Why can't humans do it too?

Chapter Sixty-Three: The Strongest

The monsters, treated as Gu worms, fought and devoured each other in a sealed environment. The monsters that survived absorbed a part of the other monsters, making themselves confused or grotesque, and their essence as a single life form was defiled.

The only advantage of doing this is that the monsters that survive are all extremely vicious and powerful, making them the sharpest blades available.

"So, there's another shady character hiding behind us?" Su Er rubbed his forehead, feeling a bit of a headache.

I hate these guys who hide in the back the most. If it's a monster that charges out directly, I can kill it on the spot. But how do I catch this old silver coin who knows how to hide himself among other monsters or even among humans?

“I will try my best to find out,” Yakumo Yukari said after a moment’s pause, then stood up again. “Then I’ll take my leave now… I want to spend more time with Yuu.”

“…Hmm,” Su Er also fell silent for a moment. He watched Yakumo Yukari’s somewhat forlorn figure before she entered the gap, then looked at Shinko. “Is there really no good way?”

If he could, he wouldn't want to see a tragedy occur.

Then Xin Ke rolled her eyes at her.

Leaving aside Xin Ke, who is overwhelmed by issues involving the overlap of two eras, and Su Er, who is staying with Xin Ke here, the battle in the city has reached the point where both sides have almost wiped out the first wave of cannon fodder they encountered.

The once elegant blue and white haori was now inevitably stained with blood, and the aura wrapped around Nura Rikuo had changed its appearance, perfectly demonstrating what it meant to be the master of demons and monsters, even able to replace the power of the underlings borrowed in battle.

"calendar!!!"

"Roger that!"

Upon hearing Rikuo Nura's summons, Araragi Koyomi, who had developed an unparalleled rapport with him through long-term training and teamwork, gritted his teeth and picked up the broken wall in front of him. The immense strength granted by his vampire blood allowed him to throw the building's wreckage at an extremely high speed, smashing the target into a pile of minced meat.

Rikuo Nura uses his good looks and trash talk to entangle his enemies. His unique Nurarihyon abilities also make him difficult for enemies to hit. In the end, the enemy is often provoked to the point of losing their mind, and Koyomi Araragi, who has been hiding in a place where the enemy cannot defend, will take the opportunity to launch a sneak attack.

Like this time, they throw boulders to crush enemies, use their vampire abilities to extract demonic power from them, or simply pounce and unleash a powerful punch to create miracles... Overall, their fighting style has yielded quite a few results so far.

When facing weaker monsters, they would compete to see who could kill more, but when faced with some tough opponents, they would cooperate tacitly. This smooth and fluid fighting style undoubtedly attracted the attention of many monsters who came to the city, and many monsters even followed them directly.

Even though they have integrated into human society, the blood of demons flowing in their veins still makes them follow behind the strong. When they have such thoughts, their demonic aura and their fear spread outwards, eventually affecting Nura Rikuo and Araragi Koyomi at the forefront.

Araragi Koyomi touched the few wisps of demonic energy that extended from his shoulders to his arms with great curiosity. He did know about fear, but he never expected that this thing could transcend the distinction between East and West and appear on him, a vampire... In the end, whether vampires can be considered monsters is still an unknown.

"Hey, Rikuo, look, I'm pregnant too!" Araragi Koyomi teased Nura Rikuo, fiddling with the few strands of hair.

"Ha, you dare to be so arrogant with just this little bit of fear? You'll come listen in when the old man gives his lecture later—run!!!"

When all his attention was focused on the line, Araragi Koyomi could clearly see the sudden tightening on Nura Rikuo's face, and the figure of him raising his sword and rushing towards him. But even faster than that was the warning brought to him by his vampire instincts, the stinging pain of his body about to be impacted.

boom! ! !

Caught off guard by the sudden attack, Araragi Koyomi was thrown into a nearby building that was not yet completely collapsed. The building, which had held on since the start of the war, finally collapsed completely, burying Araragi Koyomi inside. Also buried inside was the mastermind behind the attack.

No matter how you look at it, it's human skin, but how could human limbs stretch out into such a twisted, tentacle-like shape, deformed and extended, with an unknown liquid seemingly flowing in bulges under the white skin?

