Going Ahead and the Spider Demon

After leaving the Wisteria House, the four traveled swiftly through the mountain forest. At first, they managed to maintain a similar pace, but as the terrain grew steeper and the trees denser, the differences between them gradually became apparent.

Thanks to the steadiness of Water Breathing and his remarkable endurance, Tanjiro maintained a fairly stable pace, though the wooden box carrying Nezuko inevitably restricted his agility somewhat. Inosuke climbed and leaped across the rugged terrain like a true mountain beast. He was fast, but he often took a straight course, expending considerable energy. As for Zenitsu Agatsuma... just keeping up with the group was an exceptional feat for him. All along the way, he alternated between panting and stifled sobs. "I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die. This mountain looks so scary."

Moyu, meanwhile, moved like a silent streak of light through the forest. Combining Azure Flow Breathing's supreme perception and control of airflow with the subtle repulsion of physical resistance provided by Limitless, he moved with astonishing efficiency. A light tap of his toes on a treetop or rock sent him gliding several yards forward, landing without a sound, his breathing long and steady. He wasn't deliberately showing off; simply traveling at what he considered the most efficient speed, he gradually pulled some distance ahead of the other three.

The Six Eyes' panoramic perception swept across the surroundings like an invisible radar, revealing an unusual picture of energy in the mountains ahead. It wasn't the chilling aura of one or two Demons, but countless spots of "evil," densely interwoven like a rotting beehive. Most were faint and distorted, but several, especially those halfway up the mountain and deeper within, were so concentrated and cold that his heart sank slightly. More troubling still was the clinging, sickly sweet scent that filled the air—the smell of fresh blood mixed with the aura of death, far stronger than anything a mountain forest should normally smell of.

Too slow, Moyu judged calmly. At this rate, by the time all four of them reached the central area, the chances of the missing members surviving would probably be approaching zero. In the original story, the tragedy had already occurred by the time Tanjiro and the others went up the mountain. This time, he had set out early, and perhaps he could change something.

After passing through another stretch of forest and temporarily leaving the sounds of his companions beyond the edge of his perception, Moyu stopped on a branch of a giant tree and turned to wait.

A moment later, Tanjiro and the other two caught up, looking somewhat worse for wear. Sweat beaded on Tanjiro's forehead, Inosuke was breathing heavily, and Zenitsu leaned against a tree trunk, looking ready to collapse.

"M-Moyu, you're too fast," Tanjiro said, steadying his breathing, admiration and a hint of anxiety on his face. He had also smelled the increasingly strong ominous scent on the wind.

"Hey! Blue-eyes! Are you running so fast because you want all the credit?!" Inosuke shouted in protest, though his eyes also showed a hint of frustration at being outdone.

Ignoring their reactions, Moyu swept his gaze over the three and said directly, "The situation is worse than expected. There are an abnormal number of Demons on the mountain, and the smell of blood is strong. There's no time to lose in rescuing them."

"Huh?! Worse?!" Zenitsu's legs went weak, and he nearly sank to the ground.

"I'll go on ahead." Moyu's voice was calm but firm. "I'll head up the mountain as fast as I can, clear as many obstacles as possible, and search for the trapped members. You three don't need to force yourselves to match my speed, but catch up as quickly as you can, stay alert, and reach the mountainside without compromising your ability to fight. We'll need your strength for the battles ahead."

It was the decision he had reached after weighing his options. Rather than be slowed by the group's overall pace, he would make use of his superior mobility to clear out the lesser enemies and rescue the members ahead of time, easing the burden of a possible battle against a Lower Rank later. It would also keep Tanjiro and the others from exhausting most of their strength before reaching the central battlefield.

"Go on ahead?" Tanjiro froze, then understood Moyu's intention. Looking at Moyu's calm, impassive face, he knew this was the most reasonable arrangement under the circumstances, but letting a companion venture into danger alone...

"But, Moyu, it's too dangerous for you to go alone!"

"The sooner I reach the missing members, the better their chances of survival!" Moyu interrupted, his gaze falling on the wooden box on Tanjiro's back. "Protect Nezuko, and look after those two as well." He glanced at the trembling Zenitsu and the defiant-looking Inosuke.

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?! I don't need anyone looking after me! I'm the strongest!!" Inosuke bristled.

Moyu said no more. He simply nodded to Tanjiro. "Stay alert. If you encounter anything unusual, prioritize your own safety. I'll leave markers along the way." With that, his figure flickered, and, like mist melting into the forest, he vanished in an instant into the darker depths of the mountains, moving even faster than before.

