CHAPTER 61 – SURROUNDED

The overwhelming demon army emerging from the dark woods poured into the valley in front of Honganji Temple.

Lily stood on the steps and watched the demons run amok in the valley, sensing multiple powerful eldritch auras from the distant woods.

“It looks like the demons are going on the offensive this time,” Airi commented while standing beside Lily, her spectacles reflecting the moonlight off them as she narrowed her eyes and faced the wind which made her short hair flutter about on the front of her forehead.

“Do we let the vanguard pass again like last time, Lily?”

“Yeah,” Lily nodded.

Lily had already noticed the arrival of the court’s fleet and saw that they were mooring on Tange River’s riverbank right now, so she was certain that the court’s army would be able to retreat as long as they succeeded in repelling the next attack of the demon army.

Lily believed that it would not be that hard for her to retreat with her companions once the court’s army retreated.

“Fortunately, most of the court’s army is still here. We can attack the demon army’s flank again as long as they’re here,” Lily thought.

Just as Lily expected, a large number of demons began passing through the valley soon after. It seemed like they had not learned their lesson from last time and insisted on passing the valley forcefully.

However, the demon forces this time were much stronger than the ones from the last time.

There were several towering, red-haired blue demons, one-horned demons, purple-eyed giant spiders, giant red centipedes, as well as mountain demons with rock-like torsos present among the attacking demon forces.

“Do you think increasing the strength of the vanguard is enough to deal with us? I guess that’s the best these demons can come up with. Although they are powerful, they have no idea how warring works and pale in comparison to the court’s army in terms of strategy,” Ijuin sneered while standing on the steps.

Although Lily held the same opinion, there was one thing she felt baffled about. She did not believe that Ibaraki Doji would make the same mistake again if he was still the commander of the demon army.

However, even Lily could not predict exactly how Ibaraki planned to turn the tables with a plan like this.

Although thousands of demons passed through the valley, they did not head towards the riverbank this time and began to surround the mountain Honganji Temple was on instead.

Lily snorted icily when she saw this, “So that’s what Ibaraki is planning. Did you think that I wouldn’t have predicted that you would try to capture Honganji Temple first, huh?”

“The demons have surrounded us, Lily.” Airi looked at the massive forces of demons underneath Honganji Temple, taking notice of orange-colored lanterns flashing through them from time to time. The demon forces seemed to also have one-eyed, pulsating lantern demons that had their tongues stuck out in addition to normal lantern-holding demons.

“Let’s bide our time for now. We’ll launch long-range attacks on them if they attack us,” Lily said.

“Should I signal the court’s army on the riverbank to ambush the demons’ encirclement from behind?”

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“Don’t do that yet,” Lily said, “Letting the court’s army ambush the demon army from behind once we’ve lowered their morale should net us better results.”

Airi nodded approvingly as Lily’s words made sense.

Following a series of screams and sounds of drums with a strange beat, the demon army finally began attacking Honganji Temple a while later.

The giant spiders, as well as the giant centipedes, which were good at climbing, began crawling up the steep cliffs of the mountain, depicting a terrifying scene even when seen from afar.

“Release the arrows!” Airi commanded.

The Uesugi cavalrywomen pulled their bowstrings and made demon slaying arrows rain down on the insect monsters.

“Fireballs!” Ijuin followed up after Airi immediately and commanded the jade maidens, as well as the mirror girls to unleash spells on the insect monsters.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The weaker monsters on the cliffs and in the valley died the moment the fireballs and demon slaying arrows struck them. The powerful demons were also inflicted with injuries of varying degrees, leaving the chain of command in a mess.

The demon forces consisting of the blue demons and the one-horned demons began attacking Honganji Temple from the relatively flatter terrain of the hillside, which was pretty hard to defend.

However, a red-dressed girl awaited them there.

There were no cavalrywomen and jade maidens present here as they were bound to suffer disastrous casualties if they battled on terrain that was disadvantageous to them.

Lily stood on the roof above the back door of Honganji Temple with the sharp Yasutsuna in her hand as she faced the demons, her lustrous hair fluttering against the backlight of the moon.

The demons howled loudly as they charged towards the temple, but Lily just raised her blade and released a horizontal sword beam towards the flooding demon forces.

Spurt! Spurt! Spurt!

…
…

The sword beam sliced through the demon forces like a hot knife through butter, traversing almost 100 meters in an instant as it bisected all the demons in its path.

Lily slew hundreds of demons with this single attack.

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“It’s that woman!” a demon shouted from the back of the demon forces as the crimson anima of the dead demons flew towards Lily.

The demons raised the spears, uprooted trees, and boulders in their hands and launched towards Lily, making them rain down on her like a massive tsunami.

Lily, however, just summoned the Sakura Parasol in her hand and spun it after pointing it towards the sky.

A gigantic crimson parasol’s manifestation appeared above Lily the next moment, and blocked the spears, boulders, trees and arrows1.

