“Could it be that the ‘gift’ was just telling him his name?”
The blood demon couldn’t understand Tatsuo’s behavior at all, offering up his own name as some kind of present.
It was clearly the act of a human whose way of thinking was completely off. With that judgment, the blood demon prepared for the battle ahead.
“Still, at least he isn’t attacking together with the other one.”
He had been acting composed in front of Tatsuo, but inside he was on edge.
Honestly, Tatsuo alone was troublesome enough that he couldn’t confidently say he had a winning chance. And then there was that human woman who had appeared behind him.
He was certain that if the other human, the one who seemed to be the main threat, joined in as well, he would lose.
“If it’s just this one guy, I can still do something.”
Quietly, he studied Tatsuo.
Tatsuo had already taken considerable damage from the technique that contained his trump card.
Parts of his clothes were stained red. It was obvious the blood had seeped out from wounds.
Human stamina was finite. A wounded body would keep draining stamina at a steady rate.
The greatest threat that man possessed was speed.
It was a speed even someone like him, with enough power to stand among the Upper Ranks, could lose track of if he wasn’t focused.
But speed meant nothing once stamina ran low.
In other words, the posture he needed to take was defense.
The slashes that kept Tatsuo’s regeneration in check were irritating, but he needed to drag things out somehow with regeneration and Blood Demon Art until the man hit his limit.
He reached into the memories of the humans sacrificed for the ritual.
What he needed now was a way to fight in this situation.
If he had still been the former Lower Rank Two, Hichikyu, it would have been impossible. But he had organized and combined knowledge to complete the ritual, and now it was possible.
His true nature was a book—a vessel that recorded and stored knowledge. Using that trait, he would create his own unique Blood Demon Art.
[Blood Demon Art - Knowledge Devouring Copy]
Among the humans used in the ritual were Demon Slayers, and even Hashira. He would drag out the combat knowledge in their minds and devour it.
An enormous amount of knowledge flooded into his head.
Perfect. This was enough.
“Looks like you were doing something. Are you done preparing?”
“What? You knew?”
“Of course. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“...I’ve given up on understanding you. But thanks to you, my preparations are finished.”
The blood demon, now having given up on understanding Tatsuo altogether, answered.
At the same time, countless tree roots burst up from beneath Tatsuo’s feet and lashed out.
It was a surprise attack from the blood demon.
Of course, the attack was cut down before it could reach Tatsuo’s body and fell to the ground.
Before the severed roots even hit the earth, Tatsuo’s figure vanished.
“Dangerous!”
Using the knowledge he had devoured, the blood demon twisted his body sharply to the side.
Something flashed past him, and his arm was sliced off as he shot up into the air.
“He got faster?”
If this had been him before swallowing that knowledge, the attack would have taken his head off in one stroke.
He had no time to think. He spread his wings at once and soared into the sky.
[Blood Demon Art - Hundred Blood Light Orbs, Reforged]
Rising into the air, he formed blood orbs around him and fired them at Tatsuo.
The blood orbs exploded with light the moment they touched the ground, but Tatsuo evaded every single one.
“Yes! Keep dodging like that and waste your stamina!”
Controlling the blood orbs and the tree roots with both hands, he pressed Tatsuo hard.
Every attack slammed into the ground, producing massive explosions and clouds of dust.
When the dust cleared, Tatsuo was nowhere to be seen.
“I knew I had to watch for this!”
The blood demon flapped his wings and dropped his body downward.
At the same time, a blade of light flashed over his head.
He spun around and threw out a fist. It collided with the light and sent it flying far away.
Tatsuo had hidden himself in the dust created by the attack and launched an assault from nearby trees.
But the blood demon had predicted it and prepared to counter in advance.
“!!!”
Suddenly, the blood demon felt a stab of pain and his body tilt sideways as he began to fall.
He looked back. Where his wings should have been, only the wing roots remained, cracking as they sprayed blood.
He had thought he’d avoided the attack completely, but he hadn’t.
His heavy body hit the ground with a thud.
