Eight serpent heads rose at once, stemming from the landmass where all life inhabited. Be they a skilled omnyoji, yokai, or kami, no one was safe from the movements of the calamatous creature.

  Rows upon rows of fire from Amaterasu pelted across the surface of the creature to little avail. Shuten Doji can easily identify her magical prowess to exceed his swordsmanship and even the power of Susanoo. But the chief deity was fighting what could only be described as the end of the world.

  The dragon, a creature Shuten had only ever seen in mortal art, circled the eight heads scratching into their rocky exteriors with his lightning claws. The oni had never seen so many powerhouses take action at once.

  “My lady, are we fighting against the very earth itself?” some random deity, a member of the amatsukami screamed across the horizon. Amaterasu didn’t even have time to answer them before one of the heads bit down upon him, rendering his existence null and void.

  Susanoo and a pale skinned man dressed in deep blue flew side by side an attacked with a mixture of hurricanes, and rays of moonlight. It punched through the head of one snake, through the neck of another, before exploding the upper jaw of a third.

  It seemed hopeful at first, but upon closer inspection, sediments and foliage surrounding the devastation formed back the missing chunks. Despite being at the peak of living beings in the cosmos, even their combined efforts did little to slow these snakes down.

  From above, Amaterasu clasped a mirror which appeared to reflect the light from the sun right behind her head. It burned anything it touches, carving deep into the earth, right at the base of each serpent head.

  An urgent frown adorned her face when that too did not stop each head from sprouting back up. Lines of sediment formed thousands of snakes that all wriggled back to eight primary heads. Their roar once again resounde through universe.

  Upon reforming, all eight heads made for their location. Amaterasu, Susanoo, Ryujin, Shuten, and that pale skinned man were all within the same general area. All of them backed away to avoid the fangs that tore apart spacetime.

  “Eight, why eight branches?” Susanoo said within Shuten’s earshot. “This…this Yamata no Orochi is unlike any yokai I’ve ever seen sister. Where did it come from?”

  “Doesn’t matter where,” Shuten Doji said. “What’s important is to kill it.” He disregarded a call from the dragon as he sliced across the rocky exterior of a single head.

  The force of his blow caused a good fourth of the head to slide into the ocean. But the remaining side’s eye locked in on him. Or rather, it looked right at the broken sword in his hand.

  “Hm?” Shuten felt an alarm ringing in his head. His feet dug into the air and richocheted himself away from the malformed snake. This was just in time to avoid tendrils of water exploding out of it.

  “It’s incorporated the sea into its makeup?” Amaterasu gasped.

  “No, it should’ve always been part of it,” Ryujin denied. “It’s exterior merely covered it.”

  In front of them, seven heads of stone began squirting saltwater from their crevices. Meanwhile, the sliced head’s water tendrils coalesced into the smooth serpentine features that completed the head alongside the remaining sediment.

  Unlike the other kamis and yokais who found this transformation creepy, Shuten found it more natural then its previous form.

  The eight heads gathered together, streams of ki flowing from each mouth into a single ball. Though it appeared to be water, it was pure explosive energy.

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  It was more power then every one of them could pull together. To the omnyoji and yokai watching from a distance, they could not understand how an unintelligent beast could manipulate ki like this without any sort of hand seals or array.

  Not even the gods who did not require such limitations, couldn’t understand how so much ki could perform an attack without collpasing in on itself.

  Yet before it could be fired, a hammer smashed into the condensed. It exploded prematurely into the heads of the Yamata no Orochi.

  The land of the rising sun was showered in soil, foliage, and copious amounts of water. The hammer circled through the air, back into the hand of a black robed woman dressed in armour made of coral, and sea shells, and dragon scales.

  She wore a crown that reassembled the antler horns of a dragon, yet did not posses any natural horns. Following her, an ever expanding number of individuals appeared from the depths of the ocean.

  “Sea empress,” Amaterasu greeted. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “That’s the majin who rules the deep ocean? Doesn’t match any painting I’ve seen,” Susanoo snarked.

  “Quiet brother, those drawings are of her natural form. Though I admit, I didn’t know she was that beautiful,” the pale skinned man said.

  “You should be the careful one Tsukuyomi. Your wife’s right there.”

