"Oh? And why should I save them? They're just yokai. Besides, you're an onmyoji. Don't onmyoji take exorcising yokai as their duty?" Stroking his smooth chin, Meruem looked Yura over carefully.
"I…" For a moment Yura didn't know where to start. She had no standing to ask Meruem to help Rikuo. Classmates? Aside from a few special cases, yokai and onmyoji have an irreconcilable hatred. Never mind classmates—some even become husband and wife only to fight to the death once their true identities are revealed.
What's more, Meruem had come to the Keikain household that day under the status of a guest elder of the Uchiha onmyoji clan.
At this life-or-death moment for the Keikain, other onmyoji families were very welcome to help.
And Meruem was truly powerful. So Meruem and the others naturally stayed at the Keikain main house—hence his presence here.
"How about this then… Give me a kiss, and I'll help you deal with Tsuchigumo. How's that?" With a chuckle, Meruem leaned his head toward Yura.
"K-kiss!!!" Yura's face flared red in an instant.
"Meru~~!!!" Meruem seemed to forget one thing—two others stood beside him: Reiko and Pitou.
Pitou was fine, but Reiko puffed her cheeks in a jealous pout.
"Ah-hahaha, how weak you are! I'll kill you all!" Just then, Tsuchigumo's arrogant voice rang out again from not far away, drawing everyone's attention.
Rikuo wasn't dead after all, but he was badly wounded in many places and still fighting Tsuchigumo. From the look of things, another defeat was a foregone conclusion.
Seeing this, Yura seemed to make up her mind. She grabbed Meruem's head near her shoulder and pressed her lips to his.
Smooch.
After a brief touch with Meruem's lips, Yura drew back.
"That does it, right?" Yura said, staring at Meruem.
"Didn't expect you to actually do it…" He lightly pressed his index and middle fingers to his own lips, as if savoring the lingering taste.
"Don't worry. Since I promised you, I'll do it. I'm going." Seeing Yura's face starting to darken, Meruem hurried to speak.
"Delicious… but too short. Next time, you'll have to satisfy me." As he passed by, Meruem murmured in Yura's ear.
"There won't be a next time!!" came Yura's flustered, scarlet-cheeked shout from behind, along with Meruem's smug laughter: "Hahahaha."
"Tsuchigumo, didn't you want to challenge the strong? Come play with me." Meruem suddenly appeared between Tsuchigumo and Rikuo, one hand catching Tsuchigumo's full-force punch.
As time had passed, night was over; Rikuo had already returned to human form.
"Oh? You look strong. Hahahaha, show me what you've got. If you're too weak, I'll eat you." He didn't care who it was—so long as someone could give Tsuchigumo a good fight.
Though Tsuchigumo was one of Abe no Seimei's Night Parade, he very much wanted to fight Seimei himself. A classic battle maniac.
"Is this all you've got?" Standing atop Tsuchigumo's body, Meruem looked down at him, one foot planted on the yokai.
Though Meruem's body was tiny compared to Tsuchigumo's colossal frame.
In stark contrast to Rikuo's fight, Meruem's battle with Tsuchigumo was just as one-sided—but in the opposite direction.
The Nura Clan yokai, who had felt Tsuchigumo's seemingly endless power, could only think: what's the fu—?
The power-monstrous Tsuchigumo was completely overmatched by Meruem—utterly dominated.
"Cough, cough… Who are you?" With only the faintest rise and fall in his chest, the demon-god-like Tsuchigumo who had terrorized the Nura Clan was now hanging by a thread.
"Me? I'm merely the King of the Chimera Ants."
"So that guy's that strong…" Rikuo thought, watching the peerless Meruem.
"Damn. He's that strong… Looks like I shouldn't mess with him." Ryuuji was in a foul mood. As a sis-con, of course he'd seen Yura kiss Meruem.
He'd planned to find a chance to teach Meruem a lesson. If he couldn't do it head-on, well—poisoning in the dark was Ryuuji's specialty.
But after what he'd just seen, Ryuuji figured if he tried that, he'd get wrecked.
After Tsuchigumo's battle came Rikuo's special training. He was still too weak. Without Meruem, it was hard to imagine how the remaining yokai could have stopped a Tsuchigumo of that level. The Nura Clan might well have been defeated by Tsuchigumo alone.
There was another matter—the Great Tengu clan, formerly under Hagoromo Gitsune, now appeared among the Nura Clan.
