields, was screaming.
That strike… the monster's power was too heavy. So heavy that her arms were still numb, so heavy that the tachi in her hand, which carried the divine might of Bishamonten, was still humming with a pained vibration.
He hadn't used his full strength.
Any battle-hardened general could tell when an opponent was serious. The speed of that attack had been astonishing, its power inconceivable, but the movement itself… it had been far too casual.
It felt like a throwaway swing.
"Don't daze off."
The voice suddenly whispered right beside her ear.
Kageie's body reacted faster than her mind. Her tachi swept across in a brilliant golden arc, but the blade cut through nothing but empty air. Hikaru was no longer there.
He was close. So close.
'Left? Right?'
He was above.
Kageie snapped her head up. Against the bruised twilight canopy, the gray-clad figure was flitting over her, his pale, long hair tracing an elegant arc in the wind. The crimson ghost mask looked down at her from on high.
In those eyes, which glowed with an eerie red light, there was no killing intent.
There was only condescension.
"Too slow," his voice fell from above.
And immediately after—
Bone Spikes.
White bone spikes shot from his elbows, not at her, but into the muddy ground at her feet.
Kaka-kaka-kaka—
Four spikes, thick as wooden stakes, drove themselves deep into the earth, boxing her in and completely locking down her position. Kageie tried to move, but the Yao Qi emanating from the spikes formed a miniature cage, its pressure so immense that every step felt like wading through a swamp.
She gritted her teeth.
The golden light on her tachi erupted once more as she frantically surged the divine artifact's power, attempting to shatter the bone prison. The moment the light touched the spikes, fine cracks did indeed spiderweb across their white surfaces. That power was suppressing the Yao Qi. It could, in theory, suppress all things unnatural—
But from within those cracks, flickering arcs of purple electricity leaked out.
Lightning.
The lightning from his Thunder Muscle transformation wasn't some superficial trick layered over his skin; it had become an essential part of his physical being. It conducted through the bone spikes, surging back into the golden light.
The holy radiance shattered.
The tachi in Kageie's hand vibrated violently. The tear in the webbing of her thumb ripped wider, and blood trickled down the hilt. The aftershock forced her back another step.
And Hikaru had already landed in front of her.
He was very close. Close enough that she could see her own disheveled reflection in the crimson eyes of his mask.
"Your blade can suppress Yao Qi," his tone held a sliver of appreciation. "But it can't suppress me."
Muramasa was held horizontally at his side, its tip pointing down. It wasn't a combat stance. It was the indifferent posture of one whose analysis was complete.
Kageie stared at the ghost mask inches from her face, her own expression, framed by silver-gray hair, a mask of unwillingness. But she wasn't a fool. She recognized one, obvious fact: on her own, she couldn't even dream of taking this man down.
She barely even had the right to exchange blows with him.
The realization that her opponent hadn't been serious from the very beginning was a wound more lethal than any sword.
Her decision was immediate. She threw herself backward.
"Entire army!" her voice pierced the battlefield, clear and resonant. "Form ranks! Surround and kill!"
The thousand-man army, which had stood silent until now, roared into motion. Cavalry began their thundering charge, infantry raised a wall of long spears and advanced, and the archers in the rear drew their bowstrings taut. The great banner bearing the character 'Bi' for Bishamonten snapped loudly in the wind.
A pressure like a landslide, like a tsunami, flooded in from all sides.
This was no longer a duel. It had become a war.
The momentum of a thousand men in formation was staggering. Hundreds of arrows rose into the air, a black cloud that blotted out the last of the setting sun.
Hikaru glanced at the rain of arrows filling the sky, then at Kageie, who had already retreated into the heart of her army, preparing to use its collective might to launch a finishing blow.
He smiled.
Beneath the half-crimson mask, the corners of his mouth curled into a wanton, predatory arc.
"Calling for backup because you can't win?"
He didn't dodge. He didn't even move.
[Blood Transformation]
A crimson mist erupted from his body. It was not a tentative, thin vapor, but a substance as thick and viscous as blood plasma. The mist instantly expanded, swallowing an area a hundred meters in radius.
The arrows shot into the mist—and vanished.
They were caught, decelerated, and stalled by the thick, cloying fog, finally falling silently to the ground like stones sinking into a mire. Of the hundreds, nearly a thousand arrows, not a single one made it through.
Immediately after, a purple light exploded within the crimson sea.
[Thunder Muscle] fully activated.
Hikaru's figure vanished. In his place was a streak of pure purple lightning, racing through the blood-red mist.
