[Resonance with Blood].
The effect was even more absurd than Kōbe Hikaru had anticipated.
And it did not disappoint him.
The moment he swung his first cut and the first drop of fresh blood scattered into the air, countless new perspectives flooded his vision.
Those perspectives belonged to the blood.
Every single droplet became his eye.
All four directions. Three hundred and sixty degrees. No blind spots.
A serpent-body demon to his left-rear was coiling for a charge. A bird-headed monster above and to his right had spread its talons and was diving. Three Blue-Skin Fiends directly ahead were closing in with bone clubs.
He could see every last one of them. Crystal clear.
This thing...
Kōbe Hikaru said nothing. His body was already moving before his mind had finished the thought.
He stepped left. The blade swept back in a low trailing arc.
Thwp.
The edge found the serpent-body demon's vital point with surgical precision. The creature's body kept lunging forward on momentum — its head stayed behind, rolling in place.
He didn't look back.
He didn't need to. The scattered blood told him everything: the bird-headed monster was now two feet above his head.
Kōbe Hikaru pitched his body forward, blade tip angled straight up.
In any conventional fight, this would have been suicidal — back exposed, steel raised overhead, all defense abandoned.
But he could see.
The tip punched through the bird-head's lower jaw and burst out through the crown of its skull.
Its raking talons scraped across his back, shredding a few loose scraps of broken armor plate. Nothing more.
A hair's breadth.
Kōbe Hikaru snapped his wrist. The bird-head's corpse flew forward and crashed into the three approaching Blue-Skin Fiends, staggering all of them.
He closed the distance in an instant. Three strokes.
Three heads hit the dirt.
[Cursed Blade Muramasa: Affection +1]
[Current Affection: 31]
Smooth.
It was the first time Kōbe Hikaru had ever felt truly at ease in the middle of a fight.
Not because the enemies were weak — but because he could see everything.
Blood was his recon unit. As long as there was blood on the battlefield, he was the absolute master of every inch of it.
And on a battlefield like this one, blood was the one thing that was never in short supply.
"Kill him!"
The Blue-Skin Fiend pack leader screamed from the rear of the horde.
More demons surged forward to fill the gaps left by their fallen.
Kōbe Hikaru didn't slow down.
He drove straight into the mass of them.
It was a lunatic's choice.
But [Resonance with Blood] had given him the capital to be a lunatic.
Sword-light flashed.
One arc. Two. Three.
Each stroke drew a curtain of red mist. Each curtain of red mist expanded his vision further. He moved through the demon swarm like a fish slipping through deep water — fluid, effortless, untouchable.
Not one demon could ambush him.
Their blood had already given away their positions.
Thirty breaths.
Another twelve fell.
Kōbe Hikaru's blade work grew faster. Cleaner. The movements were smoothing themselves out, one cut at a time.
The demons in this swarm were far from uniform.
Some died in a single stroke. Some required two. A handful could actually take a hit.
There was a clear hierarchy among them — a visible gap that could not be ignored.
Where did that gap come from?
It came from the degree of mutation — the distance each creature had traveled from whatever it had been before it became a demon.
Some were nothing more than ordinary malformed creatures: skin discolored, claws grown in, and that was the whole of it.
Others had mutated far more completely — horns, scales, tails, organs that had no business being there, erupting from their bodies in grotesque abundance.
And a handful were visibly larger than their kin, faster, more vicious, moving with a ferocity that set them apart at a glance.
That was the nature of demons.
Transformation.
Weak to strong. Mundane to monstrous. Every transformation was an evolution. Every evolution made the demon more powerful.
Over these three months, Kōbe Hikaru had gradually pieced together the framework of this system.
Demon growth was divided into four major stages — collectively known as the Four Transformations.
The first stage was called Physical Transformation.
The most fundamental of changes. It referred to the structural mutation of the physical body.
Wolves growing horns. Serpents sprouting limbs. Insects unfurling wings. Fish developing claws.
These visible, localized mutations — these were the hallmarks of Physical Transformation.
An ordinary beast or wandering wraith that absorbed enough demon-qi would begin to undergo it.