  The dragon who represented his species in Takamagahara flew up to Gui Daiyu and bowed his head. “Your majesty, I was unable to stop its awakening.”

  “I didn’t expect you to,” Gui Daiyu said. Her gaze had never left the eight necks that still wriggled. Water gushed from the stump, perpetually flooding an already half drowned landmass.

  It was unnatural how this water blobbed up over large patches, acting as some kind of flesh growing over bone.

  “Sword spirit,” Gui Daiyu called out. “Stay away from that monster. Whatever you do, do not come near it again.”

  No one that wasn’t a dragon knew who she referred to. Susanoo glanced at his sword, ame no Habakiri wierdly.

  “Him.” Gui Daiyi pointed with her hammer at Shuten Doji.

  “The oni?”

  Shuten felt tremedation at all the attention on him. Thus he snorted at Gu Daiyu’s direction. “What do you mean I stay away? That thing smashed apart my mountain and killed who knows how many of mine.”

  “Exactly as I said sword spirit. We spent much effort ripping you from it, or rather…” she then said a name in a language that was unidentifiable for any natural resident of this universe.

  All the dragons around her cringed when they heard the name. Despite that, the oni comprehended what she said. The next words from him were a direct translation of what he’d just heard.

  “Ame no murakumo no tsurugi?”

  This time, the natural inhabitants of this universe understood. Though they did not comprehend the real significance behind it. Gui Daiyu nodded grimly as a sign of confirmation. She didn’t seem surprised he’d understood.

  “That’s still not…”

  “Listen to her majesty brat,” a dragon beside her said. “We are going to make a formation and lull that thing back to sleep once more.”

  “If you go near it, and it devours you. It’ll reabsorb the broken sword. Then its power will truly be unimaginable for the likes of you and us,” a third politer dragon said.

  “My grand uncles speaks true young oni, your sword was…” Ryujin sighed mid sentence with regret. “This is not the first time we’ve had to fight it. It’ll be easier for us if you step back and wait this out.”

  “Wait a second.” Shuten Doji’s opponent before all this started called out. Susanoo marched in front of the dragons with a confused expression. “Why sealing? Shouldn’t we find a way to destroy it?”

  “Brother,” Amaterasu chastized.

  “Do you wish this Chaos World to end?” Gui Daiyu asked. “That’s what would happen.”

  “What?”

  “That snake is not only a shadow of a great man. It is also one with everything. The ocean, the mountains, the sky, everything is an expression of it.” Gui Daiyu glanced at the mixture of amazement and horror everyone who wasn’t already aware experienced.

  “Only the celestial dimension of Takamagahara can be deemed its own separate dimension. But most of this Chaos World was formed from it. It’s body, or corpse if you will. No that’s not the right world, what would you call a freshly grown dead body?” Ryujin explained.

  Watching the reforming heads, this time in eight pillars of pure water, Gui Daiyu continued speaking. “Creation and that thing are a bonded pair. It was originatally an endless ocean without an point. Not until the first innate gods woke it up on accident.”

  “No that is wrong,” Susanoo said. “My father, Izanagi no Okami created…”

  “He dragged what became a new epicentre to the surface, kickstarting the newest apocalypse before this one. How did you think your mother and elder siblings died?” Gui Deiyu said without sympathy.

  “Your majesty, our men have already spread out. We should start the formation before it attacks. Even without it’s full strength, it is still ramping up. Once it hits the current ceiling, it’ll be hitting harder then most Primal Origin Chaos Immortals,” the polite dragon said to her.

  “I’m aware Ao Funan. That is why I’ll restrain it while you all form the array. Adhere my warning sword spirit.”

  While thousands of dragons illuminated the sky, biting each other’s tail into a single long ring. Gui Daiyu descended towards the Yamata no Orochi hammer in hand. A shell condensed on her back, resembling a turtle.

  Shuten Doji felt the other gods retreating. Some grabbed a handful of their worshippers or followers, others rejoined the chief deity on their own. But the oni felt turmoil watching this scene.

  He did not hear any whispers prompting him. But when he locked eyes with a snake head fighting Gui Daiyu, he felt an incomprehensible sensation.

  He stepped forward.