Over the vast plains of the Western Lands, turbulent demonic energy condensed into dark clouds that blanketed the wilderness.
Beneath that iron-gray sky lay the front line where the Dog Demon Tribe and the Panther Tribe faced each other.
Battle cries shook the heavens, and blood ran deep enough to float shields.
Long silver-white hair streamed behind the nobleman standing at the front.
A crescent moon marked his forehead, while two red demonic stripes adorned each cheek.
Hexagonal plum blossoms decorated his pale white kimono, and Tenseiga hung at his waist.
A hint of youth still lingered on his aristocratic face.
Cold demonic energy swirled around Sesshomaru, yet his luxurious robes did not stir in the blood-scented wind.
Across from him, the Panther Devas stood ready, their eyes filled with both wariness and cruelty.
Toran formed an ice lance in her hand, its bitter chill spilling into the air.
“Stop this pointless struggle, Sesshomaru!
What does your strength matter?
You are only one man.
How could you possibly turn the tide of this war?” “The Dog Demon Tribe’s defeat is already certain!” Sesshomaru did not even lift his eyelids.
Fluorescent poison gathered around his fingertips as he stepped forward in a perfectly straight line.
As far as he was concerned, the only good panther was a dead panther, and dead panthers did not talk.
“All of us, attack!” Toran sneered and hurled her ice lance.
Its bone-chilling point tore through the air toward Sesshomaru’s heart.
At almost the same instant, Shuran roared.
His burly body became a lightning-wreathed meteor charging straight at Sesshomaru as his claws erupted in a blinding white flash, filling the air with the scorched stench of ozone.
Karan swept in from the side.
Flames coiled around both fists, trailing two blazing tails through the air as waves of heat rolled ahead of her.
Sesshomaru lashed out with the poison whip in his right hand.
The emerald whip curled around the shaft of Toran’s ice lance in midair.
With a flick of his wrist, he wrenched the wall-piercing lance off course.
It shot into the Panther army in the distance, followed by a chorus of screams.
Karan’s flaming fist reached him at that moment.
Sesshomaru shifted slightly, allowing the fiery cat’s paw to skim past his ear.
The instant Karan met his golden eyes, terror seized her, and the flames around her body flared wildly.
Using the momentum of his turn, Sesshomaru struck her shoulder with his Poison Claws.
Fire and poison immediately intertwined.
Karan screamed and curled inward, evading his grasp.
The blow sent her flying directly into Shuran’s path.
The pair collided, flames and lightning tangling together as they tumbled across the ground.
Crack!
The earth where they had just rolled split apart beneath Sesshomaru’s descending light whip.
The strike could have torn an ordinary demon into pieces, but it found no target.
Shunran’s illusion spread without a sound.
The world before Sesshomaru suddenly warped as countless identical figures lunged at him from every direction.
Sesshomaru swept an expressionless gaze across the indistinguishable shadows.
His brilliant golden eyes held nothing but disdain.
“How dull.
The same old trick again.” He spun, and emerald light erupted from his fingertips like a soaring dragon.
His robes snapped in the wind as the light whip traced perfect circles around him.
Demonic energy sprayed from the whip, forming ring after ring of emerald light that expanded outward.
The storm of ice arrows Toran fired at that opening shattered into powder the instant it touched the rings, sending countless crystals bursting through the air.
The rings continued through the ruined arrows and swept across the sky, tearing apart Shunran’s illusion barrier as well.
The false figures twisted like mist scorched beneath the sun before evaporating under the surge of demonic energy.
Shunran’s real body was exposed behind them.
The petite panther girl stumbled several steps backward, clutching her chest.
Her pretty face was deathly pale, and blood trickled from her lips.
Ice arrows shattered and illusions broken in a single strike, yet the Panther Devas remained composed.
After days of fighting him, they had all witnessed the strength of the Dog General’s eldest son.
He was like the cold moon in the distant sky—visible, yet forever beyond their reach.
Even Toran, the strongest of the four, had to admit that she fell slightly short of the young Sesshomaru in individual strength.
If the fight dragged on, even she might eventually lose.
The other three were less capable of stopping him and could be killed the instant they gave him an opening.
To keep Sesshomaru from defeating them one by one and improve their chances, the Panther Devas had settled on a simple strategy: wear down the puppy.
All four would attack together and pin the most dangerous dog demon in place.
They would win at the lowest possible cost and slowly devour the Dog Demon Tribe.
The only thing that puzzled Toran was how few dog demons had come to fight.
They had raided the Dog Demon Tribe’s territory before, but the numbers still did not add up.
It was as though only two or three dog demons remained in the entire world.
It was far too strange.
‘It doesn’t matter.
Once I kill this greatest threat, I’ll hunt down every last dog demon and slaughter them all!’ Toran moved in front of Karan and Shunran, allowing the two injured panthers to heal together.
Freezing air spilled from her body, instantly condensing the moisture around her into ice lances as thick as thighs that sealed every route before Sesshomaru.
Shuran used bursts of lightning to cover any gaps, preventing Sesshomaru from escaping the field of ice lances with his superior speed.
Sesshomaru destroyed lance after lance.
His face remained blank, but irritation simmered within him.
‘If I had Father’s Tessaiga, all this trash would fall to a single swing!’ ‘And So’unga!
What was Father thinking before he died?
He left me nothing but the utterly useless Tenseiga!’ ‘Where are those two swords?!’ Sesshomaru could not understand it.
His father’s arrangements were an unsolvable riddle, and the four panthers before him had long since exhausted his patience.
He glanced toward the main battlefield nearby and frowned slightly.
Below him lay a battlefield drenched in blood.
The demons once protected by the Dog General were locked in combat with the Panther army, their battle cries and screams merging into a muddy roar.
Yet the difference between the two sides was painfully clear.
The Panther Tribe advanced with discipline, rotating formations smoothly.
Their vanguard charged, their flanks encircled, and their rear ranks suppressed the enemy.
Every panther fought with deliberate coordination.
The demon host, by contrast, lacked neither demonic energy nor courage, but every fighter battled alone.
Their formation was loose sand.
After only a few assaults and flanking maneuvers, the Panther army had torn it into scattered pieces.
Their collapse was only a matter of time.
‘The same thing again…’ ‘And Mother…’ ‘Forget it.
In this world, the only things I can trust are my own fangs and claws.’ Sesshomaru stopped wasting his attention on that disorderly mob.
A sphere of demonic energy enveloped him, and he shot through the air like a ball of light.
Toran’s ice arrows poured down like rain.
Karan spat fireballs as large as heads, Shuran fired lightning from his palms, and Shunran released petals that caused hallucinations and unconsciousness.
Before Sesshomaru, the techniques of spring, summer, autumn, and winter were nothing but flashy tricks.
Pure demonic energy.
A perfect body.
Supreme talent.
Flawless blood.
Those four qualities became one, forming the cold moonlight that spread its brilliance freely across the battlefield.
The noble heir of the Dog Demon Tribe moved calmly through the storm of killing techniques, without a single wasted motion or moment of hesitation.
He was like the battlefield’s one and only rose.