Heart Devil [OP Yandere Schizo Ramble LitRPG XD]

"Haaah…haaah f-fuck!"

A dash, a tumble, then a desperate, corrective scramble came from the fleeing figure.

The forest was splashed with black blood, followed by the noise of a hastily retreating form. Leaves swished, roots bent, Hannya crashed through brush like a mad woman, one arm gone at the elbow, the stump hissing as black mist crawled and knitted, trying its best to heal what was taken. A fan then cut the air behind her with the sound of silk pretending to be steel. She threw herself behind a cedar, holding back a string of curses.

She had assumed the painted devil would be an easy lesson, a simple ego booster. Crush the fan, learn a name, leave another lofty rumor. Instead her ribs purpled with deep bruises and the stump sparkled with an itch that meant the body wanted mana and the mana wanted time. She pressed her back to bark and let her breath thin to a hush.

Pressure flared behind her like a bloodthirsty hunter. The press of a devil who could decide between her life and death. Her blood shifted with warning. A mask. The thought came with the taste of iron. In devil-sense a mask meant one thing worth caring about. Stars were hidden, potential feigned. The two red stars painted on the devils cheeks were a joke at her expense. Somewhere on that body, on that belt, at the nape, behind her fan hand, more stars slept like coins under a pillow.

DING

[

[Mask of the Tayu] has shattered!

You are now immune to perception checks for [Guardless Presence]!

]

The thought broke something in her gaze. The harmless geisha feeling from the devil fell away, and the shape of Noh's killing intent stood up where it had been kneeling all evening. Not a two-star stage dancer. A tactician with a knife hidden behind a smile.

"W-what the fuck?" Hannya whispered, her eyes sliding to her panel. She didn't know what any of that meant, but the broad idea was understood. Her perception was being played with!

A dark line of shadow slid across the ground. Hannya leaned left on instinct. The cedar shivered and came apart at her shoulder, as if it just casually decided to separate from today on. The cut stopped where her neck had not been moments earlier.

She hit the next trunk, rolled, and came up on one leg because the other couldn't keep up with the rest of her, separated several paces behind her. Warm spray splattered the moss. Her body screamed, and then the scream smoothed into the low hum that meant her core had taken over. The severed limb fuzzed with black mist and began to draw itself from the absence to flesh.

Noh stepped through drifting cedar needles with a composure that insulted the chaos she had made in the forest. Fan low, eyes steady, kimono unwrinkled by the chase. To her, it was a leisure hunt in every regard.

"Will you submit to your senior, child?" Her voice carried like warm tea. "You know this is a losing battle. If you apologize for your words and pay respec-"

A branch-turned-spear met her mid-sentence. Hannya hurled it from above with the unlovely grace of someone who had decided that grace wasn't needed at this party. She wouldn't cower because the woman was a little stronger than she thought… and no way was she kneeling again.

"Fuck you, granny!"

Hannya turned herself into mist mid-curse and laughed as she fled upward through the canopy. The laugh shook, but it was still a laugh. Leaves rattled in her wake, the forest breathed her in like she almost belonged there.

Noh flicked her wrist and the fan split the flying branch into halves that fell without complaint. She didn't chase, instead, she raised her free hand and wrote in the air. Lines of red light sketched a sigil that looked like a palace door seen at midnight. She pressed the closed fan she held into the earth as if crowning a post.

"Binding Chi: [Empress Dress]." she said.

The drawn sigil leapt from the fan's spine and kissed the rising mist. But the word 'kiss' didn't suit what followed. Hannya felt her vapor twist into threads and those threads snap back into meat. The shift was instant and ugly, her shoulder caught a branch she couldn't pass through anymore. She crashed down hard, her flying momentum shifted to rapid descent.

DING

[

Debuff: Disrupt – [Empress Dress] chi thread has disrupted your [Mana Flow], channeled spells are silenced.

Duration: While anchor sigil persists.

Source: Binding sigil anchored to fan.

Effect: Mist State cancelled. Regeneration slowed.