Physical Transformation was itself subdivided into six minor stages — the Six Changes — each corresponding to the limit of direct control a living body could exert over its four limbs, its skull, and its core trunk.
With each completed Change, a new mutation trait would manifest, and the demon's power would rise accordingly. Some improvements were dramatic and immediately visible. Others were subtle — buried deep in muscle and bone, expressing outwardly as nothing more than an uncanny, inhuman degree of strength. But all of them were real.
A demon that completed all Six Changes could attempt to break through to the next major stage: Essence Transformation.
Essence Transformation, in general, corresponded to changes in mass and volume — the localized mutations of Physical Transformation taken further, becoming a shift in the whole. At this stage, a demon could alter its own body size at will. Grow larger. Shrink smaller. And ultimately, building upon the foundation of its original species, achieve what was called Perfect Form.
After Essence Transformation came Qi Transformation.
Qi Transformation was a further metamorphosis beyond Perfect Form — its exact nature still unclear to Kōbe Hikaru, because not one demon he had encountered had reached that level. All he knew was that demons of this tier were apparently addressed by the lower-ranked rabble as Generals, and could also be called Great Demons.
He wasn't entirely sure why, but when he thought about the upper limit of Essence Transformation — Perfect Form — the reasoning became intuitive enough. Depending on a demon's own choices, Perfect Form could approach a human appearance almost without limit.
Near-human in form. Wasn't that the defining trait of the Great Demon archetype in every work of fantasy he'd ever consumed?
And beyond that lay the final stage: Form Transformation.
Kōbe Hikaru's best guess was that Form Transformation meant achieving a complete change of form — transcending into some higher-order state of being. And not a simple cosmetic resemblance, either — not merely looking like something. A demon who achieved this would become both demon and that higher form simultaneously, possessing two natures in one body. They might even produce offspring who were not demons at all.
Demons who completed Form Transformation were known as Demon Kings.
Entities that could openly establish their own territories. Rule entire regions. Build nations of demons under their banner.
And so the framework stood: the Four Transformations, twenty-four Changes in total — Physical Transformation's six, Essence Transformation's seventh through twelfth, Qi Transformation's thirteenth through eighteenth, and Form Transformation beyond that. Weak to strong. From one end to the other.
The specifics varied from demon to demon, but the underlying principle held for almost all of them. Even for those powerful demons whose exteriors revealed nothing — whose mutations were entirely internal, expressed purely as raw numbers in strength and speed — the same progression still applied.
And as for Kōbe Hikaru himself—
He was currently at the initial stage of Physical Transformation.
Five Changes.
Only five.
Each one corresponded to the traits granted to him by a weapon he had successfully bonded with.
The First Change, brought by that very first katana: [Iron-Skin Mutation] — his skin had hardened to a toughness comparable to iron.
The Second Change, brought by a dagger: [Razor-Eye Mutation] — his dynamic visual acuity had improved dramatically.
The Third Change, brought by a broken bow: [Bowman's Mutation] — the strength in his upper limbs had doubled.
The Fourth Change, brought by a spear: [Spearman's Core Mutation] — his waist and abdomen had become freakishly agile.
The Fifth Change, brought by a shield: [Shield-Bone Mutation] — his bone density had increased, and his resistance to blunt impact had surged.
Five weapons. Five mutations.
Max out a weapon's Affection, and its ability merged into his body, completing one Change at the same time.
This was, most likely, the core function of his system.
Other demons had to burn away years and survive countless trials and near-death ordeals just to evolve.
He just had to grind Affection.
Simple. Efficient. Traceable.
And more importantly — he got to choose what kind of Change he underwent.
Unlike other demons, who had nothing but luck, rolling the dice and taking whatever the universe gave them.
"Here comes another one!"
A massive centipede spirit burst from the flank. Its body stretched a full two zhang in length, the chitin plating along its back gleaming with a cold metallic sheen.
This one had at least four Changes under its belt. A standout specimen in the Physical Transformation stage.
But that was all it was.
Kōbe Hikaru sidestepped the centipede spirit's head-butt charge. The blade swept across its underbelly.
