"So these guys don’t know either..."
Tsunokake Tatsuo let out a sigh.
The bandits had been mistaken when they thought this was an ownerless mountain.
In truth, this place belonged to Tatsuo. Under normal circumstances, no organization, bandits included, would have dared lay a hand on it.
But recently, he had left to investigate rumors about a monster, and that absence had created a gap.
Because of that gap, the bandits had been able to seize the mountain. Though that ended now.
*
"How long has it been since I was gone, and already these bastards are running wild..."
Tatsuo muttered as he looked at the bandits’ corpses. He had not shown it on his face until now, but he was in a foul mood.
In the end, another wasted trip.
He had gone all the way to the village where the rumors had spread, but he had not gotten the result he wanted.
Something’s wrong. No matter how I think about it, something’s wrong. Something definitely happened there. But why...
A strong gust of wind snapped him out of his deep thoughts.
"Hah... It’s all in the past now. Thinking about it will only give me a headache. In that case, maybe I should go see the old man before it gets too late."
By now, enough time had passed that the sun was nearly gone and night was beginning to fall.
Watching the sunset, Tatsuo started walking.
*
How long had he walked? Tatsuo looked up at the sky.
The sun had already sunk away, leaving only a yellow full moon in its place.
A full moon... The day I first met the old man, there was a full moon too.
Lost in a brief moment of sentiment, he soon arrived near the old man’s grave.
Or rather, he had been about to arrive.
Someone’s there. Quite a few, too.
He sensed several presences not far from the grave.
The place where the old man was buried was not a public cemetery.
And there was no way anyone who had not known him well in life would come visit at this hour of night.
In other words, they were likely uninvited guests.
Tatsuo strained his ears.
What reached him were people screaming, and they sounded terrified. On top of that, there was the repeated sound of weapons being swung.
Something is definitely happening.
Thinking that whatever was happening ahead might be what he had been searching for, Tatsuo kicked off the ground and broke into a run.
*
"What is this... We never heard there was a Twelve Kizuki in a place like this!!"
A man cried out in despair.
"No... impossible... Yamada... Sato-kun..."
Not far away, a woman was clutching what looked like her acquaintances as she muttered to herself.
No answer came back. Naturally so. The dead could not speak. Both of them had already become corpses.
One had his head caved in, while the other had been cut cleanly in two across the middle.
Besides them, there were several others lying on the ground, all now corpses as well.
They were all dressed alike, in black uniforms similar to gakuran, with the character for slay, 滅, emblazoned on their backs.
"The Demon Slayer Corps really is stupid! Sending nothing but ordinary members, not even a Hashira, to a place where I, Katame of the Twelve Kizuki, am waiting!!"
The one calling himself Katame shouted.
He was clearly no human.
He had only one eye where there should have been two, and from his head sprouted arms like a tree growing out of a flowerpot.
In the palms of those arms, another eye stared out from the center.
He was also far larger than an ordinary man, by enough to make him seem like he had two extra heads’ worth of height, and each of his arms looked like a hammer and a blade fused together.
He was nothing short of a monster.
"Not bad... If I keep wiping out Demon Slayers like this, I’ll become the strongest of the Lower Ranks. After that, maybe even the Upper Ranks...!!"
"Ahem... Don’t celebrate too soon. First, let’s finish this. The woman’s already completely broken down, so you’re next."
Katame raised the hammer-like arm high. His target was the trembling man.
"Aaaaaaah!!!"
The man screamed and shut his eyes.
...?
The attack that seemed about to come crashing down never arrived.
Slowly, he opened his eyes. Outside, darkness had already swallowed everything, so nothing blocked his view.
"Huh?"
The word slipped out before he could stop it. That was how unreal the scene before his eyes felt.
The hammer-like hand of the blood demon that had been about to strike him was gone. More precisely, it had been severed, blood spraying from the cut as if something had sliced it off.
His gaze shifted slightly. What he saw was a man.
A guandao?
The man was holding a guandao. Blood stained the blade, as if to prove that this was the one who had cut off the demon’s arm.
"What’s this... A new Demon Slayer?"
Katame looked utterly unconcerned despite his severed arm.
"...Hold on. You look strangely familiar...?"
As he spoke, the bleeding from the severed arm stopped, and regeneration began almost immediately.
"I finally found you."
Tatsuo’s flat voice carried a strange edge of excitement.
"You ran well back then, monster. Come on, then. I’m your opponent now."
Tatsuo leveled his guandao at Katame.
"You... You were that human from back then!!!"
Veins bulged on Katame’s forehead.
"Ran away, did I? Don’t make me laugh, human! I didn’t leave because of you! I left because of the sun!!"
"You talk too much. Shut up and come at me..."
"...Now that I think about it, I only called you a monster. I never got your name. Mine is Tsunokake Tatsuo."
Katame’s face twisted.
"Human! You really do have a talent for pissing people off!! Fine. I’ll tell you as a gift on your way to the afterlife!!"
"I am Katame, the number 6 of the Lower Rank among the Twelve Kizuki!!!"
Katame finished speaking and immediately kicked off the ground.
His regenerated hammer arm came crashing down toward Tatsuo’s head.
The hammer slammed into the ground with a deafening boom, shaking the earth.
As if proving its power, the surrounding trees trembled violently and spat out their leaves.
The force was enough to leave nothing behind if it had struck an ordinary person.
But Katame could not let his guard down.
There’s no impact.
Katame lifted his hammer.
I definitely didn’t feel it connect. But this bloodstain...!!
The thought did not last long. The answer was obvious: along the bloodstain, his hammer had been cut vertically in two.
The split hammer sprayed blood from the severed edge.
The arm attached above his head turned to look behind him. What it saw was Tatsuo, his guandao resting on his shoulder.
"Sorry. You’d just finished regenerating, and I cut you again."
Veins began to rise on Katame’s head and body.
"It sounds to me like you’re the one with the long tongue!!!"
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