Chapter 233: Chapter 232: The Downfall Of Yamata No Orochi, Shuten-Dōji and Suzaku

The shape of the battle changed the moment their commanders entered the fray and forced Klaire and Kyubi to do the same.

What was a battle of numbers became a trio of head-to-head clashes between the strongest both sides had present, which rather than put an end to the numbers issue, instead made those numbers focused on Gillian, Scylla and Kitsunoko.

“Hey, Ki-ko. Can you take care of Scylla? I’ll keep you two covered.”

“Sure. Now my mums have joined in, I doubt anything will happen.” As she answered, she produced a flame in the palm of each hand and pressed it into Scylla.

Gillian was about to jump back into the fray, but his targets suddenly burst into flames as Carl ploughed through them whilst holding the legs of a giant fiery bird as it tried to plunge its talons into him.

He couldn’t help but notice that something about the creature felt similar to Ishtar, but whilst he knew she had been close to the eastern pantheon, he couldn’t figure out why one of Amaterasu’s elites would be be related to her.

“Hey, bird! Why do you feel like Ishtar? I want to make sure I don’t hurt my sister’s family if you’re related.” Carl dug a foot in and used it as an anchor to twist and slam the bird into both a mass of enemies and the ground.

His words seemed to make the bird’s flames grow even hotter. “I will not waste words on my mother’s enemies!”

“Mother? You mean Auntie Amaterasu? Cool, guess we’re cousins, don’t suppose we can talk this out?” His words once again seemed to stoke the flames and turn up the heat, which reached a point that the ground beneath her began to melt.

As the heat reached a point that even Carl’s demon-form began to feel it, he saw no other option and stole her form, then grabbed her by the legs and threw her into a neighbouring mountain before assuming it and taking flight after her.

Lacking the control his opponent had over the heat, a massive chunk of the mountain liquified as the Tengu and Oni around him were immolated, even Gillian got singed in the surge of heat that he emitted.

In a response somewhere between shock and anger, his opponent lost control of her own heat and began liquifying the mountain she had collided with. Bursting from newly formed magma the two of them smashed into each other, causing them both to release a burst of heat that left them at the centre of a powerful shockwave as the air was forced to rapidly expand.

It caught them both by surprise and sent them into a dazed freefall.

At the same time Klaire had been yawning as the disproportionate figure that had savaged Scylla, desperately tried to do the same to her and grew increasingly frustrated as its fists, claws, feet and talons passed through as though she were mist.

When the sonic boom echoed through the mountain range like a random thunderclap, she looked to see what had happened and shook her head as she watched the two fiery beings descend uncontrollably.

“Idiot, immortals rarely have a good understanding of physics since they do what they want, but you should know better…” Seeing her let herself become distracted was infuriating to the foe she had practically ignored since the beginning of their fight. “…That reminds me though, I was supposed to be getting used to my new abilities.”

She formed a pistol and pulled the trigger, which was all she needed to do to figure out how difficult that objective was going to be. As the bullet left the barrel it did so with enough force to create her own sonic boom, deafening herself.

To make matters worse, even though the bullet flew wide by a foot, it had enough surround air pressure to knock her opponent off balance and when showered him with splintered rock when it hit the mountain side with the force of an artillery round.

The man she was fighting roared in pained fury, his muscular body rippling and growing, which Klaire didn’t think anything of at first.

As he charged towards her though, she sensed something had changed about him, moving at the last second as his claws left a shallow set of cuts on her arm. It was then she noticed that he had channelled his aura into his claws, the same way Lillim had taught them to do in order to attack every layer of a beings existence.

It was a basic unrefined ability, that typically left the user unable to use their aura to defend, but acceptable if it was the only means one had to damage an opponent. Klaire’s biggest concern was that she was limited in what she could do, because if she used the wrong ability with diminished control of her power output, she ran the risk of friendly fire.

With that in mind, she offered a quick expression of gratitudes to the hand-to-hand combat instructors on SATS and sacrificed the use of firearms to transform her armour into a slightly heavier design.

It was something she had practiced quietly for such situations, but hadn’t been battle-tested. As the black armour that covered her body bubbled and bulged, it settled into a form that reminded her of an armour set in a fantasy game that Carl used to play.

For some reason even she didn’t know, it left her feeling a little embarrassed as it settled into a set of sleek plate armour that covered everything but her joints as to not sacrifice mobility.

The new metallic texture of the black armour gleamed in a way that intensified the star-like specks that dotted it.

Before she had a chance to inspect it fully for any unnecessary gaps she had to dodge a follow-up attack, this time round resulting in his serrated claws dragging across the surface of a plate protecting the upper part of her right-arm.

Unlike the first time however, as he withdrew his arm, she avenged Scylla by twisting and planting her left foot into the side of his head.

The air filled with the sound of cracking bone as soon as it made contact, unlike Scylla however, he didn’t bounce across the ground, but was left half-buried in it as the force of the blow was more than the ground could deflect.

