Chapter 84: Here, I Am Undefeated
From the very beginning, Hikaru knew he couldn't defeat Kidomaru.
He was an Oni Samurai of the Six Transformations. His opponent was a veteran demon lord, a hair's breadth from ascending to the rank of Great Yokai. Even if Hikaru unleashed every ability in his arsenal, the attempt would be as futile as an ant trying to topple a great tree.
So, he never intended to fight Kidomaru head-on.
He chose another path.
It was a path that began at the main castle of the Imagawa Clan, wound through the cities of the Hojo, and cut across the northern mountains and eastern villages of the Kanto region. Along that path, he had slain the Thunder Beast, butchered Gakimaru, eviscerated the Venomous Flood Dragon, and put down the Nekomata.
The blood of four powerful demons, each at the level of Materialization, now stained this land.
But more —his own blood mist had stained it, too.
Every place he passed, every battle he fought, he left a trace of his own bone and blood. Those traces seeped into the soil, blended with the rock, and forged a connection with the very earth beneath his feet. He had 'touched' it, and in doing so, had taken hold.
Touching and taking hold were the keys to his conquests.
From start to finish, he wasn't just slaying demons. He was conquering this land.
It was the same principle he used to conquer the cursed blade Muramasa, the sacred Shikon Jewel, and the demonic boomerang Hiraikotsu.
The land, after all, was also a type of 'object'.
It possessed no consciousness, no soul. But it had memory. It remembered who bled upon its soil, whose footprints marked its trails. It remembered who purged the demons that occupied it, who cleansed the foul, turbid air that drifted above it.
And so, when Hikaru had walked the four corners of the region and scoured it of its demonic atmosphere, the land began to pay attention to him.
[Kanto Region: Favorability +1]
[Current Favorability: 1 (Recognition)]
The number seemed laughably small. But the meaning it represented was immeasurably vast.
"The power of the earth..." Kidomaru muttered, his voice thick with a dawning, horrified understanding. It was as if he only now grasped why this Oni Samurai, a mere fledgling of the Six Transformations, had dared to attack him alone—why he had charged back without a moment's rest after killing the four vanguards.
He wasn't being reckless. He was carefully prepared.
He had laid out a game with the entire Kanto Region as his chessboard.
"From the very beginning... you were planning this?" Kidomaru's voice was a low, suppressed growl.
From beneath the Crimson Oni Mask, Hikaru's voice emerged, unnervingly casual. "It was on the way."
"Slaying demons was my primary objective," he stated simply. "As for whether this land would side with me..." He looked up, his crimson eyes locking onto Kidomaru's. "That was just a welcome bonus."
Of course, Hikaru couldn't have known Kidomaru's true purpose was to send those four demons to their deaths. But he knew they served a greater master from Kyoto, and he knew that master was the demon standing before him now. It would have been foolish to come unprepared.
And this was his preparation. This was the escape route he had carved for himself.
Kidomaru's face was a mask of thunderous fury. He refused to believe it. He refused to believe a minor demon could conceive of such a strategy, that an Oni Samurai born only a few months ago could possess such terrifying foresight.
But the facts were laid bare before him. The very ground beneath his feet was rejecting him. The air grew heavy, pressing in on him with a evident hostility. The miasma of resentment that had shrouded the area—the lingering hatred from the deaths of the four vanguards, which should have been his to command—was being slowly but surely dispersed by a far more ancient and majestic power.
"Impossible..." His voice cracked with a note of urgency. "How can you possibly contend with my domain!"
He raised his deep blue tachi, his Yao Qi erupting. "Innate Barrier: Rashomon!"
A storm of black mist burst from his body, coalescing into the spectral phantoms of towering gates. This was the true manifestation of his domain, a demonic power known as an Innate Barrier. It took the silhouette of the legendary Rashomon gate of old Kyoto as its form, but what it truly manifested was an absolute territory centered on blindingly fast slashes and the endless variation of speed.
Within this domain, his velocity could stack infinitely, until time itself seemed to lag behind the razor's edge of his blade. in the world of pure speed, Kidomaru had achieved a level that even ordinary Great Yokai could not hope to match.
"Sword Art: Cherry Blossom!"
The words were barely spoken before he vanished. In the next instant, a hurricane of blade lights slashed toward Hikaru from every conceivable direction at once. The strikes were as swift as cherry blossom petals scattered by a gale, yet as dense and overwhelming as a blizzard filling the sky.
This was a speed Kidomaru could only unleash within his barrier—a speed that surpassed the wind, outpaced sound, and could even chase lightning. Most demons would be shredded into fragments before they could even register the attack. Even a high-level demon of seven or eight transformations would be diced into a bloody ruin.
Clang! Screee! Clang!
The shriek of metal against metal echoed as sparks erupted in the gloom. Hikaru's Muramasa desperately blocked a fraction of the incoming blows. The rest slammed into his bone armor and the shield of blood mist surrounding him.
The armor shattered. The mist dispersed.
But he did not fall.
Because the ground beneath his feet was holding him up.
Kidomaru's expression finally twisted. He saw it. The bone armor he had just pulverized, the blood mist he had scattered—both were re-condensing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
It wasn't Hikaru's own power. It was the land itself, replenishing him.
The bone and blood that had seeped into the soil, the traces of Yao Qi left among the mountain rocks—all of it was now flowing continuously back into Hikaru's body, mending him, sustaining him.
"In that case..." Kidomaru's voice turned cold and sinister. He raised his blade again. "Then I shall cut down the land along with you!"
"Sword Art: Plum Tree!"
