Generally speaking, very little had been able to make Naraku truly angry for decades. But now, a volcanic rage erupted within him, driving him to tear everything in sight to shreds and feast upon the remains. He wanted to see their corpses piled into mountains.
He knew where this emotion came from, but he didn't want to think about why. It was hatred, perhaps, or the pure malice of a yōkai.
"...Kikyo..."
He spat the name out heavily, like lava flowing from a crater. He chewed on the name, that familiar spiritual energy—it was hers. Yet, her age, her expression, and the words she shouted proved she wasn't her—not the woman named Kikyo.
But that detestable white-haired dog was exactly the same man he remembered.
"...InuYasha..."
Naraku hissed the name of the dog demon with pure loathing. Seeing old acquaintances brought him no joy; he only wanted to rend them both. But more importantly, there was the prize that could make him a true, whole yōkai.
Higurashi Kagome was fighting alongside the being she had just unsealed. To be precise, the dog demon was carrying her to evade attacks while she clumsily unleashed the power she could now clearly feel—spiritual energy [Reiki].
"Left! A yōkai is pouncing from the left!"
"Right! Right too! Ah! Something's coming out of the ground!"
"Hey! Move faster, InuYasha! That claw almost touched me!!"
Surrounded by demons, Kagome issued commands like a general, until...
"Shut up! Be quiet, woman!!!"
Veins popped on InuYasha's forehead. He cursed his past self for mistaking this woman for Kikyo when he first woke up. This shitty personality wasn't even half as good as Kikyo's!
She's so loud! And why am I taking orders from her!!
She only has the face and the spiritual energy in common! Everything else is different!
"AAAAAAAAAAH!!!"
Her piercing scream answered him. A blood-red maw was snapping at them in mid-air.
"Iron Reaver Soul Stealer! [Sankon Tesso]"
InuYasha didn't play around. He shredded the maw with his claws and used the momentum to dodge in another direction.
"Be careful—Huh?!!" Kagome gasped, her eyes widening at a man who suddenly appeared before them.
"...I have it."
The man sounded agitated, though he was trying to suppress it. As he spoke, Kagome looked down and realized that the Shikon Jewel she had kept in her skirt pocket was now in the man's left hand.
"InuYasha!! InuYasha!!! The Shikon Jewel was taken!!"
"What?! I see him! Put it down! The Shikon Jewel is mine!!!"
Seeing the treasure he considered his own—the thing that would make him a full yōkai—stolen by a random stranger, InuYasha erupted in fury.
But it was too late.
The Sankon Tesso shredded the man's flesh, but such damage meant nothing to him. His body dissolved into segments and flowed like a stream through the gaps between the yōkai, appearing instantly at the edge of the forest.
Ignoring the two pairs of eyes practically spitting fire at him, Naraku's gaze hungrily licked every surface of the Shikon Jewel. This was what he had wanted for decades...
Under the gaze of the multitude, the man in the purple kimono gave a satisfied smile and swallowed the pink jade whole.
"The big one is coming."
The moment Naraku swallowed the jewel, Sū ěr snapped his head toward the Higurashi Shrine. He felt something... extremely disgusting and difficult to deal with appearing there.
It was like a feather tickling the palms and soles of the feet, poking at the emotions of all intelligent life... but more bizarrely, there was a sensation as if a part of himself existed there.
"When will this chaos end?" Sū ěr sighed and looked at the pink-haired girl before him. "Have you truly decided to die like this?"
"If it allows more people to wear happy smiles, I am willing," Saigyouji Yuyuko said calmly to the yōkai who had suddenly appeared to tell her so much.
Sū ěr had explained the current situation and her future very clearly. She felt sorry for Yukari's concern, but... this was her choice.
Sū ěr had made up his mind. He would destroy these two anomalous trees and the array. The spells established by the Saigyou monk had protected humanity for centuries, but now they had become a trap that devoured lives and disrupted the order of time.
Yuyuko's innate ability was simply to summon and control spirits. But once she was bound to the cherry tree, and as the tree and array mutated further, her power expanded through the ley lines to an unimaginable scale. It was summoning the dead of the entire world and tempting the living to join them.
It had to be destroyed. Let the past be the past, and the future be the future. Therefore... Saigyouji Yuyuko would die.
Even without much of a relationship with her, seeing such a pure soul sacrifice herself was unpleasant.
"Have you considered... not being human?" Sū ěr rubbed his chin. "You want to keep playing with Yukari, right? You can protect people and satisfy your own wish. You'd just have to give up being a Saigyouji—no longer the descendant of an exorcist family, abandoning the family mission. You wouldn't mind that, would you?"
Yuyuko tilted her head blankly, not quite understanding. "Eh? Is that possible?"
"Yes, it's possible... probably."
"Interested in becoming the Dryad of this cherry tree?" Think asked with a smirk, pushing up her simulated glasses.
The predecessor of Kagome was a powerful priestess, and Naraku's birth was tied to her. Centuries ago, she and InuYasha were entangled in fate, agreeing that he would use the jewel to become human. But Naraku destroyed that bond with a scheme, leading to InuYasha being pinned to the tree, only to be released centuries later by Kagome.
But none of that mattered now. The half-demon Naraku, born from a thousand yōkai, craved completion. The Shikon Jewel could make a half-demon human, or it could make one a true demon.
That was what Naraku had become.
A true demon, a Chimera-like existence composed of the finest parts of a thousand yōkai. That was Naraku.
If Jibril hadn't realized the shrine's spells were failing and intervened, InuYasha and Kagome would likely have been killed on the spot. With the jewel's power, Naraku's unique traits were amplified. He wasn't "strong" in terms of raw destructive power, but in his survivability and sheer persistence.
