Demon Sword Maiden

CHAPTER 40 – MIDDLE-STAGE PERMANENCE LEVEL

Bam! The land trembled as gigantic Throned Monarch level demon stepped forward and the resulting booms made Lily’s ears buzz.

Although the demon was in the peak-stage Throned Monarch level, the level was still one level lower than the Throned Saint level. Still, the gigantic demon wielded immense raw strength because of its massive size. The demon was much stronger than Tsubiro in terms of strength even though the demon’s peak-stage Throned Monarch level limited its strength.

The blue barrier that Tsubiro created with a flail of his club got shattered by the demon’s stomp and made him spew out blood while turning his eyes bloodshot.

It was not just the gigantic demon. The other demons around him also charged at him and some even shot spells at him from afar. The occasional spell attacks riddled Tsubiro with wounds, drenched him in blood and depleted his power reserves.

“Urgh… Aah…” Tsubiro cried out indignantly when he realized that he might die here today. “Why! Why am I so unlucky?! Why have the demons been attacking me ever since I came down here? This is so unfair!”

His eyes flashed with insanity as he shrouded spirit power around him and raised his club as he leaped up, which caused blood to spatter out from his wounds.

He left several golden afterimages in the sky as he struck down with the club.

Bam! The club struck the gigantic demon on the chest, and caused its rib cage to cave in. The demon also revealed a vicious glint in its eyes and clawed at Tsubiro. Tsubiro crashed down to the ground and gave rise to a cloud of dust.

The other demons did not wait for him to recover and pounced at him immediately. However, Tsubiro beat them back with a powerful burst of energy and stood up while covered in blood.

“How dare you try to kill me! I’m going to kill you all” All the bloodshed had clouded Tsubiro’s mind, and he had already given up on returning alive from this valley.

The insane slaughter continued for an entire night.

Tsubiro wielded his club like a hurricane and made blood rain down as he blew the demons into pieces, yet there seemed to be no end to them.

Although he was strong, he did not have limitless power. He used the last remaining bit of his strength to crush the Throned Monarch level demon’s head, but it also sliced Tsubiro’s body with its gigantic claw.

The claw strike severed Tsubiro’s tendons and bones, making him drop his club to the side. He collapsed beside the giant demon’s corpse and retreated using his still moving hand as he couldn’t get up again.

However, his gaze darkened when he saw the other demons swarm towards him from all directions.

No matter how crazy he was, he was still a Throned Saint who was just one step away from achieving the Big Dipper Stage. However, even such a powerhouse was helpless in the current situation.

Tsubiro knew the chances of him escaping this predicament were close to nil and was sure that he would die here today.

He recalled how he had lived an upright, benevolent and righteous life before he had reached his limit, which was the highest power level attainable by humanity at the time. He had been just a single step away from becoming the apex powerhouse of the Heian Empire, and he was confident in ascending to the Big Dipper level in 200-300 years had he found a body with better aptitude.

These avaricious and sinful obsession with power made him set out on a path of return.

He would not have jumped down into the valley to capture Lily had he known he would end up in such a situation and would have just chosen to take over one of his disciple’s bodies. Although that would have prevented him from truly becoming the apex powerhouse of the empire, it would have still given him a chance at ascending to the Big Dipper Stage and would have increased his lifespan by a few hundred years. However, his avarice for power made him seek Lily’s body despite the difference in gender since she had an excellent aptitude.

“Hahahaha!” Tsubiro rested on a boulder and laughed maniacally. “I’ve lived for hundreds of years, killed several talented samurai who came to Mt. Izumo and have also slaughtered so many demons! That’s enough! Although Lily is talented enough to become a Celestial, she’s going to die in this valley just like me. There’s meaning to my death if I can take down such an unprecedented genius along with me! Hahahahahaha! Hahahahahaha! Ha—?!”

Tsubiro stopped laughing when his bloodshot eyes caught sight of Lily through the gaps of the demons swarming around him.

The red-dressed Lily looked down at him from atop a boulder with a red parasol in hand.

Her eyes did not contain derision, grief, hate or pity.

She just looked at him with an indifferent gaze, creating the impression that a Throned Saint like him was nothing in her eyes. The countless demons seemed to pass underneath the boulder she stood on without noticing her and swarmed towards him.

He finally understood everything at this moment.

“Nooooooo!” His eyes opened wide as he glared at her with a grudge. “So, it was you, bitch! You set this trap to kill me, didn’t you?! I won’t accept this! You’ll pay the price for this!”