The chitin was too hard — it didn't cut through.
But blood spilled.
Through those scattered droplets, Kōbe Hikaru found what he was looking for: the seams between the chitin plates.
Between the seventh and eighth segments — a hairline crack.
He drove off the ground and flashed to the centipede spirit's flank once more.
Blade tip inserted into the crack.
Twist.
The centipede spirit's shriek tore through the forest.
Kōbe Hikaru gave it no chance to struggle. He drove the edge along the seam in a long, continuous stroke — and opened the enormous creature from end to end.
Viscera spilled across the ground.
[Cursed Blade Muramasa: Affection +3]
[Current Affection: 38]
A single demon with four Changes — and it gave three points at once.
As expected. The higher the quality of the prey, the greater the return.
Kōbe Hikaru licked his lips and pressed forward.
The demon horde was starting to waver.
The smug confidence had drained from the Blue-Skin Fiend pack leader's face, replaced entirely by fear.
"What is happening?!"
It shrieked from behind the mob.
"He's just a Ghost Warrior! A low-grade undead demon! How can he be this strong?!"
Nobody answered.
Because everyone who could have answered was already dead.
Kōbe Hikaru's blade did not stop.
One stroke, one kill.
Occasionally two.
But never three.
[Affection: 42]
[Affection: 45]
[Affection: 48]
The numbers on the panel kept ticking upward.
Muramasa's blade had shifted from black to deep violet. The grain pattern along the steel writhed like something alive, and with each kill it let out a low, resonant hum of pure satisfaction.
It was happy.
Ecstatically happy.
[Cursed Blade Muramasa's mood: ECSTATIC. It conveys a message: 'Give me another dozen!']
"Your appetite just keeps growing," Kōbe Hikaru muttered, his hands never slowing.
Another Blue-Skin Fiend crumpled.
[Affection: 50]
[Bond Dialogue Unlocked (III): It tells you that it likes you — more than it ever liked its previous master — because you know how to feed it properly.]
[Special Ability Unlocked (II): Bloodthirst Frenzy]
[Effect: Once the blade has absorbed a sufficient volume of fresh blood, the wielder may enter a 'Berserk' state. For the duration, Strength, Speed, and Reaction are all boosted by 30%. When the state ends, the wielder will suffer a brief period of weakness.]
Kōbe Hikaru read the new ability on the panel. His eyes lit up.
A 30% boost across all attributes.
There was a drawback, yes — but as a trump card for critical moments, something to pull out when survival was on the line? This was exactly what he needed.
"Not bad."
He said it to the blade in his hand. "Keep it up. Once I'm stronger, I'll find you a proper high-ranking demon for your main course."
[Cursed Blade Muramasa conveys anticipation.]
Fewer than fifty demons remained on the field.
The Blue-Skin Fiend pack leader finally broke completely. It spun on its heel and fled.
"Retreat! Everyone — retreat!"
The surviving rabble scattered in all directions, scrambling away like convicts who'd just been granted a pardon.
Kōbe Hikaru didn't pursue.
He'd killed enough.
Pushing further would drain his stamina to a dangerous level. If he ran into another demon pack on the road, that would be a problem.
He stood in the middle of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, watching the retreating silhouettes fade into the dark.
Moonlight spilled down, stretching his shadow long across the carnage.
His broken armor was stained in every color blood could be. The black tachi still trembled faintly at his side — the quiet, contented vibration of a blade savoring the aftertaste of a full meal.
One hundred and fifty-three.
Kōbe Hikaru tallied the count in his head.
Affection had climbed from 28 to 50 — a gain of 22 points. Average: seven kills per point.
As expected. Small fry have terrible cost efficiency.
He slid Muramasa back into its sheath.
Click.
The sound of guard meeting scabbard rang out with crisp finality into the silence.
Time to move.
He raised his head and looked toward the mountain ranges stretching into the distance.
Somewhere beyond them, a shrine maiden named Kikyō was waiting for him.
No.
Correction.
The Shikon Jewel was waiting to be delivered.
And incidentally...
Waiting to have its Affection unlocked.
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