Makasai City, Shinto.
After a rain, it always smells like this.
The streets are soaked with puddles of water covering the roads. In the constantly wavering water, the full moon reflects itself.
Hebi walks through the pavement, carrying a transparent umbrella in his hand.
His green hair rustles as the wind brushes against the messy spikes. He's only 5'6. He's built slim, and he has a clumsy manner of walking.
After puffing out a cloud of smoke from his cigarette, Hebi flicks it into a puddle of water. Finally, he raises his eyes to discern what's in front of him.
It's a dark alley. The only street light which keeps it alight flickers constantly.
The mission he is on is to find the spirit "Jinka" living in this alley and save the woman abducted by it if she is alive. But the priority is to kill the Jinka at any cost.
"Hebi?" Something hisses in his ear. Something dear.
Hebi's eyes shift to the side. A white snake slithers on his shoulder, wrapping itself around his neck.
"What is it, Zuru?"
"The Jinka. It's here, Hebi. Right ahead of that corner. He's hiding under that car," she hisses in his ear.
Hebi caresses the snake's face gently, and she rubs her head against his firm fingers. His fingers have grown hard from all the sword training he has done in the sect.
"Thank you, cutie," Hebi whispers to the snake, a grin drawing on his lips. "Now, it's time to take the Jinka out of its hiding."
Hebi grasps the katana sheathed on the side of his belt and draws it. His gaze falls upon the car that lies under the flickering light. A sense of malevolence arises from his eyes.
"Come out, Jinka!"
"Grr… Grr…. Grr…." A distorted voice resonates under that car. A human hand suddenly reaches out from beneath the car, grasping the road. But dark vines are wrapped around it, resisting to let it free. The Jinka is imprisoning her.
'I wonder how much the Jinka has distorted the woman's body,' Hebi wonders, directing his sword towards the car.
Zwoosh!
The car flips into the air, right towards Hebi. The umbrella drops to the soaked streets. The only remaining light which illuminates the road goes out.
CRARR!
An ear-bleeding screech echoes in the alley. Hebi closes his eyes, and he moves his arms. To his speed, time seizes.
Hebi opens his eyes again. But it's not his eyes. It's the eyes of a snake.
Everything around him shifts to blue. The only image that burns with a bright red is the body of the Jinka, which looks like a massive orange blob to him now. It all happens in a second. (His human vision has shifted to the vision of a snake)
He slashes the blob right in the middle.
It leaps to the side with a shriek of pain, but its veins are cut. The second being that lies within him falls to the floor. The woman is free. But the Jinka is still alive.
The malevolent spirit leaps at him once more, not even seizing its attacks for a second. And… Hebi whispers the words, "Zuruzuru."
Dark portals open behind Hebi, linking the human realm directly to the spirit realm. Five silver snakes leap through these portals and bite the Jinka. They attack it relentlessly. Hebi stands back and blinks his eyes.
His bright yellow human eyes return to him. The Jinka screams in pain as the poisonous silver snakes bite it with their fangs without even giving it a second to defend.
Screams fill the night. Not just the Jinka's, but the woman's too.
"Thank you, Zuru." Hebi thanks his dear companion, Zuru, the Goddess of Snakes, resting on his shoulder.
"Anything for you," Zuru replies, wrapping itself around Hebi's neck.
The woman is lying on the street, her blood flowing in all directions. Her face is purely unharmed, shockingly. The only deformed parts of her body are her legs, which look like they are ballooned. She's screaming in pain. Her leg has been deformed.
'Tch, I was too late,' Hebi curses from within.
A painful feeling strikes Hebi's heart as sees this deformed beauty.
"AH! It hurts! Please, make it stop!" She screams in vain, banging her fist on the pavement furiously.
"Can I eat her, dear?" Zuru hisses on Hebi's ear. Hebi glances at the dying woman and smiles.
"You are as good as a corpse now. You are deformed, dear woman. Just think of this as putting an end to your misery."
The woman gazes at Hebi with terror in her eyes. "...what?"
"Zuru. Feast on her, sweetheart."
