The night outside the cave was quiet. Too quiet.
Kōbe Hikaru hadn't taken ten steps from the cave mouth before he felt it.
The Shikon Jewel.
It was glowing.
The thumb-sized gem tucked against his chest was leaking a pale violet light straight through the cloth wrapping — soft, but impossible to conceal. That light bled through the coarse hemp, bled through the cracked plates of his broken armor, and hung in the darkness of the night like a lit lantern.
No. Worse than a lantern.
Because threaded through that light was something else entirely. A scent. An aura. The unmistakable blend of spiritual power and demon-qi fused into one.
To a human, it might have read as a vague, ineffable sense of mystery. To a demon, it was something far simpler.
Meat.
Glowing, fragrant, irresistible meat — the kind that would make any demon in a ten-league radius lose their mind.
"...Damn it."
Kōbe Hikaru swore under his breath.
He should have thought of this earlier. The reason that demon horde had hunted the old man so relentlessly wasn't just because of the Shikon Jewel's legend — it was because the jewel itself was a beacon. A massive, unceasing signal source. As long as it existed, as long as it remained unsuppressed, it would keep broadcasting its presence to everything around it.
Like a bonfire that never went out, drawing every moth within range.
Hrrrrgh——
A deep, guttural howl rolled in from the distance.
Kōbe Hikaru raised his head. At the far edge of the treeline, pairs of eyes were kindling in the dark — red, green, yellow, violet, packed together in a dense, glittering mass, like a field of fallen stars. They were moving fast, converging on his position.
"Here we go again."
His left thumb pressed against the sword guard. His center of gravity dropped.
The system panel materialized automatically.
[Large numbers of hostile targets detected and closing.]
[Cursed Blade Muramasa: Mood shifted to 'ECSTATIC.' It conveys a message: 'Time to eat again.']
"Glad one of us is in a good mood," Kōbe Hikaru muttered, the corner of his mouth twitching.
He hadn't finished the thought before the first wave crashed out of the trees.
Three Cyclops Fiends led the charge.
Each stood a full zhang tall, a single enormous eye dominating the center of each misshapen skull. Their skin was the dull red-brown of rusted iron. They swung heavy spiked clubs — each one the size of a grown man — as they barreled forward.
"Found it!"
The lead fiend let out a roar of triumphant hunger.
"The Shikon Jewel — it's on the Ghost Warrior!"
"Take it!"
All three exploded forward simultaneously. The earth cracked beneath their feet. Three walls of flesh and iron came crashing down toward him like avalanches given legs.
Kōbe Hikaru didn't retreat.
A Ghost Warrior's body knew nothing of fear. Presence alone was never going to move him.
He watched them come, cold and unhurried, reading their movements. The lead fiend had its club raised high — leaving the hollow beneath its armpit completely exposed.
There.
Demon-qi surged through his legs.
[Phantom Step].
His silhouette vanished.
An instant later, he materialized to the lead fiend's left. The blade cleared the scabbard in a single motion — black sword-light driving upward from below, carving precisely into that exposed armpit. The edge bit through muscle and kept climbing, splitting the shoulder blade apart, and burst free at the base of the neck.
Shhhkk——!
One clean stroke had nearly separated the fiend's entire left arm from its body, along with half its torso. The massive eye went wide. Its mouth never finished forming the scream.
It collapsed.
"Big brother!"
The remaining two Cyclops Fiends staggered — a single heartbeat of shock — then erupted with a fury twice as savage. Two spiked clubs came hammering down from either side in a pincer strike.
Kōbe Hikaru didn't dodge.
He pitched his body forward instead, dropping low, sliding flat along the ground and threading through the gap between both clubs. They slammed into empty space behind him, cratering the earth in twin explosions of dirt.
He was already behind the right-hand fiend.
A reverse-grip thrust drove the blade straight through the back of its knee. Steel punched through, dragging a spray of blood with it. The fiend buckled, one leg folding, dropping it to a single knee.
