The Boar-Headed Boy and the Collapse of the Drum Mansion

The heavy wooden door shattered beneath Moyu's foot, sending splinters flying. Beyond it lay an unusually spacious room, almost entirely empty. In the center stood a tall demon with bulging muscles and a somewhat sickly, gaunt frame, his back to the door. The skin of his bare upper body was an unhealthy grayish white. Most striking of all, three drums of different sizes were embedded irregularly in his back, their dark red surfaces looking as though they had been made from tanned human skin.

Former Lower Rank Six, Kyogai.

At the sound of the door breaking, Kyogai slowly turned around. His face bore an artist's madness and the venomous resentment of a man whose talents had gone unrecognized. His fingers tapped irritably on a small drum at his waist.

Boom!

With the drumbeat, the floor beneath Moyu suddenly bulged upward, and the entire room abruptly folded in half like a book! An ordinary person would already have been crushed by the sudden spatial distortion.

But with the Six Eyes anticipating the attack, Moyu had leaped up a moment earlier, his azure eyes calmly surveying the changes in the room's spatial structure. Using Flowing Cloud Step, he touched down lightly on invisible force-field nodes in the air, avoiding the attack as lightly as a feather.

"Another one... another fool who can't recognize quality!" Kyogai roared, pounding the drums on his back with both hands. "My art! My Blood Demon Art is the strongest! Why... why did they kick me out of the Twelve Kizuki?!"

Boom! Boom! Boom!

As the drumbeats rang out in succession, the room's four walls, ceiling, and floor began to move, rotate, and press inward at a frantic pace! At one moment a wall became the floor; at another, an abyss opened in the ceiling. The entire space became a giant, ever-changing, deadly puzzle cube.

Moyu darted through the warped space, each movement landing him precisely on the only safe spot. The Six Eyes worked at high speed, analyzing the relationship between each drumbeat and the spatial changes.

Left drumbeat, the space flips ninety degrees vertically... upper right drumbeat, localized spatial compression... the pattern isn't complicated, just highly variable in its combinations. Moyu quickly reached a conclusion. He did not rush to attack, instead drawing steadily closer to Kyogai as he dodged, observing the rhythm and force of his drumming.

Just as Moyu was about to get within three meters of Kyogai—

"Boar rush—!!"

The wall to the side burst apart, and a wild figure wearing a boar's head mask, bare-chested and wielding two serrated Nichirin Blades, charged in like a cannonball. Without stopping to assess the situation, he crossed his blades and slashed viciously at Moyu, who was closest! His charge was ferocious, brimming with savage power.

Inosuke Hashibira!

Moyu frowned slightly. The Six Eyes had already picked up the sudden energy fluctuation. He knew that boar was always this reckless, but causing trouble at a moment like this was truly annoying.

"You're in the way."

Moyu did not even draw his blade. Just as Inosuke's two swords were about to reach him, he turned slightly and reached forward with his left hand, seemingly at random. It slipped precisely through the blind spot between the crossed blades and pressed against the space between Inosuke's chest and abdomen.

"Limitless, minor application—repulsion."

A gentle yet irresistible burst of immense force erupted instantly. Inosuke felt as though he had slammed into a rubber wall of astonishing elasticity. All the force of his charge bounced back at him, sending him flying backward faster than he had come. He passed through the hole he had smashed in the wall and landed far out in the clearing beyond the mansion, thoroughly dazed by the fall.

"You bastard with the blue eyes! How dare you look down on me!!" Inosuke's furious roar drifted faintly in from outside.

The split-second interruption stunned Kyogai for a moment, only to make him angrier. "Ignoring me! You're all ignoring my art!" He beat the drums even more frantically, and the room's distortions suddenly accelerated.

At that moment, Tanjiro appeared from another direction, carrying the weakened A Qing on his back. "Moyu!" he called anxiously. "Are you all right? I just heard a huge commotion..."

"I'm fine." Moyu dodged a crack opening in the floor and spoke rapidly to Tanjiro. "There's no problem, Tanjiro. Zenitsu and the boy named Shoichi are near the storeroom to the southeast. Zenitsu might be exhausted. Take A Qing and Zenitsu out of the house first. I'll deal with the demon here."

Tanjiro looked at Moyu, who remained unruffled amid the frantically twisting space, then thought of his companions who needed help. He gritted his teeth. "All right! Moyu, be careful! I'll come right back to help you!" He had confidence in Moyu's strength; right now, the most important thing was ensuring the safety of the innocent and his companions.

Carrying A Qing on his back, Tanjiro quickly headed toward Zenitsu, guided by his sense of smell.

Only Moyu and Kyogai remained in the room.

"Now it's quiet." Moyu fixed his gaze on Kyogai again, a cold glint flashing through his azure eyes. "I've seen through your Blood Demon Art."

Kyogai was enraged by Moyu's gaze, which seemed capable of seeing through everything. "Seen through it? Arrogant fool! In my Drum Mansion, I am the master! Die!"

He unleashed his full strength, his hands blurring as he struck the three main drums on his back at once!

