2 The Yokai Attack

  [Player: Kazuki Arata]

  [Level: 1]

  [Waza: None]

  [Kegare: 8%]

  [Status: Prey]

  ---

  The shadows were moving between the trees with terrifying speed. Kazuki stumbled backward, his heel catching on a root. He fell, the impact driving air from his lungs in a pained gasp.

  "Use your waza!" The cat's voice echoed from somewhere in the mist, but Kazuki couldn't see her.

  "I don't know what that means!" Kazuki scrambled backward on his palms as the first shadow lunged forward.

  It emerged from the fog - a creature that looked like it had been assembled from broken toys. Its body was small and hunched, with limbs too long for its frame, ending in claws that left gouges in the earth. Its face was a porcelain mask, cracked down the middle, revealing a maw filled with needle-teeth.

  The yokai pounced, and time seemed to slow.

  This is it. I'm going to die in a place that doesn't exist.

  Something hot surged through Kazuki's chest, rushing up his throat and down his arms. Instinct took over. He threw his hands forward, palms out, and a weak pulse of black smoke erupted from them.

  His hand had struck the yokai as it had leapt, sending it tumbling backward with a shriek. It rolled and writhed on the ground, smoke rising from where Kazuki had touched it.

  [Black Hand - Active]

  The glowing text flickered in Kazuki's vision before fading. He stared at his hands in disbelief. *How...?!*

  "Behind you!" the cat warned.

  Kazuki spun just as two more yokai emerged from the fog. One looked like a twisted fox with too many tails and eyes that glowed like embers. The other resembled a child's doll, sewn together from mismatched fabric, walking on hands and feet with jerky, unnatural movements.

  "Too many!" Kazuki shouted, backing up until he felt a tree trunk against his spine.

  The fox-like yokai darted forward, jaws snapping. Kazuki threw himself sideways, feeling teeth graze his calf as he rolled. Pain shot up his leg, but he kept moving.

  *Think, think! What did the cat say?!*

  He scrambled upright, feeling that same pressure as before building in his chest. It was like something was trying to push outward from within his body. Kazuki closed his eyes for just a heartbeat and imagined the pressure finding a channel, like a river, flowing down his arms the way it had before...

  ...and nothing happened.

  "Come on!" he growled, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to recapture that feeling. The pressure was there, but it felt stuck, like water against a dam.

  The doll-yokai skittered closer, its mismatched limbs clicking against each other and the ground.

  Kazuki's heart hammered. He could feel sweat beading on his forehead despite the cold air. What had he done differently before? It had been instinct, pure reaction…

  Kazuki took a deep breath and stopped trying to force the energy. Instead, he let it move naturally, like blood flowing through veins.

  Suddenly, he felt it; a rush of heat cascading down his arms. His veins darkened beneath his skin like rivers of black. The sensation was both burning and exhilarating.

  When he opened his eyes, a thin mist of black smoke covered his hands.

  The doll-yokai skittered toward him, its head rotating a full 360 degrees as it moved. It leapt, and Kazuki swung his fist like he was throwing a punch.

  His strike connected with the yokai, knocking it sideways. What's more, Kazuki seemed to have damaged some unseen weak point. It wasn't enough to stop it completely, but the creature hissed and backed away, clacking loudly as it moved.

  [Kegare: 10%]

  "What?" Kazuki gasped, staring at the text. "It changed?"

  He had no time to process this. The first yokai had recovered and rejoined the others. Now three sets of unnatural eyes fixed on him, circling slowly.

  "They're toying with you," the black cat said from a branch above. "You injured them, but you'll need to be smarter than this."

  "Thanks for the advice," Kazuki hissed through gritted teeth. "Any actual help would be nice!"

  The cat watched him impassively. "This is your trial."

  "Trial? I didn't even do anything!"

  "And yet, here you are." The cat's tail swished. "Use your Aura Sense. Feel the yokai's weaknesses."

  "How do I—"

  But the yokai were done waiting. They charged in unison, an attack from three directions.

  Kazuki felt an angry stillness settle over him just like he'd felt when confronting the bully back on the island. That moment when something inside him said: Enough.

