Demon Sword Maiden-Novel

Volume 8 - Higanbana: Chapter 10 – The Great Defeat

The remaining army spread out and reorganized their attack formations before charging towards Tamamo-no-Mae.

Although there were less than 200,000 units left, their murderous shouts were still deafening.

Lily’s gaze was cold, “These madmen. Lady Kimiko has already suffered such grievous injuries…”

The imperial army’s elite black-armored demon soldiers had suffered more than 200,000 casualties, leaving only a few tens of thousands alive. Most of the mixed forces belonging to the noble families had also fled. This time, the assault was mainly composed of Shuten Doji’s demon army and the lesser Tengu Army.

In the face of the large army that bore down with overwhelming pressure, the nine-tailed fox only swung its tail slowly, evidently seriously injured. Lily could feel the pain emanating from Tamamo-no-Mae’s soul as she remained still while facing the army.

In front of the 10,000-strong army formations, giant, golden phantom warriors that stood tens of meters tall and possessed strength comparable to the Big Dipper Stage coalesced into being and attacked Tamamo.

The power of those golden warriors was at the Big Dipper Stage, which was something Lily couldn’t handle, so she got down from Tamamo’s body.

The golden warriors attacked Tamamo, causing blood to splatter!

Although the attack was far inferior to the vicious bite of the sacrificial hound, it was still strong enough to hurt Tamamo. After all, the nine-tailed fox was currently seriously injured and those cunning golden warriors aimed at her wounds!

The nine-tailed fox was instantly enraged when its wounds were further aggravated, causing it to fly to its feet at an incredibly fast speed. It felt like half the sky had turned into a blurry phantom.

In an instant, the army’s advance was thrown into a storm of destruction!

Pfft—!!!

The counterattack launched by the nine-tailed fox crushed a golden-armored warrior in a single attack!

Several other golden-armored warriors retreated in a hurry, but the nine-tailed fox was too fast. One pounce and one bite was all it took to catch and kill a golden-armored phantom warrior, which soon dissipated under the terrifying onslaught!

Although Tamamo was seriously injured, her attacks were just as brutal and ferocious as before, maybe even more! The golden-armored warrior who had power comparable to the Big Dipper Stage couldn’t even withstand a blow from the nine-tailed fox at all.

The huge demon fox lunged directly into the army formation and massacred thousands of demon soldiers!

It raised its head and spewed out raging blood winds at the 10,000-strong army formations not far away!

These great formations were all offensive in nature, and the imperial court also gave up defense in the final attack.

As a consequence, the offensive formations were unable to resist the bloody storm launched by Tamamo!

In an instant, tens of thousands of demon soldiers were wiped out once again!

“This, this demon fox still has strength!”

“It is even more brutal than before it was injured!”

The army immediately lost morale and started to collapse!

This was especially so for the demon army, which was the first to collapse.

The nine-tailed fox raised its head and spat bloody winds at the lesser Tengu Army that kept casting spells and hurling spears at it from the sky!

Countless lesser Tengus were directly vaporized by the scorching-hot blood wind.

Seeing that most of the remaining tens of thousands of black-armored demon troops were killed by the nine-tailed fox’s counterattack, Kato started to despair. Even though the nine-tailed fox was seriously injured, it was still strong enough to kill all their remaining soldiers!

This was the fight of a cornered beast!

“Retreat! Retreat!” Kato issued a final order while he himself turned around and ran wildly. His horse had long since died, but his maximum running speed was much faster than that of ordinary warhorses.

The remaining tens of thousands of black-armored troops as well as the hundreds of thousands of demon troops immediately scattered across the battlefield!

Momiji jumped onto Mamukuro’s back and Ibaraki turned around to run for his life. Without waiting for their command, the demon army had already fled.

Tarobo glanced unwillingly at Lily who was not far behind the demon fox. He was reluctant to leap over the demon fox to seek revenge on Lily. Besides, Lily was not so easy to defeat. He could only turn around and fly towards the distant sky, followed by a large number of lesser Tengu.

