War.
Kōbe Hikaru raised his eyes and took in the scene before him — one he had grown all too familiar with.
Three months ago, when he had crossed into this world, the first thing he had woken to was a plain drenched in blood. A battlefield turned charnel ground.
Back then, though he had already died once and been reborn as a demon warrior, at his core he was still a modern man who had just crossed over — and the sight had rattled him badly.
Now, he only furrowed his brow.
Kikyō's reaction, however, was far stronger than his.
She had wandered through a world in chaos, yet as a shrine maiden, her work had always been the exorcism and subjugation of demons and spirits. She was simply too powerful — powerful enough that most disasters gave her a wide berth.
She had witnessed war before. But she had never witnessed the slaughter of an entire village.
This was the first time she had ever seen a sight like this.
"Let's go."
She spoke, her voice soft but utterly resolute. "We should take a closer look."
She could feel it — a resentment without equal, pressing against her like a tide.
The two of them quickened their pace.
With every step forward, the stench of blood in the air grew thicker.
This was not the smell that one person, or two people, could produce. It was the smell of hundreds — perhaps thousands — of deaths.
At the end of the mountain path, the wide open plain finally revealed itself to them in full.
Kōbe Hikaru's footsteps faltered.
Kikyō stopped as well.
They stood side by side on the slope, gazing down at everything below.
It was hell.
A true, living hell on earth.
The fields were no longer fields.
The soil that should have been growing crops was now saturated with blood, the earth turned to red mud.
Bodies lay strewn everywhere.
Absolutely everywhere.
There were ashigaru in crude armor, farmers still clutching their hoes, women with terror frozen on their faces.
And children.
Very small children.
Some had been cleaved in two. Some had been trampled into pulp. Some were little more than half a body, still draped across a paddy embankment.
Kōbe Hikaru looked upon all of it, his expression unchanged.
But Kikyō's breathing had grown noticeably quicker.
"Who did this?"
Her voice was cold. Cold enough to be frightening.
Kōbe Hikaru did not answer. He had already guessed.
The further they walked, the more bodies there were. The manner of death varied — but the misery was the same.
Kōbe Hikaru did not stop walking. He stepped through the pools of blood, stepped over the severed limbs, and pressed on.
Until — he saw the center of this desolate inferno.
There were still living people there.
No — that wasn't quite right.
There was still a battle going on.
A group of armored soldiers was locked in combat with another group of people.
That other group numbered only seven — yet they were driving a force of several hundred back step by bloody step.
Kōbe Hikaru's eyes narrowed.
Seven people.
Every single one of them radiated an aura that was anything but ordinary.
At the front was a young man carrying an enormous sword on his back — a blade nearly two jō in length — exuding a ferocious, savage energy.
Behind him moved six figures.
One was a hulking giant of a man, built like a mountain, swinging a meteor hammer with both hands — each blow pulverizing several people at once.
One was a figure encased head to toe in iron, the mechanisms on his body ceaselessly launching hidden projectiles.
One had a delicate, almost feminine face, wielding a peculiar long blade — a blade whose body could bend and extend like a snake — and with a single sweep, a dozen heads would hit the ground.
One was a small, ugly figure, surrounded by a drifting green miasma; every soldier who drew near him crumpled and fell.
One looked like a monk — a shaved head — breathing streams of fire from his mouth, turning enemies to charcoal.
And one wore the robes of a physician, bladed claws fitted over his hands; every swipe tore through enemy armor as if it were paper.
Seven people in total.
Seven figures, each like a god of slaughter.
They moved through that army freely, as if walking through an empty field.
Kōbe Hikaru's gaze shifted slightly.
He recognized them. He truly recognized them.
All seven of them —
"The Band of Seven," he murmured under his breath.
Kikyō turned to look at him.
"You know them?"
"I've heard of them," Kōbe Hikaru said, his voice calm — though inwardly, waves were rising.
The Band of Seven.
They existed in the original Inuyasha story.
A mercenary band of seven men, active throughout the chaos of the Warring States period, notorious for their brutality.
They killed without distinction — man or woman, old or young. As long as they were paid, they would take any job.
It was said they had once wiped out an entire castle town.
They were later lured into a trap by a certain warlord and slaughtered to a man.
But in the original story's plot, they were resurrected by Naraku using fragments of the Shikon Jewel, and became his subordinates.
The thing was — that point in the story hadn't come yet.
The original plot didn't begin for another fifty years.
Which meant these seven men… should still be alive.
Not yet killed, not yet resurrected — and in theory, not yet as powerful as they would be when they returned to life bolstered by the Shikon Jewel's power. And yet, even so, they were without question at the absolute peak of what a normal human body could achieve.
"Who are they?" Kikyō asked.
"Mercenaries," Kōbe Hikaru answered simply. "Seven of them. They call themselves the Band of Seven."
"By all accounts, they're the seven most brutal men in this part of the Kantō region. As long as the price is right, there's nothing they won't do — killing, burning, you name it."
Kikyō's gaze turned glacial.
"They did this?" She gestured at the bodies around them.
Kōbe Hikaru shook his head.
"Not certain."
He studied the battlefield.
The Band of Seven were cutting down soldiers — not civilians.
And the civilian corpses scattered all around…
"Could have been one side of the warring forces. Could have been the Band of Seven. No way to know for sure."
Kikyō fell silent.
She stared at the battlefield, watching the soldiers dying under the Band of Seven's blades, and her brow furrowed even tighter.
War.
This was war.
No right side, no wrong side — only killing.
No justice — only death.
The slaughter continued. The army of several hundred had been whittled down to a few dozen.
They tried to run, only to find every avenue of escape already cut off.
"Where do you think you're going?"
The young man carrying the enormous sword — Bankotsu, the leader of the Band of Seven — broke into a grin.
That smile looked jarringly out of place on a battlefield.
"You came all this way. You might as well stay."
He swung the great sword.
The massive weapon — named Banryū — cleaved through the air, dragging a gust of bloody wind in its wake.
With a wet thud, another dozen heads hit the ground.
"Big brother! This side's done!" called out the man with the feminine features — Jakotsu — as he sheathed his flexible blade and shouted across to Bankotsu.
"Same here," Ginkotsu announced in his mechanical voice.
"Heh heh… the poison's just about run its course," Mukotsu said, stepping out from the green miasma and licking his lips.
"Everyone who needed to die is dead," Renkotsu said flatly, brushing ash from his hands.
"Haaah…" Kyōkotsu hoisted his meteor hammer onto one massive shoulder and let out a yawn.
"The doctor didn't even need to step in," Suikotsu remarked from the side, his expression eerily calm — almost unsettlingly gentle.
Seven men. They had massacred an entire army — killing dozens of times their own number.
Time elapsed: less than a quarter of an hour.
Kōbe Hikaru watched it all and felt not the slightest surprise.
This was the Band of Seven.
This was the most fearsome mercenary outfit this era had to offer.
In terms of raw power — Bankotsu was roughly equivalent to a Six-Transformation demon. And he had achieved that without any spirit power whatsoever, through physical ability alone. Among humans, that was virtually unheard of.
The other six varied in strength, but setting aside the poison user, even the weakest among them had reached the Third Transformation.
Seven of them working in concert, against targets with no specific counter to their abilities, could genuinely sweep away the vast majority of human forces.
"What do we do now?" Kikyō asked.
Kōbe Hikaru did not answer immediately.
He simply watched those seven figures, watched them laughing and talking among the heaps of bodies.
And then —
He caught their conversation.
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