For a second, he went as limp as Scylla, but then his muscles rippled even more and his body began to grow. His claws carved through the ground as he clenched his fists and he pushed himself up onto all fours as let out another furious roar.

He was Shuten-Dōji, the one who had feasted on a mortals for decades, besting both mortals and monsters alike. He had laid low both lords and heroes and in the end it took a god to make him pause, then spent the following centuries mastering his power and reaching heights that overlooked mountain peaks.

So how? How was the difference in their power so great he was little more than a toy to be broken? How dare she look down on him in the same way that arrogant fox spirit had?

The questions consumed him as he demanded answers from nothing in particular, his sense of self begging to fade in the same way it had a day long passed when a travelling monk gave him the mask that changed him into the beast he was.

As the burning rage he felt consumed his sense of reason, the curse of the mask that he had absorbed twisted his body even further.

The curse was a simple one the wearer’s humanity in exchange for monstrous strength, but since he had absorbed the curse the outcome had been linked to his definition of “monstrous strength”, which Klaire was now in the process of redefining for him.

His hair grew to resemble the thick mane of a lion, whilst his ribs grew thicker and blackened as they tore the flesh covering them and merged into a solid plate of diamond-hard bone and leaving only the lowest three on each side as independent ribs.

His skin then also grew thicker and took on a metallic composition, as though so desperate to find a way to oppose her, his body was mutating to copy things he had seen Klaire do.

Klaire wasn’t willing to sit idle while it happened and tried to intervene, but some outside force had created a barrier around him that rendered a physical attacks pointless.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. You would have been better off if they hadn’t interfered…” She took on her true form and threw up a barrier to protect Gillian, Scylla and Kitsunoko from what came next, then howled.

Every Oni and Tengu still on the mountain found themselves separated from their souls, along with Shuten-Dōji. As his body slumped and his pitch-black soul hovered in the air above him, Klaire was able to disregard the pity she had felt, able to tell from the colour that he had done more than enough to earn death.

She could also see the curse and decided not to eat it on the chance it infected her, but she also wasn’t a cold-blooded killer and he was completely incapacitated. “Bit strange, but maybe I should put him through a howling of sorts, see if I can separate out the curse and make him more manageable.”

As she got to work, she was oblivious of the effects it was having on Kyubi’s battle.

In her true form, she had decided to do little more than keep the snake focused on her and out of the way of the others, which had proven a relatively easy endeavour. That changed quickly however the first time that Shuten-Dōji had roared, all eight of its heads locking onto him before the snake had become fixated on stopping Klaire.

“Strange. You didn’t bat an eye when the bird was harmed, but when that one roars you look away immediately. Is it love that musters such concern?”

“Move, fox!” The snake spat the words as another might spit venom, suddenly lunging at her with all eight heads.

“So you speak…” Kyubi mused as she avoided the mass of maws without effort. “…If you are intelligent, then talk to me and I might listen.”

Even as she spoke she gripped the flesh where all eight heads met and hurled it back and away from its goal.

As it smashed into the rock the mountain could no longer stand against the abuse the battle had inflicted upon it and a fissure formed from the point of impact up to its peak, causing a rock slide.

Kyubi felt a little bad, but she had no way to pull the snake clear before it was buried, so she got herself clear and watched to see what happened.

As it lay entombed by dozens of rocks, it tried to shake them free, but found itself too tightly covered to manage the feat. With no other option, it took on a more human form, its immense size pulling into itself completely as Kyubi watched.

After a few moments, a woman emerged, donning black hair and snake-like features such as a mossy-green scaly skin.

The change in form seemed to condense her abilities as well, honing them to a fine edge and letting her close in on the obstacle that stood between her and her goal in an instant.

Kyubi couldn’t help but be impressed, a celestial fox was on the same level as a god, but she still would have struggled to keep up with that attack prior to her ascension.

The snake woman was now wielding twin daggers and new appearance she had donned, jogged something in Kyubi’s lost memory.

“I remember now, you were there the day your lady killed my lord.” The snake woman faltered at the words, backing off slightly and hissing.

“I am Hebihime and I served as one of my lady’s retainers that day. She ordered us to leave you be, but I see you finally found the courage to seek vengeance.”

Kyubi sighed and spun to smash her tightly coiled tails into Hebihime’s gut. “Don’t get the wrong idea, I bear no grudge against your lady. I did, but it was out of a blind sense of duty in the wake of losing much of my memory.”

Her words were met with a hateful hiss as the one Klaire fought roared again. “Move! I will not let you torture my brother!”

She lunged at Kyubi again, but Kyubi simply tripped her and pinned her down, she then told Hebihime to stop making assumptions and to actually watch.

Hebihime snarled, bearing her fangs as she struggled, but when her eyes returned to Klaire and her brother she saw what Kyubi wished her to.