The nine-tailed fox was still enraged, chasing and killing relentlessly. Its speed was too fast and it leaped into the collapsed army formation. Every sweep of its nine huge tails and swing of its claws caused tens of thousands to perish!

The army began to disperse and flee in all directions without regard for staying in formation!

The nine-tailed fox chased around in a frenzy, killing and ripping apart countless enemies while the rest of the scattered army gradually fled the battlefield!

About tens of minutes later, the entire battlefield basically calmed down.

The nine-tailed fox no longer had any strength and staggered to the center of the battlefield where it curled up like a coiling yellow mountain.

It rested its head on its paws, eyes dim and panting heavily as blood stained the earth below.

“Lady Kimiko!” Lily was extremely worried and ran towards Kimiko…

This battle, which could be considered as the most tragic battle in the past thousand years, came to an end with Tamamo-no-Mae getting seriously injured and the joint alliance between the imperial court, Shuten Doji, and Daitengu getting defeated. The curtains fell with a great defeat…

In this battle, the imperial court could be said to have lost half of its military strength!

Of the 300,000 black-armored troops, 260,000 died and 20,000 were injured!

Of the more than 10,000 dharma masters and 5,000 onmyojis, a little over 80% of them were killed or injured.

30,000 of the more than 100,000 demon troops sent by Shuten Doji died.

Of the 150,000 troops that made up the army of the local noble families, 20,000 died and 30,000 were unaccounted for. Most of these rabble were trampled to death while fleeing, and many small groups who escaped got lost in the mountains and forests, their whereabouts unknown.

Relatively speaking, the lesser Tengu Army that escaped into the skies suffered the least casualties.

Of the more than 50,000 lesser Tengu troops, 6000 were killed and 20,000 were injured.

Basically, almost everyone who got hit by Tamamo’s attack died, so there were relatively few injuries

¹.

The one that suffered the most casualties was the black-armored army, which was almost wiped out.

Among them, only 50 to 60,000 people actually died from Tamamo’s attacks while the rest were turned into sacrifices.

To be specific, their blood and spiritual energy were transformed into the Blood Wish· Sacrificial Hound.

The troops directly killed by Lily mainly consisted of onmyojis and dharma masters with extremely weak defenses, numbering around ten thousand. As for the black-armored demon soldiers, Lily only killed a little less than a thousand of them. However, with the as many as 16 or 17 hounds that she destroyed, she indirectly killed 160 to 170,000 elite black-armored demon soldiers!

More than half of them failed to transform into sacrificial hounds, so they all died in vain before they could attack Tamamo-no-Mae!

If not, and all twenty hounds were formed and besieged Tamamo-no-Mae, she would have surely died.

The legend of the thousand-year-old demon fox would have really come to an end.

But who would have thought that the blade maiden, Lily, who was nothing compared to the half a million troops on the battlefield, was the natural nemesis of those sacrificial hounds driven by anima! Lily’s attack became the biggest variable on the battlefield!

Otherwise, this battle would have ended with the fall of the archdemon Tamamo-no-Mae and a miserable victory for the crusading army.

If that happened, although the losses would still be great, it would be a result that Minamoto no Yoritomo and the Cloistered Emperor could accept

². After all, they would have gotten rid of the world’s number one archdemon, Tamamo-no-Mae.

However, the end result was that the imperial army was almost completely wiped out and Tamamo-no-Mae was still alive

³…

In this battle, Uesugi Rei also cooperated with Kagura to attack around the edge of the battlefield, killing more than a thousand scattered black-armored soldiers as well as hundreds of onmyojis and dharma masters.

References

Robinxen: There’s an interesting fact about this. During the world war the royal army tried swapping to metal helmets from cloth ones to see if they were more effective, however they found injury rates had gone up with the metal helmets. On paper this looks like a failure right? More people are getting injured with the new helmet type. However actually the helmets were increasing injury rates because what would have been fatal wounds and death were being reduced to severe and minor injuries. So the helmets were effective despite causing more injuries.

Robinxen: Screw this guy.

Robinxen: I call that a victory.