Infection

“Dance of the Shattered Soul Mask… Dark Noh Theatre…”

Commanding the seven masks of Hata no Kawakatsu for offense and defense, the girl had now lost all her protective barriers. Staring wide-eyed at Miketsu as she closed in, the girl found herself completely helpless. In this sort of close-quarters combat, her power and speed were utterly suppressed by the goddess; she lacked any means of resistance.

The naginata, formed from the condensation of Qin Xin’s demonic energy, radiated a brilliant light. Clad in her fox mask, Miketsu gripped the weapon tight and swung with devastating force, carving a massive gash across the girl’s body from her right shoulder down to her left hip.

A jagged wound appeared, yet not a single drop of blood spilled from it. Terrified, the girl’s eyes bulged as she rasped a hoarse whisper.

“Scapegoat Phantom Mask…”

As the whisper fell, the Semimaru mask, which had been flying back to reinforce her, suddenly shattered into two pieces in mid-air as if struck by an invisible blade. Correspondingly, the gaping wound on the girl’s body healed in the blink of an eye, vanishing as though it had never existed.

Since her masks could not return in time to defend her, she had transferred the damage to them, letting them bear the brunt of the assault in her stead.

Seeing that her initial strike had been neutralized, Miketsu immediately whirled her naginata for a second strike, a third… Wearing the mask, she danced through the void, raining one merciless blow after another upon the girl. Her movements were elegant, her form almost ritualistic, resembling a refined performance.

The girl passively endured Miketsu’s relentless flurry of combos, frantically activating her ability to redirect the damage. Across the battlefield, mask after mask shattered into fragments. This included the three masks currently blocking the flames, as well as the Baba and Ohtobide masks that had been regenerating from earlier explosive damage. To avoid injuring Miketsu now that she was in such close proximity to the target, Tsuruha immediately ceased the torrent of Foxfire.

With Miketsu’s high-speed naginata slashes, the girl's masks burst one after another. Just as the very last mask disintegrated and a look of deep-seated dread flickered in the girl's eyes, the speed of Miketsu's onslaught suddenly slowed.

The girl seized the opening instantly. Without relying on the Kawakatsu masks, she unleashed a massive shockwave of demonic energy directly from her own body, radiating outward in a violent burst. Miketsu crossed her arms in a defensive stance and was sent flying a significant distance back.

“Die!”

Clearly shaken by Miketsu’s relentless assault, the trembling girl gathered two massive demonic energy spheres and hurled them directly at her opponent. Deprived of the amplification provided by the Kawakatsu masks, her projectiles glowed with a murky, turbid dark-purple hue.

With a flourish of her naginata, Miketsu easily dispelled the incoming energy spheres. Just as the girl began to condense even more power for her next attack, she suddenly froze, stiffening in place.

“W-what… What is this?!”

A pained expression contorted her face, and her body began to shake violently once more. It was as if she had lost voluntary control; countless surges of demonic energy that did not belong to her began erupting from every corner of her being.

“My body… I can't move… My mind is such a mess… What is happening?!”

Watching the panicked girl from a short distance, a faint smile played on Miketsu’s lips. She shifted the Qin Xin fox mask to the upper right of her forehead and gave her naginata a playful spin.

“You were probably feeling quite lucky just now, weren't you?” Miketsu said nonchalantly. “Grateful that you caught a lucky break, that you interrupted my combo just as your scapegoat masks were about to run out, and relieved that all my slashes had been neutralized. Unfortunately for you, those strikes left behind more than just phantom wounds. They injected my demonic energy into your body.”

The Dance of the Shattered Soul Mask—a high-speed close-combat technique Qin Xin performed with her naginata—did more than just cause physical harm. Each strike of the demonic naginata served to pump Qin Xin’s energy into the enemy. The more hits accumulated, the greater the volume of foreign energy stored within. Usually, in the final strike, the accumulated energy would detonate all at once, delivering a catastrophic finishing blow.

To Miketsu, the principle felt remarkably similar to the 'Eight Maiden Slayers' move from the King of Fighters arcade games she had played in her childhood. However, instead of triggering that final explosion, she had manipulated the injected energy to manifest in a different way.

From the start, Miketsu had gathered sufficient intelligence from the girl’s sub-personality. She knew exactly what cards the girl held, including the trick of using masks as scapegoats.

“De-demonic energy… Inside me… What are you trying to do?!” By now, the girl had lost almost all motor control; she could barely manage to stay suspended in the air.

“What I want to do, quite simply, is to make you… wake up!” Miketsu declared. She lunged toward the girl at high speed, plucking the Qin Xin mask from her head and holding it in her hand. Reaching her target, she thrust her hand forward and slammed the mask directly onto the girl’s face.

As soon as the mask touched her, it began to synchronize with the demonic energy already inside the girl, exerting firm control over her. Then, the mask began to rapidly shift through various countenances, launching a targeted invasion into the girl’s psyche.

As a Tsukumogami born from the masks of Saintly Virtue, Qin Xin shared the ability to manipulate emotions and the spirit with the Kawakatsu masks. Naturally, for this to work on someone as powerful as this girl—who was bordering on the rank of a Great Yokai—Qin Xin needed her to be completely immobilized and weakened. That opportunity was now here.

As the Qin Xin mask rapidly shifted forms, the girl began to emit tearful cries. Qin Xin had delved deep into the girl's warped psyche, beginning to dismantle the mental barriers the girl had erected for herself. All the past events she had desperately fled from began to replay before her eyes like a kaleidoscope.

“No! Stop! I don’t want… I don't want to see this! I didn’t do those things… I did nothing wrong! I only… I only wanted my father’s attention… Why… Why did it have to end like this?!”

As her mental self-deception was slowly peeled away, the girl struggled frantically, unable to face reality as she wailed in despair. Just as her voice reached its peak of hopelessness, a petite figure gathered her into a hug. The black-clad girl—her sub-personality—embraced her other self gently from behind.

“Do not be afraid. Face it with courage,” the girl in black whispered into her ear. “This is what you should have done long ago. No matter how great the sin, it is something we created with our own hands.”

The black-clad girl held her other self tighter, leaning in close.

“Forgetting will not solve anything. Come… accept it all. I will bear it with you.”

“Remember everything… Be stained in the final black.”