Klaire was pulling apart her brother’s soul, not to be cruel, but so she might remove the impurities.

It would have been a long, arduous procedure, but she was using all the speed and power at her control to make complete it as fast as she could while being as thorough as possible.

When Hebihime realised what she was doing, she asked Kyubi why Klaire would go to the effort. Kyubi wasn’t going to lie, she told her it was likely just Klaire’s way of defeating him without killing him.

“So we are just stepping distractions to be removed?…” Hebihime relaxed, accepting that there was nothing she could do against Kyubi. “…It won’t matter in the end, Lady Suzaku is the daughter of our Lady Amaterasu and neither that man or any of you have no chance of defeating her.”

Kyubi laughed and released her. “Don’t worry about him, from what I heard he’s just getting to know his cousin…”

As the two had fallen into the valley between mountains, they continued to burn hot enough to melt the earth around them, both awoken as they splashed into the pool of lava they had unwittingly created.

Spluttering and spitting out the molten rock was just as painful for both of them. The only blessing they could find was that neither possessed a solid body so they didn’t have fleshy lungs that could be burned out or filled with rock.

“You are making a mess of my mother’s realm!”

“Well she can consider us even for making bringing her back to her senses my responsibility before I’d even been born!”

The two lunged at one another again, hovering off of the ground just enough to make use of their talons as they continued bickering.

As they continued clashing, they had begun to defend themselves against the shockwaves that each clash created, but in doing so increased their frequency.

The valley they fought in had been terraformed into a river of lava and the shockwaves battered the surrounding mountains and after a particularly brutal clash, one of the mountains finally succumbed to their ferocious battle.

The rock burst as though exploding in anger in response to being dragged into their conflict, pelting them with boulders that were themselves large enough to be considered hills.

Those boulders in turn were liquified as they tried to crush the two firebirds and the ones that weren’t melted sent fountains of lava spraying into the air as the splashed into the river below.

As they soared between the fountains and rain to clash time and time again, Carl came to an abrupt stop and hovered as he looked around himself, realising that they may have gone a bit far.

“Are you mocking me!” As she swooped in, talons poised to rip Carl apart, he flapped his wings to avoid it.

“Stop it. This has gotten out of hard, give me a moment and I’ll fix this mess as much as I can…” Suzaku had been about to argue, but then he formed an aura platform and returned to his human-form. “…Shush, I’ve never tried this before so just give me a second.”

He externalised the divinity he circulated to become the firebird, then did the same for the divinity of his ice-form. Choosing to not believe him and dive in to take advantage of his vulnerability, Suzaku left Carl with no choice as his skin started to bubble from the heat and forced him to stop her.

He produced a barrier to both defend against the heat and make a wall for her to smash into, then when she did smash into it, he created another to trap her in place.

He apologised, told her he didn’t want to resort to what he was about to do in case he couldn’t reverse it, then finally solidified the divinity in the channels circulating her body. The same thing he had done to Dracula to strip him of his ten-star status.

Forced back into her human form as she could no longer sustain her true one, Carl brought her over to the platform where he was working and apologised again.

“What did you do!?”

“I used the law of Divinity to solidify what was coursing through your divinity channels. There aren’t many that can manipulate divinity to the point of changing it so completely and even the ones that could would need longer than this will take me to finish.”

Carl huffed and shook his head as Suzaku smashed her fists bloody against the barrier she was sealed in, deciding it would be best to simply focus on his task before she killed herself trying to escape.

The two divinities were surprisingly similar, the structure, colour, movement and intensities were exactly the same. “…So if that’s all the same, then this sub-structure here must be the elemental basis, which means if I make a copy of this and store it, then remove this part here, then copy this one and store it, then remove this bit from this one and swap them around…”

As he narrated his actions, he noticed the dull squelchy thudding had stopped and after taking the two new divinity structures back into himself, he turned to face Suzaku once again.

Snarling, she correctly stated that whilst one of them felt similar to her own, the other felt like one of the infernal crowns, Cocytus. That was as much as she got correct however as she quickly dived into a baseless accusation that between that and the demon form, he was creation of Samael’s and the grand crown had betrayed them.

“…Wrong on all accounts. As I said, I am a creation of Ishtar. I was thrown a thousand years through time by Mobius. Now sit there quietly while I fix the damage we caused.”

Suzaku did as she was told, if only because she had no choice.

Carl took on the new form he had created, becoming a bird the same as Suzaku’s true form, about ten meters tall, with a wingspan that and half again. Rather than fire though, his body was made up of a thick, icy mist that robbed the are around him of any trace of warmth.

“He actually did what he said…” She watched as his head rolled back and he fell off the platform and into a nose dive towards the valley floor. Any lava within a hundred metres not only hardened, but frosted over.

In a matter of minutes the lava had been transformed into gleaming icy valley, that when thawed, would be an eternal scar on the landscape and a permanent memorial to the battle that had taken place.

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