Chapter 785: Mitsuhide Kijin Form (2)
The first collision tore the shrine grounds apart.
Nathan’s black blade crashed against Mitsuhide’s wall of blood hardened darkness, Shiina’s glowing katana carved a blue line along the giant’s side, and Yukihime’s spear struck from behind with a burst of frost that spread over his back in an instant. The impact of all three attacks at once sent a violent shockwave across the mountain. Broken stones lifted from the ground, the ruined shrine walls split even farther, and the air itself seemed to howl under the pressure.
Mitsuhide roared.
His massive arm swept outward, and the darkness wrapped around it exploded in every direction like a living storm. Jagged spikes of black blood burst from the earth. Blades formed in the air. Tendrils lashed out with enough force to tear through wood and stone as if they were paper.
Nathan twisted aside and cut through two of them in the same motion. Shiina vanished into a blue blur before a cluster of spikes could skewer her from below. Yukihime raised her free hand, and a wall of ice rose between them and the ining storm, freezing half the blood weapons in place before they shattered into crimson shards.
But Mitsuhide was already moving again.
Even in that giant form, he was fast.
Too fast for something so large.
He drove a clawed hand downward toward Nathan with enough force to crush the ground open. Nathan threw himself to the side as the blow landed, the impact splitting the stone beneath him and sending fragments into the air. Before Mitsuhide could follow through, Shiina flashed across his chest and cut three times in the span of a breath, blue arcs slicing through the armored darkness covering his torso.
Black blood spilled.
Not normal blood.
It hissed where it fell, eating into the earth and leaving dark smoke behind.
“Do not touch it,” Nathan called.
“I noticed,” Shiina replied, already moving again.
Mitsuhide’s head snapped toward her, and the giant swung with brutal speed. The back of his arm struck like a battering ram, but Shiina bent backward at the last second, the blow missing her by barely the width of a hand. She spun low, her blade trailing blue light, and cut into the back of his knee.
Yukihime attacked at the same time.
From behind Mitsuhide, she thrust her lance forward, and a torrent of snow and ice burst around the weapon in a spiraling wave. Frost climbed up his legs and along his spine, locking one of his arms for a precious moment. Her power did not merely freeze the flesh. It bit into the blood darkness itself, slowing the way it moved and forcing it to harden.
Nathan saw the opening and rushed in.
Dark armor poured tighter across his body as he leaped, Kyomei black in his hands, his aura roaring around him in dense waves. He came down with enough force to break ordinary steel, and the blade slammed into Mitsuhide’s shoulder, cutting deep through flesh and into bone.
The giant staggered for the first time.
But only for a moment.
The blood and darkness around the wound writhed violently and began to close it at once.
Nathan’s eyes sharpened.
Regeneration.
Fast, but not instant.
And more importantly, it was gathering toward one place before spreading.
He jumped back just as Mitsuhide unleashed another blast of force from his body. The shockwave tore through the ruins and finally brought down the front half of the shrine. Timber and roof tiles crashed behind them in a thunder of splintering wood, while dust rolled across the courtyard in heavy clouds.
Below the mountain, even the valley would have heard that.
Mitsuhide rose higher in the middle of the collapsing wreckage, towering over them like some blasphemous idol dragged into the world. The split circle symbol now glowed through his chest beneath the blood armor, faint but visible every time his wounds closed.
Nathan stared at it.
There.
Shiina landed beside him, breathing a little harder but smiling like she had found exactly the sort of battle she wanted. “He heals too quickly.”
“He has a core,” Nathan said.
Her red eyes flicked toward him at once. “Where?”
“In the chest. The symbol.”
Yukihime joined them a heartbeat later, snow swirling around her ankles. “Then we tear it open.”
Mitsuhide did not give them time to plan further.
He spread both arms wide, and the darkness around him surged upward in towering columns. The blood soaked earth, the dead servants inside the shrine, the slaughtered soldiers on the path below, all of it answered him. Thin streams of red black power rose from every corpse and rushed into his body.
The mountain trembled.
The sky above the shrine darkened unnaturally as if some vast cloud had passed over the morning sun. Mitsuhide’s roar deepened into something inhuman, and suddenly dozens of giant spears formed behind him, each one made of condensed blood and shadow, each one large enough to impale a horse clean through.
He sent them down at once.
BADOOOM!!
The world became impact and noise.
Nathan cut one apart and rolled beneath another that gouged a trench through the courtyard. Shiina darted through the barrage with impossible footwork, blue light flashing between the falling weapons like lightning threading through a storm. Yukihime drove her spear into the ground, and a dome of ice burst outward around them, taking three of the spears head on before shattering into a rain of frozen fragments.
