Anime Crossover: Oni Samurai Artifact System — Chapter 207

Chapter 207: She Insisted, So You Just Gave It To Her?

Beneath the sprawling canopy of the Sacred Tree, dappled morning sunlight danced across the dew-kissed grass. A gentle breeze swept through the ancient branches, rustling the leaves as the two figures finally parted.

Kikyo slowly released her grip on his collar.

Taking a deliberate half-step back, she turned her head away. A faint, lingering flush of crimson still painted the delicate skin from her earlobes down to the nape of her neck. Yet, her expression had already smoothed over, smoothly shifting back into the serene, untouchable facade of a high priestess. Looking at her composed features, one would never guess she had been the one to aggressively initiate the kiss mere seconds ago.

Hikaru leaned back, his broad shoulders settling against the rough, ancient bark of the Sacred Tree. His Crimson Demon Eyes quietly reflected the shrine maiden bathed in the golden morning light. Her long, silken black hair cascaded over her shoulders, framing a spotless white kosode and a vivid red hakama. The crisp obi tied neatly at her waist accentuated the elegant, slender curves of her figure.

She was stunning. He had known that absolute truth since the very first day they crossed paths.

But right now, there was a different texture to her beauty. Faint shadows lingered beneath her eyes, betraying the exhaustion of a sleepless night spent maintaining a massive barrier. Yet, woven through that fatigue was a deep, quiet serenity—the quiet peace of a long-awaited reunion.

Kikyo didn’t meet his gaze. Instead, she tilted her chin slightly, her dark eyes tracking the rising sun cresting over the distant mountains behind him.

“You were gone for a month,” she stated, her voice smooth and even.

Hikaru gave a slow nod. “Yeah.”

Counting the days of endless slaughter and travel, it had indeed been roughly thirty days.

“In that time, you sent thirty-three messages.”

At least once a day, he thought.

“But,” she continued, her tone dropping a fraction of a degree, “before that final signal last night, I had absolutely no idea what kind of danger you were actually facing.”

Kikyo finally turned her attention back to the young Oni Samurai. She paused, her lips pressing into a thin line. Outwardly, she was a picture of absolute tranquility. Inwardly, Hikaru could practically feel the waves of intense dissatisfaction rolling off her spirit.

Faced with this perilous atmosphere, the pragmatic undead samurai relied on a core survival principle: handle a volatile situation by remaining completely static.

He simply nodded again.

“What is with the ‘yeah’?”

Her cold, clear eyes locked directly onto his. There was no overt anger or petulant grievance in her gaze. Instead, it held a deeply buried, swirling emotion—like a frozen lake in the dead of winter. The surface was a mirror of ice, but dark, turbulent currents rushed relentlessly underneath.

“I was actually quite upset,” she admitted softly. “I planned to wait for you to return, sit you down, and interrogate you thoroughly.”

“And then?” Hikaru prompted, his voice a low, steady rumble.

“Then, I saw you.” Kikyo lowered her eyelashes, casting faint shadows over her cheeks. “So… never mind.”

The words were spoken with feather-light grace, as casual as brushing a stray autumn leaf from her sleeve. A grueling month of waiting, an entire night burning her spiritual power to maintain a village-wide barrier, the crushing weight of anxiety—all of it was instantly dismissed by that simple phrase.

Hikaru studied her in silence. He knew this shrine maiden better than anyone. She was deeply traditional, fiercely reserved, and bound by duty. Even if her heart was a raging tempest, she would force herself to project an aura of indifferent calm. But after everything they had been through, Hikaru had long since learned how to read the truth bleeding through the tiny cracks in her armor.

He opened his mouth, preparing to offer a rare reassurance.

Kikyo suddenly cut him off.

“However.” Her voice sharpened, cutting through the morning air. “There will not be a next time.”

She delivered the statement with chilling absolute calm. It was so matter-of-fact that it actually stunned the pragmatic samurai for a split second. It wasn’t a threat. It certainly wasn’t a coquettish pout.

It was pure, unadulterated confidence. The absolute certainty of a goal already achieved, a reality already set in stone.

“The next time you leave, I am coming with you.”

The moment the words left her lips, Kikyo moved.

She didn’t run. She didn’t even take a physical step. Her red-and-white silhouette suddenly blurred against the backdrop of the morning sun. Through his demonic vision, Hikaru could physically see it—a razor-thin, almost perfectly transparent film of pure spiritual power enveloping her entire body.

In the blink of an eye, she materialized ten zhang away down the stone path.

Hikaru’s eyes narrowed as his mind processed the kinetic data. This wasn’t the spatial distortion of the Space Teleportation spell she had used in the past.

This was raw, physical movement.

A high-speed, continuous trajectory from point A to point B. By wrapping herself in a frictionless layer of spiritual energy, she had effectively turned her body into a beam of light skimming across the earth. The sheer velocity was staggering—it nearly rivaled the explosive burst speed of his own Thunder Muscle technique.

Kikyo stood perfectly still on the distant stone path. The displaced air caught up a second later, gently fluttering the pristine hems of her kosode and hakama. She turned back to face him, her expression as cold and composed as a porcelain doll.

