Oni no Chouten

Oni no Chouten behaves with an unsettling combination of playfulness, detachment and absolute authority. He treats extraordinary events as games, forcing those seeking him to navigate bizarre puzzles rather than approaching them through ordinary conversation. His manner can appear almost childlike despite the immense consequences attached to his decisions.

He does not display conventional human morality toward either species. Suffering caused by the arrangements he approves does not appear to trouble him, and he treats the creation of a Promise as a transaction. Once someone reaches him and asks for a new agreement, the request can be granted, but he determines a corresponding reward or price.

His demands are deliberately personal. The price attached to a Promise is connected to something particularly precious to the person making it, allowing him to enforce agreements in ways that reach far beyond an ordinary political treaty.

Oni no Chouten possesses abilities unlike those of ordinary demons. Within his realm he can manipulate space, time, perception and physical form. The environments surrounding the Seven Walls can change without obeying normal geography or chronology, and those entering them can experience transformations and impossible locations.

He can alter his own appearance, communicate through unusual means and transport individuals across enormous distances or between worlds. His apparent command over the structure of reality is what makes a Promise possible: an agreement made through him can establish supernatural rules affecting humanity and demonkind on a global scale.

He is responsible for enforcing both the original Promise and the later agreement sought by Emma, demonstrating that even a thousand-year division between the Human and Demon Worlds can be rewritten through his power.

Oni no Chouten is initially known indirectly through demon religion and references to the Promise. Mujika and Sonju help establish that breaking or replacing the existing agreement means confronting an authority far beyond ordinary demon rulers.

A thousand years before the main story, Julius Ratri reaches Oni no Chouten with the demon leadership to end the war between humans and demons. The resulting Promise divides the world between the two species, prohibits ordinary hunting across that divide and permits the creation of human farms within the Demon World. Julius and his descendants are made responsible for maintaining the arrangement.

Emma later encounters Oni no Chouten at Cuvitidala and realizes that reaching him again offers a way to replace the existing Promise. She and Ray undertake the ritual associated with the Seven Walls, but Emma ultimately reaches him alone. He agrees to her proposed new Promise while demanding a reward in return. The eventual price is Emma's memories of her family and her separation from them after entering the Human World.

Emma becomes one of the few humans to reach Oni no Chouten personally. He accepts her request for a new Promise but takes her memories of her family as its price.

Julius Ratri negotiates the original Promise with Oni no Chouten a thousand years earlier and is made responsible, along with his descendants, for maintaining it.

Ray accompanies Emma through much of the Seven Walls trial, but he does not reach the final meeting with Oni no Chouten.

Mujika belongs to the old religious tradition connected to demon beliefs about the divine and helps Emma understand the significance of the Promise.

Sonju follows the old faith and recognizes Oni no Chouten as an authority whose arrangement governs the divided worlds.