Celtic Pantheon (2/3).

Ichigo woke up to a slightly annoyed voice.

"Ehhh, you never hold me so tightly when you sleep."

That sounded like Kuku, then who was the one sleeping on top of him? He sighed before opening his eyes. He saw a head full of white hair and two white fox ears as he looked down. He saw himself holding Inari as she slept. Then he felt a slight headache developing, probably due to all the drinking he did last night. He was also hungry and thirsty.

While he was thinking whether he should wake Inari up or not, she let out a yawn and got up, straddling him and stretching like a lazy cat. Her clothes, a simple kimono for sleepwear, barely hanging on her body. He caught a glimpse of everything before he turned his head away with his cheeks feeling warm.

"Aah! Why do you have such a reaction to seeing her half naked and not me?!" Kuku exclaimed with a pout. That seemed to wake Inari up fully, as she stopped mid stretch and went rigid. She calmly pulled her clothes back on, bent down, kissed his cheeks and went off to the bathroom. He was shocked for a moment before he pulled himself up, stretched and went to get a glass of water. Kuku was hovering over him asking him about his reaction to, what was admittedly, an amazing sight. But he had something else to do first.

Before falling asleep last night, Zangetsu had wanted to tell him something, but he was tired and slightly drunk, so he told him to wait until morning. So while he waited for Inari to come out of the bathroom, he entered his inner world. He found himself sitting on the throne in the dungeon, though it looked a bit different, he couldn't pinpoint exactly what was different but something was. Zangetsu was already there, so he asked him.

"Zangetsu, what did you want to tell me last night and is it just me or is there something different about this place?"

"That's what I wanted to tell you. For every soul you exorcised, a light source appeared in this dungeon." Zangetsu replied.

"I didn't exorcise them, I helped them move on by getting rid of their resentment after they gave me their permission." Ichigo said back absent-mindedly looking around.

"Same thing, different words. The only difference the light sources made was make this place a little brighter." Zangetsu shrugged.

"Nothing else?" Ichigo asked.

"Either nothing or the effect was so small that neither of us felt it. Exorcise more souls so we can find out!" Zangetsu 'suggested'.

"It's not exorcising! It's helping them move on!" Ichigo groaned back. He was sure that no matter how much time passed and whatever they ended up becoming in the end, this back and forth between him and Zangetsu would never end.

"And as I said, same thing, different words!" Zangetsu said with a grin.

"You wanna get your pasty white ass handed to you or something!" Ichigo shouted as he stood up from the throne. He wanted to get some exercise in.

"Try it, you stick-up-your-ass bastard!" Zangetsu replied with an eager grin. It had been a while since they fought. He was getting antsy.

"That's it! We're going to fight and how the hell do I have stick up my ass?!" Ichigo said as they moved outside the dungeon for a fight.

Their fight took a while, as always and by the time he came back outside, Inari and Kuku were ready to continue their journey. He quickly got to the bathroom, took a shower, changed his clothes and was ready to go in half an hour. They quickly booked out of their room and left the hotel, all the while the hotel staff gave them suggestive smiles. What they believed happened, didn't happen but he didn't feel any need to correct them.

It seemed that due to what happened this morning, Inari had gotten over what little hesitation she still had and was more willing to show her affection openly, rather than the hints she had been dropping before. Kuku apparently approved of this as she gave Inari a thumbs up when she thought he wasn't looking. Kuku may be a dragon older than a millennia, but she acted more like an open-minded and free-spirited university student most of the time. He didn't know how she was before being trapped for so long, but he didn't care. She didn't ask him any questions so he wouldn't either.

After the little detour, they sped up their pace a bit to reach the tomb and made it there in a few hours, but what they found there was far from what they were expecting. They were expecting humans. Security guards that had cordoned off the area and banned entrance for anyone without a pass or a guide. What they found was a barrier covering the whole tomb. A tomb that nearly encompassed 5 sq km of area. That, of course, put them on edge.

Ichigo called out Zangetsu. Inari's personal weapon was a tanto she called Sakura, which was already in her right hand. Kuku on the other hand had told them that she fought best without any 'items' and that her body was her strongest weapon. She even demonstrated that by punching the ground and creating a crater, so they didn't question her further. They moved closer and found two people, guarding the barrier.

"Devils." Inari and Kuku said at the same time.

"What are devils doing here? What about the humans that were supposed to guard this place?" Ichigo asked with a scowl, he had smelled some blood. Inari bit her lips before answering.

"Most likely dead. I smell a lot of blood in the air."

"Definitely dead. All the blood you smell belongs to humans. Look over there, you can see dead bodies." Kuku said, pointing out, what appeared to be a mound of dead bodies. As a dragon, she had the best senses out the three of them. The bodies she pointed out were wearing security guard outfits. Ichigo's scowl deepened as his eyes started to turn red from their, now usual, golden color.