Everything happened too fast. By the time the weaker yokai reacted, deep purple gas was seeping out from the cracks in the concrete fragments of the ruins that had completely buried Araragi Koyomi. It was undoubtedly a highly poisonous gas. Under Nura Rikuo's suddenly grim expression, he could clearly see countless holes appearing on the surface of the concrete fragments that had come into contact with the poisonous gas.

Even the hard concrete was shrinking and melting. In just a few breaths, the outermost layer of concrete dissolved into a pool of purplish-black liquid, flowing down the surface of the ruins and making a strange hissing sound when it touched the road.

"Miasma, miasma?!" Among the group of monsters, an old monster whose pupils shrank to the size of pinpoints muttered to himself.

"Koyomi! Araragi Koyomi!!!"

Without time to worry about the miasma, Nura Rikuo simply swung his sword at the strange fleshy pillar. Unexpectedly, the sharp blade easily severed it with almost no resistance. Except for the retracted end, the other end fell to the ground, and purple poisonous gas seeped out from the cut.

Well, although it sounds a bit heartless, Nura Rikuo wasn't really that worried about Araragi Koyomi being crushed or poisoned to death. He had already experienced the vampire's vitality quite well. How could a vampire be afraid of the sun at first, but with more training, eventually be able to stand under the midday sun?

Even the sun's rate of melting it couldn't keep up with its self-repairing speed!

According to Nurarihyon's assessment, Araragi Koyomi doesn't need anything else; his self-healing ability during self-repair is enough for him to stand on the grand stage of powerful yokai—and even dance a samba on it.

"Stop shouting, he's not dead yet."

As expected, Nura Rikuo didn't have to wait long before Araragi Koyona's muffled voice, which sounded somewhat muffled from being buried under the sand and gravel, came out.

Chapter Sixty-Four: Winning Hearts and Minds

With his vampire constitution granting him extraordinary self-healing abilities, Araragi Koyomi rises to the occasion.

Chunks of rubble were pushed aside, while the lingering dark purple fumes still clung to his body. His flesh, corroded and melted, swelled and festered, and was torn off by Araragi Koyomi and thrown to the ground.

When Araragi Koyomi walked out of the ruins, apart from the clothes that were riddled with holes from the poisonous smoke, his body had returned to its most normal state, and his yellow skin even appeared whiter.

"...No matter how many times I see it, I feel like your recovery ability is cheating," Nura Rikuo said to Araragi Koyomi with a hint of envy. "If I had your recovery ability, I wouldn't even have to worry about getting injured, haha, I could even relax a bit when I'm training."

“You can’t slack off during training, right? If you only have strong recovery ability, you’ll become a punching bag, didn’t you say that yourself?” Araragi Koyomi couldn’t help but complain, recalling how he was beaten up during training.

"Hahahahahahaha," Nura Rikuo laughed heartily, scratching the back of his head.

He stopped responding.

"How wonderful... Is this the friendship between a yokai and...?" Seemingly unable to bear watching these two chatting idly, a voice that felt like a venomous snake crawling across one's body interrupted their conversation.

The voice seemed to carry a smile, but what seeped in was only a bone-chilling cold, or perhaps endless malice, icy and slippery.

Before any of the monsters present could react, a white figure flashed to the white tentacle that Nura Rikuo had just severed, dragging it away with agility and strength far exceeding its size. Nura Rikuo's hasty sword strike only hit empty air.

"What a pity, it was just a little bit short." Amidst a sickeningly sharp sound of bones snapping, the Nura Clan's group of yokai finally saw the entity that had launched the sneak attack with unexpected speed and ruthlessness.

With an appearance identical to that of a human, she wore an ancient purple kimono, and her black hair was coiled over her shoulders like seaweed, with a few strands hanging down her chest sticking up like venomous snakes, as if searching for Araragi Koyomi and Nura Rikuo's weaknesses.

A handsome man, but judging from the last wisp of a tentacle remaining on his raised right arm—ah, even that last tentacle had folded into his arm—it looked no different from a human arm from the outside. However, everyone knew how twisted the existence was beneath this humanoid body.

A body that can be twisted and deformed, and possesses both agility and strength.

miasma.

Raising his hand to signal his yokai to step back to avoid being accidentally injured by the miasma that looked like it would kill them at first glance, Nura Rikuo silently recited the two traits he had discovered so far, and looked at Araragi Koyomi.

Do him?

Dry!