Suddenly, the pale snake on Hebi's shoulder begins to choke. It opens its mouth wide open and a very pale hand reaches out of the snake's mouth. Suddenly, ripping apart the snake, a massive woman-like being emerges from the mouth.
The snake had just vomited a humanoid creature into the street.
"What – what the heck is that!?" The deformed woman screams into the night. "What kind of a monster is that!?"
In front of her stands a 6 feet tall spirit with extremely pale skin, a naked upper female body, and the lower body of a snake.
Hebi narrows his eyes upon hearing the woman's remarks.
"Monster? Tch, don't call my sweet wife a monster, you slut."
The snake-like woman licks its lips with her snake-like tongue. "I humbly receive."
///
In the middle of Makasai City, there's the Devil Sect.
Rumors carry many things about this sect, but not a single one could even scratch the ugly truth behind this sect. The people think that they know, but they know nothing. It's far uglier on the inside rather than its outward appearance.
But… she knows of it.
Okubo Momoko stays seated upon the highest point of the Devil Sect, overlooking all the buildings that lie beneath it. She's a woman of nearly 70. Her skin has grown ancient and the beauty of her past has disappeared long before she hit the number 60.
Her hair grows grayer by the day. It almost looks milky pale now. Even though all this happened, she still stays seated upon that shrine as the leader of the Devil Sect. No matter her age, her power is paralleled to none.
She gazes at the sect below with a frown.
She remembers the days of her childhood when the spirits were still a rare sight to see. Her grandmother told stories of fields that stretch upon lands and lands with not a single spirit in sight. It's humans who waged war against each other back in the day. It's humans who performed the miracles. Not some spirit from the other realm.
But – ever since the bridge between the spirit realm and the human realm collapsed, Spirits have been growing in numbers.
Her grandmother used to communicate with the Devils through a spiritual power that they possessed from their family. But by the time of her mother, they were holding hands with the Devils from the spirit realm. And now…
"Sigh, what have we come to?" The old woman mourned, closing her eyes.
Lost in the train of thought, she didn't even notice the man approaching her from the bottom of the long white stairs that lead to her shrine.
"Granny Momoko? Have you gone deaf already?" A voice calls out to her.
She lowers her eyes, only to see a man dressed in a proper suit with a tie. It's not every day she sees people dress properly in her Sect now. Except for herself.
"Mr. Carter?"
Mr. Carter is a hot blonde guy from a foreign country. He deals with all the spiritual activities that occur in Makasai City. As Momoko's Devil Sect possesses some of the strongest spirit tamers, Carter comes to deal with her very often.
"Yeah, Granny. Finally, you heard me," Carter replies, taking a seat right in front of her. "I came to ask you how the Jinka hunt went."
Momoko gazes at the gates to the sect, just as Carter mentions this. Through the gates, a young, slim, and short man is walking in with a snake wrapped around his body.
"Hm, it seems the job is done. There comes Hebi."
Carter turns to gaze at the gates. He sees Hebi walking in. "Ah, yes. Hebi has grown stronger then?"
"Too strong," Momoko replies.
A gust of wind graces the peak of the shrine. Carter narrows his eyes, gazing at the old woman with a suspicious look.
"Granny. What were you so worried about? You were lost in your thoughts when I came up."
Granny Momoko lowers her eyes with a sigh. "It is just the new generation, Carter. There's Hebi. The kid married a devil spirit as soon as he turned 18. He is disgusting. Then, the twins who love nothing except each other ~ very intimately at that. There's Ghost, who considers ghosts as his best friends. And of course, the two sisters Nami and Soju. The cat and the fox devil kids. Lastly, the worst of all. The one who possesses a bond with the Yaksha himself. Takehiko. He fucks his own sisters. He is sick in the head."
Carter's face turns to disgust as she finishes it. "Well –"
"The new generation scares me. It's as if we are no longer in control of the Devils, Carter. It's as if these new kids are the Devils themselves."
///Author's Note///
Also guys, when you're commenting and reviewing. Do stay away from the word "Incest" because this word is banned in WN for some reason, lmao. Now, Ik this book has a lot of it, but avoid it, yeah? I dun need all my reviews and comments deleted. Amen... Just say goddamn sweet home Alabama instead!