Chapter 301

A trace of surprise appeared on Kikyō’s face, one cool eyebrow lifting slightly as she regarded Haruto with unexpected interest.

"You want to learn how to cultivate spiritual power... and the techniques that use it?"

What surprised her most was that Haruto was already extraordinarily strong.

She did not know what kind of power he practiced, but there was no question that he had already reached an extremely high level in his own path.

For someone like that to come to a miko and ask to learn the fundamentals of spiritual training was hardly something she had expected.

Still, surprise did not mean rejection.

Spiritual techniques and inherited arts were not things that could be casually passed on to outsiders, but neither were they absolutely forbidden to teach.

Naturally, though, she would not teach them for nothing.

Kikyō looked at Haruto and calmly asked,

"Then what can you offer me in return?"

"That..."

Haruto rested a hand against his chin and fell into thought.

For the current Kikyō, most things in the world held little value.

Gold and silver were nothing more than worldly possessions. Rare treasures were equally useless to a body made of clay and grave soil.

Her only true obsession now was destroying Naraku.

So what kind of payment could genuinely interest her?

A moment later, Haruto’s eyes lit up.

"I’ll give you a Duskull in exchange for teaching me. How does that sound?"

He turned one hand over, revealing a red-and-white Poké Ball in his palm.

With a press of the button, red light flashed through the room and a small black Ghost-type Pokémon appeared.

"Dusk..."

Duskull swayed gently in the air and looked up at Haruto.

Then its attention shifted toward Kikyō.

The moment it noticed her, Duskull seemed to discover something extraordinarily precious.

It immediately floated over and began circling her affectionately, occasionally brushing its body against the sleeve of her miko robes without the slightest hint of hostility.

Haruto had obtained this Duskull from Elite Four member Agatha during his time in the Pokémon world.

Back then, he had simply been collecting Pokémon and had accepted several Ghost types, Duskull among them.

Now it had unexpectedly become useful.

The reason Haruto had chosen Duskull was simple.

Duskull was known as the Requiem Pokémon and possessed an unusual affinity with spirits.

In Haruto’s eyes, that made it potentially useful for Kikyō’s current condition.

"A yōkai? No..."

Kikyō watched the creature circling her with visible curiosity.

She could clearly sense that Duskull possessed no yōki whatsoever. Instead, its presence carried a strange fluctuation remarkably similar to that of a soul.

She instinctively held out one hand.

Duskull obediently settled onto her fingertips.

A cool sensation passed through her skin, accompanied by an unusual aura.

What surprised Kikyō most was the effect it had on her.

The dead souls within her clay body, which often stirred restlessly, gradually quieted beneath Duskull’s presence.

Kikyō immediately understood.

This creature possessed the ability to soothe wandering souls.

And for her, that ability was genuinely valuable.

At the very least, it would reduce the effort she constantly had to spend suppressing the dead souls within herself, allowing her to wield more of her strength elsewhere.

"Thank you."

Kikyō’s voice remained cool, but some of the distance that had surrounded her before was gone.

Her fingertips gently brushed across Duskull’s spectral body before she gave Haruto a straightforward answer.

"I can teach you the spiritual training methods you asked for."

Haruto was naturally pleased.

Over the next several days, he began studying under Kikyō.

She started with the most basic skill of sensing spiritual energy, teaching Haruto how to gather the power scattered through the surrounding atmosphere, how to guide it through his body, how to use spiritual power to purify yōki, and how to perform various techniques.

At first, Kikyō assumed Haruto was merely indulging a passing curiosity and would learn little more than the basics.

She quickly discovered that his comprehension far exceeded her expectations.

Within only a few days, Haruto had already grasped the core principles behind spiritual training and learned a considerable number of techniques.

At the same time, Kikyō’s own condition improved day by day.

With Duskull constantly at her side, she no longer needed to devote so much attention to suppressing the restless dead souls inside her body.

For the first time in a long while, she could truly rest at night.

Much of the lingering gloom between her brows gradually faded, and even the spiritual power surrounding her became purer and calmer.

Once Haruto had mastered the fundamentals well enough to continue practicing on his own and could freely use the techniques Kikyō had taught him, he bid her farewell.

After all, he had never intended to become some great spiritual practitioner.

He merely wanted another useful set of skills.

Kikyō did not try to keep him.

Haruto resumed his journey, traveling at an easy pace and stopping wherever something caught his interest.

He encountered plenty of lesser yōkai along the way, and whenever he found one with unusual meat or particularly pure yōki, it inevitably ended up inside the Gourmet Restaurant.

One evening, the sun slipped beneath the horizon before Haruto realized how late it had become.

The last crimson glow of dusk disappeared into darkness, leaving only the rustle of pine trees and the steady chorus of insects throughout the wilderness.

Haruto had missed the villages along the road, and there was nowhere nearby to stay.

Rather than worry about it, he found a sheltered ravine and decided to camp beneath the open sky.

Dry branches crackled in the campfire, the orange-red flames illuminating a small circle around him.

Haruto had skewered a rabbit yōkai he had hunted earlier that day and was slowly roasting it over the fire. Fat dripped into the flames, sending up bursts of tempting aroma.

Leaning against the trunk of a thick tree, he idly played with a thread of spiritual power around his fingertips while considering which stretch of mountain forest he should explore tomorrow in search of rarer yōkai ingredients.

Then his hand suddenly stopped.

A sharp, incredibly pure surge of yōki had entered his senses.

It was nothing like the scattered energy of the minor yōkai that infested the mountains.

This aura was immense but tightly controlled. It did not need to flare outward or display its power.

Its mere presence was enough to silence every insect in the surrounding woods, and even the wind through the trees seemed to falter.

Haruto raised an eyebrow, interest appearing in his eyes.

Any yōkai possessing an aura like this had to be extraordinarily powerful.

Perhaps he had finally stumbled across the kind of premium ingredient he had been looking for.

Suppressing his own presence completely, Haruto followed the source of the yōki until he reached a wide clearing nearby.

Moonlight spilled across the open ground like water.

Standing beneath it was an elegant young man with long silver-white hair falling to his waist.

He wore pale robes, their sleeves stirring lightly in the night breeze, while his expression remained utterly indifferent.

Golden slit-pupiled eyes showed almost no emotion.

The tremendous yōki Haruto had sensed came from him.

Sesshōmaru.

Haruto recognized the powerful dog demon of the Western Lands immediately.

Then his gaze shifted toward the figures beside him.

A short, green-skinned yōkai was clutching the Staff of Two Heads while nervously scanning the surroundings.

Jaken.

Behind Sesshōmaru stood a young girl with her hair tied into a ponytail. Rin held several freshly picked wild fruits in her hands, her small face completely carefree despite the darkness around them.

Haruto felt a flicker of disappointment.

So much for a new ingredient.

He stopped concealing his presence.

The instant his footsteps sounded against the ground, Jaken bristled and spun around.

He thrust the Staff of Two Heads toward Haruto, both carved faces atop it seeming to glare along with him.

"Who are you?!"

Jaken’s shrill voice shattered the stillness of the night.

He rose onto his toes and stared warily at the stranger who had suddenly appeared from the darkness.

In the dangerous Sengoku period, anyone wandering alone through the mountains in the middle of the night was either a fool with no idea how close death was...

Or someone with the strength to ensure the monsters of the wilderness had far more reason to fear them.

The first kind rarely survived long enough to make it this deep into the mountains.