One spear broke through and shot for Nathan’s back.
Shiina appeared beside him and cut it in half before it reached him.
Another came for Shiina from above.
Nathan pulled Shiina to his body and then caught the attack with Kyomei and shattered it with a burst of dark power.
Shiina was silent for a moment as she stood pressing against Nathan who hugged her waist.
Then he released her almost immediately.
She smiled as he moved immediately.
Nathan charged straight in, black power erupting around him like a storm wrapped in human shape. Shiina matched him from the side, her body glowing brighter now, blue energy trailing from her blade and feet in long ribbons as she accelerated. One came with crushing force, the other with merciless speed.
Mitsuhide met them both.
His claws smashed down toward Nathan while a wave of blood blades spread toward Shiina, but Yukihime lifted her lance from behind and swept it through the air. A freezing current crossed the battlefield and stiffened the ining weapons just enough.
That single instant was enough.
Nathan caught Mitsuhide’s descending arm on Kyomei and forced it upward. At the same time, Shiina slipped through the half frozen blades and reached his exposed side. Her katana flashed across his torso once, twice, then a third time in a deeper line, carving open the blood armor over his chest.
The glowing symbol appeared clearly.
Mitsuhide roared and unleashed a burst of darkness at point blank range. Shiina was thrown back through the air, twisting hard enough to land on her feet, though blood ran from one corner of her mouth now. Nathan held his ground for a breath longer, dark armor cracking under the pressure before he too was forced back across the courtyard.
Yukihime did not retreat.
Instead, she rushed in from behind with terrifying grace, her silver hair streaming behind her as her lance thrust forward like a line of winter moonlight. The blade pierced clean through Mitsuhide’s left side and burst out through his abdomen in a spray of black blood and frost.
Ice exploded through his body.
For the first time, Mitsuhide let out a sound that carried actual pain.
Yukihime’s voice was cold as the mountain itself. “Stay still.”
The frost raced through him from the inside, freezing one leg to the ruined stone beneath his feet. Mitsuhide snarled and tried to turn, but Shiina was already there again, ing low and fast. Her blade cut through the tendons at the back of his other knee.
The giant lurched.
Nathan saw his moment.
He released more of his power, far more than before. Dark energy poured off him in thick waves, the pressure so heavy that the broken courtyard stones around his feet began to crack and sink. Kyomei seemed to sing in his hand, black aura coiling around the blade until it became a slash of night given shape.
Mitsuhide sensed the danger and howled. All around him, the remaining blood darkness rose to protect his chest, layer upon layer folding over the glowing mark like shields made from dead flesh and curses.
“Yukihime!” Nathan shouted.
She understood instantly.
With a sharp cry, she ripped her lance free and spun it in a wide arc. A blizzard burst from the weapon and slammed into Mitsuhide’s upper body, freezing the outer layers of blood armor in thick crystal white. The darkness fought it, but the cold bit deep enough to slow its movement.
Shiina grinned despite the blood on her lips. “Finally.”
Blue light exploded around her.
She vanished so pletely that for a heartbeat even Nathan lost sight of her. Then blue slashes lit up Mitsuhide’s chest from every angle at once, one after another in a terrifying storm of speed. She was no longer striking just to wound. She was carving a path. Cutting through the frozen blood armor, shattering Yukihime’s ice together with Mitsuhide’s defenses, peeling away every layer protecting the symbol beneath.
The core was exposed.
Mitsuhide bellowed and tried to pull more darkness into himself, but Nathan was already moving.
He crossed the distance in a single violent burst, every ounce of his power focused into Kyomei. For an instant the whole battlefield seemed to narrow to one line, one target, one strike.
Nathan looked up at the towering Kijin and spoke with absolute calm.
“This ends here.”
He summoned Pandora’s curses on top of it, the dark eating faces appearing around him coating his whole body. He didn’t even hold back to get it down in one slash.
Then he brought the sword down.
“Celestial Rank Dark Magic.”
The slash that followed dwarfed everything before it.
A colossal wave of black power erupted from Kyomei and tore through Mitsuhide’s chest at point blank range. It struck the glowing symbol dead center, split through it, and blasted out his back in an explosion of darkness so vast that the entire upper shrine grounds vanished in shadow.
The mountain shook.
Trees bent.
Stone walls below in the valley cracked from the force of it.
For a long second, no one could see anything.
Then the darkness began to recede.
Mitsuhide was still standing.
But only barely.
