Yamada Ieyasu

The Kuro-Akuma found himself wandering the plains of a place he did not know. However, there seemed to be a force guiding him along his path, instructing him where to walk and how long before he arrived. He staggered as he walked, as if he was not fully sure as to how his feet operated. However, after what seemed like ages of walking, he found himself at the estate of the area’s shogun.

Once he arrived, one word constantly pounded in his mind. Korosu...Korosu...Korosu! Korosu! Korosu! Korosu! This constant pounding in his mind seemed to drive him insane. He invaded the estate through the very incovert method of barging through the main entrance and beheading everyone who tried to stop from advancing. Even those that attacked him from range seemed to have their heads detached from their body as if severed with a blade.

As he advanced, the shogun’s guards and able-bodied fighters retreated to his quarters. However, it was not the shogun that was the Kuro-Akuma’s target. It was one of the culinary staff: a man of no stature whatsoever. Once the Kuro-Akuma had encountered his target, the characters ‘殺す’ were scratched into the target’s chest; and on the target’s back, the characters ‘山田’ were cut. After this, the man seemed to have burst into a pillar of black flames which consumed him until his death.

Once his target was killed, the Kuro-Akuma simply walked out of the estate with no resistance from the horrified residence and guards. The reason that he wanted to kill that man specifically was lost to him, but what he did learn was something he figured was of importance. ‘Yamada Ieyasu’, the characters carved into the man’s body, was his name.

This was the first memory the man ever recalled. Everything before that event remained obscured to him. He was unable to remember his past, or whether or not he even had one. What was clear to him, however, was the identity of his mother and his one goal: to serve her to his fullest capacity. This servitude usually came in the form of removing someone from the realm of the living.

Ieyasu resided in the spiritual plane known as Bakumonji. Unlike the majority of the spirits there, he had the capacity to exist in the mortal realm due to his half-human nature. However, his ventures there were usually limited to taking out targets that his mother had assigned to him, after which he would immediately return to his home.

The residents of Bakumonji, Ieyasu included, were subjected to its spiritual laws. One of these laws was the oneness of the spirit and the body. What this meant was that, unlike those that resided in the mortal plane, the spirit entities of Bakumonji had no separation between their soul and their body. This meant that the energy transfer inside of them could also be done by spiritual means as opposed to the ways that mortals transfer and convert energy.