The demons charged forward once again. However, they gathered their eldritch energies to create a demon-faced barrier this time. Each side of the demon-faced barrier had a Permanence level demon controlling it, so the demon forces continued moving forward steadily at a slow pace.

Although the demon-faced barrier repelled most of Lily’s sakura blades, a few of them still passed through its cracks and killed a bunch of demons. However, this was still far enough to stop the demon forces from advancing.

Lily showed an icy smile on her face and jumped from the roof, rushing towards the massive demon forces alone.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Lily dodged all the spears and boulders hurling towards her with ease and kicked the demon-faced barrier hard after jumping up high.

Bam!

The barrier, as well as the demons powering it, flew back from the impact and crashed into the demon forces behind them, creating chaos.

Lily landed on the ground and executed a spinning blade strike immediately, killing all demons within a ten to twenty meter radius, each missing a part of their body.

The demons charged towards Lily from all directions in the next moment, but she jumped up and spun around to slash down, releasing a circular crimson sword beam.

The attack split open a several dozen meters deep gorge on the hillside, causing the demons to die from falling into it or from the sword beam’s impact.

Lily had created a natural chasm with this one move, dividing the demon forces apart.

She descended to the ground slowly while holding the Sakura Parasol up and brandished the cursed blade in her hand again the moment she landed, releasing sword beams in quick succession.

Spurt! Spurt! Spurt!

Even the demon-faced barriers could not block all of the incoming attacks, each attack taking the lives of several demons.

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The animas of the demons rose up from their bodies and flew towards the parasol-holding girl under the cover of the night, making her look like a celestial maiden who had descended to the mortal world to collect the souls of all demons.

Lily stepped on sakura petals and jumped across the chasm once she finished collecting the anima of the demons. She then waved her hand and shot fireballs towards the chasm, turning into an impenetrable firewall, preventing the demons from advancing forward.

However, Lily heard the screams of women from the temple the next moment.

A samurai woman came running towards Lily and said, “There’s been an emergency, Ms. Lily!”

Lily summoned Kagura immediately and returned to the temple with haste, leaving behind such a message, “Guard this location for now, Kagura!”

Although the samurai woman in the temple had killed numerous demons rushing towards them from the front, the demons still continued their reckless charge with no regard for their losses.

A giant spider and a mountain demon leaped onto the steps in front of the temple and engaged in close combat with the samurai woman at this moment.

Slam!

The giant spider spun around swiftly and knocked down a samurai woman by dashing into her while the mountain demon, which remained unaffected by the arrows and fireballs because of its sturdy body, punched a bow-wielding cavalrywoman, sending her flying into the temple.

The mountain demon raised the stone lantern in its hand the next moment and threw it towards Ijuin, who was battling the spider right now.

“Watch out!” Airi rushed forward and cleaved the stone lantern into two with a slash.

“Ms. Airi!” Ijuin broke out in a cold sweat.

“There are too many monsters! I never thought they would attack us so crazily!”

Airi charged towards the mountain demon as she spoke to Ijuin, gripping the mace in her hand harder as the mountain demon slapped at her with its massive, rocky palm. She dodged the mountain demon’s palm attack swiftly by going around a pine tree and swung her mace at the eye on its head.

Bam!

A Permanence level ape demon shot up from underneath the cliff at this moment, though, and struck Airi away with a powerful slap, sending her crashing into the temple’s front garden.

“Ms. Airi!” Ijuin cried out in alarm.

No one could stop the ape demon as it made its way through the cavalrywomen. Although they tried to go up against it, all of them swatted away by it.

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The cavalrywomen’s blades, spears and arrows simply had no effect on the steel-like fur of the ape demon, and even the powerful demon slaying arrows just inflicted minor injuries on it.

It looked like the demon ape was controlling its strength to avoid killing the cavalrywomen as much as possible and was trying to knock them out instead. The demon ape jumped several meters high and landed in front of the immobile Airi who still had not recovered her senses. Her fair underbody, which had minimal armor, attracted the attention of the ape demon, prompting it to grab her and flee.

“Ms. Airi!” Ijuin rushed towards the ape demon immediately, but a massive centipede which had just climbed onto the steps blocked her way the next moment.

“Ms. Airi!” Ijuin could only watch as the ape demon took Airi away as the centipede was in the late-stage Permanence level, a level much higher than Ijuin.

Although the centipede pounced towards Ijuin menacingly, its head flew across the sky before it could even bite her to death.

Followed by a crimson flash, Lily arrived in front of Ijuin with her blade raised up.

“Are you okay?”

Ijuin shook her head hastily and said, “I-I’m fine! That demon ape took Ms. Airi away!”

“What?!”

Lily looked at the direction which Ijuin had pointed and saw a black demon ape shuttling through the woods on the hillside while carrying Airi on its shoulders2.

References

Robinxen: This thing is broken as hell.Robinxen: I wonder if it’s actually our probably-not-traitor recovering her sister.