Boom! Boom! Boom—!!!

The room's three-dimensional space was thrown into complete disarray in an instant! Up, down, left, right, front, and back lost all meaning. Countless walls and floors pressed and ground toward Moyu from every direction like the teeth of a monstrous beast, intent on crushing him completely!

Yet under the absolute insight of the Six Eyes, the flow of energy and spatial nodes within the seemingly chaotic attack were perfectly clear.

Moyu moved. No longer dodging, he charged straight into the densest part of the attack.

"Azure Flow Breathing, Zero Form, First Style: Vortex Slash, modified."

Azure Star left its sheath, but its blade did not blaze with light. All the azure Cursed Energy was compressed and contained to an extreme, forming a rapidly spinning edge of energy along the blade, so fine it was almost invisible. Wherever the blade passed, the solid obstacles bearing down on him seemed to be drawn and deflected by an invisible force. One after another, they swept past Moyu, unable to touch him in the slightest. This combined the "rotation" of Vortex Slash with the "guidance" of Mirror Dissection for defense and breaking through.

Like a fish swimming upstream, Moyu traced a bizarre curve through the collapsing space, pierced every obstacle in an instant, and appeared before Kyogai.

Kyogai's pupils contracted sharply, and terror appeared on his face for the first time. He wanted to retreat, wanted to beat the drums and alter the space, but Moyu was too fast!

"Your drumming is too loud."

Moyu's voice was calm and even, but Azure Star flashed through his hand like lightning.

"Azure Flow Breathing, Zero Form, Second Style: Mirror Dissection."

The blade flashed, not toward Kyogai's neck, but precisely onto the core energy node on his back connecting the three main drums. It was the source of Kyogai's Blood Demon Art and the center of his spatial manipulation.

"Crack..."

A faint sound rang out, like glazed glass shattering. Countless fine cracks appeared across the three dark red drums on Kyogai's back, along with the surrounding skin and muscle, as though an invisible force were dismantling them from within.

"No... impossible... my power..." Kyogai felt his connection to the mansion rapidly vanishing. He tried to struggle in terror, but the backlash from his Blood Demon Art left him unable to move.

Moyu gave him no chance, turning his blade.

"Water Breathing, First Form: Water Surface Slash."

It was a plain, straightforward slash, yet it held precision and power honed through countless repetitions. The blade flashed past, and Kyogai's head flew through the air, an expression of disbelief on his face. His body began to turn to ash.

[Defeated Former Lower Rank Six, Kyogai. Obtained Coins +8000, Lower Rank Blood Sample ×1.]

With Kyogai's death, the Blood Demon Art sustaining the mansion's strange space instantly dissipated.

Rumble—!!

Deprived of the supernatural power holding it together, the already dilapidated ancient mansion groaned under the strain. Beams and pillars snapped, walls crumbled, and the whole building began to collapse!

Just then, Tanjiro rushed back to the doorway. "Moyu!"

"Go!" Moyu barked. He flashed forward and grabbed Tanjiro by the arm. Like two streaking shadows, they narrowly burst out of the mansion an instant before it collapsed completely.

Boom—!!!

A great cloud of dust billowed into the sky as the ancient Drum Mansion was reduced to rubble.

Moyu and Tanjiro landed in the clearing, breathing slightly hard. But before they could even be glad they had escaped with their lives, they saw a scene nearby that made their blood pressure soar:

Inosuke was furiously punching and kicking Zenitsu, who sat slumped on the ground. Though Zenitsu's face was battered and bruised, he clung tightly to the wooden box containing Nezuko that Tanjiro had entrusted to him. No matter how Inosuke beat him, he refused to let go!

"Let go of that box, you lightning-struck idiot! There's definitely a demon in there! I can smell it! Let me chop it up!" Inosuke roared, kicking Zenitsu in the back again.

"N-no! Tanjiro said... this box is more important than his life! I promised to protect it..." Zenitsu cried, clutching the box even tighter and shielding it with his body.

"Tanjiro! Moyu! You finally made it out!" Seeing the two of them was like seeing his saviors, and Zenitsu cried even harder. "This wild boar's gone crazy! He's trying to take the box!"

Tanjiro's eyes nearly burst with rage. "Stop it!" he roared.

Moyu's gaze turned cold in an instant. He flickered behind Inosuke and, before Inosuke could react at all, delivered a sharp side kick squarely to his ribs.

Crack! The sound of breaking bone rang out clearly.

"Aagh!" Inosuke screamed as the kick sent him flying several meters. He crashed heavily to the ground and could not get up for the moment.

Moyu lowered his leg and looked coldly at Inosuke, who was curled up in pain. His voice was as cold as ice:

"The first rule of the Demon Slayer Corps strictly forbids drawing a blade against a comrade. If there's a next time, it won't be just a few ribs that break."

His words carried unquestionable authority and icy anger. The air itself seemed to freeze. Tanjiro hurried over to check on Zenitsu and the wooden box, while Inosuke lay on the ground, glaring in shock and anger through the holes in his boar's head mask at the blue-eyed man who had severely injured him with a single move.