A stronger technique, more potent Yao Qi, and an even faster storm of blades swept over the battlefield. This time, the assault wasn't just aimed at Hikaru, but at the very ground he stood on. The blade-light tore into the earth, carving deep, smoking trenches across the landscape.
"Sword Art: Void!"
His speed surged again. The slashes became so fast that they tore the air apart, creating pockets of absolute vacuum. Wherever these pockets of nothingness passed, all matter was annihilated. Plants turned to dust, rocks were reduced to ash, and the ground beneath Hikaru's feet began to collapse.
"Do you really think you can oppose me with this?" Kidomaru's voice seemed to echo from the depths of the underworld. "This technique is ten times more powerful than my Cherry Blossom! In the face of this speed, your so-called recognition from the land, your support from the earth—it is all futile!"
Hikaru was thrown back ten steps, his bone armor shattering once more. Fresh blood gushed from a dozen new wounds. This was merely Kidomaru's twelfth transformation of the technique, speed pushed to its absolute limit.
But still, Hikaru did not fall. He simply raised his head, watching the demonic figure dance its mad ballet of destruction in the void.
Then, he smiled.
"You're right," he said, his voice calm amidst the chaos. "Relying solely on this land's recognition isn't enough to stop you."
He raised his left hand. The purple light within the Thunder Beast's horn he held pulsed violently. At the same time, his right hand pulled the dragon scale and the Nekomata's claws from his breastplate.
He plunged all three demonic artifacts into the ground at his feet, pouring three distinct types of Yao Qi into the earth.
"I didn't just ask this land to recognize me," he declared, his voice rising. "I'm making it become my weapon!"
Thunder exploded from the ground. It didn't descend from the heavens; it surged up from the depths, clawing toward the sky in jagged bolts of lightning. A toxic mist permeated the soil, spreading out like a dark purple ocean. And from the churned earth, dead spirits began to crawl, their numbers ten, a hundred times greater than before.
These were the remnants of every demon that had died on this land, the monsters Hikaru had slain on his journey. Their remains were buried in the soil, their resentment not yet dissipated. But now, those remains and that resentment were being mobilized by the very land that had recognized Hikaru as its champion.
They were transforming into his soldiers. They were becoming his blades.
Kidomaru's speed finally began to falter. Not because he was growing weaker, but because there were simply too many things to dodge. There was the lightning from below, the poisonous mist, the swarming dead spirits, and the forest of bone spikes that continuously erupted from the ground.
Those spikes were not grown by Hikaru. They were grown by the land itself, guided by Hikaru's Yao Qi, using the demonic remains buried beneath as raw material.
The entire battlefield was attacking him. The entire earth had turned against him.
"Damn you—" Kidomaru roared, his blade-light becoming even more frenzied. "Sword Art: Boundless!"
It was his strongest technique. A speed countless times greater than Void. The blade-light dissolved into a blur of infinite afterimages, slashing everything that stood in its path into absolute nothingness.
The thunder was shattered. The poison mist was dispersed. The dead spirits and their remains were ground into powder. Even the bone spikes erupting from the earth were reduced to fragments the moment they appeared.
But those fragments simply re-condensed. Once, twice, ten times, a hundred times.
As long as this land still recognized Hikaru, as long as Hikaru still stood upon this land, those attacks would never stop.
A single point of favorability, to an ordinary person, might be nothing more than a passing glance at a stranger. But for the earth itself, that one glance carried the weight of a thousand years.
Kidomaru finally realized he could not kill Hikaru. Not because Hikaru was stronger than him, but because on this land, Hikaru might die, but he would never be defeated.
"Damn it..."
Kidomaru's movements slowed, the impossibly fast slashes becoming just a blur. The consumption was too great. Sword Art: Boundless required a terrifying amount of Yao Qi to sustain. Even for a veteran demon lord like him, on the cusp of becoming a Great Yokai, he could not maintain it for long.
And Hikaru?
He just stood there. His bone armor constantly shattered and regenerated. Fresh blood constantly gushed from his wounds, only to be absorbed by the land and fed back to him. He was expending almost nothing.
Though the chasm between their raw power was still vast, though a world of difference separated them, as long as Hikaru stood here, Kidomaru could not harm him.
Much less get past him.
It was then that another presence made itself known. From the distance, a voice seemed to call, not in words, but in power.
It was Kikyo.
The shrine maiden, clad in her white robes and red hakama, had at some point drawn her longbow. The tip of her arrow condensed with a blinding white light, a sun in the encroaching darkness. She had been waiting for this exact opportunity.
Waiting for the moment Kidomaru's speed finally flagged. Waiting for the moment her arrow could not miss.
'It's my turn.'
No words were needed. The coordination between Kikyo and Hikaru had long surpassed the need for language.
The next second, the Sacred Arrow launched, transforming into a white rainbow that streaked directly for Kidomaru's chest.
At that moment, Kidomaru tried to dodge, but his speed was no longer sufficient. More, at the exact same instant, a thicket of Hikaru's bone spikes erupted from the ground directly beneath his feet, locking around his legs like stony manacles.
"Damn it—" Kidomaru roared, swinging his blade down to sever the bone restraints.
But that split-second delay was all it took.
The Sacred Arrow struck his left shoulder.
White light exploded as a torrent of spiritual power surged through him. Even with his demonic fortitude, Kidomaru's entire left arm was seared by the holy energy, then blasted into charred, smoking ruin.
He let out a piteous, agonized scream.
It was the first time in hundreds of years that someone had managed to severely wound him.
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