Even if you were to kill him, he would smile and accept it.

Hyakki never had the chance to witness such a scene. Before sleep overtook him, he kept imagining “Dororo”.

But the white flames of life distorted his depiction of her face.

Dororo, as white as a marshmallow.

【So sweet.】

Hyakki didn’t want any dust to stain his, so he gazed at her until he drifted into a hazy sleep.

His dreams had lost all color, becoming nothingness.

…

Hyakki wandered on the edge of human dreams, far from the pleasant ones.

Using Dororo as the center, he sensed the dreams of the people here. Most of them were filled with darkness and despair, while a small minority persevered for survival, dreaming of a clean and prosperous life, no different from the struggling civilians in the lower tiers of Italy.

People abandoned by society living in places abandoned by society.

“No matter which country, which city, evil always takes root in the human heart. The darker a person’s heart, the harder it is for them to imagine light… No, perhaps they have already forgotten about the light.”

The blue-haired youth’s consciousness was like a mist, traversing dreams, not delving too deep, searching for something.

And then, he saw the darkest “dream” of today.

This mass of “dream” was so massive that it could crush everyone. Only the core emitted a faint light, and the gloomy, oppressive colors seemed to induce spiritual suffocation, exuding a strong and deadly presence. Any illusionist who saw such a “dream” would instinctively retreat, fearing contamination, but Rikodu was different. He couldn’t help but reach out and touch it.

The thin gray membrane was incredibly sturdy.

The barrier of the mind was even harder than the impregnable walls of the real world.

Rikodu distinctly sensed that the owner of the dream was sleeping in the darkness, surrounded by a pitch-black sky and a dim, lifeless land. A crimson evil light flickered in the distance, seeming both far away and close at hand, shadowing the figure but unable to consume the will enveloped in darkness.

Was this hell?

If it was, why did it allow that incongruous glimmer?

“You…”

“Do you also wish to return from hell?”

Having experienced the six realms of illusion and endured the suffering of falling into the realm of beasts, Rikodu smiled silently, deeply understanding the difficulty of emerging from the darkness.

He had underestimated Hyakki.

“With such a powerful spirit bound, if released, it would unleash unparalleled power, enough to ignite the flame called will.”

Rikodu couldn’t imagine how someone like this could rank second in power. How terrifying must the first place be?

Yokohama was truly a hidden dragon and a crouching tiger!

After a moment of hesitation, Rikodu heightened his vigilance and decided to enter the “dream” to take a look.

He obscured his figure with the mist of illusion, employing a profound mental resonance to stealthily infiltrate Hyakki’s deeply negative spiritual world. Upon entering, Rikodu suffered immense mental contamination, as the crimson eye of reincarnation struggled to protect the host from the power of the demons. In a trance, he seemed to glimpse the hidden truth within the darkness.

The twelve demons lurked within the darkness, indistinct and obscured, only revealing glimpses of their presence.

Hyakki, as the sacrifice, hung in the center of the “dream.”

He breathed.

He slept.

He emitted a faint white light, allowing Rikodu to understand the story unfolding within him.

Threads entangled the young man’s body, binding his limbs and cruelly separating them from his torso. His head was tightly gripped, lifted up to reveal a face stripped of its skin, hollow and grotesque.

The impact on Rikodu was substantial, furrowing his brow as he felt the nauseating sensation of witnessing such cruelty.

“This… is a sacrifice?”

What was even more terrifying was that the illusionist found himself, under the influence of the “dream,” harboring thoughts of killing Hyakki, as if he were some archenemy that must be eradicated.

No.

The demons never obtained Hyakki’s life!

They stripped him of everything they could, bringing down a “curse” akin to divine punishment, weakening his strength, assaulting his spirit, but they could not kill him!

It would be the demons who would howl in anger and despair!

Hyakki did not perish. He remained connected to the power of the twelve demons, drawing upon their malevolent energy to survive. Blind, he used his inner vision; limbless, he employed prosthetics; unable to stand straight, he relied on artificial supports to prop up his back, exhausting his life force from crawling to standing.

“What does this dream symbolize…”

With his astonishing sensitivity, Rikodu detected the lingering resentment of the twelve demons.

“Why do I feel like the sacrificed monsters are the true offerings?”

Hyakki, suspended in mid-air, was not a pitiful creature in the dark world but an object that even the entire darkness could not contend with! His breath intertwined with the fate of the universe, a fragile vitality, clamping down on the chains binding him, subtly consuming the power of the demons.

As darkness clouded Rikodu’s vision, he struggled against the mental contamination to continue observing…

The sacrifice stirred slightly.

Each struggle felt like a collision on the brink of life and death, as the young man desperately tried to awaken.

Sensing Hyakki’s consciousness stirring and instinctively rejecting intruders, Rikodu chose to retreat rather than engage in a direct confrontation. He left the dream of this severely impaired host. The mental toll of the night was significant, preventing him from exploring another person’s dream.

After Rikodu slipped away, a new change occurred in Hyakki’s spiritual world.

Forced to tilt his head back, the young man slowly lowered it amidst the creaking sounds, his scattered black hair disheveled. His limbs, pulled back by the threads, were slowly returned to their original positions.

In the depths of darkness, Hyakki stood upon a vacant altar.

Beneath his feet lay deeper shadows… The reflections of the twelve demons in his shadow were even more terrifying than the demons themselves.

In “Dororo,” the protagonist is said to be the son of heaven descended from the prayers of all beings. While the anime adaptation doesn’t explicitly mention it, both the manga and the game versions subtly suggest that he might be a divine being reincarnated or a vessel of divine artifacts. Though some newcomers have considered this, none dare to bet on whether the anime adaptation will include this twist, as even if they win, there’s no real benefit.

Whether bearing the responsibility of salvation, whether human or divine, is meaningless; even gods can descend into mortality.

He gazed helplessly into his dark world.

“How much longer…”

“Until I can kill you all…”

He unconsciously walked, using his intact limbs from his imagination to search day and night.

In the folds of space-time, the Hound of Tindalos, not belonging to this dimension, rushed from the human 21st century to the world 4.6 billion years ago in a way incomprehensible to humans. Those who escaped its attention, like the parallel time traveler Blanc Jessowho, breathed a sigh of relief, never wanting to experience again the feeling of being devoured by such a monster in parallel memories.

With a unit of one hundred million years as its timeframe, the Hound of Tindalos spent one day traveling, while it took forty-six days to reach Earth 4.6 billion years ago.

It stared intently at its prey that had repeatedly escaped, howling with hunger.

The Hound of Tindalos could also be called the Hunter of Time Travelers! Anyone attempting to traverse spacetime unfortunate enough to encounter it would be relentlessly pursued.

4.6 billion years ago.

On the recently born Earth, a boy with pink hair resembling a high school student sat on the ground, devouring the last coffee pudding he had brought along. His gaze blanked out for a second, his expressionless face seeming devoid of joy, realizing that he wouldn’t get to enjoy delicious coffee pudding if the monster didn’t catch up to him soon.

Gaiki thought indifferently.

“Oh well, how much longer will this life of chasing and escaping last? Has Hyakki still not figured out the pattern of being pursued… and my coffee pudding is gone.”

“I should probably go back and find the person who attracted this monster in the first place.”

The renowned deity of the second dimension, the legendary “Saiki Kusuo,” refused to admit that his various abilities were useless against such an unattractive and unseeable monster. How unlucky was it to be pursued just by a glance?

Because of an ability leak during sleep and an accidental time-traveling, Saiki Kusuo felt it was a disaster without cause.

He dared not return home to avoid being hunted across spacetime by the Hound of Tindalos.

Can you blame him for your ugliness?