Noticing the exchange of glances between Nura Rikuo and Araragi Koyomi, the kimono-clad male demon smiled and said, "Could you wait a moment? We're all demons, aren't we? Can you really trust those humans?"

"I'm not trying to sow discord between you, but based on what I've seen along the way... you probably don't know, do you? Those humans dressed in uniform were secretly ambushing some monsters, and then covering them up with all sorts of strange things."

Nura Rikuo suddenly stopped in his tracks.

"Oh? It seems you yourself know that what I'm saying is very likely to happen, right?" The male demon in the purple kimono raised an eyebrow. "Not those demons who came to this world like me, but those demons who are currently fighting us."

"After all... it's much easier to attack from behind than from the front," the purple-robed male demon laughed even more heartily, pleased to see his words cause a stir among the demons opposite him. "Who knows, maybe one of your companions is among them. Why don't we check them thoroughly?"

"Wha, what?!"

"General!"

"Little Lord!"

The Nura clan's yokai, who had retreated to places untouched by the miasma, began to clamor. It would be fine if such a thing weren't brought up, but if it were... just thinking about what had happened during the time they had spent together in the city made them uneasy.

The strange looks humans gave them, the rejection they felt at suddenly discovering these alien beings around them, and the little monsters that kept disappearing—and indeed, some of the missing monsters were found among the humans… Yes, those despicable people were capable of doing such things!

The noise behind Nura Rikuo grew even louder.

The Nura Clan's yokai are too well protected, and yokai are just that kind of simple creatures. Apart from those yokai that were transformed from humans, most yokai can be described as straightforward. They say what they mean, fight if they're unhappy, and even if they're bad, they're bad in a straightforward and direct way.

Whether what he said was true or false, Nura Rikuo knew what he had to say.

After all, in a sense, he was distrusted by the yokai outside of the Nura Clan because he was born with only a quarter of the yokai bloodline. His quarter bloodline also prevented him from showing his yokai form during the day. He was able to fight under the scorching sun thanks to Nurarihyon for getting a blocking spell from Grandma Shinka.

Therefore, such suspicion and infighting must absolutely not arise, at least not while this great battle is not yet over.

"You really dare to say that?" Nura Rikuo sneered, slashing a sword aura across the road in front of him. "He suddenly appeared and ambushed my best brother. If it weren't for his special abilities, he would have been crushed to death by your vicious attack. And now you dare to use such rhetoric to disrupt our morale at a time like this... Why should we believe you?"

"Yup!"

"If it weren't for the fact that Riku is a vampire, he would definitely be dead by now! If it were me, I would definitely be dead."

Why should we believe the enemy?!

"That's right!"

The Nura Clan yokai, who had been living in Araragi Koyomi's house for so long, were already quite familiar with him. They were extremely anxious when they saw Araragi Koyomi being smashed into the rubble. Now that they realized the problem, they became wary of this suddenly appearing male yokai again.

Whether or not someone is actually taking advantage of the situation, at least for now, Rikuo Nura has maintained the status quo.

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"Is that so?" The male demon in the purple kimono nodded noncommittally, laughing mockingly. "I'm curious, you're all demons, aren't you?"

"Since you're a demon, why do you stand on the side of humans? You sacrificed your life for them, and couldn't even keep your body; it was torn apart and taken away by humans... If I'm not mistaken, you're a half-demon, right?"

The male demon pointed at Nura Rikuo, and his voice became shrill.

"You chose the human bloodline within you? Then where do you place those demons who trust you wholeheartedly?"

Whoosh—Bang!

Nura Rikuo's forward slash was blocked by the yokai in the kimono, who picked up a metal pipe. He could see the yokai grinning maliciously at him, a smile of inexplicable hatred that seemed to wish for the worst.

Without a doubt, he was the most troublesome enemy. His attacks were not just physical attacks, but also attacks on the enemy's fighting spirit and mind. Nura Rikuo could no longer sit idly by and watch him continue to say such things. Of course, such words would not make him put down his sword and surrender, but to say that he was completely unmoved... at least Nura Rikuo himself knew that he also had his doubts.

"Your name," Nurarihyon said expressionlessly, looking down at the male demon he was pressing down with his sword.

The male demon in a purple kimono answered quietly as he forcefully broke apart Nura Rikuo's sword.

"…Naraku."