The ascent toward the summit of the Ou Mountains could no longer be graced with the name 'mountain path.'
Earth, stone, and the ancient trees that should have struck deep roots had melted away into formless sludge. In their stead lay the endless detritus of iron, abandoned upon this battlefield decades ago.
Broken spear shafts, blades rusted to a bruised crimson, and Emishi helmets bearing the gnawing marks of beasts covered the ridgeline like a grotesque tapestry of slaughter.
With every step, the sound of splintering bone and crushing iron let out a nauseating, discordant wail beneath their feet.
"The very air tastes of rot. Disgusting," Hideto spat dryly, fluttering the collar of his loose hempen robes.
As they drew closer to the peak, the atmospheric density grew unnaturally heavy. This was no mere shift in pressure. The void was choked with a thick, reddish-black miasma—a lethal fog of cursed energy.
The mere residue of the Cursed Energy subconsciously exhaled by a Special Grade spirit was a toxin so potent that an ordinary man’s lungs would have burst, forced to vomit blood until his end.
"Do not attempt to draw breath through your lungs. Circulate your blood with Cursed Energy," Sugawara no Utsugi replied indifferently, casting aside his battered straw hat.
A massive vortex of Cursed Energy crouched atop the summit. It felt less like the presence of a living being and more like the swirling, bottomless maw of Jigoku itself.
"Oi, what does that look like to those eyes of yours?" Hideto asked, resting his hand on the hilt of his fractured tachi.
"It is as if tens of thousands of souls have been curdled into a single, agonizing curse," Utsugi murmured chillingly. Beneath his feet, blue Cursed Energy began to rise from his blade like a shimmering heat haze.
"It comes."
No sooner had Utsugi’s declaration fallen—
Kugugugugu—!
The summit convulsed with a roar that felt as if the very crust of the earth were being twisted asunder.
It was no earthquake. The myriad rusted weapons and mounds of bone covering the ridge rose into the sky as if beckoned by a gargantuan magnet, assembling themselves into a titanic silhouette within the thick mist.
Kiiiik— Kang! Clang!
The mountain echoed with the hair-raising screech of steel grinding against bone. Finally, as the miasma parted, the true form of the Special Grade Cursed Spirit revealed its harrowing majesty.
It was the form of a gargantuan centipede, its length immeasurable.
Yet, its flesh was not made of meat, but of the Vengeful Spirits of Emishi warriors churned with the mud of Mutsu. Thousands of shattered breastplates, swords, and spears formed its writhing carapace, while beneath its belly, hundreds of broken human arms and blade-shards gripped the earth like skittering legs.
[ Curse them... the dogs of the Yamato...! ]
[ Give me back my head... I shall tear you...!! ]
From the massive fissure that served as the Special Grade's mouth, a grotesque death rattle—the overlapping voices of tens of thousands—erupted like a gale.
That mere roar was enough to shred the mist at the mountain's foot instantly, violently whipping Hideto's loose garments. It was an overwhelming discharge of pure Cursed Energy.
"Well now. It’s twice as large as my estimates," Hideto muttered dryly, knitting his brows.
"I haven't the slightest inkling of where to even begin carving."
"Start by clearing those hideous legs obscuring our vision."
Utsugi’s feet kicked off the mud.
His form left a trail of azure light, hurtling like a projectile toward the front of the colossal centipede.
Sensing his approach, the Special Grade reacted with a screech of metallic friction. Dozens of blade-legs beneath its belly descended upon Utsugi simultaneously. It was a deluge of iron lightning striking from every direction.
"Heat Haze Dance (Kagerou no Mai)."
At the sound of Hideto's voice from the rear, a bizarre distortion rippled through the Special Grade's vision. The creature's blade-legs plunged toward Utsugi's crown with unerring precision, yet—Kwa-ang!—the thunderous impact pierced only the empty air above the rocky peaks.
Utsugi, having used the missed legs as stepping stones, leaped high as an overwhelming density of Cursed Energy entwined around his tachi. He spun through the air like a top, drawing a horizontal arc of destruction across the centipede’s steel limbs.
Sggg-kt—!!
Three or four of the gargantuan steel legs were severed as cleanly as if they were stalks of radish, collapsing in a heap.
However, a single shard from the severed limbs ricocheted upward, grazing Utsugi’s cheek ever so slightly.
Slick.
A shallow scratch, enough to bead a single drop of blood.
It was in that moment.
!!!
[ Save me...! Aaaauuugh!! ]
Utsugi’s vision suffered a total eclipse of darkness.
The mountain summit vanished; the presence of Hideto evaporated. In their place was the sensation of wet mud. A gargantuan spear of the Yamato army had impaled his abdomen. The horrific agony of intestines tearing whenever the spearhead twisted. Before his eyes, his wife and child lay decapitated in the dirt, while the cruel laughter of the slaughterers rang in his ears.
