Chapter 198
It was a very good thing she had looked into the Oni ahead of time. If the Shinohara of today had existed in the past, could the damage have been kept to a minimum? Who could say? She did not know what the Oni of that time had been like. But she was japan’s foremost Awakened One and hunter, the First Hunter recognized by every Hunter Family in japan. The Oni before her now was an opponent she could handle.
“Guuuuuaagh!”
Crack! Rrrrrumble!
The Oni’s fist drove into the ground, and as though a Hellscape had unfolded, the earth was instantly swallowed in lava. This was her chance. The moment the Oni turned the land to lava, it left Impotent Man an opening, however brief.
“Heavenly Sword Art: Single Strike Severance.”
Shnk!
At last, the Oni’s right arm fell clean away. That should have been enough of a single strike. The Yellow Dragon had died to one of Yu Eunha’s companions; there was no reason the Oni should be any different.
“Kheooogh!”
She pressed the advantage. The Oni sank to one knee, clutching its severed arm. The Thousand Swords rose high into the sky again, then poured down on the Oni as it held its arm. They were called the Thousand Swords, but every blade was made of mana. The swords embedded in the Oni vanished, and newly formed blades drove into it in their place.
“Heavenly Sword Art: Sword Hell.”
Married couple
So long as her mana held out, the blades fell in numbers that might as well have been infinite. Good thing she had brought mana stones. There was not much left now. She could completely finish it.
“Guwahhhhhhh!”
“Nothing is more pathetic than a dead thing crawling back to life and clinging on.”
She poured still more mana into the rain of blades. The Oni’s body was hacked apart and buried under them, and though it howled in pain, it could do nothing but flounder in the lava.
“Gyaaaagh!”
As its body began to soften into something like ground meat, she did not miss the opening. Her Hellscape came down straight on the Oni’s neck.
Craaaack!
“Gyaaaaaagh!”
The Oni braced its neck and held fast, but Yuzuki did not stop either. With every last drop of mana, she cut through the Oni’s neck. It might worry Yu Eunha. But if Yuzuki won, wouldn’t she be pleased? If a woman this strong told her she wanted her, wouldn’t Eunha truly like that? The thought suddenly crossed her mind.
Craaaack! Grrrrind.
After its neck had been torn at for a long while, the Oni’s head and body finally separated. Because the Thousand Swords had poured so brutally onto its neck, the flesh there ripped away as if it had been bitten off. The severed Oni head already showed no signs of life.
“Is it dead for certain?”
The many-colored lights in its eyes had gone out, and it was not breathing. It was a good thing she had rushed it from the start. If the Oni had truly used the full extent of its power, she would probably still be struggling even now. Perhaps it was because it had only just been revived.
“Whew. If I go back like this… huh?”
Thuk.
A deep, dull ache and a sharp sting bloomed below. When she lowered her head, she saw a blade jutting out of her chest. What was this? The heavenly sword did not attack its master. Where had something like this come from? It was not the Oni either. The Oni did not attack like this. She forced her weakening neck to turn, and saw someone she had forgotten only because so much time had passed.
“Heh heh. You look rather worn out.”
“Shinohara. Inosuke?”
Why was Shinohara Inosuke here? Why did this Loser / Defeated Person have a sword buried in her body?
“Long time no see, Shinohara Yuzuki.”
“What are you doing here, you - kgh!”
With the sword in her, she could not speak properly. Inosuke’s blade was carving through the flesh inside her body.
“To reclaim my place, of course.”
“What are you - “
His place? What was that supposed to mean? He had lost the Succession Struggle and fled to Kumamoto without even understanding why he had lost.
“I kill you here, and I become the hero who killed the Oni.”
“Crazy bastard.”
What a lunatic. He really was a vile man. A man who must never become successor.
“You’ve always been an unpleasant bitch. It’s only natural that the powerful rule the weak. But you ran your mouth about serving the citizens and made me sick with that hypocrisy.”
What was wrong with becoming a leader and serving the citizen?
“Clinging to the logic of power like that, what age do you think this is!”
“Isn’t this the world where Shinohara took over the government after the great cataclysm? If you possess overwhelming power, you should use it to rule the dog-pig citizens!”
What an idiot. As if she did not know that. Under a military regime, that much was necessary. Any Japanese person who had studied the history of japan would know it. The Warring States Period and the shogunate period were when samurai ran rampant. Strong rule was fine. Tyranny, however, inevitably invited backlash from the other families. If it had been a powerful centralized system like Korea’s Dynasties, perhaps, but the shogunate was not like that. Even now, in the Hunter Era, the hunter Families stood beneath Shinohara in much the same way. More than anything, Inosuke intended to use that power for himself alone. At most, for the Family / Clan. In other words, the Shinohara Family would bleed the very nation of japan dry.
“I was taken down by this crazy bastard?”
If things went Inosuke’s way, this nation would be finished.
That was why he had not become successor. That was why he had run.
“Kukukuk. In the end, the one who survives is the strong one. Well then, goodbye. I’m only reclaiming my place, so don’t resent me too much.”
He yanked the sword from Yuzuki’s body. All strength left her, and she collapsed with a thud. Blood surged up and spilled from her mouth. Was she really going to die here, like this? There were still too many things she had not done. Protecting japan. Yu Eunha. She wanted to see her face just one more time.