Why? Because of the Hundred Tales' Evil Eye—Sanmoto Gorōzaemon's mole planted in Hagoromo Gitsune's Night Parade.
Just like the Nura Clan's own mole, Sanmoto. The Hundred Tales were truly an uncanny group of yokai.
All of them were Yamamoto Gorō's various organs—disgusting and troublesome.
…
Meruem's involvement didn't change the war in any substantive way. Though he took down Tsuchigumo, even in the original he hadn't helped Hagoromo Gitsune do anything. And to the Keikain, Meruem and the Nura Clan were both outsiders.
The proud Keikain had never relied on outsiders.
As Hagoromo Gitsune labored in Nijō Castle, her forces under Kidōmaru led the Night Parade in a general assault on the Keikain main house, already half-ruined.
They swore to annihilate the Keikain to the last.
"So that's the Keikain's Shugen? Pathetically weak." The Twenty-Seventh Shugen's strength was still a bit lacking against a great yokai of Kidōmaru's caliber.
"Don't insult Grandpa! I'll be the one to wipe out Kyoto's yokai!" Yura threw herself in front of Kidōmaru.
A carp-like iron hand cannon appeared in her right hand as she snapped a fuda between her fingers.
"Yomi Funeral: Water Cannon! Yura MAX!"
"Godspeed Blade Barrage! Umeki!" Yura's water cannon was as feeble as a child's squirt gun against Kidōmaru's blade.
"Words!" "Extinguish!" Mami-ryu and Ryuuji's attacks followed.
The three siblings together barely held Kidōmaru's advance. In the old days, Hihi alone could fight Kidōmaru to a standstill.
"Offer those sweet livers of yours to Lady Hagoromo Gitsune! I envy you, truly—to have the chance to dedicate your bodies to a god." Dressed like a cleric, Kyōkotsu appeared at the Keikain headquarters' heart.
"God, forgive these poor souls!"
"Keikain—fight to the death!" Though the Twenty-Seventh Shugen's aptitude was middling, he wasn't a coward. He was ready to die in this battle.
"Humans in this world are so weak. It's nothing like the last world, where other races were pressed to survive only in the cracks, meow." Amid the chaos, only Meruem's group remained relaxed. Any yokai who tried to attack them was shredded to pieces before they got close.
"That guy in the air with the cross looks just like Pouf. So annoying, meow." Pitou meant Kyōkotsu. To be fair, Kyōkotsu and Pitou did have a bit in common.
Both were… neurotic. Though Pouf's case was worse—he had the pervert attribute too.
"Where is the maiden who wields Hagun?" Apparently, Kyōkotsu still didn't know that Yura, battling Kidōmaru nearby, was his target.
"A Lord of a Hundred Demons who still has things he fears… That sort dares call itself master of a hundred demons? Laughable…" A very quiet voice came from Meruem's lips.
But everyone present was either yokai or onmyoji; however small the voice, to them it was loud in the ear.
"Courting death! Blaspheming Heaven with your arrogant tongue! You'll pay for those words!" Kyōkotsu abandoned the Twenty-Seventh Shugen he'd already gravely wounded and lunged at Meruem with his cross-weapon.
Clang! A sharp katana caught Kyōkotsu's cross. The Dark Division: Twelve Stars.
"Who's the fool here? Kill him, Yi She."
"Vermin dare challenge a lion? I grant you death!"
Less than twelve hours remained until Hagoromo Gitsune gave birth.
"Who on earth are you?" asked the Twenty-Seventh Shugen—who should have died, but lived thanks to Meruem's intervention.
By then, he didn't know what else to say.
Hagoromo Gitsune's elite who attacked the Keikain headquarters had been annihilated—more precisely, annihilated by twelve people. We're talking thousands of yokai—the Keikain's mortal enemies.
The Chimera Ant army's king's subordinates—the Dark Division: Twelve Stars…
"Me? I'm merely the King of the Chimera Ants. Though I slew these guys, let me warn you—do not disturb Hagoromo Gitsune's childbirth."
"If you want to live."
"That guy's so full of himself…" the Nura Clan yokai whispered. But awed by Meruem's terrifying power, none dared retort.
"Do you know what kind of terrifying creature Hagoromo Gitsune is about to bring into the world?" Only in peacetime would he show himself—the man under the hat with two hairs like cockroach feelers: the Thirteenth Shugen summoned by Yura's Hagun shikigami.
"Of course… Abe no Seimei—or call him… Nue." Meruem glanced back with a grin, flashing white teeth.
(End of Chapter)
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