  He closed his eyes and let the pressure in his chest expand outward, not just through his arms but throughout his entire body. But this was different from the focused energy of his attack. This was like trying to spread the river into a thin mist, to push it beyond the boundaries of his own skin.

  At first, nothing changed. He could still feel the yokai approaching and hear their unnatural movements. Panic threatened to overwhelm him.

  "Feel, don't see," the cat's voice guided. "Your eyes lie..."

  Kazuki forced himself to relax, to stop straining. He imagined his awareness flowing outward in all directions. For several heartbeats, there was only confusion—then a sudden, disorienting shift.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  When he opened his eyes, the world had splintered into layers he couldn't comprehend. The pain was immediate—a migraine that felt like his skull was cracking open. He gasped, nearly falling to his knees as his vision swam with colors he had no names for, patterns that shouldn't exist.

  "Too much," he choked out. "I can't—"

  "Focus," the cat commanded. "See what you need to see."

  Kazuki gritted his teeth and narrowed his concentration, trying to filter out the overwhelming sensory input. Slowly, the world resolved into something his mind could process.

  Colors shifted. The yokai were no longer just physical forms but swirling patterns of energy. The fox-creature burned bright red at its core, with tendrils of orange flowing through its tails. The cracked-mask yokai glowed a sickly green, brightest at the split in its mask. The doll-yokai pulsed with uneven bursts of purple, centered in its mismatched limbs.

  [Aura Sense - Active]

  "I can see them," Kazuki whispered. "I can see inside them."

  The fox-yokai leapt first. Instead of dodging, Kazuki stood his ground. At the last moment, he focused his kegare into his right fist and struck—not at the creature's body, but directly at the bright red core he could now see.

  His fist connected with a burst of black smoke. The yokai let out a howl that made Kazuki's ears ring, then crumpled to the ground, its fiery aura dimming.

  [Kegare: 11%]

  The other two yokai hesitated, their auras flickering.

  Kazuki focused on the remaining yokai. Through his Aura Sense, he could see thin threads connecting them, pulsing with shared energy. These weren't completely separate creatures - they were puppets that shared a string.

  [Thread Cutter - Active]

  He lunged forward, catching both yokai off guard. Instead of attacking either directly, he swept his arm in a wide arc between them, channeling this darkness into an infinitely thin blade that sliced through the energy threads that bound them together.

  The effect was immediate - both yokai shrieked. The mask-yokai's cracked face split further, and the doll-yokai's limbs began to twitch independently of each other.

  [Kegare: 13%]

  Kazuki didn't waste the opportunity. With the last of his strength, he covered his fists in that smokey shadow and savagely punched, sensing exactly where to strike their weakened cores.

  For a moment, nothing happened, then both yokai dissolved into wisps of black smoke, their auras extinguished.

  [Kegare: 15%]

  Kazuki fell to his knees, chest heaving. His Aura Sense faded, the world returning to normal colors. Every muscle in his body screamed with exhaustion.

  "I did it?" he panted, barely believing.

  "You did," the cat confirmed, jumping down from the branch to land silently beside him. "Though those were merely lesser yokai. Foot soldiers, you might say."

  "Lesser?" Kazuki's voice cracked. "They nearly killed me!"

  "And yet, you live." The cat's tail curled around its paws. "Most mysterious."

  ‘Reality’ crashed back into Kazuki's consciousness. He wasn't on Tashirojima anymore. He wasn't even in his world. Whatever had happened at that shrine had transported him somewhere impossible; somewhere with monsters and magic and talking cats.

  "This can't be happening," he whispered, staring at his trembling hands. "I need to go home."

  "The shrine that brought you here is one side of a door. To find the other, you must go deeper."

  "Deeper into what?"

  "The Yokai Realm." The cat's eyes gleamed. "This is the border; the threshold where your world and this overlap. Beyond lies the true realm of spirits, where what you think you know no longer applies."

  Kazuki looked up, taking in his surroundings for the first time. The twisted trees loomed, their bark gnarled and heavy with moss. The fog had thinned a little, revealing a path that wound deeper into the forest. In the distance, mountains rose against an impossible sky—two moons, one silver and one blood-red, hanging low over jagged peaks.

