Path of the Cambion: Kurou's Rising, Chapter 2

A few hours later, I had finally made it back to the village. My eyes showed horror. I was witnessing strange, black flames as dark as the night sky scorched across the entire village. Houses were completely disintegrated by the flames. A countless number of charred corpses lay flat on the ground, eternally unmoving. Large pools of blood were splattered across the ground. My ears rang at the sound of tortured screams of children and even their families, their expressions being the embodiment of pure agony.

My body shook with fear, sorrow, rage, and many other emotions rampaged through my mind. Just by looking at the black flames again, I was reminded of my previous fight with him, and the black, dark energy in his hand. I clenched the hilt of my sword with an iron grip, rage overtaking my body as I imagined the viciously grotesque ways to kill him when I found that bastard. But suddenly, before I could even move, three strange figures dressed in black cloaks came assailing towards me with great speed.

With nothing but my own rage powering my instincts, I rushed toward them with extreme speed, slashing hard at them all. They unsheathed broadswords from their belts made out of a peculiar sleek black material and one of them blocked my sword strike. A whirring sound came from the black blade when it clashed against my sword. I gritted my teeth in anger and snarled, pushing against his weapon, struggling for dominance. Green flames rose around my entire body before bursting violently, sending the figure sailing through the air while covered in my flames. He crashed harshly into the ground, the other two rushing towards me.

I was still engulfed by the flames around my body, which only just seemed to get wilder and hotter the more I used them. I blocked their attacks with little difficulty, having no trouble despite the fact that I was being double teamed. In spite of that, the more our swords clashed, the more my flames began to steadily calm, and got shorter. I became frantic at this sudden development and jumped back. Despite my recede, the two cloaked figures still ran at me, no plans on stopping their assault.

I screamed loudly while I raised my sword very high into the air, my flames quickly transforming into a burning emerald green inferno around my body, and I slashed down. A gigantic wave of green flames consumed everything in its path, rushing toward them. The figures both pointed their swords forward, a strange black and white-ish energy emitting from their blades. It fired off in the form of a huge black blast with phantasmal streams of white around them, clashing with my flames in a struggle for dominance, trying to overpower my flames.

In the end, it proved useless. My flames toppled over the blasts. The figures opened their mouths to scream, but even that couldn't be heard as they were consumed by the inferno. The monstrous explosion of green energy destroyed everyone and everything who dared to stand in the way. More figures, which seemed to be double the amount of the group I just dealt with, began to surround me. I gritted my teeth in frustration. Stronger or not, these strange people seemed to be able to hold their own against me fairly well, and I knew it would be a bad idea to face this many all at once.

Before I had the chance to attack, suddenly, large royal purple crystals had begun to uproot from the ground, stabbing through the bodies of the assailants, holding them high into the air. Confused, my eyes darted around the entire area before they landed onto a familiar figure. It was the same man dressed in black clothing. He started to walk towards me, his jacket flowing in the wind like a cloak. He looked at me with an icy stare while I threw one back at him. Not realizing it, the pupil of my eye turned to a slit as rage filled my body just by looking at him.

He grit his teeth, there was something off about him though, he seemed a bit… unstable… "I should've known it was a mistake to try and recruit you into Hellzone corps, but it was an even bigger mistake now that we know what you really are, Cambion!!" he yelled at me with an untold amount of hatred in his voice. Although, I didn't understand why the hell he called me a Cambion. My mother was no demon. Even if she was pretty damn strong back when I was young, and had a tendency to reach unheard of levels of anger, she was never demonic. Most of the time she was just like any other mother would be. My father, however, was a different story entirely since she never told me anything about him.

I barely even knew my father. Hell, I didn't even know his name. The first time I had mentioned him, my mother told me he was one of the strongest people she had ever met. She never gave any clues to whether he was a demon, or even seemed demonic at all. Nevertheless, I went back to my main focus. My eyes surged furiously with green energy to the point that it fired off as a fairly large, fast beam of energy racing straight for the man.

I would normally be in for a shock when with a sweep of his hand, he knocked the blast of energy away and impacted into a nearby house, however, I couldn't seem to care. My thoughts were completely directed towards slaughtering this man. "Trusting me? How about trusting you!? This would've never happened if you demon slayers never came to our village, but now… everything's gone… IT'S ALL YOUR FUCKING FAULT!!!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, my green flames now becoming unstable as they rose around me in a giant pillar.

I ran at the man with unimaginable speed, appearing only as a brief blur as I rushed toward him. Purple energy formed in his hands, swirling around them before creating two longswords with long, blood red blades and purple hilts. Black energy slithered out of his body, going in upward streams all around him and swirling around his blades. The moment I got close, there was a dark, twisted grin on his face that would've made anyone who witnessed it shiver with fear.

