A Sudden Whim's [Absolute] vs. Dohi's Steadfast Defense

"Sigh..."

A sigh drifted over abruptly...

The demon's internal alarm bells rang wildly, and he instinctively turned his head... that boy wearing a pair of hanafuda earrings had appeared behind him at some unknown moment, as if by some eerie trick.

He was sitting squarely on the demon's back.

"Friend, would you mind letting him go?"

"This younger brother of mine, he's a bit of a fool, but his heart is in the right place. If you really choke him to death, he won't be fresh to eat anymore, will he?"

"! When did he appear? Why didn't I sense him at all?" Dohi was shocked.

In his previous life, he had been a chef, long accustomed to the kitchen, and his sense of smell was sharper than an ordinary person's. After being turned into a demon in the second year of the Taisho era, he had undergone another round of enhancement.

He could not only identify the location of prey through the scent of the human body, but also accurately grasp the escape route of humans through the aura radiating from their bodies.

But tonight, his nose had failed him!

"You bastard, you don't have a scent at all! Are you even human?!" Dohi lashed out with a claw at Roy.

A gust of wind brushed his face, and he could even smell the nauseating stench of blood from the demon's claws.

Roy sidestepped, sliding along Dohi's arm to his armpit, reached out, grabbed Tanjiro by the collar, and hauled him up from the ground.

"Cough... cough... cough..." Once saved, Tanjiro clutched his throat, gasping for air.

The boy's face was blue, and he was too ashamed to look at Roy.

He was filled with constant regret...

I'm so useless. In the end, I still have to rely on Nii-san to save me...

"Tanjiro, when are you going to toughen up?"

Roy flicked his foot, picked up the axe Tanjiro had dropped on the ground, and, pretending not to see his dejected expression, shoved the axe back into his hands and said, "Continue."

Tanjiro: "Huh?"

Before he could even process it, he received another kick to the backside, sending him charging toward Dohi once more.

"A battle you requested yourself must be finished by yourself..."

Roy's words followed Tanjiro's retreating back, echoing through the quiet shrine...

Yet, to Dohi's ears, they were extremely grating!

He was no fool; having "plowed" this mountain adjacent to Mount Sagiri for so many years, he relied on two things: cunning!

Through his previous probing, Dohi had judged that the greenhorn with the axe was no threat; the one standing behind him was!

He immediately focused ninety percent of his attention on Roy, flashed forward, leaped directly over Tanjiro's head, and swiped at Roy's face!

"Whoosh—"

Roy shifted horizontally, dodging Dohi's strike.

Seeing he had missed, Dohi adjusted his strategy in mid-air, turned, and delivered a side kick, his massive demon foot inches away from the other man's face.

As a result, Roy leaned back with ease, ducking under the blow.

"Damn it! I can't track his movement path at all!"

"Why..."

"Why do you have no scent?"

Dohi couldn't understand!

Having missed twice... he flashed again, dodging a desperate slash from Tanjiro behind him, and leaped backward several times to put distance between himself and the Kamado brothers.

Zetsu: Tighten and isolate all "aura" and "scent" from the body, minimizing one's presence to the extreme.

Roy, through the notes recorded by Jager, had imagined sealing his pores, naturally cutting off the channels for "aura" and "scent" to flow to the outside world.

It was perfectly normal that Dohi hadn't sensed him.

"Yeah... Nii-san, how come I can't smell your scent either..."

Dohi's anomaly was seen by Tanjiro. The iron-headed boy had two most famous traits... one, an iron head, daring to compare skull hardness with demons; two, a keen sense of smell, able to smell not only the scent on humans and demons but even the faint traces left behind on objects.

He gripped his axe, quietly retreated to Roy's side, sniffed carefully, and soon noticed something strange.

"No... Nii-san still has a scent, it's just much fainter..."

He really did have the nose of a dog...

Tanjiro was right. Roy hadn't mastered Zetsu. He wasn't Gon, who had grown up in the wild and naturally understood how to restrain his aura. After opening his aura nodes and receiving guidance from Wing and pressure from Hisoka, he had quickly grasped the technique of Zetsu. He had truly achieved—"isolating from nature, becoming a self-contained entity."

However—

Inspired by the trick of "walking on water," Roy had a sudden idea: he thinned the aura attached to the soles of his feet into a film, temporarily wrapping his pores. This blocked the aura radiating to the surface of his body. Of course, the drawback was also obvious—

The film was pressed against his skin, exposed to the outside, and would naturally emit a faint trace of aura.

It was just that this aura was easily masked by the smell of blood; unless one had an exceptionally developed sense of smell, it was impossible to detect.

"Is now really the time to be spacing out?"

"Watch your right..."

Two flames of "Nen" ignited within Roy's pupils, and through [Gyo], he caught Dohi lunging in once again!

He reached out and yanked Tanjiro...

Tanjiro's body tilted, and taking advantage of the momentum, he swung his axe fiercely to the right!

The glint of the axe sliced through the night sky, trailing a chilling arc of light that cut through the wind and snow, aiming straight for Dohi's abdomen...

"Squelch—" Blood sprayed out, and intestines spilled onto the ground...

Dohi let out a miserable shriek, leaped backward, and tumbled away once more. After landing, he stared fixedly at Roy, his expression exceptionally ferocious!

Damn it, if I don't get rid of this guy, I'll never have a chance. Does this really mean I have to abandon this "Dojo"?

To become a god... to become an ancestor. Since gods can have divine palaces, why can't demons have demon halls?

Dohi had heard that the supreme lord possessed an incredibly luxurious dojo, one said to be capable of manipulating space at will... Within it, whether a demon walked, lay down, stood vertically, or horizontally, it was entirely up to that lord's whim... It was known as the "Infinity Castle"!

Therefore, unless absolutely necessary, Dohi was determined not to abandon this shrine. It was his cafeteria, the very foundation of his survival. He didn't like moving, and he liked being forced to leave his home even less...

In that case, the only option left was "to fight"!

Dohi regenerated his flesh, took a deep breath, and sneered...

"That is why humans are such filthy creatures."

"When faced with danger, you only know how to pull the weak in front of you as a shield."

"Do you know? I was once a decent person, too, until my superior made a mistake and pushed me out to take the fall. Only then was I forced to eat him!"

"And you—" Dohi pointed at Roy, sparing no mockery, "You, who only hide behind your younger brother, do you dare to fight me one-on-one?"

Uh... "Is Nii-san being mocked?"

Or rather... mocked by a demon?

Tanjiro cast a sidelong, uneasy glance at Roy.

The young man remained expressionless and unmoved. As long as he didn't receive a system notification—

That the battle would increase his "Martial Arts" experience points...

He saw absolutely no need to make a move.

Furthermore—

Roy looked at Dohi calmly and said earnestly: "Friend, you really shouldn't judge a book by its cover."

"Don't let his stupidity fool you; in my eyes, he is actually... very strong..."

"Nii-san!" Tanjiro suddenly raised his axe, two dragon-like streams of air erupting from his nostrils!