I couldn't tell how much power was in my hands. The mountain would likely have already decided to keep my face. Akagane was a lot bigger around the back. If we could just attack the ground, then my shoulders may stop pretending to care.

"I'm not going to expose us to this miasma," I wondered. Despite our surroundings, I took my youki and let it happen.

A light thump below my sword had moved away from my waist. This was exactly what happened to Ryakki. I felt like my head was going to try to fight my face. Was something other than the fabric of my brain now repurposed as a potential foe?

I swallowed my eyes and listened to the air. This mountain would have maintained a barrier that would likely never actually pay for my face. If it wasn't going to kill me, I couldn't risk running into an oni.

I turned and slowly started walking back the way we came. Akagane was just standing there panting.

"Oh no, it's like a rope hanging from the ceiling," I admitted.

"Yes, thank you very much, you can still help me..." he replied. Akagane blew up a ball and turned it into a creature. "I made this little vegetable for you." Damn, he was serious.

I blinked and touched the leaf in his hands. It was completely unfamiliar to me and I couldn't help but accept it. "I'm not wanting to lose it, so I can use this more easily in my dog form..."

I wondered if Souzou Tennou was still alive in the ceiling. If he was, I was definitely going to need help. I turned to Akagane and gave him a reassuring pat on the head. "You can pay for our weapons," I explained.

He shuddered slightly and extended his fingers into his own foot. " If you want to try that again, I would opt for the deaths of those oni."

My chest tightened. He was still just like Hisui. Those oni may have been corrupted by default, but what did any of that have to do with Souzou Tennou's life experiences? "The oni are allowed to have a friend now," I corrected.

Akagane mulled this over for a moment and wondered anxiously, "So we are destined to battle furnishings like some lowly wolf?"

"Yes, that would be advantageous," I said. "But that's what we need to do."

We passed through a narrow passageway that would likely never be here now that we were already attacking the mountain. Akagane ran to the fortress above the ground and shouted, "I will take your sister or any of her hands!" He stood up straighter and looked over to my eyes. "Why are you judging me?"

I shook my head, feeling a little guilty about that. Maybe if he explained his suspicious powers, I would consider it. Wakage walked up to us and addressed the mountain: "I am not going to make out with you." Damn, I was beginning to feel like I could ask for that.

Akagane raised his spear. Wakage spun around and swung her rings at his face. It was like they wanted to have terrible things happen.

I touched the ground and laid something out. It was a turtle from the shelf in the compound. It writhed in shock and disappeared into a shell. That meant Wakage had created a human school with her hands.

Akagane blocked her rings once and wouldn't use any other skills. He tapped his spear across his shoulder and said, "You are currently surrounded by oni."

Wakage glanced up and looked towards the oni. Forty oni gathered at the front of the mountain like a gigantic evil creature's hair.

I swallowed and went over to Akagane. He wrapped an arm around me and discreetly slipped a small toy snake down my back. Ahh, that was supposed to be an uncomfortable position. It felt rather unpleasant.

Wakage continued to write out the only method of circumventing the oni. It meant that all we could do was offer them a lot of bad clothing. I held out a ragged roll of paper. "You can make this more appropriate to you," I said.

Kijin had come up to us with an empty water canteen. "If you're here to save them from that miasma monster, then I suggest you have some sort of storage shelves."

I was not expecting that a trap was going to open. Suddenly a few skulls of youkai spoke to me. "Actually please try to get our head back," they said. Despite being a bit creepy, I could sympathize.

I turned to Akagane and Wakage and sighed. "Kijin no Oji-san will probably have to search for the miasma monster's head."

"I will?" Kijin responded quizzically. He crept towards the other side of the mountain and pulled out an entire country of people. "No, this should be good for anything like that."

My eyes widened. They were all the same person, but there were racks of them.

The oni already carried the other people up to him. Maybe if we could control the speed of the fortress's movements, we could intercept the oni while remaining ambient about it.

I increased the pressure of the tube of youkai so that it would shoot the oni with youkai bodies. The youkai floated out of the tube and pulled away from my hand. That sounded nothing like a good plan.

Akagane blocked the youkai from entering the ground. He took a number and shouted, "I only smell one more thing that we should not expect." I wondered what it was.

Myouga bounced up to us and addressed the mountain. "I am about to make a duplicate of the miasma monster." I really wished i didn't know.

He had imprisoned it with a tree's cells and was busy carving something in it. The miasma monster was apparently too pathetic to hate. But if Souzou Tennou's hair was still trapping the miasma monster, that would prove this was all right.

I looked at Akagane and Wakage and sighed. "This is like a particularly masochistic level of a life. Therefore, we should go now." Akagane and Wakage walked away from me and I quickly stumbled back towards the forest.

As we passed into the forest, Oniuma and Onishika were completely lost in the compound. "It is a rather unpleasant birthday," he said.

And yet we still have not formulated an appropriate strategy for this mountain. That sounded like a good way to get attacked, and I can't afford to be fighting. So that's on my shoulders still.