Jibril could swat away his attacks with ease, but even she couldn't kill him. Naraku had no vital organs left; he was everywhere and nowhere at once.
Like a mudslide flowing down a mountain, Naraku let go of his form, devouring the corpses of yōkai and humans alike, expanding until he filled the gaps of the entire city.
Such a massive, weakpoint-free entity was beyond Rikuo or Araragi. They could only retreat... until the blinding light and the mushroom cloud rose.
It wasn't a traditional nuclear bomb, but a neutron bomb—a low-yield small hydrogen bomb used in combat for the first time. It minimized damage to buildings while eliminating the "biological" threat without long-term radiation. It was the perfect tool for a monster that occupied an entire city.
When all forces except those on the perimeter were cleared, the world's major powers ignored the Japanese government's protests and launched the ultimate weapon of modern society. The effect... was unexpectedly good.
Without Sū ěr or Jibril lifting a finger, the monster that had stumped modern yōkai and Onmyōji vanished in a flash of light and heat. It was more violent, simpler, and faster than anyone had predicted.
In years to come, a new port city might rise from the ruins, but that was a story for the future. This was a victory for humanity's own power.
It was said that seconds after the mushroom cloud rose, countless tiny shards of light scattered from the city across the world.
Yōkai called them the shards of the Shikon Jewel. To humans, they were a source of total social instability. Some woke up with Herculean strength; others found their minds suddenly sharpened.
Some called them the keys to corruption; others called them a ladder for those desperate to change their fate. Some became malicious; others became altruistic. Perhaps the shards never changed; only the humans did.
And then there were the new lives—the talking cups, the trees that pulled up their roots to find the sun, the cats that learned to smoke and drink. They were good and evil, impossible to define simply.
Because of this war that ended with the ultimate human weapon, those who once roamed the world and faded into myth were exposed once more.
It was a new era, full of opportunity and challenge. Handling these new races became the priority of every nation—some chose segregation, some chose hierarchy, some chose integration.
But none of that was Sū ěr concern. He liked this vibrant world where competition drove technology to new heights.
"How about we go abroad for a trip?" Sū ěr put down his coffee and asked. "The Maldives? Or the Alps... maybe Provence? Lavender fields are the definition of romance. An Elf like you should like that scenery, right? To smell it with your own nose?"
"Lavender?" Think sat beside him and took a sip of his coffee. Not bad—this physical body was indeed good.
Think had separated herself from Sū ěr soul. It caused some minor damage to both, but compared to the joy of walking hand-in-hand under the sunset, it was a small price to pay.
Well, and for those 'indescribable' activities.
"Why am I not an option??"
When the discontented voice came from behind, Sū ěr felt his head sink into a "valley" of softness. But the greater crisis was the pair of arms locking his throat from behind.
"Breathing! I can't breathe!!!"
He tapped Jibril arm frantically for a long time before he was granted the right to breathe again, coughing hard.
"Just so you know, compared to a wild woman like you, Sū ěr and I are legally married," Think said with her trademark fake smile. "Ah~, I forgot. For a primitive single-celled organism like you, such a concept is likely unimaginable."
"What did you say! Sū ěr! I want a wedding too!!" Jibril rage instantly shifted to Sū ěr. She wanted a wedding. Now. Immediately. This afternoon!
"Calm down, calm down. Okay, no problem, absolutely! But let's finish talking about where we're going first, okay?" Sū ěr held up his hands in surrender. "By the way, did that dog demon and Kagome really just set off like that?"
"Tch. The girl's past life was entangled with him, after all. When Naraku died—or rather, when the jewel shattered—she seemed to wake up some memories. They set off to collect the shards, arguing the whole way."
"Collecting them all?" Sū ěr clicked his tongue. "That's going to take a while."
After all, no one knew how many tiny pieces the neutron bomb had blasted the Shikon Jewel into.
"How do you know that isn't exactly what they want?" Think offered a casual evaluation and took another sip of coffee.
"…Fair point," Sū ěr was at peace.
The array left by the Saigyou monk had been dismantled by Think. Saigyouji Yuyuko had shed her human body to merge with the cherry tree, becoming its new Dryad. At Yukari's suggestion, she changed her name to signal a goodbye to the past—Saigyouji Yuyuko, a lovely name.
When the array collapsed, the mirage of overlapping eras vanished. Yukari and Yuyuko remained in the past, while the yōkai who didn't retreat and weren't eaten by Naraku either hid among humans or joined the Nura Clan.
The Lord of Pandemonium, the title of the Nurarihyon, was now accepted by humans as a representative of the "other." In-fighting and schemes would remain in the future, but with yōkai born from humans among them, the Nura Clan was safe. After all, they had an old demon with centuries of wisdom.
Araragi Koyomi and Kiss-Shot set off on a journey around the world. His combat performance in the final battle put him on the human government's watch list, signaling the end of his ordinary life... but he said it didn't feel bad.
Indeed, how could it? Traveling with him, besides Kiss-Shot, was the girl with the braided hair, Hanekawa Tsubasa. Though he was shy about it, Araragi truly cared for her...
"Everyone seems to be doing well," Sū ěr said suddenly. "Each with their own life."
"And so?"
"And so, let's hold Jibril wedding first, then travel the world," Sū ěr stood up and smiled at Think. "When we're tired of this place, we can think about going back to Disboard, okay?"
"No objections here~"
"Me too."
"Alright, let me think..." Sū ěr rubbed his chin. "For our first stop after the wedding..."
"Let's go to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia!"
[THE END]