"I thought I heard that the devils stopped needless killing."

"They did, but the devils themselves are divided into two factions. The New and Old devil faction. The old one believe that devils are superior to any other race and enjoy killing. They happily kill their own people, let alone what they consider the weakest and most useless species." Inari replied with a sigh. She knew he would get upset and angry at the needless deaths.

If the devils wanted something from the tomb, they could have easily hypnotized and then altered the memories of all the human present without any difficulty. They were the best at hypnosis, right below only a handful of other creatures.

"Let's go. I want to know why they would do such a thing." Ichigo said walking towards the devils. His eyes had completely turned red and black was starting to bleed into his screla. He appeared right in front of the devils, knocked one of them out using the back of his blade and asked the other one, resting Zangetsu on the devil's neck.

"What the hell are devils doing here and why did you kill all the humans."

The devil was completely taken by surprise and tried to move backwards but the sword digging into his neck stopped him. Ichigo asked the devil again.

"What the fuck are you doing here and why did you kill those humans?" He said with clenched teeth.

The devil finally seemed to understand his position and rather than giving him an answer, started to gloat.

"Who do you think you are human?! You dare raise your weapon on your superiors! I will have your head for this!!" and shouted a few more obscenities. Ichigo stood there dumbfounded at the stupidity of the devil.

Did he not see what happened to his companion? or how he was unable to react to his sudden appearance? What the hell was wrong with these devils? Ichigo simply stood there as Kuku showed up behind the devil, broke his arm, threw him down on the ground, stepped on his face and asked a question.

"Did you and yours kill those humans?" She asked that with her powers on full display. The devil finally seemed to understand that he was not in a good position and answered while stuttering.

"Y-ye-yes we did."

"Why?" She asked putting more pressure on the devil's face.

"T-they were in the way..." and before he could say anything else, Kuku crushed his face.

"Ichigo, these are the kind that treat anyone weaker than themselves, especially humans, like a virus that should be completely destroyed. They don't care about anything but themselves, not even their own family. No need to show them mercy Ichigo, they will only bite your hand in return." Kuku said solemnly. Such kind of beings have existed since the start of the world and will keep existing till it's end.

"Perhaps we can talk another time, your little show has brought some attention." Inari said as she killed the devil he had knocked out. He was a bit weirded out by how easily they had killed, but now that he was closer, he could see that the humans had not died a quick death. Their deaths were prolonged and painful. He could see that in the expression their dead faces had.

He threw a Getsuga Tenshou at the barrier before anyone could come out and destroyed it with a single strike. He was still angry and his powers had always responded to his emotions. That single wave of Getsuga had also killed a few devils running towards them while stopping the others.

As he walked, he saw that there were more bodies as he went deeper into the tomb. Most of these bodies were women and he didn't have to look very close to understand what they had gone through before they were killed. He realized that said things were probably still happening to anyone still alive. He started running to where he could feel the largest crowd and soon he came across a large hall and unfortunately, he was proven corrected.

The things happening in there were horrible. All the humans were naked, the few males were tied to different places and from what he could see, their limbs were cut of. The women were being 'played' around with like some toys. Their eyes were hollow and lifeless, while the males had already died from blood loss. There were limbs thrown around everywhere and the devils were laughing and drinking at all the misery they had caused.

He could dimly feel the other presences strewn around the place being snuffed and understood that Inari and Kuku were the ones killing the other devils. The scene in front of him had already been etched into his memory as he came to another realization. He was given access to hell for a reason and right now he was seeing a lot of reasons. He didn't wait any longer and let his hold on his powers loose. The devils finally noticed him and started making their way towards him.

They didn't get very far before a Hell Gate appeared behind him and started to open. Hundreds upon thousands of chains burst forward as each devil was impaled with dozens of chains. Their laughter quickly turned into screams of pain and despair as they were literally dragged into hell to be tortured for eternity. The few that had gotten closer to him were crushed when he released his hold.

He looked towards the surviving people and didn't know if they even wanted to be healed. They were in such a horrible condition. He decided to ask them directly and went towards one of the women. They were scared of him. That was to be expected. After all they had just seen him completely obliterate the monsters that were tormenting them. In the end, he didn't have to ask them as Inari and Kuku showed up and did it for him.

After a while, they saved anyone they could and collected all the bodies in one place. The few people they were able to save barely looked alive. Inari and Kuku both knew healing spells and did their best to heal as many as possible. After everything, they managed to save only 8 people out of nearly 100 that usually maintained this place. They erased the memories of the survivors and buried the rest. The last thing he did was find any souls and help them move on.