Yamari's POV

I ran through the village with a great sense of urgency, obstacles falling in my way only for me to slice through them with my mechanical grimoire katana, Magarin, one of my greatest inventions. It was capable of efficiently harnessing extreme reserves of magic energy, and transforming into any weapon I pleased. It essentially had the design of a muramasa sword with a fairly long azure blue blade which was laced with many futuristic looking runes on it. The runes were actually mechanical runes, another masterpiece of tech I have combined with magic.

The hilt was a much darker shade of blue and so was the scabbard, but the blue there was a tad lighter and had a moon design with a blue cloth wrapped around it. Magarin had multiple different abilities that made it the extremely dangerous combat weapon it was, such as: absorbing any kind of energy with little to no chance of malfunctioning, adapting to different types of energy and counteracted it, the innate ability to transform into different types of weapons based on the energy it absorbed and the situations I was put in, and much more.

When I had first created and introduced it, it was officially and immediately branded a weapon of mass destruction. Little did the fools know… I could control its energy output, but they didn't bother to listen, but what made this device really special was, it had the capability to hold and enhance my spirit weapon within it, which went by the same name as my invention. But anyway, as I slashed through the multitude of obstacles, a large group of Deathbound Corps soldiers were right ahead of me. I grinned. 'Trying to block my way, how foolish,' I thought. In fact, I was amused that they actually thought mass numbers of them would defeat me after I had already dispersed a large amount of their group while here.

Pressing a button at the bottom of the hilt, the blade burst with blue electricity before I discharged it at them in a giant torrent of energy. I merely snickered deviously at them as they all froze with dread on their faces before the blast consumed them all, creating a large eruption of blue light upon impact. I chuckled at the site of destruction, running off again soon afterwards, putting my main focus back on the matter at hand.

When me and my partner had traveled here to Kumara village. We had two goals in mind: one was to find Kurou Kurosawa and get him to join our group one last time; the second was to retrieve an ancient, very powerful weapon from them. And it was not just any weapon, this certain weapon was a soul weapon.

Soul weapons are meant to be the embodiment of the person whose soul was extracted, but in the form of power. There are only a few ways to extract the soul of a person and form it into a soul weapon. One way is for two living souls to simply have a strong enough connection to each other in order for it to work, and once they die, the person that holds the strong connection gains their soul.

The second is to kill them and collect their soul core from their bodies when they're dead or rip their souls from their bodies when close to death without the need of a strong connection. A feat like that is normally capable by only reapers and a certain number of demons, and other very powerful beings. However, it is extremely difficult to actually manage to make a weapon from a soul. This soul weapon I was after was named Karrian. It was created from the soul of one of the most fiendish people in history. So evil that the weapon could barely be used without the user being possessed by it, and causing mass destruction.

It was given to Kumara village for them to seal off, never to be seen or used by anyone who lacked the proper control. However, they had once discovered there were only two ways to successfully wield the blade; one way was to possess an equal amount of good to the evil in Karrian the second was to simply be equally or nearly as evil as the weapon itself. No wonder Deathbound Corps was after this weapon, and if they played their cards right, they could probably have their members take tests in order to see who was most capable of using it.

In the midst of my thoughts, I had finally reached the area. Unlike the houses of Kumara village, this was in the shape of a large heavily armored and secured metal tower. Unfortunately, seeing as how the door to the area was now gone, it was clearly not enough to keep them out.

I dashed into the tower and ran down the stairs through the narrow walls down to the room Karrian was being held in, dispatching a multiple amount of Deathbound soldiers on the way. When I had made it, there was another one of them right in front of the pedestal where the sword was placed, still sheathed in its scabbard. It was my first time witnessing the blade. Its scabbard was pitch black, even darker than even Aisu's own clothing.

It had the colors of green, red, and blue gems embedded into its scabbard, so it even had the power to create soul gems into itself. 'Looks like the sword was even more powerful than I had first believed,' crossed my mind. There was white fur around the tsuba of the blade as well, and the butt of the hilt had a yin yang symbol on it. Above the hilt, there was also a large, pitch black aura all around the scabbard, rising from it ominously. To be honest, the weapon seemed more akin to a forbidden artifact, if you asked me. The evil energy inside the blade just seemed limitless… I was stunned when the figure had taken off his hood.

The man had dark magenta eyes, spiky royal purple hair, and a purple eyepatch which had a kanji on it for fate. 'Hadn't we seen this guy before… Kurou Kurosawa…?' I thought, my thoughts wandering for a second before returning. We had only just seen this man once, and that was while we were here, demanding him from Kumara village. 'So why is it that now when seeing him again, he's suddenly changed colors? And that strange energy around him filled to the brim with malice…' I thought cautiously. It was possible that some random renegade demon or someone with high level abilities was possessing him right now, but at this point, I wasn't prepared to take any chances.

