Reincarnated in a Shounen Manga - Chapter 153: Damn It!!

Carpy’s pressure points were filled with an unmistakable dark Ord that wasn’t his own. Every pore in his body felt like a balloon that was about to pop. He was in so much pain that he would have cried if he could.

“Expel it!” Uwabami instructed, trying to help Carpy get rid of the energy from his body. But the only thing Carpy could hear was the sound of rushing water, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

He knew one thing for sure: while this energy could kill him, he didn’t want to let it go. Uwabami had said that he wouldn’t be able to naturally evolve past the middle class. No matter how much he tried to ignore it, it made sense. Before becoming a demon, he was just another average fish.

For whatever reason, the corpse of the ultimate class demon had a delayed reaction, and it felt like another presence was trying to invade Carpy’s brain. He wasn’t afraid of it at all! Fortune favored the bold, and the place he was trying to reach wasn’t a place anyone could reach without experiencing danger.

Instead of expelling the negative Ord that was like poison to him, Carpy did the opposite: he guided the negative energy through his nodes and tried to get his body used to it. This immediately had negative effects as he started bleeding from his eyes and mouth.

“You dumbass! You’re gonna get possessed!” Uwabami shouted, trying to use her own Ord to expel the thing inside Carpy. But a similarly powerful Ord pushed her away, and she reeled back, a stream of blood sliding down her nose.

Carpy coiled like a snake and lay atop the mountain, closing his eyes. He remembered the times Master Kon manipulated his Ord when they were fused. Master Kon’s special ability was something Carpy considered to be the closest technique he had seen that could bring something close to perfection. So Carpy copied the way Ord moved when he and master Kon were fused. Making it thin like a string inside his body, and then sharp like a razor, using his veins to stake through his body.

Whatever was inside him wasn’t fully sentient; it was just releasing a lot of energy like a wild animal with no control behind it. Carpy instead twisted his Ord into a rope and ran it through the foreign energy like a drill. Any other demon in his place would have failed since the difference in pure power was too big, but Carpy wasn’t just any other demon; he had a pool of Ord that he often didn’t know what to do with.

With the added Ord, Carpy’s output was still fewer than the thing inside, but that didn’t matter as he finally reached what looked like a heart made of rotten, dark flesh that released a foul odor. Without hesitation, Carpy’s Ord pierced through the heart. Instead of killing the presence, however, it spread around, and Carpy started seeing memories that he knew for a fact weren’t his own.

In the memory, a green-skinned, four-armed demon was pushing against some kind of gate covered in tens of thousands of sealing talismans. The demon was weeping and didn’t dare turn around to look at the corpses of many innocent murder victims, unwanted babies, and many other horrific things that this place seemed to be the dumping ground of.

“I see you’re having some troubles there,” said a voice. The demon looked up to see an exorcist, his body coated in Ord in the telltale manner of a Warrior. What stood out about the exorcist was that he had a spiked bat leaning on his shoulder and was wearing an oni mask. “You seem pretty strong for a high-class demon. If you weren’t sealed here, then you might have been able to reach the ultimate class. Wanna come work for me?”

“Human!” The demon growled in defiance against the exorcist. “You think I will grovel-”

“I won’t be a human for that long, so how about you become my subordinate?” The exorcist carefully lifted off his Oni mask, revealing a grotesque visage that made even Ibaraki take a step back. His skin was a network of gnarled scars that crossed his face like jagged lightning strikes. As he turned his head, the veins in his neck and arms seemed to writhe and pulse like a nest of serpents, lending an otherworldly aura to his already eerie appearance. The sight was so terrifying that it took every ounce of willpower not to recoil in horror.

The man’s smile was gruesome, revealing rows of decaying teeth that were jagged and broken. His outstretched hand was similarly disfigured, with scars on his skin and deep gouges where fingers had once been. The nails that remained were blackened and ragged; it was clear that this man had known unimaginable pain, and his scars told a story of agony and survival.

“Don’t be afraid. There’s no exorcist alive who can hold a candle to me and do this to me. I did this to myself,” said the exorcist.

Ibaraki struggled to comprehend the man’s intentions, his mind a whirlwind of confusion and uncertainty. Perhaps that was why he instinctively reached out and took the man’s hand.

When they made contact, Ibaraki felt a sudden chill run through his body. Though the man appeared human, there was a darkness lurking beneath the surface – a presence that sent shivers down Ibaraki’s spine.

Ibaraki could not pull away from the man’s grip. They were held fast by an inexplicable force that bound them together.

“By the way, I never introduced myself, did I?” The exorcist put on his mask. “My name is Shuten Doji…”

…

Time seemed to dissolve into the memory, and Carpy felt as though he was living through hundreds of years in a split second. The concept of time itself was gone, and he paid close attention to every development of the story of the demon named Ibaraki right up until the birth of Shuten Doji’s son.

Shuten Doji stood atop a tower, with Ibaraki next to him, while Kidomaru, the son of Shuten Doji, stood at the foot of the tower. But even as a father looking at his own son, Shuten Doji didn’t seem to have much of an opinion on his son’s training.

“He was born weak,” Shuten Doji declared.

“Yes, my lord,” Ibaraki agreed. “But he is still an ultimate class demon. He is only considered weak because he is your son, and in comparison-”

“Ultimate class demon is a term humans came up with for the demons they couldn’t handle,” Shuten Doji interrupted, turning around and starting to walk off. “If we went back to the days when I was an exorcist, that brat would be beaten black and blue by any exorcist worth their name.”

Ibaraki looked toward the young Kidomaru. “Poor kid.”

***

It was uncomfortable being in a prison made for holding powerful people and exorcists with abilities that would make it easy to escape normal confinment. Even though it was for my safety, I was well enough and ready to leave. “We need a plan to escape.”

Agon nodded while eating one of the crab-rats. I wasn’t sure if he was actually listening or just nodding along to anything I said.

We had no idea how long we had been there, but it was longer than a few days. Normally, I would have been cautious about an escape plan, but Agon had plot armor and the Nekoshu. Also, for some reason, it seemed like Yamata No Orochi was playing along and lending him his power.

Just as I began to explain the plans I had in mind, footsteps echoed from around the corner. Before we could react, a demon came in with arms and legs protruding from the sides of its head like they were horns. Its eyes and mouth were sewn shut. Then it pointed the top of its head toward us, and the bald head split open, revealing a mouth with the tongue wrapped around the brain.

A loud screech came out, and by then, I was already up, drawing the cursed sword and decapitating the demon in a split second. But the damage was already done. The whole cave rumbled, and dozens of demons swarmed in from the tunnel in front and behind us, some of them high-class demons.

We could not escape without a fight, so we got ready for one.

It was the first time in a while that I was going to fight without Carpy by my side, and that could be dangerous since Carpy’s sensory abilities were one of the main reasons why I wasn’t KO’ed by some sneak attack by a low-class demon.

“I will cover your back! You cover mine!” I faced my enemies back-to-back with Agon.

I allowed the cursed sword’s energy to spread right up to my neck, and one of the demons, who looked like a sword on legs, charged forward to the front of his group and yelled, “NO SWORDS!”

The cursed sword flew out of my hand and fell to the ground behind me. But I didn’t let such a thing distract me and took a fighting stance. It wasn’t like I was completely useless in a fistfight.

That was until I heard another sound behind me, something that sounded suspiciously like my sword getting picked up. As I turned around, I saw Agon standing there with my sword in hand and looking at it curiously.

This guy!