"W-wait! Moyu!" Tanjiro reached out to call after him, but caught only a passing breeze. He clenched his fist, knowing this was no time to hesitate. "Let's pick up the pace! We have to catch up!"

"Hmph! I'm not scared!" Inosuke tossed his head and charged off in the direction Moyu had disappeared, even though he knew he couldn't possibly catch him.

"Wah... wait for me! Don't leave me alone!" Zenitsu cried, scrambling after them on hands and feet.

Having gone ahead, Moyu pushed his perception to its limit in the current environment. The Six Eyes' vision penetrated the obstructing trees, picking up signs of life, the flow of energy, and... those unnatural threads.

The higher he went, the stranger the forest became. Huge webs shimmering with a dull sheen were everywhere, some strung between trees, others spread like traps beneath the layer of dead leaves on the ground. The air reeked not only of blood, but also of a sticky, insectile stench.

Soon, he found his first target.

A young member in a Demon Slayer Corps uniform was stuck fast to an enormous web stretched between two giant trees, its diameter over three meters. He hung in midair with his arms and legs spread wide. Tough white spider silk bound his entire body, tightening the more he struggled. It had even cut into his flesh, and blood seeped slowly from the wounds. The member was unconscious, his face bluish and his breathing faint.

In the shadows at the edge of the web crouched a "thing" with a humanoid form, but on all fours, its joints bent backward. Its skin was bluish-black, its hair sparse, and it had multiple compound eyes. Slime dripped from its mouth as it stared greedily at the "prey" on the web, making a hissing sound. This was a lesser Demon forcibly transformed into a spider-like form and assigned to guard the trap.

Moyu's gaze turned cold, but he didn't even draw his blade. Appearing like a ghost just behind and to the side of the Spider Demon, he held his fingers together like a blade before it could react. A barely perceptible blue gleam traced their tips, imbued with the power of Blue, precisely severing the thickest energy connections between it and the giant web. At the same time, he pressed his other hand against the air.

The faint repulsive field of Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue acted gently upon the member.

"Pfft!"

The Spider Demon let out a piercing shriek as its connection to the web was severed, while the member was "pushed" off the extremely sticky web by an invisible force and began to fall. Moyu had already flashed beneath him and caught him, blue light flickering once more at his fingertips as he cut away the silk binding him. He quickly checked the member and found that he was weakened mainly by blood loss, mild suffocation, and toxins, but was not in immediate danger. Moyu laid him gently in a relatively safe spot beneath a tree, gave him basic treatment to stop the bleeding, and left a conspicuous small Wisteria emblem scorched into place with his Breathing Style as a marker for Tanjiro and the others following behind.

The whole process took less than five seconds. Before the Spider Demon, panicking after losing its connection to the web, could find a new target, Moyu casually crushed its head with an attack imbued with the power of Blue, reducing it to ash.

He continued up the mountain.

Similar scenes kept appearing. Some members were hanging upside down from trees, blood rushing to their heads; some were wrapped in silk cocoons and buried beneath half-rotten leaves; others were being controlled, wandering stiffly like marionettes to serve as living alarms or bait. Like an efficient clearing and rescue machine, Moyu used the Six Eyes' ability to see through energy nodes and the structure of the webs, along with the extreme speed and precise control afforded by Azure Flow Breathing, to free the trapped members and eliminate the Spider Demons, often before they even noticed him.

Most of the members he rescued were already unconscious or delirious, and the faces of the few who were still lucid bore traces of extreme fear. Judging from their fragmented mutterings and the traces at the scenes, they had not faced direct assaults so much as traps, manipulation, and strange poison attacks. It was as though the entire mountain had become a giant spider's nest, and they were flying insects that had blundered into it.

He also found several sources of the strong smell of blood. In areas where webs were especially dense, torn uniforms and great patches of blood, long since dried and blackened, remained. Clearly, some members had not lived to see rescue. With each such place he found, Moyu's gaze grew colder. Fast as he was at saving people, he could not undo tragedies that had already occurred.

Just as he cleared out the seventh Spider Demon's nest and settled two dying members in a safe place, the Six Eyes perceived an aura distinctly different from those of the lesser enemies quietly emerge from deep within the dense forest ahead and to one side.

The aura was cold and viscous, with a deliberately feigned sense of frailty. But Moyu could perceive a clear energy resonance between the malice at its core and a powerful presence he had sensed somewhere on the mountainside. The fine threads of spider silk that served as surveillance nodes and covered nearly the entire mountain forest were especially closely connected to this aura.