I charged my energy, making it start to gather around my body before finally bursting. I vaulted towards Kurou, preparing to slash at him with all my strength until suddenly… he blocked my slash. On top of that, he had done it quite easily. All with just a gauntleted hand on. He turned back towards me with a fierce glare. "How rude, and during a family reunion, begone filth!!" he said, slashing his blade against mine. He sent me back a considerable distance when his blade slammed into Magarin.

I regained balance while in the air and glared at this… man. His voice, it definitely did not belong to the Kurou we saw earlier. Although, that didn't explain why he looked so much like him. Ignoring the matter for now, I stood back up, pointing my sword at him from afar. "Afraid I can't do that. You see, what you're trying to touch right there is a forbidden soul weapon. I can't just let you take it, so I'm afraid I'll just have to kill you," I told him with a grin. The man simply glared as dark purple energy began to envelope him in the form of rising shadows before disappearing on the spot.

My eyes widened as I then felt the blade of his sword pressed to my neck. I knew what he used was teleportation, but to use it in such a way… "You've got it backwards. It is you who shall die, and be cleansed in darkness…" he said in a dark tone before moving with a swift motion of his sword, aiming to slit my neck. I quickly ducked out of the way, managing to dodge the blade, then kicked him away. Azure blue lightning began to spark around my body and Magarin violently, and I rushed toward him with a swift slash.

He blocked my strike again, ignoring the energy that seemed to explode around the area on impact. He jumped out of the smoke and looked at his sword. Seeing the blade was cleanly cut off like butter, he simply threw the hilt away. He then raised his hand. "Consume everything, Kamitsu," said the man in a chilling voice and a shadow-like aura of dark energy rose around his body, twisting in large streams around him. All of it went and grew in the palm of his hand, forming a linear shape. One half of it began to curve, and he gripped it, sweeping it to the side, dispersing the shadows around him. And all of this ended up replacing the shadows with a strange weapon.

It had a midnight blue hilt with a few marks of purple on it and at the butt of the hilt was a hook. The blade was strange as well. It was pitch black, and seemed to have a strange sickle shape, as if it were a combination of both a scythe and katana. Dark energy burst around the man with a flame-like aura before he suddenly rushed toward me.

I raised my sword to block, his blade slamming into mine. Dark purple and azure blue flames burst around each of our bodies as we clashed. We began slashing at each other at high speeds, sparks flying wildly off our blades with each fierce clash. In spite of this, I was the one getting pushed back. I let electricity discharge around the blade of Magarin and slashed down hard, sending forth a sizable, fiery arc of blue energy toward him.

Slashing upwards, he had created a quick dark energy shield which deflected my attack and sent it flying up, exploding on impact with the ceiling. I suddenly heard a loud, piercing stab go into the ground and my eyes widened. The floor turned pitch black, a strange ooze rising from the ground, forming into copies of the man whom I was fighting.

They all rushed at me from all directions, slashing at an incredible rate at me in short, quick bursts of speed. I managed to block a few hits, but had gotten cut a considerable amount by some of the slashes, forcing me to waste magic energy on my own wounds just so they would heal quickly.

One of them abruptly appeared in the air above me, charging dark energy in its palm. I looked around myself and saw the rest doing the same, dark energy gathering at the tips of their blades before they all suddenly fired off their respective blasts of dark energy toward me. I quickly covered myself in more azure blue electricity, creating a shell of energy around me as the blasts hit, creating a gigantic maelstrom of dark energy, spreading as if it were a raging ocean.

I gritted my teeth from the slight pain of the shadows consuming my body. It was pitch black all around me and my breath felt as if it were being forced out of my body as I struggled to last within the storm. Eventually, the shelling around my body was destroyed, and I screamed in agony, the energy engulfing my body and it exploded in a large burst. My eyes were wide with shock while the energy slowly disappeared as did the smoke around me. That battle- no, it wasn't even a battle considering how short it was.

While he wasn't as strong as Karrian itself, his energy was just as corrupt, and was more than enough to dominate the battle. That allowed him to defeat me. I strained myself to get up, watching him walk towards the forbidden weapon; however, by the time I could even fully stand, it was already too late. "Time to awaken father, I'm taking you home," said the man as he took hold of the blade.

The minute his hand touched the sword, immense, black, evil energy began to rise from the blade, erupting with malevolent force. I watched a twisted grin appear on his face and he began to laugh very loudly as the evil energy engulfed the entire building before he suddenly disappeared.

The building began to crumble, boulders falling and smashing into the ground. I quickly began to run out of the building, dodging and smashing any boulders that appeared in my path. Pressing a button on my shoulder, making the spaulder slide over, I revealed a small container in there and a vial popped out. Quickly, I grabbed it and opened it, drinking the dark blue liquid. I felt my energy begin to overcharge, sparks of blue energy wildly shot around my entire body, healing my wounds in a near instant…