When Shuten-doji first appeared, he wasn't very powerful. Humans drove him away with nothing more than ordinary rifles and cannons.
While fleeing, he ran into the Ghost Lord, a tiny member of the Ghost Clan who was stealing salted fish and had nearly been beaten to death by villagers with hoes and axes.
Shuten-doji rescued him on a whim and took him on as a subordinate.
And so the Ghost Lord became Shuten-doji's first follower, accompanying him as they fled from place to place.
Along the way, they had their disagreements and shared their laughter. They talked about their dreams beneath the night sky, faced enemies side by side, and supported and helped each other every step of the way.
Though nominally superior and subordinate, they had in truth become close friends and brothers.
They gathered a great many Monsters along the way and eventually built the Iron-Cast Palace in Hokkaido, a stronghold for Monsters. Fighting side by side, they repelled human attacks time and again, and steadily grew stronger.
By the time they came to their senses, they had gone from two wretched Monsters on the run to Great Monsters commanding tens of thousands of followers and striking terror into human hearts. They had secured a firm foothold in this world ruled by humans.
Shuten-doji and the Ghost Lord thought they could keep living happily together like this forever.
But it turned out they had both been too naive.
No organization could remain perfectly united and close-knit. That was true of humans, and it was true of Monsters.
When tensions with the outside world eased, internal conflicts began to surface.
The first conflict between Shuten-doji and the Ghost Lord was over the Iron-Cast Palace's direction. They had a serious disagreement over its path forward.
Shuten-doji never forgot the humiliation