So, here she is. Without betraying any reaction, Moyu settled the last member down, slowly straightened, and looked toward the seemingly empty shadows.

"Rustle..."

Soft footsteps sounded, and a figure emerged from behind a tree.

She was a bewitchingly beautiful woman in a somewhat revealing dark purple dress that outlined her graceful curves. Her face was pale, but her lips were red as blood. Her long black hair hung loose, a few strands clinging to her sweat-dampened temples, making her look all the more pitiable. Her eyes were full of fear and helplessness, and her body trembled slightly like a frightened fawn.

"H-help..." Her voice trembled, thick with tears. "Please... please save me..."

She staggered a few steps toward Moyu, only to "trip" over a vine several meters away. With a startled cry, she fell to the ground, and when she raised her head, tears streamed down her face. "I... I was brought here against my will! That monster Rui... he turned us all into this! He forced us to work for him! Please, spare me! I can help you! I know where Rui is, and I know his weakness!"

Her performance was superb, rich with layers of fear, despair, pleading, and accusations against Rui. An ordinary person, especially someone who had witnessed the horrors along the way and was full of sympathy for the victims, could easily have been taken in.

Yet Moyu's Six Eyes saw a different picture: extremely fine energy threads, almost indistinguishable from the air, were wrapped around the woman. They connected not only to her limbs but also, like fiber-optic cables, continuously transmitted visual information about her surroundings toward the mountainside. Though the activity of the Demon blood in her body had been deliberately suppressed, its cold quality and its deep connection to the countless webs throughout the mountain forest were impossible to hide. In particular, beneath the dead leaves around the spot where she had seemingly fallen, several layers of transparent web traps had already been laid, coated in the strongest adhesive and laced with neurotoxins.

Eyes... and bait, too? Moyu understood. This woman was probably one of Rui's "family," tasked with watching for prey and luring them into deeper traps.

Seeing that Moyu merely watched her in silence without answering immediately, the woman looked even more panicked, tears threatening to spill. "Y-you don't believe me? I really haven't hurt anyone! Rui made me do everything! Look, I'm so weak... how could I possibly hurt those powerful swordsmen?" She tried to crawl forward, but "just happened" to avoid the edge of the web trap she had set.

Moyu finally spoke, his voice flat and utterly without inflection. "Nice acting."

Spider Sister's body stiffened for an almost imperceptible instant.

The next moment, Moyu moved. He didn't draw his blade, but vanished from where he stood in an instant.

Spider Sister's expression changed drastically, her disguise dropping at once as viciousness and shock flashed in her eyes. So fast! She hadn't even seen him move! Instinctively, she thrust both hands forward, and countless nearly transparent threads, surrounded by a faintly disorienting glow, shot from her sleeves and between her fingers. Rather than attacking directly, they instantly wove together before her into a hazy barrier that constantly refracted light and shadow, an attempt to obscure his vision and buy time. At the same time, she retreated rapidly, spraying more silk behind her in an attempt to create distance and set new traps.

"It's useless."

The cold voice sounded as though it came from right beside her ear. Moyu appeared directly behind the disorienting web barrier, as though he had passed through empty space! The threads were enough to confuse an ordinary swordsman's vision and slow his reactions, but under the Six Eyes' scrutiny, their energy structure and patterns of refraction were perfectly clear, rendering the barrier useless.

Spider Sister's pupils contracted sharply. With a scream, the nails on all ten fingers shot outward into sharp black spikes coated in viscous venom, stabbing viciously at Moyu's chest from point-blank range. At the same time, she spat out a large mass of white webbing at his face.

"Clang!"

A clear blade note rang out. Azure Star had not been fully drawn; only half its deep-blue blade was exposed. Moyu flicked his wrist, and the blade flashed like lightning, not toward Spider Sister, but through the air in several fine blue arcs too fast for the naked eye to follow.

"Slash, slash, slash—!"

The venomous web Spider Sister had spat out, her lengthened nail spikes, and the main control threads that had just formed behind her, connecting to the trees in an attempt to pull her away, were all precisely severed at the same instant! The cuts were smooth and shimmered with a faint azure light, preventing them from regenerating and reconnecting.

"Ah—!" Spider Sister let out a piercing scream. Her attack and escape route destroyed at once, she staggered backward, her eyes finally filling with genuine terror. The gap between them was too great! This swordsman was not only terrifyingly fast, but could also easily see through all her web traps and attack paths!

