Little Nakime

Muzan had always resented the few stubborn holdouts who refused to raise the demons' overall level of education, and Jingyue Qianyu was the hardest one to deal with.

Now he had dumped him on Akaza and left Akaza to struggle with teaching him. Honestly, he was the only one left.

Once he learned to read, every demon would officially be literate.

A perfectionist's dream come true.

At that moment, in the room Nakime had arranged for them, Jingyue Qianyu was sharing some demonic "common knowledge" with Akaza.

"Muzan's actually a huge coward." As he spoke, he cautiously glanced around. Once he confirmed Muzan couldn't be bothered to pay attention to him, he boldly began bad-mouthing him.

He shared his experience with the "newcomer." "If you want to complain about him, just make sure he isn't paying attention, and you can say whatever you like. Though I've already been beaten a few times. I don't know what's gotten into him, insisting that I learn to read."

As he spoke, he seemed to remember how much it had hurt when Muzan hit him on the head, and rubbed the top of his head. "He always acts all gentle, but he hits really hard. And he's not remotely respectable, either. He's the one who led all the demons astray."

Akaza grew interested as well. He put down the book he hadn't particularly wanted to read in the first place and listened.

Akaza's reaction only encouraged him to keep talking:

"Let me tell you, if you're short on money, you can go to Nakime or Asanuma Seiji and the others. Nakime can contact every demon, and she manages the boss's money, too. But fair warning: ask for too much, and you'll get beaten. It's best to earn your own."

Jingyue Qianyu didn't hold back even when talking about his own embarrassing past:

"Several decades ago, I asked Nakime for too much money, and she and Muzan beat me up together. After that, I went back to earning my own.

"They're seriously so stingy."

Speaking of Nakime, he added, "Oh, right. If you ever get into danger and can't win, just shout, 'Nakime, save me!' She'll teleport you into the Infinity Castle.

"But the boss said it's best to break through your limits. Then you won't have to fear getting your head cut off.

"And another thing..."

Jingyue Qianyu was really getting into it. Having finally found a demon patient enough to listen to him "share his experience," he had opened the floodgates. In the middle of his enthusiastic speech, he suddenly realized that Akaza's expression looked a little off.

His voice cut off abruptly. He stiffly turned to look behind him and forced a smile uglier than a grimace:

"Boss... did you hear all that?"

Muzan smiled. "What do you think?"

Then Akaza watched Muzan blow his companion's head apart with a single punch. His companion's head quickly regenerated, and he grinned as he watched Muzan disappear.

Akaza couldn't help sucking in a cold breath.

He really couldn't get used to the way demons behaved!

Why did they keep blowing people's heads apart over nothing?!

His whole impression of Muzan had just been shattered!

"Doesn't that hurt?"

Jingyue Qianyu rubbed his newly regrown head:

"Not too bad. Demons have a very low sensitivity to pain. It only really hurts when a Nichirin Blade or a Bright Red Blade cuts you, or when you absorb the boss's blood. Now that hurts like hell! Usually, losing a head or an arm barely feels like anything."

Akaza: "..."

No wonder you hadn't learned your lesson after getting beaten so many times.

"But Akaza, why did you suddenly become Upper Rank Two? I don't think I'm weak, either. Why couldn't it be me?

"How about we fight?"

Then Jingyue Qianyu, who actually wasn't much of a fighter and whose Blood Demon Art took an extremely long time to activate, was instantly defeated by Akaza...

Muzan discovered someone who seemed to be a character from the original story-a young fellow in the Fishing Village who made bizarre art, always torturing fish to death and sticking their corpses onto pots. Both his parents had also died while fishing.

Muzan knew about Gyokko. Like Hantengu, there was nothing touching about his story.

But this was an opportunity to test whether this thing called the power of the plot actually existed.

After all, he had been an Upper Rank in the original story, which made him a key character. If Muzan didn't turn Gyokko into a demon, would the power of the plot do it instead?

Over the following stretch of time, he casually stopped Gyokko from killing a child who had mocked him.

He did, however, watch Gyokko beat the child up.

Then Muzan discovered that a Half-Demon had appeared.

Its objective was clear: it headed straight for Gyokko.

Hidden behind a house, Muzan watched the Half-Demon slit its wrist and feed its blood to Gyokko, whose face was swollen and bruised from being beaten by a group.

That was basically enough for Muzan to confirm that the so-called power of the plot existed.

Muzan wasn't about to watch the Half-Demon walk away right in front of him. He would test the strength of the power of the plot while he was at it.

Muzan suddenly charged out, and the Whips extending from his back instantly stabbed into the Half-Demon's body.

The Half-Demon clearly hadn't expected Muzan, a mighty Demon King, to sneakily hide behind a house and ambush it!

It was caught completely off guard.

And pierced straight through.

Muzan hadn't brought a Nichirin Blade, but even Half-Demons had originally been born from his blood. Although they had escaped his control, he still had the ability to kill them.

His arm transformed into a huge mouth, and he swallowed it in one gulp right in front of the newly transformed Gyokko.

Gyokko watched his "savior" get eaten. Terrified, he scrambled up from the ground and took off running.

At the same time, he screamed for help, tears pouring down his face in terror.

But Gyokko had only just become a demon and naturally wasn't very strong. Muzan caught up with him in an instant and swallowed him in one bite amid his terrified stare and screams.

This Gyokko actually had intelligence.

And the other Half-Demon Muzan had just eaten had been intelligent, too. Most of the Half-Demons he had encountered were idiots with nothing in their heads.

Yet Gyokko, of all of them, had intelligence.

This Half-Demon seemed more like a tool of the power of the plot.

But this unseen force clearly had no self-awareness. It could only adjust in response to changes, perhaps anticipating them a little at most, but it was still about as capable as artificial idiocy.

It worked more like so-called fate, only far less powerful.

Moreover, the more something seemed to relate to Tanjiro and the final outcome, the greater its influence became.

But it still had to obey certain rules. If he deliberately changed things, the power of the plot couldn't do much.

Its greatest effect so far had been the appearance of Half-Demons. It had also kept Muzan from finding them almost entirely, while leaving the Demon Slayer Corps convinced that the ones indiscriminately eating people were still demons under Muzan's command.

That kept fresh blood flowing into the Demon Slayer Corps.

But Muzan knew that if he could deal with the Ubuyashiki family's so-called "curse," he would resolve the problem of the Demon Slayer Corps. Then he could get rid of the Half-Demons. He refused to believe the power of the plot could do anything after that!

After dealing with the Half-Demons, Muzan returned to the Infinity Castle and found Nakime covering her eye as she earnestly advised Akaza.

"You absolutely must not break the rules the boss laid down, and you absolutely must not slaughter innocents. Otherwise, you'll get fired, and it'll be awful..."

As she spoke, she realized Muzan had arrived and hurriedly shut her mouth.

Holding a biwa, she returned to her raised platform, knelt on the floor, and bowed her head slightly, as though nothing had happened.

Muzan: "..."

So little Nakime had two faces, did she?