The Shield That Screams

"Do not waste your gaze elsewhere, my lord."

"...Are you certain you don't need my help?"

"If we were to interfere, we would only become a burden. Is it not our finest service to provide an environment where you may fight freely, with your mind at ease?"

At Miho's words, Bathory withdrew her gaze from Rohen and soared ahead into the front lines.

"My hair keeps getting in the way."

Watching Bathory join the battle before her, Miho drew a hairpin from within her sleeves and slid it into her hair. Rohen preferred the long, loose fall of straight hair, so she rarely used the pin—but now the steadily falling rain had plastered her hair to her skin, and it irritated her endlessly. With the pin, she drew her long hair up into neat order.

Then, folding paper into shikigami modeled after the Four Guardian Beasts—all but the Azure Dragon—she brought them into being. Nor was that all. The records of her lineage, able to wield yin, yang, and the five elements at will through onmyōdatsu, boasted overwhelming firepower even in close combat.

By its roots it meant nothing more than as swiftly as a decree, yet latent within the charm lay the power to expel demons. And sure enough, one of the demonkin that had been slinking behind Miho to assault her found itself bound fast by the spell, unable to so much as twitch in midair, vomiting out a resentful moan.

"The only one permitted to lay hands upon this girl is my master, you see."

Along the path of Miho's hand as it swept gently through the empty air, flame blossomed amid the falling rain and swallowed the demon whole. She watched him flail in the agony of burning flesh, thought the sight utterly pitiful, and passed him by with indifferent eyes.

"Come to understand your place, and die like an insect ensnared in a web—struggling, ugly, to the very end."

Night was the hour when the energy of yin grew strong. By yin-yang and the five elements, the colors belonging to yin's branch were blue and black, and those colors symbolized wood and water. Rain fell from the heavens, and thickets of grown trees rose all around. When night came the energy of yang weakened—but that did not mean it became unusable. Yin-yang and the five elements were, in the broadest view, a cosmogony: all existence was born from the cycle of yin and yang, and repeated its dissolution. At this hour of swelling yin, if she added the energy of earth to wood and water, she could turn this entire battlefield into an infernal chaos.

So thinking, Miho flexed her fingers and set her power in motion—and with a tremendous shudder, tree roots began growing at a furious rate, bursting up through the earth ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to engulf the Demon King's army.

This was the majesty of a Great Yokai, heir to an overwhelming lineage.

"You keep good subordinates."

I wanted to ask him where he found the leisure to open his mouth—but our conversation's allotted duration had already run out. If the Ruyi Peak had so much as pressed down on him for a moment, its overwhelming mass would have left the Demon King with no escape from a fatal wound. Yet he was skillfully evading that pressure with his unique ability. The Ruyi Peak carried a time limit of seven minutes after summoning, so wielding it indefinitely was impossible.

I shouldn't be admiring how well he blocks it, should I?

If the Demon King died and revived, the effect of Equality would no longer persist. That hesitation lingering in me was likely because I still had no grasp of how to respond to what came after. Knowing myself far too well was, perversely, its own torment. The Ruyi Peak had two minutes remaining, and within that window I had to make my choice.

"You think too much!"

"...!"

The Demon King drove a fist into my thought-clouded perception. I caught it, swiftly shortened the Ruyi Peak, aimed, and extended it. If this era possessed guns, would this be the sound that rang out when a bullet tore through a human body? A crack of split air rang faintly for an instant, and the Ruyi Peak pierced the Demon King's body and drove him far away—only to slam against an invisible wall, caught in the dead end of Standstill.

No time for thinking this over and that.

I gritted my teeth. Facing the Ruyi Peak, the Demon King had used his unique ability ten times in total. The previous seven had evidently been bluffing. The fact that he couldn't resist having his body pierced this time made it likely the ten-use limit was genuine. The question was—ten per day? If not, ten per revival? Or was even this one more bluff? Or did the count increase with every resurrection?

Enough. For now, I have no choice but to exhaust the remaining entries on my word list.

If there was a word akin to Equality, it was Parity. If I mastered it, then even after killing the Demon King once, I would not lose a war of attrition. The reason I hesitated, knowing all this, was that I didn't know how many deaths the Demon King could still suffer before gaining total immunity to a method that had killed him once. The more empty slots remaining in his words, the more chances I had left to kill him.

A tedious game of catch-the-thief.

I twisted the Ruyi Peak, widening its surface area. The Demon King's wretched frame, letting slip a faint, graceless scream, could no longer endure the staff's extension—and began collapsing in a grotesque ruin. Watching that, I grasped the word Parity through consonants and vowels.

"I sense... your hesitation."

The Demon King bared a crooked smile as he studied my face. "The ability that slows my flesh carries its restrictions, so it cannot be used at once upon revival—am I wrong? Let me say this in advance. This time I will not miss. I will twist off that neck of yours and cast it neatly beyond that castle gate."