"Wait! Wait a moment!" She put on a pleading face again, tears and snot streaming down it. "I really was wrong! I'll help you! I really will help you deal with Rui! He's just up there! He cares a lot about his 'family.' I can take you to him, I can ambush him! Please, spare my life!"

Moyu paid her no heed and slowly drew Azure Star the rest of the way. The blade reflected the dim light of the forest, a cold blue gleam flowing along it. He walked forward one step at a time, his pace steady, but the pressure he brought with him nearly suffocated Spider Sister.

"N-no... don't! Lord Rui! Save me! You can see this, can't you?! Save me!" Seeing that begging was useless, Spider Sister broke down completely. She raised her head and screamed in sharp despair at the sky above the mountain forest, at the omnipresent web nodes through which she transmitted her view. "I'm your sister! Lord Rui! You said we were family! Don't abandon me! Save me—!"

Her voice, full of the fear of betrayal and a final plea, echoed through the mountain forest. Yet there was no response, only the rustle of wind through the leaves and the faint hissing of other Spider Demons in the distance. Through the threads that shared her vision, all that came back from the deep, chilling aura on the mountainside was... indifference.

Spider Sister's eyes went utterly dull, holding the deathly stillness of shattered hope.

Moyu's blade was already raised.

At the same time, at the entrance at the foot of the mountain.

Tanjiro, Inosuke, and Zenitsu Agatsuma finally arrived, panting, at the area where Moyu had first stopped. They also saw the first rescue marker Moyu had left and the unconscious member beneath the tree.

"Moyu saved him!" Tanjiro immediately went over to check on him and breathed a sigh of relief. "He's still alive!"

"Tch, he's fast." Inosuke looked around. The depths of the mountain forest, the increasingly strong smell of blood, and the chilling aura stirred unease even in his wild instincts, though he felt more excitement than anything else.

Ever since approaching the mountain, Zenitsu's exceptional hearing had picked up countless sounds that made his skin crawl: the faint friction of spider silk, groans of pain, the hoarse whispers of Demons, and... deep in the forest, a grating rustle like countless arthropods crawling. Now, standing at the foot of the mountain and gazing up at the dark forest that seemed to swallow all light, his accumulated fear finally erupted.

"N-n-no... no way! We can't go in!" Zenitsu clung desperately to a nearby tree, his face as white as paper and tears and snot smeared all over it. "Can you hear them?! Those sounds! There are so many Demons! And... and there's something even scarier up there! We'll die! We'll definitely die if we go in! That guy Moyu is a monster! We're not! Tanjiro! Inosuke! Let's go back! I'm begging you!"

Tanjiro looked at Zenitsu's face, twisted with fear, and knew that he wasn't simply a coward; his hearing had amplified the mountain's horrors. Tanjiro was anxious, worried both about Moyu, who had gone on ahead, and about the members who might still be alive on the mountain, but he couldn't abandon Zenitsu either.

"Zenitsu, calm down! Moyu's already gone in, and he needs backup! Those members need us too!"

"Backup? Going in there is suicide! We'd just get in the way!" Zenitsu shook his head desperately. "If you want to throw your lives away, go ahead! I'm not going! I won't go in even if it kills me!" His fear overwhelmed everything else, even his guilt toward his companions.

"Useless coward!" Inosuke roared impatiently, his twin blades clashing with a ring. "Stay here and shake, then! Tanjiro, let's go! Leave this blond weakling here by himself!"

Tanjiro looked at the frantic Zenitsu, then at the dark mountain forest, and gritted his teeth. He knew that taking Zenitsu into the mountain in his current state might be even more dangerous.

"Zenitsu," Tanjiro said, trying to keep his voice steady, "stay here and protect yourself, and... and look after the members Moyu rescued. If anything goes wrong, take them back down the mountain immediately! Inosuke and I will go on ahead!"

"T-Tanjiro..." Zenitsu looked at Tanjiro's determined eyes, shame and fear mingling as tears welled up in his own, but he couldn't get a complete sentence out.

"Come on, Inosuke!" Hesitating no longer, Tanjiro gripped his Nichirin Blade and charged into the dark mountain forest toward the second marker Moyu had left. Inosuke let out a howl and followed close behind.

Zenitsu was left alone, clinging to the tree trunk and trembling in the deepening night amid the seemingly omnipresent sounds of terror, isolated and helpless. From deep within the mountain forest, Spider Sister's final desperate scream seemed to drift faintly down on the wind, adding to the sense of anguish and foreboding.