A massive wound split his chest open from shoulder to waist, and the glowing symbol at his core had been cut in half. The blood darkness pouring from him no longer moved with purpose. It spilled wildly now, unraveling instead of obeying. His giant body trembled as if it could not decide whether to remain whole or collapse into pieces.
Mitsuhide looked down at the ruin carved into his chest, then slowly lifted his eyes back to Nathan.
For a brief moment, he remained standing as if sheer will alone might hold him upright.
Then his body gave out.
He collapsed onto the broken ground with a heavy crash, and almost immediately the monstrous shape he had taken began to shrink. The towering mass of blood and darkness receded from him like a tide pulling back from shore, peeling away until only his real form remained. He looked battered now, horribly so, his clothes torn, his flesh broken, blood pouring from the deep slash across his chest in thick, steady streams.
Nathan took one breath.
Then the strain hit him all at once.
“Ngh…”
A sharp groan escaped him as the backlash from Pandora’s curses tore through his body. He had already pushed himself too far. Between Yorimasa’s poisonous bite, the lingering venom still fighting inside him, and the amount of power he had just forced out, his body had been driven well past its limit.
His legs gave slightly beneath him.
Nathan dropped to one knee and drove Kyomei into the ground to keep himself upright. His breathing turned ragged. Sweat ran down his face. His vision blurred at the edges, and when he opened his mouth to steady his breath, blood rose instead.
“Nathan sama…”
Yukihime was at his side in an instant.
She knelt beside him, her voice tight with worry, one hand already reaching toward him as if to support him without disturbing his balance.
Nathan spat blood onto the ruined stone, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I am fine,” he said, though his pale face said otherwise. “I just need a little time.”
Yukihime did not argue, but her eyes made it clear she was not convinced.
Behind them, Mitsuhide gave a faint sound that might once have been a laugh.
“You did it, Ronin.”
Nathan raised his head and looked toward him.
Mitsuhide lay on his back amid the debris, blood soaking the earth beneath him, his breath already shallow and uneven. Death had clearly laid its hand on him now. Whatever foul strength the shrine had lent him was gone.
“Norihiro must be very pleased,” Mitsuhide said.
Nathan’s eyes hardened at once. “I did not do this for him.”
A rough chuckle left Mitsuhide, followed by a fit of coughing that brought more blood to his lips.
“It does not matter,” he murmured. “You still did what he wanted. He sent you away, did he not? And now, while you were dealing with me, he is freer than ever to do as he pleases.”
Shiina, who had remained silent until then, finally stepped forward. Her red eyes stayed fixed on Mitsuhide’s face.
“Why did you turn against Norihiro sama?” she asked.
Mitsuhide shifted his gaze toward her.
For a moment he simply looked at her, as if deciding whether the answer was worth the breath it would cost him.
Then he gave it anyway.
“I turned against him before he could turn against me,” he said quietly. “That is all. Once he gets what he wants, the rest of us daimyo bee inconveniences. Obstacles. Nothing more.”
Shiina said nothing after that.
Nathan’s grip tightened slightly around the hilt of Kyomei as he forced himself back to his feet. His balance was not entirely steady, but he stood.
“Norihiro will not get what he wants,” he said coldly. “He is next.”
Something like amusement flickered through Mitsuhide’s dying expression.
“T…then… I suppose I should help you, Ronin.”
Nathan narrowed his eyes. “Help me how?”
Mitsuhide drew a shallow breath, every word now sounding like effort dragged through broken lungs.
“You cannot kill Norihiro by rushing straight at him. He will be ready for that.”
Nathan took a step closer. “What do you mean?”
Mitsuhide’s bloodied lips curved faintly.
“He also has a shrine in his domain,” he said. “And it is far more dangerous than this one. He is counting on it. Counting on its power to help him take the Kastorian capital…”
His voice trailed off.
The last word never fully formed.
His eyes slowly closed, and this time they did not open again.
Silence followed.
Real silence.
Not the oppressive, unnatural silence that had hung over the shrine before, but the quiet that es after violence has finally ended and one life has truly gone out.
Nathan stood there, breathing through the ache ripping through his body, his sight still not fully clear. But even through the pain, one truth settled with absolute certainty.
The third daimyo was dead.
Sadamasa still lived, but Nathan had already made certain he would not bee a problem.
Yorimasa was dead.
Mitsuhide was dead.
Now only Norihiro remained.
Nathan lowered his gaze to Mitsuhide’s corpse for one final moment, then slowly pulled Kyomei free from the ground.
His voice, when it came, was quiet and merciless.
“Then I will get rid of him too.”
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