]

Hannya spat leaves and blood as she cratered the ground on impact. Her leg was nearly back, her arm was a wrist away from being whole, but Noh was already there. A second fan had appeared like a consequence and pointed at Hannya's head.

Hannya glared up at the devil as her mind worked. There were two things, to mysteries, that frustrated Hannya to no end about this pretty girl looming over her.

The first was the amount of strength the painted devil possessed. This wasn't the kind of strength a side character should have, at least to her, this was a supporting role's strength. Not the kind of might that came from a 'one-liner' type character she assumed this devil to be. It was obvious now this devil possessed more than two stars, there was a hard cap to even limit breaking in this world.

Which led to the second mystery…

How in the hell does a history(novel) buff like her, not recognize this character from the text? Not a single obscure line from the story mentioned a devil with a painted face living on Hazy Mountain. Hannya was sure. She combed through every chapter and side story for any new morsel of reference or hints into more of Vainglory's subtle influence. She'd read this story far more than once or twice, so there was no doubt the story never acknowledged such a person.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

With a devil like this beside Baku, the question is: Why was she not even described during his own side story?

'Something… isn't right here.' was her conclusion.

"Who… the hell are you?" Hannya finally asked through gritted teeth.

"Noh." she said, and let triumph sit on her face without apology. "16th Invidia, and your better."

Hannya's rage came cold. Her better? A Supreme's better? Fat chance! The leg reformed and sealed with a swallow. The bones in her hands took their old shape. She rose to one knee and set her weight there like a verdict.

"My better?" she said, and showed her teeth with a wild grin. "Bold words for a lesser!"

Noh only shook her head in that patient way that invited murder. The child's blood was clearly unbalanced. The spinning petals in her eyes only showed challenge and defiance, despite the clear difference in strength.

"Even a young Supreme needs training to stand at the top," she said. "If you admit your defeat, Baku and I will hammer the crooked nails and polish the proper ones. True strength and true elegance. That's what you want, right? All devils do. To be awed by all. Even by those you deem unworthy."

The words found their mark because they were true in a way Hannya hated. The forest watched and waited to see if truth could finish what the fan had started.

But Hannya's fist had already closed around dirt.

"Kikiki. True elegance, huh?" she said softly. "Elegance these!"

She threw. Not a pebble. Not a hidden blade or spell. A palm of raw, unfettered earth straight into the face of the woman who had never had to swallow it.

A dirt clod. Yes, a dirt clod.

"Hannya skill:" she shouted. "Pocket sand!"

It wasn't the speed, far from it. It was the shamelessness. It was the way the move ignored every law of image that Noh had organized her life around. Elegance, grace, beauty. All tossed out the window in a way that made one stare at the absurdity of the choice.

Dirt struck her cheek and stuck. It stung her eyes through powder and pride, a simple evil made ruthless warcraft. Something like a memory uncoiled in her throat.

"Kabu-...!" She caught her words and swallowed them down.

For an instant she saw a boy in bright sleeves swinging through smoke and laughing at rules, and then the forest came back with the insult still on it.

Hannya did not wait for pain to make a better teacher, she snatched a rock and snapped her arm in a throw that would have impressed a lower god. The stone took the grounded fan off the hinge. The anchor jumped, tilted, and cracked. The sigil shivered and broke.

DING

[

Anchor has been destroyed.

Binding effect has ended.

]

Hannya sighed in relief at the freeing feeling and turned to mist on the breath that followed. She was gone into the trunks and the high hanging branches, a streak of black vapor dragging a ribbon of laughter behind it.

Noh's composure broke and was rebuilt in the space of a heartbeat. She wiped her face with the inside of her sleeve as if etiquette could shield the shame. Then she moved… a bit more violently than before. The fan drew white lines through living wood. Trees that had stood through harsh winters remembered how to kneel, now collapsing in mass as it followed the black mist. Each swing chopping down another objection.

In the canopy, Hannya felt the forest growing thin around her. She respected the panic enough to pick up speed.

"Oh shit, s-she's crazy!" she muttered, a little dazzled and a little thrilled. "She'll really kill me if she catches me."

she said that, but the word seemed to lack the urgency one would expect fleeing death.