  "So I'm stuck here?" His voice was hollow. "In this... Yokai Realm?"

  "For now." The cat stood and then transformed again into the young woman in the black dress. "Like I said, my name is Kuro, by the way. I am a Nekomata. Think of me as a spirit guide."

  "What the hell?" Anger flared in Kazuki's chest. "I was just a tourist!"

  Kuro fixed him with an unblinking stare. "The shrine has stood for centuries, Kazuki. Thousands have visited it. Yet only you were brought here."

  "Why me?"

  "That," Kuro said, "is the mystery!" She turned, padding toward the path. "Come. Night falls quickly here, and more yokai will be drawn to you. We had best find shelter."

  Kazuki stood shakily, wincing at the pain in his leg where the fox-yokai had grazed him. A notification appeared before him:

  [Kegare: 16%]

  "Kegare?" he read aloud. "What's that?"

  Kuro paused, looking back at him. "Corruption. Spiritual pollution. Yokai carry it, and their attacks can infect humans. It's not dangerous in small amounts, but..."

  "But?"

  "Let us just say you don't want it to spread." Kuro resumed walking. "The first village is half a day's journey from here. There, we can find someone to purify your wound."

  Kazuki limped after the cat, his mind racing with questions. None of this made sense. Yokai weren't real. Magic wasn't real. Yet he had just fought monsters with his hands, guided by floating text that only he could see.

  Either he was having a stroke, or everything he thought he knew really was wrong.

  "Kuro," he called, "Are there others like me here?"

  Kuro's pace didn't slow. "There have been others, yes. Humans with the potential for spiritual powers. Some became great heroes. Others..." She trailed off.

  "Others what?"

  "Others were consumed by Kegare and became yokai themselves." Kuro's voice was matter-of-fact. "The power you've tapped into is neither good nor evil, Kazuki. It simply is. How you use it, how it changes you… that's up to you."

  Kazuki fell silent, digesting this. This was getting weirder by the minute. And yet, as Kazuki looked at his injured leg, at the strange forest around him, at the cat who seemed to know far more than she was telling, he couldn't deny that whatever was happening felt real.

  One thing was certain: he wasn't on Tashirojima anymore. And getting home would apparently require going deeper into this nightmare, not running from it.

  "Fine," he muttered, limping after Kuro. "Let's find this village."

  The forest darkened as they walked, the twin moons rising higher. Kazuki's leg throbbed with each step, the pain spreading upward like branches of ice growing beneath his skin. He gritted his teeth, refusing to complain.

  A sudden rustling ahead made them both freeze.

  Kuro hissed. "Something much stronger than before."

  The trees ahead seemed to bend away from the path, as if making way for something massive. Heavy footsteps shook the ground.

  Kazuki instinctively tried to activate his Aura Sense again, desperate to see what approached. His temples throbbed as he strained, just enough to show him a massive, hulking shape approaching, surrounded by a dark aura that pulsed with malevolent red at its core.

  "Oni," Kuro whispered. "We can't fight it. Not in your condition."

  Before they could retreat, the creature emerged from the trees, towering at least nine feet tall, with red skin like granite and a single massive horn protruding from its forehead. Its mouth was filled with tusks, and a club the size of a large child made of gnarled wood rested on its shoulder.

  The oni roared, a sound that made the trees tremble. It fixed its gaze on Kazuki, nostrils flaring as it scented his Reishin.

  "Run!" Kuro commanded, but Kazuki's injured leg buckled beneath him as he tried to turn.

  The oni charged, club raised high. Kazuki knew he couldn't escape. His body was spent, his newfound power nearly exhausted. If only he had the strength.... Kazuki focused everything on just getting up; if he could just stand, he could fight.

  But then the world swayed and the color drained out of it as a pain like a broken tooth started branching out from the wound in Kazuki's leg. The last thing he saw before consciousness slipped away was Kuro standing over him, the small brass bell on her choker glinting in the starlight.

  "Welcome to the Yokai Realm, Kazuki Arata," she said, her voice sounding very far away. "The game has just begun."

  ---

  [New Achievement: Demon Slayer]

  [Next Chapter: The Realm Unfolds]

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  Is Kuro friend or foe?

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