He got submerged within the swarm of demons as he reached out towards the unattainable heavens with his bloodstained arm.

Tsubiro got devoured by the demons soon after.

Lily then used the same method as before to draw the demons away from here and returned back a while later. Lily finished the remaining demons by utilizing the Sakura Parasol veil and settled the corpses with ease.

She stood on a boulder after that and extended her cursed blades, Crescent Moon and Yasutsuna, towards her sides to draw the thousands of anima towards her with her anima-controlling powers.

There were eighty-seven Throne anima among them. This incredible harvest had enhanced Lily’s crescent moon to the ninth grade. Most of them were Throned General anima, but they also contained five Throned Sovereign anima and one Throned Monarch anima.

As for Yasutsuna, it had long reached the ninth grade’s limit and still lacked a key element to turn it into a spirit artifact.

Lily assimilated most of these Throne level anima.

“Ngh… Aah…” She shuddered and moaned with a seductive look in her eyes.

The spirit ocean within her spirit palace became vaster and purer, and the purple moon changed from a crescent moon to a half moon. Although Lily did not know what this signified, her strength had reached the middle-stage Permanence level now.

As for Tsubiro, his soul and spirit jade had long been consumed.

Lily went towards his death place and picked up his club, which made her feel like she was in a primal forest when she held it in her hand. The club was a low-ranked spirit artifact, so she stored it within the mirror space.

“Hmm?” Lily noticed a green thumb ring on Tsubiro’s hand, which was the only thing that remained of him after being bitten to death by the demons. Lily employed a small-scale domain and retrieved the ring using sakura petals, bringing it to her palm.

She infused it with spirit power since it had become ownerless now.

“So, it was his storage ring!” Lily felt glad that the demons had not eaten it.

Lily felt her pulse race as she examined the ring.

As expected of an adept who had resided on Mt. Izumo for over a hundred years, he had tons of treasures despite being just a False Immortal. The ring contained all the treasures which he had collected as a Throned Saint over the past several hundred years.

There were around 3,000 magatama in it, making him richer than the Bureau of Onmyō. He had wealth equivalent to the empire’s treasury. There were around a hundred life-recovery magatama in it along with several magatama of different attributes, but there were no blood magatama in it.

He also had seventh and eighth grade weapons, armor, over a hundred magic artifacts, and had half-a-dozen ninth grade weapons, armor and magic artifacts.

The space inside the ring was as big as the storage room in Lily’s mirror space, which was equivalent to the warehouse size of a castle tower. This made it a low-ranked spirit artifact as well.

He also had several enigmatic ascension arts, secret arts, and several seventh, eighth and ninth grade materials in it.

Lily shifted all the important items into the mirror space and then stored the ring inside her storage jade. The storage jade could store spatial artifacts inside it, but it was not possible to retrieve items from it directly and required the user to take it out from the jade first.

“Phew…” Lily sighed in relief and raised her head to look at the clifftop when she saw the valley shrouded in eldritch energies.

Lily took out the Record of One Hundred Demons and summoned a flying monster. She rode on the ten meter wide wing of the bird demon and flew up to the clifftop at once.

Although the flying monster allowed her to take to the skies at a rapid speed, it consumed higher energy when compared to the demon hound and also used more magatama when compared to the giant koi. She needed to expend two magatama to traverse a few hundred kilometers, which was much more expensive than using a teleportation array. This was why she rarely rode it.

However, the bird demon could not fly higher than the clouds after it entered them because of an invisible pressure which forced it to fly straight. This forced Lily to make it land on the crevice on the cliff and unsummon the bird demon.

Lily climbed up the cliff after that and stabbed her sword in between the rocks to climb up the steeper slopes. It was just a matter of time for her as no powerful monsters attacked her.

It took her a whole day to reach the clifftop where she had jumped down from. The path leading to the shrine was brightly lit at the moment and had multiple disciples guarding the shrine, all of whom waited for their master with torches in their hands.

However, Lily knew that their master would not return.

These disciples were all innocent and the three old men were just his accomplices. Lily did not feel like killing them as Tsubiro was already dead now.

“Hold on…” Lily was just about to leave, but she recalled an important thing at this moment.

Although she did not care about the three old men, she recalled the samurai who had warned her within the cave. She knew that she would have landed in higher peril if it were not for his warning and could not just leave him behind.

Lily returned to the shrine with her hand on her katana’s hilt.