The abject despair and terror of an Emishi warrior dying in a spray of blood was forcibly thrust into Utsugi's soul.
'...An illusion.'
Flash!
Reality returned. In physical time, it had been a mere blink of an eye. Yet, as Utsugi landed, his breath was minutely ragged, and beads of cold sweat lined his brow. Despite it being only a superficial abrasion, the residue of fatigue and terror that had struck his entire body remained vivid, disrupting his heartbeat.
"Oi. Why did you falter? Your movements stiffened," Hideto asked dryly as he approached. He had not missed the momentary lapse in Utsugi's defenses.
Utsugi wiped the drop of blood from his cheek with the back of his hand, glaring at the Special Grade with cold eyes.
"An annoying Cursed Technique," Utsugi muttered lowly. "Those blades are not meant for mere physical destruction."
"The moment you graze the steel that forms its body, the 'Memory of Death' of the Emishi warrior that the blade once slew is forcibly injected into the target's brain. It is but a momentary vision, yet the body experiences the terror and agony of that death in its entirety."
Hideto’s indifferent eyes narrowed.
"...A psychological interference technique? You suffer the pain of death from a mere scratch?"
"Indeed. It is not a fatal wound in itself, but the visions accumulate in the brain with every hit. A moment at first, but with repeated strikes, the mental devastation will compound."
Utsugi adjusted his grip on his tachi, gritting his teeth. The strike on his soul—the injection of memory—had not been perfectly erased; it remained like a foul residue.
"If the technique is sustained, the boundary between reality and illusion will crumble, eventually driving the victim to madness. It is a vile curse designed to shatter one’s will to fight completely."
It was then.
Sensing its attack had struck home, the Special Grade let out a bizarre laugh that shook the mountain. Deep crimson resentment billowed from the stumps of its severed legs, absorbing the rusted weapons from the ground to regenerate its limbs in an instant.
[ Bear... the weight of death...! ]
The Special Grade's massive frame bent grotesquely toward the heavens, its thousands of blade-legs clashing against each other to produce a horrifying metallic din. They served as the creature's 'hand signs' for weaving a ritual.
A sound like the very atmosphere splitting apart resonated around them. Light warped, and the clouded sky began to swirl into a bloody hue.
"...Oi, Sugawara." A sharp tension laced Hideto's dry voice. "Is it a Domain?"
Utsugi widened his stance. The speed at which the Special Grade’s Cursed Energy was encroaching upon the space surpassed all imagination. Escape was impossible.
Then, a grotesque incantation, the layered voices of ten thousand Emishi spirits, shook the Mutsu mountain range to its core.
[ Domain Expansion ]
[ Iron Wail, Iron Soul (Cheol-myeong Cheol-hon) ]
Pa-aaaaat—!!
In an instant, the colors of the world inverted.
The mountain scenery and the misty sky were erased into a void of black. The space where Utsugi and Hideto stood was forcibly dragged into the Special Grade's Innate Domain.
When vision returned, what the two men faced was a horrific, illogical world of another dimension.
The ground was a sea of viscous blood, deep enough to sink one’s ankles. And above that crimson sea, hundreds of thousands of rusted swords and spears thrust toward the sky, lined up endlessly like tombstones. The sky itself was a rotted blood-red, its ceiling bristling with blades ready to fall like rain.
This was the interior of the Special Grade's stomach, a hellish realization of the slaughter-field experienced by the Emishi rebels.
Every blade existing within this domain was a 'Sure-Hit'—guaranteed to strike the target. If even a single blade of this iron rain grazed them, the vision of death would immediately strike their brains.
Hideto stood atop the sea of blood, gripping his broken sword tightly. His usual lethargy had vanished completely. Attempting to deceive the senses with his Refraction Cursed Technique inside a Domain was futile. The 'Sure-Hit' factor was an intent to kill woven into the space itself; it would ignore illusions and unerringly tear the flesh.
"So we must endure without taking a single hit?"
"Do not whine. I expected as much," Utsugi's cold voice echoed. His six eyes were not overwhelmed by the Domain’s harrowing vista.
"Die! Dogs of the Yamato!!"
With the death rattle of tens of thousands, the rain of blades suspended in the sky began to pour down upon Utsugi and Hideto. A perfect deluge of death, with no space to evade and no shield to block.
But in that desperate heartbeat, Utsugi and Hideto simultaneously took their respective defensive stances.
"New Shadow Style."
"Sugawara Secret Technique."
Just before the sure-hit blades could touch their crowns, two pulses of Cursed Energy erupted explosively over the sea of blood.
"Simple Domain (Kani Ryoiki)."
"Falling Blossom Emotion (Rakka no Jo)."
Inside the Special Grade's domain, the desperate resistance of the two heretics had begun.
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