“Spirit Transformation Technique,” she announced, her voice carrying clearly over the distance. “By wrapping the entire body in concentrated spiritual power, I can briefly shift into a semi-spiritual state to achieve frictionless, high-speed movement.”

She paused, lifting her chin a fraction of an inch. “I created it myself.”

“Just like the Space Teleportation, the Compound Barrier, and the Earth Barrier… I conceptualized and perfected all of them on my own.”

Her tone remained perfectly flat and professional. Yet, within the depths of those cold, clear eyes, Hikaru caught a fleeting, deeply hidden glimmer of smug pride.

It was, quite frankly, incredibly adorable.

She had spent the entire month developing this. While he was out bathing in blood and grinding his strength, she hadn’t just been sitting in the shrine pining for him. She had been training relentlessly. Innovating a movement technique specifically designed to keep pace with his monstrous speed. Forging a spell that would guarantee she could travel by his side across any battlefield.

All of that grueling effort was poured into validating the absolute certainty of her declaration: There will not be a next time.

The shrine maiden was bound by tradition and strict etiquette, yet when it truly mattered, she never bothered to hide her deepest desires. She refused to be the woman left behind to wait. She wanted to walk alongside the man standing before her, to share the burden of the slaughter, rather than watching his back as he rushed off to face nightmares they should have been fighting together.

Hikaru remained rooted beneath the Sacred Tree, his Crimson Demon Eyes locked onto the solitary figure down the path.

He let the silence stretch for several long seconds. Once again, a familiar realization washed over his pragmatic mind.

As expected of the strongest shrine maiden in the Sengoku era.

That legendary title was never just empty flattery.

While her monstrous reserves of raw spiritual power might have been a genetic lottery win, the sheer talent, precision, and ruthless creativity required to weaponize it were entirely her own. In that regard, Kikyo was nothing short of a terrifying genius.

Space Teleportation. Layered Compound Barriers. Spiritual power lenses. The complex manipulation of faith energy she had reverse-engineered in record time. And now, this Spirit Transformation Technique. Every single one of these high-tier spells was something she had conceptualized and birthed from scratch.

If she hadn’t been geographically shackled to this remote, rural village—if she had been given access to the ancient scrolls, systematic inheritances, and elite masters of the capital—Kikyo wouldn’t merely be the strongest shrine maiden of their time.

She would have unequivocally become the strongest human alive in the Sengoku era. Her legacy would easily rival that of Midoriko, the mythical priestess who had once slaughtered legions of demons and crushed Great Yokai with her bare hands.

Pushing off the tree bark, Hikaru closed the distance.

His heavy, measured footsteps echoed softly against the stone path as he walked right up to her. The shrine maiden held her ground, merely tilting her head back to meet his gaze. The icy clarity in her dark eyes sparkled brilliantly in the morning sun—as pristine as a hidden mountain spring, as untouched as fresh winter snow, completely devoid of any worldly impurities.

Slowly, she raised her delicate brows.

She closed her eyes.

And tilted her face upward just a fraction of an inch more.

The physical shift was microscopic, but the underlying demand was deafeningly clear.

Hikaru stared down at her, momentarily struck dumb. He understood exactly what she was asking for, but his deadpan nature couldn’t resist a dry retort.

“Didn’t we already just—”

“That was me taking the initiative,” Kikyo interrupted, her voice a faint, stubborn whisper. She refused to open her eyes. “Now, it is different.”

“…How exactly is it different?”

“Figure it out yourself.”

Hikaru gazed down at the breathtakingly cold, beautiful face presented to him. She was a woman reserved to her very marrow, heavily burdened by duty, yet in this fleeting moment, she was being exceptionally, vulnerably honest.

He didn’t actually need to analyze it; his tactical mind had already deciphered the nuance. The first kiss had been born of her frustration and overwhelming relief. Now, she was demanding his active response. She wanted proof that the feeling was mutual.

They were, indeed, two entirely different battlefields.

Faced with this logic, the undead samurai found himself thoroughly speechless. But he certainly wasn’t going to refuse.

After all, it was a reward he had been quietly craving for a month.

He leaned down, closing the final gap between them. This time, the contact was deliberate, infinitely lighter, and agonizingly slower than her desperate ambush moments ago.

Kikyo’s long eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks. Her slender fingers reached up, quietly but firmly gripping the rough fabric of his sleeve, anchoring herself to him.

In the distance.

Hidden in the shadows of the shrine’s wooden corridor, Momiji and Botan were currently crouched behind a thick support pillar, frantically covering each other’s mouths to muffle their squeals. Both of their eyes were blown wide as saucers.

Botan leaned in, her voice a frantic, scandalized whisper. “It’s starting again… Big Sister Momiji, shouldn’t we go back inside? This feels illegal to watch…”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re absolutely right. Let’s go,” Momiji whispered back in rapid agreement.

Despite her words, her feet remained firmly glued to the floorboards, refusing to move a single inch.

Nearby, the proud warrior Naoe Kanetsugu had politely turned her head to face the opposite courtyard, projecting an aura of dignified ignorance. However, the faint, rapid twitching of her ears betrayed her intense eavesdropping.

And a few feet away, completely oblivious to the heavy romantic tension suffocating the shrine grounds, little Kaede was sprawled out on the wooden steps, snoring softly with a thick line of drool pooling beneath her cheek.