Before it could process what had happened, Kōbe Hikaru was already on its back. The blade swept horizontal.
A head hit the dirt.
The third Cyclops Fiend turned and bolted.
Kōbe Hikaru dropped off the corpse and pressed his left fingers into a seal.
Demon Art — Ghost-Fire Wisp.
A ball of pale blue flame shot forward and struck the fleeing fiend squarely in the back. It detonated. The fiend screamed and went down in a heap.
He walked over and finished it.
Three Cyclops Fiends. Thirty breaths, start to finish.
[Cursed Blade Muramasa: Affection +1]
[Current Affection: 28]
But that was just the overture.
More eyes were pouring out of the treeline — a flood with no end in sight. Blue-Skin Fiends, serpent-body spirits, centipede wraiths, bird-headed horrors. And others still, things Kōbe Hikaru had no name for, breeds that looked like they'd been assembled from spare parts.
They swarmed inward from every direction, boxing him in at the center.
"That's him!"
A familiar voice rang out from somewhere in the mass.
Kōbe Hikaru tracked it. He recognized them — the remnants of the demon pack that had been hunting the old man. The survivors of that earlier horde.
The one leading them now was a Blue-Skin Fiend unlike the others — a full head taller than the ordinary breed, its skin covered in a layer of rough, overlapping scales. A lieutenant. Their pack leader.
"This is the Ghost Warrior who stole the Shikon Jewel!"
The Blue-Skin Fiend pack leader jabbed a finger at Kōbe Hikaru and screamed at the surrounding horde.
"Kill him! The Shikon Jewel is ours!"
"OURS!"
The swarm erupted into a roar that shook the trees.
Kōbe Hikaru swept his gaze across the mass of them.
Rough estimate: at least two hundred. More than the wave outside the cave. The Shikon Jewel had apparently been busy — every demon from several surrounding mountain ranges had come sniffing.
"You're a real menace, you know that?"
He muttered it quietly, tightening his right hand on the hilt.
The Shikon Jewel resting against his chest continued its serene, soft-violet glow, utterly indifferent to his complaints.
[Shikon Jewel: Current State — DORMANT. Affection cannot be unlocked.]
Not even a twitch of acknowledgment.
More high-maintenance than the sword.
"Fine."
Kōbe Hikaru exhaled slowly.
He lifted his gaze to the wall of demons encircling him. His inverted eyes — black whites, blood-red irises — held no fear. Only a flat, impenetrable calm.
"Since you've all come to me..."
He drew the blade.
Moonlight ran cold along the steel. The grain-pattern along the dark blade pulsed with a faint undertone of violet.
"...don't expect me to go easy."
The horde seemed to hesitate for one suspended moment — his presence pressing against them like a weight — but greed won out over instinct. It always did.
"All of you — charge!"
The Blue-Skin Fiend pack leader's command broke the stillness. Two hundred demons surged forward as one.
Kōbe Hikaru moved to meet them.
Cut a path through. That was the only option he had.
The blade sang as it swung. He drove forward into the swarming mass — cutting, cutting, and cutting again.
Strike. Strike. And strike once more.
The steel moved in continuous arcs, unhesitating, burning through the press of bodies like a scythe. Each cut drew blood. Each drawn blood fed the blade. Each feeding sharpened the edge a fraction more. The cycle turned, relentless and mechanical, and Kōbe Hikaru was the still point at its center — not a man fighting, but something closer to a force of nature that had decided to take the shape of one.
[Affection: 30]
[Trait Unlocked: Resonance with Blood]
[Bond Dialogue (II) Unlocked: It tells you that it is satisfied with today's feeding. And then, it shares a secret — its maker was a swordsmith named 'Muramasa.' Every blade that man ever forged carried the same curse: an unquenchable thirst for blood.]
[Within the range of your sight, all blood becomes your eyes — resonating with you, binding you to bloodshed, calling you to dance with slaughter.]
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