How very kind of you to hand me the answer yourself. I extended the Ruyi Peak further still and tore his body apart. Chunks of the Demon King's flesh pattered to the ground, and with them the effects of Equality and Standstill naturally released. In the same instant, the Ruyi Peak vanished from my right hand. Along the puddled rainwater, the Demon King's blood crept sullenly up to my shoes.

I wished it could end here, but reality was nothing if not merciless. Drawing the shield Ohan out through materialization, I summoned Excalibur and gripped it in my right hand. Before long, the dead Demon King revived and vanished from my sight—and the Ohan in my left hand began to shriek violently.

KWAAANG!

"A grotesque weapon, that one."

With my life on the line, does that matter? The instant I unleashed Parity, the Demon King—pressing in to renew his assault—felt the wrongness and fell back. Equality no longer persisted, but Parity filled the gap in its place. What I needed to prove now, one could say, was the moment the Demon King's unique ability reset.

The pressure of Excalibur's arc into the Demon King's abdomen carried monstrous force behind it, splitting the ground and hurling mud skyward. Across the frigid air, my sharpened sense of smell caught an unmistakable scent of blood—and through it, I knew the strike had landed.

So it's not on revival—it resets on a fixed cycle after all. Assuming it isn't another bluff...

Holding that crucial piece of information, I faced the Demon King—now missing one arm—once more.

Within roughly fifteen seconds, I would kill the Demon King one more time. During the span when he had lain motionless within the Demonic Tree, I had grasped Incineration. Lightning was a dead word already—it had killed him once. So I arranged my thoughts and moved to renew the battle—when the Demon King, standing exactly where he was, regarded me with listless eyes, and with his one remaining arm drove his hand straight through his own skull.

"...?"

Crack!

Thud-thud-thud!

The crooked tang of blood thickened in the air. I was so dumbfounded by the absurdity of it—the Demon King severing his own life before my eyes, taking his own life—that no thought formed at all. What warned me was the shield in my left hand—Ohan—screaming loud enough to burst its own eardrums. Only then did I realize I had lost sight of the Demon King before me, and hauled Ohan up behind me.

KWAAANG!

A detonation so immense I could scarcely believe a fist had met my shield sent me flying. Sprawled gracelessly atop a puddle ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of gathered rain, I jerked my head up to assess the situation—but the Demon King's physical specs, unbound by any restriction now, were beyond anything I could chase.

THWACK!

Crunch!

"──!"

Conversation's effect had long since expired, so a soundless scream coiled at the back of my mouth as the left hand gripping Ohan shook apart, ruined and flailing. The instantaneous pain was colossal, but thanks to Excalibur's scabbard, it did not quite knock me unconscious.

"So this time, you cannot weaken my body."

I ground my teeth at the Demon King, who had severed his own life—chosen suicide—solely to erase the effect of Parity. Certainly, suicide was one death among many.

For now, I need to escape this spot—!

For the Demon King as well, this had to be one of the rarest of chances. Because he had already experienced death by his own hand once, he could never repeat it. If I could somehow absorb this blindsiding moment, the opportunities for him to seize the initiative from me would all but vanish. But as I turned over a thousand thoughts of how to survive this, the Ohan I had dropped to the ground began shrieking deafeningly. An intense warning: death was near.

Shluk.

Sure enough, the Demon King's hand slid with terrible smoothness into my flank. The pain was too vast to be dismissed as merely shattered ribs. Adrenaline flooded me in a rush, yet it could not suppress agony that threatened to sever my mind outright. Blood welled thick and sour, surging back up my throat in heaves. Excalibur's scabbard was not omnipotent—the deeper the wound, the longer it took to heal.

"I suppose this trinket is the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠cause of your wounds healing without end?"

The Demon King, catching my sagging body and lifting me slowly, seized the scabbard of Excalibur—the bracelet locked around my right hand—and pulled. Naturally, a bracelet does not slip smoothly free from the wrist, and when he wrenched at it by force, my skin tore away in ruin.

CRRUNCH!

Then, with nothing but raw grip strength, he crushed the scabbard to pieces. Watching that scene, I found myself so absurdly detached that a hollow laugh escaped me even now—but the agony flaring across my whole body did not let that laugh last long.

"H-Heal."

My body had reached its limit, and at last I spent the cherished Heal to make myself whole. Immediately after, I registered Ohan beginning to wail and, on reflex, drove the power of the Word into ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a repulsion to blast the Demon King away—

GRRAAAAK!

He was not blasted away. Enduring the recoil, he held his ground exactly where he stood—even though a full-force attack rebounding upon its caster should have returned to him as-is. Both legs driven into the earth, he overcame that backlash in its entirety: a staggering sight. And when I saw him, at last, drive a fist precisely toward my heart, I understood in my bones.

This—

I cannot dodge it.

Only Ohan, the shield that shrieks its warning when its wielder stands at death's threshold, went on screaming its deafening cry.