When the Second Elder returned in triumph carrying the corpse of the Leopard Cat yōkai Chiyan, the Dog Clan's fortress instantly erupted into a storm of cheers.
Waves of shouts rolled across the stronghold, a cathartic release of the fighting spirit and long-suppressed joy in the hearts of the dog demons.
Meanwhile, in the Leopard Cat Tribe, the air was heavy—stifling and oppressive.
In the center of their territory stood Lord Shakumyōmaru, the Leopard Cat Tribe's great Daimyō who had taken his true beast form as a Daiyōkai. His mountainous body loomed over the land.
He wore war armor of red and black, styled after Sengoku-period samurai. Draped across his thirty-meter frame, it amplified not only his unmatched aura of strength but also lent his stance a sharper, more menacing presence.
His brown fur gleamed sleek and smooth. From his shoulders jutted two massive horns, each two to three meters long. His bared fangs glimmered with a cold light, adding to the ferocious visage that few could bear to face.
"The death of the Fifth Elder, Chiyan, has been confirmed. It was the work of the Dog Clan's Great Elder and Second Elder acting together. Along with her, the rising stars of our tribe—Tōran, Shūran, and the others, fell at the Dog Clan's mountain outpost."
After slaying Chiyan, the Dog Clan had deliberately spread the news far and wide through the Third Elder, Ziyan.
On one hand, it was to trumpet their great victory, like a dose of strong medicine injected into the weary veins of the Dog Clan alliance. It was a rallying cry to revive their flagging morale.
After years of campaigns and years of defeats, the Dog Clan's allies were exhausted and desperate for a single victory to lift their spirits.
On the other hand, it served as a warning to their vassals and allies: the Leopard Cats would surely escalate the war, and others would need to shoulder their share of the burden in the cat-dog conflict, lest the Leopard Cats freely concentrate their elite warriors.
The Panther Tribe quickly delivered the report to Shakumyōmaru.
Not long after, the three Panther Elders still present in the homeland convened in a high council with their great lord.
Since most of the Leopard Cat elites, like Shakumyōmaru, preferred their true forms, their stronghold had been built on a massive scale—broad, crude, and imposing.
Within an open-air stone hall, Shakumyōmaru sat upon a colossal throne hewn from blue-green rock, listening in silence to the report from one of his subordinates.
His eyes, each the size of an infant's head, swept slowly across the three elders below. His voice was deep and resonant, utterly devoid of the violent madness that would mark him in later ages.
"There is no need for wasted words. Since the dogs have struck us with such force, if we do not answer in kind—slaughtering one of their elders as an offering, then the very heavens of the Western Lands will shift against us."
With that single line, Shakumyōmaru set the absolute tone of the council.
The Leopard Cat Great Elder—fifteen meters tall, his body clad in gray-blue fur, understood his lord's fury all too well.
The news of the Fifth Elder's death had thrown the entire tribe into an uproar.
The Great Elder, who had lived through the days when the Leopard Cats ruled the West unchallenged and the shift to the current balance of two rival powers, felt his own rage burn hot. Yet after centuries of survival, he also carried the cold wisdom of an 'old thief who refuses to die'.
It had been his strategy to bleed the Dog Clan dry over time, draining them through attrition. And for decades, that strategy had borne fruit, leaving the dogs and their allies battered and half-dead.
But now, with such a reversal, their own negligence had cost them dearly.
The fall of an elder and the loss of promising youths was no small blow to a tribe already beset by enemies on all sides.
Under Shakumyōmaru's stern gaze, the Great Elder raised his head slightly and gave his reply.
"As you command, my lord."
He paused, carefully choosing his next words.
"By the dogs' usual methods, their next move will be to consolidate around their stronghold, abandoning their outer holdings. Twenty years ago, they did the same; digging in for a war of defense, determined to wear us down until we withdrew."
The Cat–Dog war had known two true turning points.
The first was the birth of the Dog General, which transformed the Dog Clan's position from mere pawns to players in the great game.
The second was the sudden rise of the Third Elder, Ziyan, which gave the dogs the strength to expand their territory.
That rise had forced the Leopard Cats to launch a massive assault years ago—a campaign so brutal that even the Dog Clan's Second Elder had nearly fallen in battle.
The Great Elder continued his analysis.
"To avoid being drawn into another endless war of attrition—where the dogs lose little while we are the ones left exhausted, we must act decisively."
His voice dropped lower, grim and weighty.
"The other two elders stationed against our rival clans must be recalled. With the five of us united, we will make the dogs pay for their blood debt in blood!"
"Then we shall do as the Great Elder says," Shakumyōmaru agreed without hesitation. His massive arm swept through the air, the motion of his seven-meter limb whipping up a gale.
The force of it was so fierce that the weakest of the elders, the Sixth, felt he might be blown away entirely.
"I will see it arranged at once," the Great Elder said.
When the meeting adjourned, Shakumyōmaru turned and slowly lifted into the air, his colossal body rising toward the mountains until it vanished at the mouth of a cavern.
The three remaining Leopard Cat Elders made their own preparations. At the Great Elder's orders, two leapt skyward, streaking off toward their assigned territories.
"This time," he instructed, "not only must we gather the elders, we must also strike the neighboring powers hard. Otherwise, with the elders recalled, our local forces will be left vulnerable to counterattack."
In this world, few feared virtue, but all feared power. Strength alone was the law of the land.
So long as the Leopard Cats maintained their dominance, there would be no worry of others seizing the chance to strike them down.
After all, Daiyōkai were the pillars of a tribe; the beams of purple-gold that held up the seas, the white stone columns that propped up the sky.
The Sixth Elder soared through the skies, his seven-meter body covered in fur white tinged with blue. His ears still rang with the Great Elder's orders.
Though older than Chiyan, he had only ascended to high-class yōkai status after her.
Even now, his strength lagged behind the Dog Clan's Third Elder, Ziyan. Against her, he could do no better than fight to a draw.
Ordinarily, such power was not shameful. Most yōkai grew stronger only over centuries of training. In another hundred or two hundred years, he would not rank among the weaker of the high demons.
But in the chaos of war, with life and death uncertain, he was the softest target among the five elders.
It would be no surprise if the three Dog Elders sought every chance to strike him down.
"I cannot sit and wait for death," he thought. "The Fourth Elder's post is at Wind and Thunder Gorge. The yōkai who dwell there are the Crow Tengu. Their treasured Storm Wings are a rare prize indeed… I must find a way to seize them."
As the Sixth Elder schemed for some advantage that might tip the odds in his favor, the brown light in his eyes darkened into something more sinister.