He charged straight into the cavalry ranks.
"General's orders, stop him!" a front-row cavalryman roared, thrusting his long spear.
The spear tip struck home, hitting Hikaru's shoulder.
Then the spear shaft shattered.
It was like a chopstick poking a castle wall. The bone armor didn't even vibrate; the lead simply snapped off, and the ricocheting fragments embedded themselves in the cavalryman's own cheek.
The next second, bone spikes erupted from the blood mist. Not just one, but over a dozen. They shot up from the ground, lanced through the air, and burst from the sides of the lightning's trajectory. The white spikes seemed to have eyes, piercing the necks of warhorses, tossing riders from their saddles, and sending them crashing into a forest of newly-grown bone, where they were impaled with a fresh spray of blood.
Men and horses were overturned without mercy. Screams of agony merged into a single, horrifying chorus.
But the purple lightning showed no intention of stopping.
It tore through the cavalry, ripped through the infantry squares, and sliced through the archers' firing lines. Wherever it passed, spears snapped, iron armor shattered, and warhorses fell with terrified neighs. The lightning raged, its ambient discharge electrocuting nearby soldiers until their bodies went into spasms, their weapons clattering from their grasp. The blood mist robbed them of their sight, leaving them unable to even tell where the enemy was.
Hikaru moved as if through an uninhabited land.
His body was the ultimate weapon.
Muramasa never even left its sheath. Relying solely on his Bone Spikes, his lightning, and a body hardened to the strength of steel by the dual enhancements of his transformations, he pierced the thousand-man formation alone.
From north to south.
A straight line.
Clean. Efficient.
He carved a path of blood through thousands of men and horses, a path that pointed directly at Kakizaki Kageie in the center of the army.
Kageie watched that bolt of lightning drawing closer and closer. She saw it all with perfect, horrifying clarity. The thousand elites she took so much pride in were like paper dolls before that monster. It wasn't that her soldiers were incompetent. It was that thing—it was simply too absurd.
"Bishamonten be praised!"
She held nothing back. The power of the artifact within her burned to its very end. The golden light on her tachi surged to its absolute limit, transforming into a massive, thirty-foot blade of pure radiance. This strike gathered all her energy, spirit, and soul, even borrowing the 'momentum' of the army at her back.
This 'momentum' was a different kind of power—the collective awe and reverence that soldiers feel for their leader, the united will of a thousand hearts. The momentum of a thousand men condensed into a single strike, fused with the power of a divine artifact.
"Evil-Bane!" she roared, slashing down toward the approaching lightning.
The golden blade of light cleaved the blood mist and split the very earth, crashing down upon the purple lightning with a pressure that felt almost holy. It was a blow that could have split a mountain.
And Hikaru—
Finally drew his blade once more.
Not because he was forced to, but because the light of that strike was genuinely beautiful, worthy of a response in kind.
Muramasa slid from its scabbard without a single wasted motion. It was a simple, pure, upward flick.
The blade's light collided with the golden radiance.
There was no stalemate, not even a moment of confrontation. There was only the soft, tearing sound of silk being ripped in two.
The thirty-foot-long golden blade was split cleanly down the middle. The holy light shattered, dissolving into a sky full of glittering fragments that drifted away on the wind.
Yet the momentum of Muramasa's blade did not diminish. It followed the crack in the shattered light, trailing a sheath of purple lightning, and fell straight onto Kakizaki Kageie.
The two figures crossed paths.
Finally, Hikaru landed, Muramasa angled toward the ground. There wasn't a single drop of blood on the blade—the lightning from his strike had instantly cauterized the wound.
Behind him, Kakizaki Kageie remained frozen in her striking posture. Her dark silver armor was split open from shoulder to waist. Her delicate face was a mask of shock and utter incomprehension.
"This… how is this possible…"
She had lost.
And she was dead.
When two armies clash and the enemy comes with clear killing intent, Hikaru had no reason to hold back. Even if the opponent was a conquerable 'Artifact'.
At that very same moment, hundreds of miles away, in a brightly lit military tent nestled in the mountains on the border of Echigo and Musashi provinces.
A young girl dressed in armor, her head wrapped in white gauze, suddenly snapped her eyes open. Silver-white, smooth hair spilled out from beneath the veil, framing an exquisite yet heroic face.
There, in her mind's eye, a pitch-black phantom had appeared.
It was a long blade.
But the blade… was cracked.
And then, it shattered into nothing.
"Kakizaki Kageie's soul…" she whispered, her voice tight. "Has it returned to Takamagahara?"
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