Looking forward, he saw Tatsuo rushing in so fast that only afterimages remained.
[Blood Demon Art - Blood Hair Shield, Reforged]
[Heaven-Splitting Breathing, Second Form - Heavenly Body Piercing Strike]
Three layers of protection, thicker than before by far, wrapped around the blood demon.
But Tatsuo’s attack charged in with the momentum to pierce even that.
Tatsuo’s technique and the blood demon’s technique collided.
With that impact, two layers of the shield shattered in an instant.
Cracks began to spread through the last remaining layer as well.
“At this rate, it’ll break through!!”
Instinctively, he thrust his arms forward.
Tatsuo’s strike, which had already pierced the final shield, stopped only after drilling through the blood demon’s outstretched hands.
Tatsuo then began pouring strength into the blow, trying to cleave through the blood demon’s neck along with the hands he had pierced.
The blood demon also gathered all the strength in his body to stop him.
“Ngh...!”
“Uoooooh!!!”
Tatsuo’s faint groan and the blood demon’s thunderous shout.
The two beings, each refusing to give an inch, crashed together in a fierce struggle.
It was the blood demon who broke the deadlock.
[Blood Demon Art - Torrential Blood Wave, Reforged]
Behind the blood demon, a surging wave of blood began to form.
But instead of spreading outward, the wave kept swelling in place.
“He’s not releasing it—he’s compressing it to make it explode!”
The swollen blood wave began to shine.
“I can just regenerate! I’ll turn this crisis into an opportunity and wipe you out in one shot!”
At last, the compressed Blood Demon Art burst apart in a massive explosion.
*
With the explosion, Kocho Kanae kicked off the ground and ran.
“That was a mistake! So he had an attack like that... Then that first explosion must have been the same thing.”
Kocho Kanae regretted her decision.
For some reason, she had let Tsunokake Tatsuo fight alone under the pressure of his presence.
Her first impression of him, while watching the battle, had been one of shock.
The strength of the blood demon he was fighting was hard to judge in detail without engaging it directly, but even so, she could say with certainty that it was the strongest demon she had ever seen.
That demon was definitely Lower Rank Two. The kanji for Lower Rank Two had been engraved in its eyes in formal numerals.
But its physical abilities and the destructive power of its Blood Demon Art were absolutely not those of a Lower Rank.
Had she realized that under normal circumstances, Kanae would have joined the fight.
But she couldn’t.
Tatsuo’s skill surpassed her imagination.
Powerful attacks had flown at him, yet he had cut through them as if they were nothing.
His physical ability and the precision of his Breathing were not those of an ordinary Demon Slayer.
Especially his speed. It was enough to make her wonder whether she could even keep up.
The rumor that he possessed strength rivaling a Hashira was no lie. It was true.
What surprised her most was his Breathing.
It was a Breathing style she had never seen before, despite how clearly trained it was.
There were the five major foundational schools of Breathing, along with many derivative styles, but she had never felt anything like this before.
It was as if the style was infused with the will to smash and tear apart anything that stood in its way.
It was only natural that she wanted to know who he really was.
*
Kanae entered the thick dust.
She turned her head this way and that, trying to locate Tatsuo.
“There’s too much dust. I won’t be able to find him like this.”
[Flower Breathing, Second Form - Honorable Dancing Peony]
Kanae drew her Nichirin sword and unleashed a series of slashes that seemed to trace a sphere.
The wind pressure from the strikes blew the surrounding dust away.
After she sheathed her sword and looked down at the ground, she found marks as if something had been swept across it.
“Looks like he flew off in that direction.”
With that thought, her body moved.
She dashed forward for a moment, then suddenly sensed something nearby.
“I’ll borrow it for a moment.”
“Huh?!”
Something brushed past her side.
She reached for the Nichirin sword at her waist to respond, but her hand cut through empty air.
When she looked down, the sword that should have been there was gone.
“My Nichirin sword... when did he—?”
Kanae was still reeling from the disappearance of her sword when—
Shrrk.
—the sound of something being cut came from somewhere nearby.
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