The game lasted until the moon rolled high into the night sky. It lasted until the sun lit the high mountain mist again. And still, Noh hunted. Hannya learned holes and shadows were welcoming allies, along with the patient taste of dirt.

At some point, Hannya dug herself a burrow with her hands and formidable will, not fear, will. The earth held her, her pulse slowed. Her breath became the soil itself within her dirt bunker, waiting to weather the painted storm.

'She still hasn't given up?' Hannya thought, eyes open in the dark. 'And where the hell is my backer!?'

This entire time, not once had her backer come to break up the battlefield and demand compensation on her behalf. Hannya knew that old man heard this entire scrap, and clearly, he chose not to intervene.

"Usless backer! My exit strategy!" She clenched out a whisper within her burrow. She wasn't gonna bend the knee to that Painted Devil, but she couldn't escape her wrath either. She was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

She didn't expect an answer from the old man. Rage warmed her anyway. But to her surprise, the warmth changed color. Her blood climbed toward a pitch she hadn't heard in it before. Red light awoke in her skin, not aura, something like a law began to draw sigils on her body.

She rose without meaning to. The light gathered at her chest and left her as if it had been politely waiting for the right moment to go. It printed itself into the ground in front of her. A sigil in red, not Noh's door-pattern, but a call written in a voice that was not in this forest.

Hannya knew that shape. Every devil knew. A summoning.

Across the trees, Noh turned her head as if the world had rung. She blurred toward the light and found Hannya standing by it, looking at her hands like a girl who had just realized what they were for.

The chase dissolved like a sketch under rain. Noh's shoulders lowered. Her fan folded and stayed folded. Some final strictness remained in her eyes, but something else now sat beside it. Relief, annoyance, and a decision.

"It seems our game is over." Noh said. "Face the world properly, then."

She stepped near and the forest made room. From thin air, she drew out a fold of black robes and a comb that had not seen daylight in months. Hannya didn't step back. She let the older devil come into her reach. She watched closely for a blade and received cloth.

"Etiquette," Noh said, and shook the robes once to let them fall right. "Humans want posture more than promises. Demons want teeth, but they love polish on the bite. Do not wobble when you bow. Speak less than you think you need to. Name your price once and let silence raise it for you. If a priest quotes a law at you, smile like you wrote it."

"..."

Hannya stared. There was a smear of dirt at the corner of Noh's eye where a young devil had humiliated an art form. The woman spoke as if giving a temple lecture. Without asking, Noh gathered some pink hair into something stricter. Pins slid and set. One pin lingered in Noh's fingers a half second longer than the rest. It wasn't new. It didn't gleam or boast. But a faint warmth seemed to live in its spine.

"Hold still," Noh said. "Hair is a banner. Wear yours on purpose."

"..."

Hannya didn't miss the weight when the last pin settled. There was a different kind of attention in it. It wasn't hostile, but not harmless either.

"Well," Noh said. "Did you get all that? What are you waiting for? Go."

She nudged Hannya with the folded fan and looked away at the same time, as if not wanting to see whether the girl would trip at the first step. Hannya stepped into the red circle. Despite the oddness of the room shift, excitement rose like a tide she couldn't name. The forest seemed very far away.

"Who are you?" Hannya asked before fully stepping in the circle, because the question had bloomed again and because she wanted to hear the answer once more now that dirt didn't coat it.

Noh smiled then, a real one shaped by a loss that still breathed in the bones of it.

"Noh," she said. "16th Invidia."

Something in the pin warmed against Hannya's scalp, an old presence, a memory bound and given.

"And your better." Noh added, but softer now, as if the words were a quilt and not a blade.

Hannya's laugh came back honest for the first time in a day.

"Kikiki, I guess I'll remember it." she said shamelessly, and meant it more than she wanted to admit.

Light took her as if the ground had opened its eye. The summoning pulled. The circle emptied. The last thing she saw was Noh turning away to hide the fact that she watched.

The last thing Noh did was reach up to touch her own hair where a different pin had once lived.