She could more or less tell what he wanted to say, but she nonetheless lent him an ear while watching
“What?”
“I understand this is a shameless request to make, but…”
“You want to know if there’s a way to help him, right? I can give it a try, but… Hey, what’s with those eyes?”
He was completely covered in black including his face, but surprise could still be gleamed from his eyes.
“I-It’s nothing… I just didn’t think you’d accept so easily…”
Now that he mentioned it, that certainly made sense. Tomoe nodded.
They had been fighting until just awhile ago, and Michizane had been saying a lot of thoughtless things too, so her impression of them was indeed rock bottom.
He must have been expecting her to ask for an apology or for compensation.
“This can be settled quietly as long as I don’t kill him, right? We don’t want to antagonize the clans either, and it will be troublesome if they try to take vengeance against us. Well, either way, it’s not like we can really guarantee anything to each other.”
Though Tomoe did think of a way to avoid antagonizing the clans, she couldn’t say for sure it would work.
These black-clothed men also didn’t have the authority to promise anything.
That’s why there was little point to a verbal promise.
The man appeared shocked, but she ignored him and stepped forward as though to challenge Michizane to a fight.
“…A complete loss. In just about everything…”
The man seemed to mutter something, but Tomoe was no longer paying any attention to him.
“You can release the jutsu now. You’ll be sent flying by the rebound if it’s forcefully broken through.”
The layers of constraints and shackles on the monsters made it look like a bagworm, but it continued to rampage all the same.
Tomoe could feel the black-clothed men’s spiritual power being drained out of them, and she could tell that they wouldn’t last for another 30 seconds.
“I understand… Is there anything else?”
“Get away when I shoot my arrow. I’m not taking any responsibility even if you get caught in my attack.”
Then she formed a spiritual bow and drew a Spirit Arrow like the one she used against the Gashadokuro.
The man nodded, then signaled his orders to his friends.
Tomoe perceived their actions through her senses and shot her bow, while the men released the jutsus and withdrew.
Freed from his bonds, the hulking figure stood up and slammed his demon sword into the approaching arrow.
“OOOo!! Something like this!!”
As expected, a single giant arrow with concentrated power was enough to alarm him.
Tomoe fired a second arrow, and for a moment, Michizane was startled, but then he snickered, for it had flown off course and pierced a garden tree behind him.
“Ha ha, where are you aiming at?”
“‘Earth Grave’!”
Tomoe ignored Michizane’s mocking laughter and used a Skill to summon a spear on the land, then muttered as she touched it.
“Wood thins the earth.”
The garden pond shook as she re-positioned Kamunagi in her hand and sent it flying in a diagonal direction to the left.
“Earth muddies water.”
The garden trees, the earth spear, and the garden pond all shone faintly with her spiritual power.
“Don’t tell me! Are you—!?”
Just as Tomoe thought, he was indeed conscious, but it was too late.
With a snap of her fingers, the giant arrow suddenly split and transformed into ropes.
“GUAAa!?”
Michizane screamed in pain as the ropes bound him hand and foot, then Tomoe jumped into the garden pond and unleashed her skills.
“‘Flare Tornado’!”
As a spinning pillar of fire as big as an adult rose from the garden pond across the monster, Tomoe formed a hand seal with her wet hands and pointed to the fire.
“Water will extinguish fire.”
She threw Kamunagi diagonally forward to the right, sending it into the ground, then jumped once again and split a part of it with her hand seal as she pointed to her beloved sword.
“Fire will melt metal.”
“Uu, stop it!!”
The points connected through her spiritual power.
Michizane realized what she was up to, so he forcefully broke through his restraints and stood up, then leaped at the remaining ‘point’, that was Kamunagi, with his demon sword.
But…
“Your effort is laudable, I suppose────Metal will harm wood.」
Tomoe joyfully teased before solemnly weaving the last chants.
In the next moment, all the points connected through a firm line, and
The five points she prepared connected to form a pentagon that trapped him completely.
There was no longer any need for her to touch her beloved sword imbued with spiritual power.
Tomoe formed a seal and poured spiritual power into the pentagram.
“The Five Elements contest each other! Go forth, revolve!!”
The flow of spiritual power increased as it circulated repeatedly in a flow of rivalry, making the lines thicker and higher like walls.
“AgyaaHhhh—!!??”
Earth thinned, Water muddied, fire extinguished, metal melted, wood harmed, then once again, earth thinned.
The power of the circulating vanquishing current was relentlessly attacking him, who was at the central point.
“GAHhh!!”
He slashed at the wall with his demon sword as if in an appeal to let him out.
However, while he did manage to harm the wall a little, he was immediately repelled by the power that was continuously rotating.
When he tottered and hit the opposite wall, he was sent flying again into the opposite, only to be sent flying again… and so on.
He writhed in agony unable to move properly, but before long, a change appeared, and one of the black-clothed men pointed it out.
“Did he become smaller?”
The more the unbearable screams continued, the more the huge frame shrank.
His arms, which had been as thick as the waist of an adult, were already less than half the size, and most of his muscles were also gone.
“…How could that Pentagram of Oppositions achieve this? It’s supposed to be a jutsu that manipulates the flow of yin, but… Oh! I know! She’s polarizing the yin to turn it into yang!”
In a sense, it was basic theory.
The Yin-Yang Symbol depicts the relationship of Yin and Yang through the Yin-Yang Fish, which look just like two magatamas fitted into each other.
Yang is represented with white, while Yin is represented with black, and within each are dots of opposite colors.
Therefore there is yang in yin, and yin in yang.
Even the strongest yang and yin had opposite attributes within them, indicating that too much yang would turn to yin and too much yin would turn to yang.
The demon sword possessed a powerful yin ki, so it was possible to make it cross that line that even with just the yin ki that a human could prepare.
When the mass of evil ki was turned into ‘yang’, it could no longer sustain its existence, and it began to collapse.
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