"It won't," Tanjiro said, trying to reassure him without turning around.
Whether Zenitsu believed that was another matter.
The two continued deeper into the mansion, following Alex's guidance through the dim, oppressive corridors. The air inside felt wrong. Every room seed to be holding its breath, waiting.
Tanjiro stepped into a bedroom first.
The instant he crossed the threshold, the sound of a drum echoed sowhere in the distance.
Tanjiro spun around at once.
The door they had just entered through was gone.
The drumming did not stop.
With each beat, the room around him seed to twist and change, as if the entire mansion were being rearranged. Yet after only a mont, Tanjiro realized that was not quite right.
It was not the room that had moved.
It was him.
Once the shifting ceased, he stood still, forcing himself to think.
The room changes whenever the drum sounds... No. I'm the one being moved.
His nose twitched, trying to sort through the scents now mixed together in the air.
From within the blade, Alex warned him, "Watch the doorway. The demon is coming."
"I understand."
Tanjiro imdiately drew Asuramaru and took a two-handed stance, eyes fixed on the open doorway ahead. He could hear footsteps approaching now. Along with them ca the unmistakable reek of a demon—blood, rot, and sothing deeper, older.
His grip tightened.
Which made Alex grimace inwardly.
"Brat, your palms are sweating all over the hilt," he complained. "It's disgusting."
Under the circumstances, though, he could only endure it.
Then the figure appeared.
A huge silhouette filled the corridor beyond the door.
It was Kyogai.
The forr Lower Rank Six was massive, broad-shouldered and thickly built, with long, smooth hair hanging over his shoulders. Strange markings marred his face, and his bloodshot eyes glead in the dark. Drums were embedded in his body—on his limbs and across his torso—giving him an appearance as grotesque as it was unnatural.
He bared his fangs and snarled, "Damn it. One of them got away because of those pests. Why does everyone insist on barging into soone else's ho without permission?"
His voice rose with fury.
"It's infuriating!"
He glanced down the corridor, irritated and restless.
"Where did those two run off to?"
And then Tanjiro, in all his straightforward honesty, announced himself.
"I am Tanjiro of the Demon Slayer Corps," he said clearly. "And I am here to slay you."
Inside the blade, Alex nearly died of frustration.
Could you be any more direct?
Ambush him! Sneak attack! Cut first, introduce yourself later!
Still, the declaration had one benefit.
Kyogai turned fully toward him.
His crimson eyes swept over Tanjiro, then paused on the hanafuda earrings. Sothing changed in his expression.
"That appearance... those earrings..." he muttered.
Then his voice sharpened.
"So it's you. You're that one."
His face twisted.
"If I kill you, I'll win that lord's approval. I'll return to the Twelve Kizuki!"
As he spoke, one of his blood-red eyes rolled, revealing a blue iris underneath. Written clearly on that iris were the words:
Lower Six
But two scars slashed across the mark.
The sight made Tanjiro's expression change.
He already knew what the Twelve Kizuki were—Muzan Kibutsuji's twelve strongest demons. He had not expected to encounter one here.
Even if Kyogai had fallen, even if he was no longer an active mber, that title alone made him the most dangerous demon Tanjiro had faced so far besides Muzan himself.
Tanjiro did not waste another second.
He tightened both hands on Asuramaru.
"Water Breathing, Fourth Form: Striking Tide!"
Water surged around the blade as Tanjiro launched himself forward, the slash descending straight toward Kyogai's neck.
But just before it could connect, Kyogai raised his right hand and struck the drum on his left shoulder.
The beat rang out.
At once, the room flipped violently to the left.
Tanjiro, caught midair, lost all sense of balance and went hurtling sideways toward the wall. By contrast, Kyogai stood unmoved in the corridor, as steady as if nothing had happened.
"Die, insect."
He struck the drum on his abdon.
Another beat thundered through the room.
Tanjiro sensed the danger a heartbeat before it arrived and twisted out of the way. The space where he had been a mont ago was shredded by three invisible slashes, as if so enormous beast had raked its claws across the floorboards.
Fast.
Almost perfectly synchronized with the drumbeat.
And yet his body, strengthened as it was now, could still react in ti.
Tanjiro steadied himself and began analyzing imdiately.
Inside the blade, Alex was thinking too. He rembered enough about Kyogai to understand the basic shape of the fight, but he deliberately held his tongue.
Kyogai was dangerous, yes—but not beyond Tanjiro.
This was a good chance for him to sharpen himself.
So Alex watched.
Kyogai pounded the drums embedded in his body one after another, twisting the room and launching invisible attacks in rapid succession. Tanjiro dodged, adjusted, observed. For several monts, neither side gained a clear advantage.
Within the sword, Alex watched the clash unfold and found himself feeling a flicker of pity for Nezuko.
By the ti this was over, the poor girl in the box was probably going to be shaken half to death.
...
Elsewhere in the mansion, Zenitsu had been separated the instant the room shifted.
He was now running around the vast house like a lost ghost, tears streaming down his face.
"Tanjiro! Tanjiro, where are you?!" he cried. "Didn't you say you'd protect ? How am I supposed to survive on my own?!"
His voice cracked into a whine.
"I'm so scared... I'm so scared!"
In full panic, he flung open a door at random—
—and found himself staring straight at a burly figure with a boar's head and a body built like a monster.
The boar-headed figure turned at the sa mont.
Zenitsu nearly died on the spot.
"A boar-headed monster!"
He scread so loudly the house itself seed to shake.
The "monster," anwhile, simply looked at him, then moved in a blur and rushed straight past him without a second glance.
Zenitsu was left standing alone in the doorway, knees shaking so hard they nearly buckled.
"T-Tanjiro..." he whimpered. "Where are you? I really can't do this without you!"
He spent a few more monts spiraling into hysteria before sohow dragging himself onward.
At the end of another corridor, he found yet another door.
After a long, miserable hesitation, he opened it.
Inside was a boy clutching a drum, staring back at him in terror.
The boy's hand was already poised to strike the drum in his arms, but when he saw that Zenitsu was human, he froze.
Zenitsu, on the other hand, reacted as if he had found a savior sent from heaven.
He rushed over in a blur of yellow, crying shalessly.
"I finally found soone! Can you protect ?!"
The boy could only stare.
"Huh?"
...
Back in another room of the mansion, Tanjiro and Kyogai were still locked in battle.
But by now, Tanjiro had already begun piecing together the structure of Kyogai's Blood Demon Art.
The drums embedded in his body were triggers.
The drum on the left shoulder rotated the room to the left.
The one on the right shoulder rotated it to the right.
The drum on his abdon released those three invisible Wind Claw slashes.
And the drums on his thighs seed to control forward and backward movent within the room.
Once he understood the pattern, Kyogai no longer seed as impossible as he had at first.
.....
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
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