'No. I can’t die here.’
She poured her guttering mana into her dying body and forced it to move. She had to kill Inosuke before he went off to do something insane. If that man gained japan, it would surely be ruined. Inosuke had clearly joined hands with sin. The Oni must have been created by sin as well. That was why he had appeared now. He would certainly become an obstacle to Yu Eunha too. Shinohara could not become sin’s lackey. If Inosuke died, Shinohara or some other Family / Clan would take hold of japan. At the very least, that would be better than Inosuke seizing power.
“Kgh.”
After crawling for a long while, the place she finally reached was the corpse of the Oni of Chaos. The lava had not cooled yet and was still hot, but Shinohara Yuzuki wrapped mana around her body and barely made it to the Oni’s heart. She had once heard it during hunter training. If a monster’s core was implanted in a body, there was a small chance the person could become a mutant. She would stake everything on that possibility. After all, if she stayed still, she would die. Yuzuki dug into the Oni’s chest and pulled out a murky-looking black core. Then she moved the heavenly sword, already fading as her mana dwindled, to pry open the wound in her chest and pushed the core inside.
“!!!”
The instant she inserted the core, it felt as though scorching flames had engulfed her body. The sensation that every single gene in her body was being rewritten came along with bone-gnawing pain. The Oni’s Core consumed her heart and took its place. She could feel it. Demonic energy now began to flow through every blood vessel connecting to the core. She could feel the Oni’s blood flowing through her. At that moment, the memories possessed by the Oni of Chaos she had killed came flooding into her mind. Yuzuki’s life and the Oni’s memories mingled, remaking her into something new. In the process, she saw it. Behind all of this stood Inosuke and a boy who appeared to be from the Middle East. That had to be sin. Now that Oni blood had begun to flow in her, she felt she knew it instinctively.
‘I’ll beat those bastards to death!’
As Oni blood began to flow through Yuzuki’s own blood and completely fused with it, the bone-gnawing pain stopped, as if the Oni blood were urging her to take revenge, and at last her body felt at ease.
Fwoooooosh!
Hot flames erupted around her body. Power began to fill the body that had been losing all strength. Demonic energy overflowed through her. She could feel that she had become a mutant. And not an ordinary mutant. Yuzuki herself had become the Oni of Chaos. Whether she was the Oni of Chaos possessing Yuzuki’s personality, memories, and body, or Yuzuki, who had obtained everything of the Oni of Chaos, did not matter.
“Heh. Heheheh. Heh-heh-hehahaha!”
“What the hell? Y-you… How?”
“A Loser / Defeated Person should have stayed holed up in Kumamoto. What makes you think you can show up, kill an Oni, and try acting like a hero?”
She could not forgive him. Inosuke, at least, had to die.
“Kgh. Die!”
“Do you think someone who could only win by striking me from behind after I’d spent all my strength can beat me head-on?”
Yuzuki grabbed Inosuke’s sword arm tightly and exercised her authority. The Oni’s authority was hellfire. With hellfire that melted anything, she melted Inosuke’s arm away. Skin and flesh melted away, exposing bleached-white bone before it crumbled.
“Gyaaaaaagh!”
“To think I took a single strike from someone like you - I’m honestly dumbfounded.”
It was so absurd that all she could do was sigh.
“S-spare. Spare me! Sin threatened me too!”
Threatened, was he. He had a way with words. When he stabbed her from behind, she had felt it clearly: he had not been forced. He had meant to kill her. So why should she spare him?
“If you were in my position, would you spare me?”
“!!”
Yuzuki of Chaos seized Inosuke by the neck.
“Die.”
“G-gh. Gyaaaaaaaaagh!”
His skin melted away, his eyeballs tumbled out, and in an instant he was reduced to a skeleton. Yuzuki burned Inosuke’s entire body just like that, erasing even the trace of his existence from the world. The problem was that after killing Inosuke, Yuzuki’s body began trembling uncontrollably.
“Kgh. Kraaaaaagh!”
Perhaps that was only natural. human form transformation through core insertion was not stable. And when the Oni’s Core she had placed in her body was from a being called one of the Four Heavenly Kings, Yuzuki’s body could hardly stabilize now.
Before long, all strength left Yuzuki’s body and she collapsed with a thud. And there was someone who had watched everything from the very beginning: the battle between the Oni and Yuzuki, and Inosuke’s appearance.
He was the person involved, the pigheaded creep who had gone in for self-destruction, and the Hellgate. He was the man who had revived the Oni as well. And, on top of that, he was the hikikomori who had gotten wrecked by Little Yongyong-i in a male competition. It was Cale, the Sin of Sloth.
Cale was briefly surprised when the Oni died at Yuzuki’s hand.
“Kukukuk. To think Shinohara Yuzuki would fuse with the Oni. Still, I suppose she can’t avoid the side effects.”
Cale leisurely approached Yuzuki, who was drained and unable to move properly.
“Y-you bastard.”
Wham!
Cale’s fist sank into Yuzuki’s solar plexus, exactly where the core had just been inserted.
“Stay down and rest.”
“Kgh!”
Yuzuki’s body had only just had the core inserted. In that state, the core that had replaced her heart was struck, which was difficult to endure. In the end, Yuzuki could not withstand Cale’s blow and lost consciousness.